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  [Cover Feature] Aging and Death Attuned to Ecological Hospitality

  From 2008 to 2017, I worked as a geriatric social worker, caring for poor, elderly people who, in terms of health, were in their middle- to late stages of life. For the past fifteen years, I have been working with twenty to thirty elderly individuals of various classes, genders, and regions to record their life histories through oral accounts. I published a book titled Farewell Diary that closely documented the last three years of a wealthy elderly woman’s life until her death at the age of eighty-seven. In the last five years, I have focused primarily on being on the ground supporting the homeless around Seoul Station, where I have witnessed firsthand the aging and passing of those considered to be on the “lowest rung” of society. Through my interactions with these individuals, I have had a preview of the physical aspects of my own eventual aging and death, which in turn prompted me to engage in extensive research and inquiry. At sixty-eight, I myself have also entered old age, and the changes in my body, sentiments, and thoughts are interesting subjects of study. Despite a similar trajectory, experiences, memories, feelings, and interpretations of aging and death vary greatly among individuals depending on their attitudes and perspectives, whether it concerns themselves or others. What is it that makes us fear death?All sorts of doubts about things considered “ordinary,” including feelings and emotions that people say naturally permeate us such as sadness or joy, are the driving force behind my thoughts, writings, and life. One such example is the question, “Why do people fear death?” Death is everywhere around us, and everyone knows that we all die. In fact, for the person concerned, death is a complete disappearance that allows for an eternal escape from all pain and problems—a perfect exit. The fact that all living beings perish is the ultimate consolation for those in the process of dying. Concern for the people left behind may be a reason for fearing death, but with death, even that concern ends, and the rest becomes the business of the living.      These days, I often think, “I might not wake up” before going to bed and “I’m still alive” when I wake up in the morning. If I had died, my life would have ended with me being the only one unaware of my demise, while everyone else would know about it. The same goes for other deaths. Although one may sense the end approaching, at the moment of passing, they are the only one unaware of their own death. Of course, in the sense that those left behind must handle the deceased’s affairs, an individual’s death is not the end from a societal perspective. Whether in life or death, every individual is intertwined with society. Thus, it is understandable to talk about regret or sadness—but invoking “fear,” no matter how much I think about it, seems unwarranted. It is as if we were being deceived by someone and then, caught up in that deception, inadvertently deceive ourselves.      Aging and death are matters of time and beyond human control. When it comes to fearing and confronting something, we need to be clear about what we are dealing with—poverty, isolation, inequality, or excessive medical care that are prevalent in the process of aging and dying. Money and capitalism, and our attitude toward them, are the real matters. If we let disorienting rumors frighten us into believing our enemies over ourselves, irrational fears will seize us. Without a chance to fight back, we’ll drown in a deep well of our own making, pulled under by imaginary ghosts. One way I challenge disturbing common beliefs is by weighing who benefits and who loses from them. “When it comes to the pervasive fear of death, who stands to gain and who loses?” This question also translates to, “Who is fueling this fear?” The first groups that come to mind are the superfluous medical, pharmaceutical, and sports industries, as well as the industries related to old age, death, and religion. They form a conveyor belt plastered with “Nothing’s more important than health,” a slogan that is so widespread it has become an ideology. The consumers, of course, are the ones who suffer the loss. Fear surrounding aging and death is an outrageous rumor, a manipulated ideology, and the flip side of it is aversion. Neoliberalism attaches abnormality, uselessness, and even the notion of “sin and punishment” to death—the destination of life—as well as to aging, illness, and disability, then pushes away and abhors these realities. Finally, when someone dies, we are presented with a range of products and services that urge us to pray for the deceased’s blessing in the afterlife. This neoliberal ideology is the very source of such rumors.      To avoid being deceived by such potent rumors, clarifying one’s stance on aging and dying is a must. This stance is rooted in a person’s outlook on life itself. Thus, the questions to continually ask are, “What makes me happy?” and “Why do I live?” There is no point in discussing likes or dislikes regarding aging and death, as these are inevitable aspects of life that everyone must face. If aging and death are something that cannot be avoided, the course of action should be to enjoy them to the fullest. If this is not possible, then one must just accept and endure life as it comes. The future is uncertain anyway, and pulling out all sorts of variables and getting anxious about them early on only makes life chaotic. Not all preparations are useless, as some do have value, but the most crucial preparation is to establish one’s attitude. In my case, “a life of self-sufficiency, conviction, and shared practice” is what ultimately makes me happy, both then and now. Living simply, with just enough materials to uphold self-respect, is both a way to live frugally and to reinforce these principles. Should I continue to live the way I do now, I will age with the passing of time, and old age, illness, and disability will follow and shape me. If death does not arrive before the moment where my body and mind can no longer sustain themselves, I intend to take death into my own hands. What comes after is not my concern. I am neither curious about life after death nor the remaining time I have in this world. I plan to live as it comes. When the body and mind feel like “this is it,” some people open the door to death themselves; some offer their bodies to beings in the mountains, the sea, and the air. The manner of death is also each person’s responsibility. My life, from beginning to end, is solely and uniquely mine, and I desire a free death. I have serious doubts on views that regard choosing one’s own death as a sin. For the people remaining in this world who will be hurt by my choice, I leave my convictions about free death in speech and writing whenever I have the chance.      I often hear people around me, both young and old, expressing that they cannot bear life and wish to die. Hearing these words so frequently is what I find truly unbearable. Sometimes, to those who have the capacity to grasp the meaning of my words, I offer a blunt response: “Living and dying are nothing extraordinary. This world and life itself are absurd, after all. The life or death of a person is a matter of utmost significance only to the individual concerned and a source of sorrow for close acquaintances, but it has little social consequence and can even be a positive thing from an ecological perspective. The decision to live or die is yours to make; if you choose death, then see it through. However, if you choose to live, you must clearly define the kind of life you will lead regardless of all the absurdities, contradictions, and hardships life holds. Then live the way you desire and that serves the common good of society until your final breath.”      People often say that the fear of pain in the process of decline is greater than the fear of death itself. This sentiment holds more truth than simply stating a fear of death. The future, however, is an extension of the past and present, and it steadily approaches with each passing moment. Aging and illness generally do not strike suddenly; the deterioration happens so stealthily that you might not even notice it yourself. Only acquaintances you haven’t seen in a while might catch the changes. On rare occasions, you may be suddenly hit with such changes but that is something to accept as “my turn.” If there is consciousness left at the moment of passing and you can think to yourself, “I lived a decent life,” that in itself is sufficient. In case you lose your mental faculties first, it would be wise to prepare for things like refusing life-sustaining treatment. The process of resistance, resignation, and acceptance: “I want to die not knowing this!” Aging is a process of repeatedly resisting, resigning to, and accepting the gradually increasing losses and impossibilities, saying, “Okay, I accept!” and then planning the next step. It involves passing through phases, at times navigating periods of confusion and depression, while strategizing “selection and concentration” that fits the new version of oneself. Since time continues to slip away, aging calls for categorizing what to do and what not to do, focusing first on what you really want to accomplish. The Lower Village that I have been frequenting lately is a venue for a night school for the homeless run by homeless individuals and volunteer teachers. I have been teaching the “speaking and writing class” there for four years. The roughly twenty or so teachers are mostly in their twenties to forties, and I am the only “old person” among them. When faced with tasks that take a long time for me to learn or are headache-inducing, such as installing Google Drive or creating web posters, I sometimes shamelessly say, “I want to die not knowing this. Let the young people who will continue using it handle it!” I take advantage of my “old age” as an excuse, indirectly informing others what it is like to be old and suggesting a division of roles. In the rapidly evolving material world we live in, the “cultural aging” of the elderly is inevitable. To avoid being alienated from a civilization that seems beyond reach, cooperation and division of roles between generations become necessary. It is fine to live and die without mastering certain technologies or cultural trends that are difficult to grasp. You can discern what you would like to learn, even if it is just to get a general sense and even late in life, and then find enjoyment in making use of it. You can also determine what you want to give up learning and ask someone else for help after weighing the cost-effectiveness between the degree of use and the remaining time, and what you do not feel like learning at all. After figuring that out, you can let things be and focus on living with ease. The elderly should steer clear of exerting too much effort on matters that aren’t truly important to them.      As I age, I feel that although my physical strength and memory have declined, my insight and ability to form relationships have significantly improved. I experience ongoing progressive symptoms such as farsightedness and arthritis, so I make sure to take care of my eyes and joints by doing eye and muscle exercises whenever I find time in my daily life. My curiosity and desires remain the same, and as always, the challenge lies in making choices. I have significantly cut back on learning new topics of discourse, as I am already well-versed in enough discourse to engage with the people I want to meet. For the studies that are more essential, I rely on talented young activists or professionals, following their work and finding pleasure in learning from it. However, I sometimes find myself hopelessly drawn to settings that stir my instincts, or to study topics that ignite my curiosity—things that bring a thrill, even to an old person! I do not agree with the saying, “If you cannot go all the way, it is better not to go at all,” since you can still enjoy the journey as far as you are able to go. After all, are not most things in life pursuits without a true end, no matter how far you go? Differences and discrimination in aging and death What should be problematized are discrimination and inequality rooted in differences of class, gender, identity, and culture throughout the journey of aging and living. In this sense, while aging and dying are deeply personal matters, they are also political and social agendas. In a society driven by wealth, the aversion toward the elderly is often an emotion directed more towards poverty than aging itself. Old people collecting waste paper on the streets evoke discomfort or, at most, fleeting sympathy. This sympathy and aversion carry an underlying anxiety that in a society with a fragile safety net, one’s own old age could end up like this with just a single misstep. On the other hand, wealthy elders are favored by the state, corporations, and younger generations alike.       The deaths of the poor are often simple and swift compared to those who prolong their lives with money. Having resigned themselves to their fate early on, their minds are less conflicted, allowing them to reach a sense of freedom sooner. As someone unlikely to become a wealthy elder, I feel I have secured the best possible outcome in advance, exchanging the time, emotions, and costs associated with the aging and dying process for a “life and death true to myself.” I reject the gaze that labels the simple and swift way the elderly poor prepare for their departure—both mentally and physically—with words such as “miserable” or “forlorn.” While their lives may have been challenging and their acceptance of death painful, this straightforward and quick process reflects an approach to aging and dying that embodies ecological hospitality.      Many of my acquaintances belong to social minorities, including sexual minorities, so I often hear about the deaths of young people who have taken their own lives. These deaths, largely due to stigma and hatred, can be seen as a form of social murder. Whether someone dies by suicide, illness, or the natural process of aging and decline, I do not express sadness in front of others. As someone without religious beliefs, I also refrain from using common expressions like “in a good place” or “bless your soul.” Instead, for those who lived with too little means or endured too much suffering, I conceal my heart’s celebration of their reaching death by simply saying, “You have gone through a lot. Now you can rest.” Whenever I witness people in power who could not confront their life’s errors or shame and escaped them through suicide, I consider myself fortunate not to have such power.      For me, mourning is a process of reflecting on and interpreting the life of someone who has reached death, and as opportunities or needs arise, examining the positives and negatives, achievements and limitations of the deceased’s life, so that it can serve as a mirror for the living. I desire my own funeral to be as simple as possible. Rather than focusing on the ceremony, I hope that the detailed aspects of my life will spark ongoing debates and controversies. My wish is for the living to sharply and faithfully reinterpret the context, meaning, and limitations of my existence.      My interest extends only up to my own death. Funerals are irrelevant to the deceased; as soon as one passes, everything becomes a ritual and I believe that all rituals contain a significant amount of deception. Funerals are for the living, events that showcase the power and resources of those left behind. They cover up the deceased’s struggles, joys, and sorrows in life with packaging and polite words, turning the matter into a business disguised as “human duty.” This business mobilizes not just blood relatives and acquaintances, but even people who never met the deceased while they were alive. The funeral industry assigns a quality level and price tag to all the products and services down to the smallest item, and employs funeral workers at near minimum wage, all while profiting behind the scenes. I rarely attend funerals, except for public ones for so-called “unclaimed” deaths, such as those of the homeless. However, on the rare occasions when I find myself in a funeral hall connected to a large hospital, the atmosphere evokes the image of a vending machine.      Old age is a messy chapter in life, making it an opportune time to fight until the moment of cessation. When fear seeps in, whether it stems from aging, death, poverty, illness, or alienation, the first step is to face yourself head-on. Only by confronting yourself squarely can you effectively challenge the multitude of rumors that circulate this world.  Translated by Kim Soyoung KOREAN WORK MENTIONED:Choi Hyunsook, Farewell Diary (Humanitas, 2019) 최현숙, 『작별 일기』 (후마니타스, 2019)  Choi Hyunsook has worked as a caregiver and life manager for elderly individuals living alone while also conducting oral history projects. She has published works such as Is the Difference Really So Big Between Heaven and Hell?, Just When You Think It’s a Dead End a Narrow Path Appears, The Life of Grandpas, The Life of Grandmas, The Origin of Determination, the essay collections Facing Life Head-On and Farewell Diary, and the novel The Case of the Missing Old Man Hwang. 

  by Choi Hyunsook

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  [Cover Feature] Aging in Remembrance of the Future

  Mawe is an elderly man in his seventies living in the neighborhood of Yeonhui-dong. As soon as he turned twenty, he left his hometown in the remote mountains of North Gyeongsang Province and boarded a train bound for Seoul. Watching as the familiar sights of his hometown slipped further into the distance, he found himself lost in the scattered thoughts of everything he was leaving behind and all that was to come. He couldn’t help but cry when he thought of his first love, who left him with nothing but the hazy memory of her retreating figure and the sting of a refused proposal to run away together to Seoul. As he wiped his tears, he vowed to make something of himself and return one day. But life in Seoul was unforgiving; with no education and nothing to his name, he only had the will of his own body to rely on. He got his start hauling goods in and around a corner of the bustling Dongdaemun Market, continuing for a few years until he caught the attention of a store owner who came from the same hometown. The man, old enough to be his father, hired him to work in his store where Mawe learned the ropes of running a business before eventually opening his own in his mid-thirties. He came to realize that whenever he chased after money like a madman, it constantly evaded him, disappearing like a mirage on the horizon. But whenever he decided to cast his greater ambitions aside and settle into the lull of simply making a living, wealth began to pour in from unexpected places. While others copied the designs of high-end clothing brands, he made and sold tracksuits that stretched out after a single wash. He had nothing else in mind besides making small profits and quick returns.      Fortunately for him, a fitness boom had taken over the nation and his products flew off the shelves as people looked to keep up with the latest trend of dressing in comfortable yet slouchy athletic wear. Runners along the riverside trails wore his clothes, as did teens who raced through the night streets on their motorcycles. You could even catch glimpses of it being worn in the background of news clips and variety shows. With the factory running around the clock, it still wasn’t enough to keep up with the sheer number of orders that were pouring in. He had struck gold overnight. The tracksuit craze wasn’t quick to fade either and even the slightest tweak to his design, whether in fabric or style, immediately made it a bestseller before eventually solidifying it as another staple of his store. But as the money flooded in, Mawe was unexpectedly gripped by fear. In the decades he spent at Dongdaemun Market, he had witnessed countless business owners ride the rollercoaster of life’s ups and downs. He recalled the men who, after cashing their cheques, bought foreign cars, gambled, and paraded their girlfriends on their arms, only to return haggard and in search of money within the year. He couldn’t shake the image of his own face becoming one with their desperate expressions. There was no way he was going to let that happen. With more money than he had ever had to his name, Mawe bought a two-story brick house with a quaint garden in Yeonhui-dong. What was it about Yeonhui-dong that set it apart from the rest? For one, it was the very same prime location that two former presidents once called home. In his younger years, when he would pass through on his delivery route, Mawe often caught sight of the dense treetops that towered over the high boundary walls of the gated properties that filled Yeonhui-dong. It was a refined neighbourhood, its sophistication teased through those fleeting glimpses. What sort of happiness lived within those neatly painted walls? He wanted to see for himself. After setting up his own store and getting married, he had become a father to a son and a daughter. His family of four created a picture-perfect life in their two-story brick home in Yeonhui-dong. It was a portrait complete with a fairy-tale home and garden, not to mention, a lovely wife and children. He had become a man who turned his dreams into reality and no longer shed tears over all he left behind.      As time passed, his little store grew into a full-fledged business and he went from being a store owner to the head of a company. And rather than being the rollercoaster ride he once feared it would be, his business operated smoothly and steadily. He never demanded too much from his children and they, in return, grew up without causing much trouble. His booksmart son managed to pass the civil service exam early and by all accounts seemed to have settled into a secure path in life. While his daughter was not as academically inclined as her older brother, she possessed a knack for business and ultimately took over the day-to-day operations from her father. With the existing setup they had in place, she took it a step further by putting their products online well ahead of their competitors and launched three online businesses focused on men’s and women’s apparel, as well as athletic wear.       After his daughter moved to the Gangnam district and his son relocated to Sejong City, only he and his wife remained in the picture-perfect two-story house in Yeonhui-dong. His wife, being the more sociable one of the two, joined a local meet-up group and travelled around the country, even going abroad from time to time. She regularly went to the community and senior learning centers where she learned ballroom dancing, singing, and English. Their house grew quiet. The neighborhood of Yeonhui-dong was changing too. What was once a sleepy middle-class neighborhood suddenly became a trendy hotspot. As elderly residents struggled to maintain their homes, many of them sold their houses to move into smaller apartments while the remaining properties became cafés, restaurants, and wine bars. Some of the bigger houses were converted into publishing firms or photography studios. A guesthouse with walls painted a vibrant shade of yellow and the unfamiliar sight of something known as an espresso bar also opened in the alley right where Mawe’s house stood.       In retirement, Mawe struggled to fill the seemingly endless amount of free time on his hands. He tried going to the community center with his wife and even paid a visit to the senior learning center, but he found it hard to adjust to the active energy that filled the air. He was better suited to doing things on his own rather than activities that required working with others. One afternoon on his walk, he found himself on a side street he didn’t normally take. Right in the middle of the alley, he spotted a house under construction. It was a worn-down, quaint, two-story house, and by the look of how its surrounding walls were being torn down, it was likely being remodelled as a commercial property rather than a home. After that first day, he decided to pass by every time he took his daily lap around the neighborhood. Where a tall wall once stood, a low iron fence took its place. It wrapped around a small garden, one side of which was filled with camellias, crape myrtles, and a persimmon tree. The walls of the first floor were all but gone, revealing a new spacious studio with large glass windows. Judging by the tables and chairs that were being arranged inside, it was sure to be a café. He pictured himself drinking a cup of coffee as he stared at the bright red camellia blossoms through the glass windows. He could see himself there, taking in the sight of the crape myrtles as he escaped the summer heat, or smiling contentedly as he looked up at the orange persimmons hanging from the tree in the heart of autumn. When he caught himself hoping for the coffee to be good, he couldn’t help but chuckle sheepishly at the realization that he was looking forward to something for the first time in a while.       A season came and went, and at last, a signboard was hung outside the finished building—it read: Yeonhui Banggeul Studio. He studied the tiny letters above the low entrance for a long time. “Yeonhui” was obviously for the neighborhood, but what did “Banggeul Studio” mean? Could it be bang for room and geul for writing? Room Writing Studio? If it was a studio, didn’t that make it a place for photography? The thought that it might not be a café struck him with a brief pang of disappointment. His deflated expression was clear across his face as he continued to stare up at the sign until a young woman around his daughter’s age came out and greeted him. Excitedly, she urged him to come inside for some celebratory grand opening rice cakes and to learn more about the new space.       Yeonhui Banggeul Studio was a place he had never encountered before in the decades he spent living in the neighborhood. Everything about it seemed so foreign that he wondered if he could even call it a store. But seeing that it wasn’t a place for living, he decided it could be called one after all. According to the woman, the studio was essentially a writing center. The first floor would be run as a café on weekday afternoons while various writing classes would take place in the evenings throughout the week. There were classes on writing poetry, fiction, essays, and journals, as well as reading groups dedicated to the very same genres and more. The center was run by a handful of writers who earned money from the lesson fees they received and the profits from the café, with the second floor serving as their personal workspace and office.      “So, it’s basically a writing school,” Mawe said.      The woman responded, “Rather than a school, I hope it becomes a place of gathering. A place where everyone can read, write, and share their thoughts freely.”      He had already felt a sense of relief when he learned that it was going to be run as a café, but now that he knew its true purpose as a writing center, his heart leapt in his chest. The excitement he felt was a strange emotion, one that even he couldn’t understand.      In the early spring, he enrolled in the journaling class. While he would never have dreamed of trying his hand at poetry or fiction, he figured that he could at least give journaling a shot. The instructor introduced himself as a novelist who had made his literary debut through an annual spring literary contest held by a newspaper outlet before projecting the class materials onto the screen.       Write about your life—to write is to meet, and only through meeting can you finally part      “What exactly are we parting with?” a young male student asked.       “With the version of myself that I’ve recorded; the me that is trapped within my own words. With the version of myself that continues to wander through memories of the past.” The words came spilling out of the impassioned instructor’s mouth before he fell silent. Mawe felt goosebumps trail down his arms. After a brief pause, the instructor continued,  “If there are memories you want to part with, write them down. All shame becomes bearable once they’ve been transformed into words.”       To protect everyone’s privacy, the instructor proposed that they use nicknames in class rather than their real names. He began by asking the students to call him “Shado,” explaining to them that he wanted to shrink the size of his own shadow. The young couple requested to be called “Hedge” and “Hog,” after the pet hedgehog they were raising together. A middle-aged woman who hardly ever smiled or spoke wanted to go plainly by “S”. When someone asked why, she replied, “Because it’s somehow shaped like a person who’d be able to walk without stumbling.” Mawe was the last to speak. He initially asked to be called “My Way,” inspired by the title of his favorite song. But the young male student insisted that they should all keep their names to a single letter or word, suggesting that he could condense it into something like “Mawe.” The young man’s boldness left him grumbling but as he repeated the name over in his head—it finally clicked. It had a nice ring to it, almost like the name of some wealthy Chinese tycoon. From that day on, he became Mawe.      Once a week, he took on this new identity at Yeonhui Banggeul Studio. He wrote his journal entries and found himself being drawn to books he would never have given a second glance before. He even started stopping by the public library every now and then on his walks. When he found out that they hosted poetry readings and book talks every few months, he figured they weren’t the type of events that suited him and so he let them pass unnoticed. That was until he saw a poster for a poetry reading by a male poet who looked to be around the same age as he was. He signed himself up with a mix of curiosity and apprehension. The session was titled “Goodbye Spring,” and the poet would be reading not only from his own works but also from other famous poems centered around the theme of spring. One poem in particular that day resonated deeply with Mawe— The Waste Land by the poet T.S. Eliot:        April is the cruellest month, breeding       Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing       Memory and desire, stirring       Dull roots with spring rain.       Winter kept us warm, covering       Earth in forgetful snow, feeding      A little life with dried tubers.        The poem was long but as soon as he heard the first line, Mawe’s mind went hazy in shock. He felt as if he knew exactly why the beautiful month of April, known for its seasonal flowers, was the cruellest month of all. It was as if this poet provided the key to the deep depressive spells he had fallen into every spring since reaching his mid-sixties. Somewhere along the way, he began to feel an overwhelming urge to cry whenever he was met with the beautiful sight of cherry blossoms fluttering in the wind. He was madly consumed by a deep jealousy over their eternally untouched beauty, leaving him riddled with age spots and withered by time. Spring was the cruellest, as Eliot said, for mixing memory with desire and ultimately stirring the dull roots. All winter long, he convinced himself he had lived enough and that it was time to accept the aging and death that awaited him. But spring kept shaking him, reigniting his desire to live just awhile longer. Spring made him feel ugly. He wanted to argue with the heavens: why must life end in a single instance when the seasons always return if you wait long enough? The ever-changing seasons were always beautiful, yet life felt endlessly bleak and sordid. Every spring, he wept over his insignificance.      Pouring these feelings into his journal, he shared them with his instructor and fellow students, who offered kinder words than usual. Even S, who had little to say and kept to herself most of the time, gave a lengthy response to Mawe’s words that day. S spoke of poems that compared life to the seasons, specifically of a song she learned from her grandmother as a young girl. She explained that “The Song of Four Seasons” compared youth to spring and old age to winter, mourning the fleeting nature of life but that its final verse offered a sense of hope and resolve. To everyone’s surprise, she asked if she could sing it for them, to which the room responded with applause.        Flowers bloom from this mountain to the next, surely it must be spring       Spring has sprung yet the ways of the world remain unkind      I too was in the springtime of my youth just yesterday, but now, humbled by      time, I am old and gray      My youth, which has hopelessly abandoned me,      What good is there in welcoming the spring, knowing it will come and go?       Spring, if you are to leave, just go!        A song that began with such resentment towards spring ended on a note very different from The Waste Land.       Friends, gather around       and drink another glass! And though we may say we’re done,       let’s revel and enjoy the fun!  By the time S finished her song, they all cheered and clapped. Mawe felt his eyes wet with tears. Shado, their instructor, was the first to speak.       “It seems like this song suggests that aging can be done in remembrance of the future.”       “What do you mean by remembering the future?” asked the young woman they called Hedge.       Shado replied, “Instead of waiting around for the future you want, why not create it for yourself? Couldn’t we call that the very act of remembering?”       For the first time that night, Mawe bought a round of drinks for Shado and the other students. They all made their way to a newly opened bar in the alley next to Yeonhui Banggeul Studio, where they all shared different types of local makgeolli. The younger ones knew much more about makgeolli than an old man like him. And as he listened to them describe each region’s flavors and specialties, he found himself delighting in the realization that there was still so much left to learn at his age. When he promised himself that they would do this again next week, sharing more stories over drinks yet to be tasted, he felt a sense of relief at having something to look forward to. As the night came to a close, they all headed in the direction of the bus stop on the main street. Cherry tree branches, peppered with buds, extended beyond the yard, reaching over the high walls with the promise of bursting into bloom. Mawe pointed out they were sure to be in full blossom by next week. Hearing his comment, someone marveled, “You sure have an impressive gift for remembering the future!” Even though he was eager to get home to write his next journal entry, Mawe only wished that this nighttime stroll would last just a while longer. It was a spring night—cruel and electrifying.  Translated by Nicole Lin KOREAN WORK MENTIONED:Lee Juhye, The Seasons are Short, But Memories are Forever  (Changbi Publishers, 2023) 이주혜, 『계절은 짧고 기억은 영영』 (창비, 2023) Author’s Note:This is an essay written in the form of a novel. Mawe, a choric character in the novel The Seasons are Short, But Memories are Forever, laments the process of aging by likening it to the seasons. By further interrogating this question of aging, the character of Mawe will be brought into greater focus.  Lee Juhye reads, writes, and translates. She is the author of works including Plum, The Cat’s Name is Long, Whose Spot, The Seasons are Short, But Memories are Forever, and The Room with the Chinese Parrot. She has translated various titles, including Adrienne Rich’s When We Dead Awaken: writing as Re-Vision, Lydia Davis’s  Can’t and Won’t, and Maggie Doherty’s The Equivalents.

  by Lee Juhye

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  [Cover Feature] In Search of Aging's Light

  Toward the end of Proust’s Time Regained (volume 7 of his novel In Search of Lost Time), Marcel, the narrator, upon returning from the sanatorium in Paris where he spent several years, is invited to an afternoon reception at the home of the Duc de Guermantes. Marcel is astonished to be reunited with people he hasn’t seen in ages, as everyone, including the master of the house, looks completely changed, made up with “generally powdered” faces as though they’re taking part in a play or a masked ball. The “mask” is the face of old age, a consequence of time. “The heads have been in the making for a long time without their wishing it and cannot be got rid of by toilet operations when the party is over.”¹      Passing time, or the years we live through, inevitably leaves its mark on us. In his novel, Proust metaphorically translates time, which can’t be seen with the eyes or felt with the hands, through the physical reality of the body. That is the notion of the “embodiment of Time” stressed by the author on the last page. In other words, the times past, through which we have lived, stay accumulated in our bodies, never taken from us—“after death Time leaves the body.” Proust translates the way time is internalized in our bodies in terms of depth and height, not width and volume.      Amid the “masked ball,” Marcel hears the sound of the bell he heard decades before as a child—the “metallic, shrill, fresh echo of the little bell” on the gate at the end of the yard in his old home in Combray, which rang as Marcel’s parents showed out Mr. Swan, a neighbor, finally leaving after a long evening of conversation. Decades and countless events stand between that moment and the day of the party at the home of the Duc de Guermantes, but the sound remains unchanged. To hear it more clearly, more closely, Marcel must make an effort to withdraw from the conversations among the “masks” around him and “plunge into” himself to grasp the vivid memories they bring forth. The sound, then, exists deep inside his body, intact as ever, and all the past moments that lie between the moment the sound was heard and the present moment exist in that deep space within. So all he has to do to recapture the past moment, or return to it, is plunge “more deeply into” himself. Marcel says, “I had a feeling of intense fatigue when I realized that all this span of time had not only been lived, thought, secreted by me uninterruptedly, that it was my life, that it was myself, but more still because I had at every moment to keep it attached to myself, that it bore me up, that I was poised on its dizzy summit, that I could not move without taking it with me . . . I was giddy at seeing so many years below and in me as though I were leagues high.”      The giddiness he feels at the pinnacle of time takes on a more concrete form in the person of the aged Duc de Guermantes.       “I now understood why the Duc de Guermantes, whom I admired when he was seated because he had aged so little although he had so many more years under him than I, had tottered when he got up and wanted to stand erect—like those old Archbishops surrounded by acolytes, whose only solid part is their metal cross—and had moved, trembling like a leaf on the hardly approachable summit of his eighty-three years, as though men were perched upon living stilts which keep on growing, reaching the height of church-towers, until walking becomes difficult and dangerous and, at last, they fall.”      “Eighty-three.” Yes. This year, I turned the same age as the Duc de Guermantes or the old Archbishops as described by Proust. I’m as old as U.S. President Joe Biden, the former Korean President Lee Myung-bak, the deceased Lee Kun-hee, former chairman of Samsung, and Kim Jong Il, the also deceased former leader of North Korea. President Biden, who tripped and fell in front of the eyes of the world, conceded his candidacy for a second term to the younger Vice President Kamala Harris in the end.      I, too, who had been confident of my relatively good health, recently slipped on hard cement ground while on a long walk along the banks of the Han River and slightly injured my tailbone. Anyone well into old age eventually faces a moment when they reel from vertigo, as if standing on stilts, clumsily trying to look down at the ground. Two days ago, I returned from a trip overseas, during which I walked for six hours along a 20-kilometer wooden path over a swamp surrounded by yellow autumn grass.  * At what age do people belong to the “aged” group? This is a highly subjective judgment, but also a social issue in communities, in which people are seen through an “objective” standard. In today’s industrial society, most working people over age 65 are considered “old” and forced to retire. This is the age at which senior citizens in Korea become officially eligible for free subway rides, a benefit provided by the government. In general, human motor nerves are most sensitive and quick to respond around age 25. After age 30, however, the body’s structure begins to degenerate. On a personal level, my physical deterioration was detected early on, as I’ve suffered from myopia and astigmatism since my youth, and had to deal with diminished hearing, tooth wear, and memory loss beginning in my late 60s. Such decline is inevitable for all who are born into life, for it has been our fate at all points of history.      The advancement of medicine and technology, however, has made it possible to correct deficiencies in physical function, thanks to which I have been able to carry on with daily life and work even after my retirement at 65 without too much trouble. One day, I got on a subway train and the young woman sitting in front of me jumped to her feet and yielded her seat, saying, “Sir!” For the first time in my life, I became objectively aware of my old age; it was long after I had retired from work.      The “2023 Survey on the Aged,” conducted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, reveals surprising results. Based on the responses of 10,078 citizens over age 65, it showed that the average age at which people saw themselves as old was 71.6—1.1 years older than the 70.5 reported in 2020. Thirty-nine percent of senior citizens seek to continue working after retirement, and the proportion of such people increases each year. This shift relates to the phenomenon of longer life expectancy. According to the population mortality table released by Statistics Korea, the average life expectancy of people in Korea in 2022 was 79.9 for men and 85.6 for women. By the UN’s count, however, the life expectancy of South Korean babies born in 2023 was 84.33 on average for both males and females, ranking it among top three among 210 countries around the world, an eight-level increase compared to the life expectancy in 2022 (82.73, 11th in ranking).       If life expectancy is a quantitative indicator of good health, healthy life expectancy is qualitative. Healthy life expectancy, which excludes years of inactivity due to disease or injury, indicates how long a person is expected to live in good health. The average healthy life expectancy for Koreans has increased by 5.9 years, from 66.6 in 2000 to 72.5 in 2021—a positive development for individuals. But for society, this increase, driven by low birth rates and a rapidly aging population, presents a heavy burden. A report by Korea Development Institute predicts that if the legal age for senior citizens remains unchanged at 65, the elderly care expenses in Korea will be the highest among OECD nations by 2054. Elderly people over age 65 make up 19.2 percent of Korea’s total population of 51 million, or roughly 10 million people. In South Jeolla and North Gyeongsang provinces, the aged account for 25-26 percent of the total population. As Simone de Beauvoir somberly pointed out half a century ago in her book, Old Age: “The insouciance hiding itself behind sundry myths of increase and abundance treats the aged as the lowest class of people. France has the highest old age population in the world, with 12 percent of the total population being 65 or older. And yet the aged have been sentenced to poverty, loneliness, disability, and despair.” Fifty years later, then, with the elderly population twice as high, what fate are the aged in Korea sentenced to?      François Mauriac, the novelist, has stated: “Old age is great, what a pity it ends so badly!” The end he refers to is aging and death. “Old age. It’s the only disease that you don’t look forward to being cured of,” said Orson Welles. Humans, strictly speaking, are all prisoners sentenced to death. We just don’t know when the sentence will be executed. On a social level, aging and death call up the issues of senior care and funeral arrangements. A recent news report indicated that as a result of a low birth rate and aging, facilities like nurseries, preschools, and even postnatal care centers are turning into centers for the elderly, such as long-term care facilities. Around the same time, the same newspaper ran an article titled “Crematoriums Keeping the Country from Turning into a Cemetery Filled to Capacity . . . Ashes Scattered over Mountains and Sea.” As funeral customs in Korea began to change in the mid-90s, with more and more people opting for cremation (93 percent of all funeral options chosen today), memorial parks equipped with enshrinement facilities like charnel houses have been on the increase. Such facilities, however, come with contract expiration dates—15, 30, or 45 years at the longest—meaning that even the deceased may need to “move out” once a lease expires and find a new place of enshrinement. * So many things have changed, indeed. I grew up thinking that a funeral consisted of courteous visits by relatives, neighbors, and acquaintances at the home of the deceased, a long funeral march with a bier carrying the corpse to be buried in the family burial grounds. In my life, the funerals of my parents and grandparents were conducted in this manner. But caring for family gravesites became increasingly difficult with the passing of time and people growing used to life in big cities. The challenge now is to deal with these changes. A matter of similar import is my own funeral. The most important principle is my attitude on my own life and death. My life has been one of learning, reading, and writing, which has allowed me plenty of time to ponder life and death. But I have yet to know what death is. I have only seen and felt and thought about the death of others, outside of my own body and mind. I can’t experience my own death or attend my own funeral. I can, however, imagine the final moment leading up to death.      Michel Tournier contemplated two ways of dealing with death: “In the past, someone facing death knew that he was dying. He would call his family to his bedside and tell them something meaningful, like La Fontaine’s fables. Today, when someone is approaching death, he is carried to the hospital and placed in a glass box for a long time at the order of people in white gowns, barely maintaining his existence through rubber hoses and syringes” (Petites proses). Today, I dare not hope for the good fortune of a death like one in La Fontaine’s fables; it’s far more likely my end will follow the course of the latter. My father, however, died one day while I was living abroad, as he made ready to leave the house and stepped out onto the wood maru. The cause was a heart attack. A large Chinese character, 雪, meaning “snow,” was written in thin, shaky strokes on the day’s page of the desk calendar on the chest of drawers in his room. Hong Yunsuk, a poet and my mother-in-law, went to bed at night as usual and passed away quietly the next morning. On that sunny autumn morning, her caregiver had unexpectedly called me: “She’s not breathing.” How wonderful it would be if my last moment were so simple! After age gives way to death, the only traces of a person left in the world are the tomb and the tombstone. Nothing remains, of course, after the ashes are scattered over a mountain or sea. I wouldn’t mind if, one day, my own ashes were scattered to the wind, leaving nothing behind. I’ve seen countless tombs and tombstones as I traveled around the world. I’ve passed by those of my ancestors in the mountains back home, and those of renowned writers such as Paul Valéry, the author of “The Graveyard by the Sea,” in Sète in the South of France. The one that’s stayed with me the longest is the unadorned tombstone of the poet W. B. Yeats, which I came upon in a churchyard in Ireland. The pithy words engraved thereon admonished me to be on my way: “Cast a cold eye on life, on death. Horseman, pass by!” The small and simple granite stone of Albert Camus’s tomb, in a graveyard in the little town of Lourmarin in Provence, showed nothing but the writer’s name and the dates of his birth and death.      When Michel Tournier, born in 1924, was asked, “What will be the most important event to take place in 2000?” he replied without hesitation, “My death.” Then he explained why: “Because I’ll be 76. My father died at that age. Just as his father did. It’s a good age to die. You can avoid the pain and disgrace of old age, without losing your good fortune and reason. And damn, wouldn’t it have been a long enough life?” He had his epitaph written out in advance: “Michel Tournier (1924-2000). I adored you, and you returned my love a hundredfold. Life, I thank you!” (Petites proses). Two years later, in March 2002, I paid him a visit at his home in Choiseul, a village near Paris. He was still on the panel of judges for Prix Goncourt. At 78, he had a face full of wrinkles and walked with a limp. I subtly congratulated him on already reaching his second year beyond the age he was supposed to leave this world. He replied, “Oh, good heavens! I missed my own death!” On January 18, 2016, he died at his home in Choiseul, aged 92. He’d always praised Victor Hugo in his old age and loved to recite one of Hugo’s poems, “Boaz Asleep”:             Life’s primal source, unchangeable and bright,             The old man entereth, the day eterne;             And in the young man’s eye a flame may burn,             But in the old man’s eye one seeth light.               Translated by Yewon Jung Kim Hwa-Young is a literary critic, translator of French literature, and recipient of the Palbong Literary Criticism Award and Inchon Award. He has published more than twenty books of criticism, including A Study on Literary Imagination, On the Poems of Midang Seo Jeong-ju, The Shock of Happiness, and A Walk with French Literature. He has translated more than 110 works, including The Stranger, Madame Bovary, Fruits of the Earth, and Strait Is the Gate.  [1] The version quoted in this essay is the translation by Terence Kilmartin (Jovian Press, 2018).  

  by Kim Hwa-Young

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  [Essay] Love at Once: On the Poetry of Jin Eun-young

  Jin Eun-young’s poetry is “beautiful and political.” This expression comes from the poet’s own considerations over the schism that emerges between social engagement and engaged poetry—when we raise our voice at society through poetry, can that voice avoid falling into cliché? If so, can we ensure the words spoken in that voice remain political?—but it is now used by most as a description of the poetic oeuvre she herself has built. Perhaps at some point we’ve simply come to think of it as the proper description of her poetry. Since the entrenchment of neoliberalism in Korean society during the 2000s, whenever there has been a political struggle or societal tragedy, and literature has not shrunk from the moment but bravely engaged  in literary fashion, Jin Eun-young’s poetry has been there to speak. When her poem “Seven Word Dictionary” established the poet as a figure who composes a dictionary of their own and defined “Capitalism” as a “darkness of all shapes and colors” offering no way to “make it through alone,” we as readers felt the intense power of “beautiful and political” poetry.      But think about it. How does this curious phrase, which may seem almost oxymoronic to some, become possible in poetry? What gives rise to poetry that is at once beautiful and political? Here we must always be wary of rhetoric. What I’d like to discuss is how Jin Eun-young’s poetry works ceaselessly to write the “beautiful and political” site of struggle, how it refuses to give up on passion for a better world even as it stomachs an aching life, how it can say that after “blood, sweat, death” comes “song,” as in her poem “As Always.”      The core of the phrase “beautiful and political” is and—the realization of beauty and politics at once. This “and” links the seemingly distant realms of aesthetics and politics, autonomy and engagement , folding them together in a single place. A poetry which is charged with poetic language in and of itself and which reminds the reader of social realities and leads them to picture the next reality at once. A poetry which makes a radical political argument and which exerts aesthetic power, a grip on beauty, to political effect at once. Jin Eun-young’s poetry extends in the temporal setting of at once. Perhaps we could also say that poetry itself only forms when an A and B of utterly disparate aspects are present at once. The poem thereby intimates that A and B were perhaps never so different after all.      In “The Truth” we see that “the water” is at once a place of “unmoving stars” and moving “stillness.” The silence fallen over the world holds a secret which can’t be kept silent. Poetry begins by telling us that no probable situation in this world can be read in only one way, that a line once written is overlain with other meanings. In this poem, we find the truth that “there was a child who fell in the water” alongside the truth that “the child still skips safely across the hearts of loved ones / Like steppingstones across the water.” Because there is no “reason why that person had to die,” the reason also sounds “like a wandering song.” The truths that surround us do not present themselves clearly in a single visage. Rather, the truths of “the living, the dead” are there, each coexisting in the same world.      Readers long familiar with Jin’s poems will remember “every facial expression” that is there hiding somewhere, even when we close our eyes and try not to look at the world in the poem “All Gone,” the first in her first collection Seven Word Dictionary. Or the speaker who claims there are times when “all we can do is say there is” about an “unverifiable presence” in the poem, “There is,” the first from her third collection, Stolen Song. By the time we arrive at the poem “The Truth” in her fourth collection, I Love You Like an Old Street, it seems as if the poet is imparting to us that even things which have crossed over the border into the unseen are in this world, that some truths wander the world forever, kept secret in the darkness. Poetry tells. It tells us that the unseen hold their place within us in their most intense form precisely because they are unseen. That the stories we don’t want to tell, precisely because we don’t want to tell them, are placed within this world in their most intense telling, which must eventually be told. That our lives are full of things that are at once, despite having utterly disparate meanings. That sometimes this truth consoles us, and sometimes it assails us.      The temporality of at once is also expressed in the powerful impression exuded by images which coexist despite not going together or feeling right for each other. In “The Pianist of Fate,” the “morning” of “each and every day” brings hope for the unfurling of a new everyday life, but it approaches with the “black feathers plucked from its bright naked body,” shivering in the cold. In “A Field of Red Four-Leaf Clover,” we hear “the train’s wheels screech,” the sad sound of things which must come to a stop, alongside the complaint “Can I be hopeless even though I’m old?” This tells us that the sadness of someone who has just realized that “forever” is nothing more than a made-up word is always bound to intersect with the sigh of someone who has just realized that, in this life, some things are forever after all. How about the poem “Feels Right for You”? Here we find a scene of “you” keeping the “childhood secrets” of a “blood-soaked afternoon,” embracing a crumpled hope and an all-too-short sadness in your heart as you “swim through darkness and walk through light,” “hand in hand” with “me.” Those who couldn’t walk alongside others in the past begin to walk together. In short, Jin Eun-young’s poetry is to be discovered in the unfamiliar juxtapositions of which life consists.      Let’s think about “In Houyhnhnmland.” Taking the fictional ideal society of Gulliver’s Travels as its title, this poem turns the ideal into something peculiar. Here, the ideal society is a place which takes pride in the attitude that “We can always watch death / Close by as well” because “We can just imagine—it’s so far away.” A place that leaves us with an uneasy feeling, where the ideal permits the strange.[1]  In other words, whenever the here and now provides a sense of comfort, as in Houyhnhnmland, we must vigilantly remind ourselves where we are. The heat of a “campfire” may be “warm” to some, but to those who have recognized the “long-vanished” “screams” it covers up, it is something much more terrifying. Such unfamiliar juxtaposition is a method which places two completely different things side by side at once to convey the ambivalence of our lives, a form which contains the truth of a world in which we live always with something out of place that doesn’t feel right.      In “Mom,” it is “like paying taxes,” doing a civic duty, for the poet to visit her mother. She wonders what it’s like for her mother, but she doesn’t ask. She only guesses that her mother would say it was “like giving alms, her whole body trembling with devotion.” Some love points our eyes far beyond the beloved in a relation of obligation and devotion toward each other. One side feels an obligation without even knowing what the other wants, and the other side offers devotion without thinking how the other feels. Some relationships lean disjointedly upon each other even while persisting over a long period of time. This poem tells a story that wouldn’t be out of place in any mother–daughter relationship in this world. Or, we could put it another way. A person can love a certain world while that world doesn’t love them in the same way—these two things can coexist. The ambiguity of poetic language is written by those who have noticed life’s ambivalence.      As a woman and a poet, Jin Eun-young is particularly sensitive to the ambivalence of life. For those who are too easily cast out of this world, the visceral experience of life itself is a series of unfamiliar juxtapositions. In order not to neglect this condition as it is, in order to draw up life-saving song from the gaps of disjunction, poetry is essential. Poetry teaches a different way of interpreting the pain that seeps out when life’s ambivalences make themselves felt. For instance, “Like the patients / Sitting […] in the waiting room’s / Folding chairs / Hearing the nurse call their name” and “pass[ing] through the doors” in the poem “Someday, After You,” some live a life of waiting to be pronounced the next to die, but poetry whispers to them the possibility that they “sit in the chair of being,” that standing up from this chair is to “offer the seat” not to death, but to the beginning of something else. This offers those who must live as if they are “soon to stand and offer the seat” a way to replenish the substance of their lives.      Thus, as in “There is Paper,” poetry is written whenever “the most disappointing creation[s]” are confidently brought into use on “thin” paper. Or should we say poetry is written on paper which is itself the “most disappointing creation” where so many countless things come to pass—“Always eating and drinking, love burning with abandon,” “White ash scattering in the empty mouth of the wind.” Or is poetry written on paper so easily engulfed in flame so that “the heat of the things turned to ash” inside “a fresh urn” can be written there, or so thin that “reality” easily “crumples like fantasy” and can “best be described” there? On this subject, this essay offers only the following: Poetry is born when completely different things are all there at once.      Completely different things coming together. This is also the fundamental principle of love. When one person walks with another, when they follow the same path despite stumbling out of step with each other, love finds its beginning. And love persists tenaciously, undestroyed even amid a world of unceasing war, disaster, tragedy, and violence. When the world wears us out and torments us to no end, we continue to love at one and the same time. Even through our tears, we read and write poetry.      Once long ago, I stood in a cold street and watched, amid a protest of irregular workers who shouted out demands to overturn their wrongful dismissal, as Jin Eun-young recited word by word, in a voice trembling but clear, a poem evoking Kafka’s hunger artist. The poem was not composed of lines to right the wrong of the situation, but to draw out another, different meaning from it. I think it was then that I had the faint realization that some love begins from an instance of discord with the world, at one and the same time. Jin Eun-young’s poetry is beautiful and political at once. Holding that double tension and weight, it defends the dignity of poetry to the bitter end. Translated by Seth Chandler Kyung Eon Yang debuted as a literary critic in the pages of Contemporary Literature in 2011. Her works include the collection of critical essays How to Say Hello. She has been awarded the Shin Dong-yup Literary Award. [1] Translator’s Note: This line relies upon a pun between the word for “ideal” and the word for “strange, peculiar, abnormal,” which are homophones in Korean. The connotations of “strange” should be taken as “disturbing, uncanny, grotesque.”   

  by Yang Kyung Eon

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  [Essay] The Compassion of History: On Han Kang’s Nobel Prize in Literature

  I think it’s fair to say that few people expected Han Kang to win this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature. Based on its recent turn toward rectifying both geographic and gender imbalances, the Academy was widely expected to select a female Asian laureate, but the frontrunner was China’s Can Xue. Han was on the oddsmakers’ lists, but of the Korean candidates mentioned, the seventy-year-old poet Kim Hyesoon seemed a more likely choice. (One Nobel prediction blog dismissed Han’s chances, stating, “she is on the younger side, but will most likely be considered a serious contender in the next seven or eight years.”) Han is the first Korean winner, the first female Asian laureate in literature, and the fifth-youngest recipient of the literature prize; and once we were over our surprise, those of us who have read and admired Han could delight in her selection and consider what it might mean for the author, and Korean literary culture in general, in the international literary world.    Her relative youth notwithstanding, Han fits the conventional Nobel profile well. Although her work first appeared in English barely a decade ago, she published her first short story collection in 1995 and has been a major literary figure in her country for over twenty-five years. She has won multiple major international prizes, including the (frequent Nobel-predictor) Man Booker International Prize and Prix Médicis étranger, and has been translated into over thirty languages. And with her sensitivity to the human element of historical events, her work displays the “idealistic tendency” stipulated in Alfred Nobel’s will. Indeed, Han declined to hold a press conference or otherwise celebrate her Nobel on the grounds that celebration was inappropriate during the wars in Ukraine and Palestine.    This compassion and empathy for the suffering of others informs Han’s work. The Swedish Academy’s citation commended “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.” In deploying that lyrical style to expose the governmental brutality (and subsequent coverups) at the heart of Human Acts and We Do Not Part, Han reveals not only the harsh truth of these atrocities but the universality of the suffering they perpetuated. And her delicate portrayals of intimate personal relationships in Greek Lessons and The White Book provide further evidence of the necessity of compassion and love in the face of unbearable loss.    In the Anglophone world, Han is probably best known for her first book in English translation, the subversive and unsettling The Vegetarian. The tale of an enigmatic woman who spurns her husband to embrace a plant-based diet, the novel was variously interpreted as a critique of Korean society, a parable of conformity, and a manifesto for female agency. A financial and critical success, winning the 2016 Man Booker International Prize and landing on best-seller lists, The Vegetarian paved the way for Han’s subsequent English-language publications and, ultimately, the Nobel. Yet that book appeared in English eight years after its original Korean publication, and only thanks to the passion and persistence of translator Deborah Smith. (Other countries have been quicker to pick up some of Han’s other works—We Do Not Part, for example, forthcoming in English in 2025, appeared in French in August 2023 with the title Impossibles Adieux.)    In the ten years since Han’s debut in English, Korean literature’s international profile has greatly increased. Support from LTI Korea and other granting agencies has facilitated translations of Han and many other South Korean writers, as well as publisher trips and author appearances at book fairs and festivals, all of which have contributed immensely to Korean literature’s expansion in the international market. The Anglophone media has been quick to link this growth to the success of BTS and other figures of K-Pop, film, and television, but the true drivers are the many dedicated literary translators from Korean. With their fervent promotion of and advocacy for South Korean writers, this new generation of translators performs an invaluable service as mediators, interpreting not only the texts but the contexts and essences of these books. Translators of contemporary Korean literature—including Janet Hong, Soje, Sora Kim-Russell, and Anton Hur, among others—are powering not only the increasing number of titles, but also the corresponding expansion of genres and topics, such as the fantastic universe of Bora Chung and the gritty gay cityscapes of Sang Young Park. Translation into English is vital for true international success: it is the universal language of publishing, and books must be available in English for their fullest dissemination.    Ten short years after her own work made that leap, Han Kang now joins the Nobel pantheon. Literary prizes are arbitrary and deeply flawed, and the Nobel is no exception; many great writers were never recognized, while other laureates have (mercifully, in some cases) faded into obscurity. The effect of the prize on Han’s reception and future production remains to be seen. One of the most significant parts of Han’s Nobel, though, is its timing. Most previous laureates have been recognized near or at the end of their productivity, but Han’s award comes at the probable midpoint of hers. Even with the lag between original publication and availability of translations, we may have another twenty-five years of Han’s work to look forward to with the near-guarantee of its swift availability—and promotion—in English.    Han Kang’s anointment as laureate confirms her status as an international writer and ensures that her future work will be published, translated, reviewed, discussed, and read around the world. It is an inflection point in both her own career and the international exposure of Korean literature, and a truly celebratory moment. Susan Harris is the editorial director of Words Without Borders and the co-editor, with Ilya Kaminsky, of The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry.

  by Susan Harris

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  [Essay] Words That Bestow Life: In Honor of Han Kang’s 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature

  Here, in offering these remarks on Han Kang’s 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, I speak not as a critic so much as a contemporary reader of her works. Distanced from both the writer she writes about and the reader who reads her criticism, the critic tosses her gaze down at both. Her language moves in one direction; her critical utterance expresses her superior specialist knowledge about the writer. The contemporary reader, on the other hand, dwells communally among unknown fellow readers in that imaginative space built by the books of their time. Those who cohabitate in this space of contemporary literature are linked together by chance encounters, candid admissions, and the desire to touch one another by sharing the writers and books they love best. In this safe space they may exchange without embarrassment their most intimate feelings about or most trivial experiences with a book.    On Thursday, October 10, 2024, I was in a meeting with several other people. While paying due attention to the serious discussion taking place around the table, I nonetheless found a part of myself wandering off, wondering who would receive this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature. Had I been among my literary cohort, we surely would have made a festive time of the moments before the announcement. These literary friends of mine—oddballs who do not hesitate to buy piles of books, no matter how old or new, that they proceed to stack on shelves already filled to overflowing, and to read with mad delight—had already placed their bets on their favorite authors: Can Xue, Yoko Tawada, Anne Carson, Ali Smith, and Margaret Atwood. But on October 10, I was not among them. At eight o’clock sharp, curiosity got the better of me. I quietly reached for the cellphone in my bag to check the news. And when I did, my heart stopped. The news that I had been so certain would arrive one day was already in my hands.     On the way back home that night, I felt gravity had lost its pull; my heart was bursting, my head reeling. Over the next few days, this feeling of weightlessness persisted, even as I exchanged words of joy with my literary friends, students, and fellow writers. “Our beloved writer has won a great prize.” “What great happiness.” “We must celebrate together.” Why is it, then, that even as we congratulated each other in that moment of indubitable, heartstopping joy, we found ourselves strangely unable to laugh out loud? Why did our voices falter? And why did we turn our damp eyes away from each other’s gaze?    It was only later, during a phone conversation with a friend I had not talked to lately, that the tears finally came. It happens that way sometimes. Some kinds of happiness do not evoke laughter but rather a complex, cathartic grief. At times, it is flowing tears that can best express the happiness we feel. I know there were others beside me who, caught in feelings too difficult to express, also found themselves in tears after the announcement. “I burst out crying when I heard.” “I cried, too.” “The moment it was announced, we all cried. We were hugging one another and crying.”    The reason we embraced and wept is because, for some years now, even decades, we have been suffering. Budgets for books, publishing, and culture have been slashed. People working in the cultural sphere are fast losing the means to foster creative knowledge and critical thinking. Both online and offline, discrimination and crimes of hate are greatly on the rise, leaving women, disabled persons, the elderly, children, teens, and LGBTQ people increasingly at risk. Those who ceaselessly deny and distort the history of state violence have turned to stigmatizing the victims and their bereaved families rather than consoling them and offering reparation. In recent years, we have lost both the eager spirit and the material means to forge a better today and a better tomorrow. One by one, we have sunk into silence and isolation, hurt by words and images of hate, cynicism, lethargy, and base vulgarity.    So the tears that sprang from our eyes when we heard that Han Kang had won the Nobel Prize in Literature were not tears of national pride. We did not weep because our national literature finally had arrived at a level we had been long aiming for, or because we finally had received the international recognition we deserved. Rather, we wept because we remembered literature had kept us company through all those brutal and violent years, giving us the strength to continue living—literature that faithfully pieced together historical truth, literature that kept beauty and dignity alive. We wept because we, who are so worn out and weary of words of hate and violence, know that there are words that bestow life rather than death. We wept that these words had been given to us as a gift. The joy that bursts from the wellsprings of a deeply repressed pain must sound like a cry rather than laughter. Think of the first sounds that emerge from the newly born baby embracing the world and expressing the sensation of life with all its body. Think of that stupendous cry.    This is why we do not hesitate to say the news of Han’s Nobel award must have given new life to someone wasting away, depleted and alone, in some unobserved corner of the world. In Han’s writings, we often come across this theme of a human being deprived of bodily function, language, and willpower, being pushed to the utmost limit of existence. In that very moment when the human being in extremis reaches this limit, a powerful life force reasserts itself. This is why, in those moments when I feel most depleted of energy, the following passage from Han’s early short story “Evening Light” comes back to me. It is a passage that occurs at the very end of the story.      A darkness both of sky and earth, heavy as a boulder, was crushing Jaein’s body. His flesh rumpled. His spine wilted.  His collarbone, rib cage, knee joints and talus bones came crumbling down in one heap with a loud clatter like tumbling wooden blocks. His muscles and innards burst furiously in all directions into the air.      This is a story about two young half-brothers. The older brother, a painter, lives alone by the sea. One day, he boards a fishing boat and is lost at sea. Jaein arrives at the shore just as the sun is sinking beneath the sea that has swallowed his half-brother. He pours libations into the sea. Soon after this gesture of mourning, his body undergoes a startling transformation. The onslaught of darkness takes on formidable, supernatural power as it presses down upon the small, fragile body of a grieving human being. The scene is too fantastic to be real, yet is narrated with such anatomical precision that we cannot brush it off as mere illusion. Step by step, with cool accuracy, the narrator depicts the body crumbling down. It is as if Jaein’s body, for unknown reasons, is shattered before the narrator who watches with unflinching eyes. In this scene, Jaein is destroyed as an individual, but he joins the vast flows of life energy operating at planetary and cosmic levels. This deserves to be called a metamorphosis beyond the realm of death into another dimension of life.    Han’s novels narrate such moments of transformation when a human being, confronted with the final paralysis of death, manages to rekindle the will to live by tapping into an inner strength, or comes face to face with an overwhelming life force. The waves of energy circulating between word and word, sentence and sentence, page and page, reach out and touch the reader. The reader’s body accepts and absorbs the bursts of life energy emanating from Han’s works. The reader is shaken and shattered by her powerful language, yet through this very process, is reborn.    In Han’s work it is not only the individual that passes through death to reach a new life. The human community, too, survives destructive violence to arrive at a new existence. Her works do not merely testify to the continuing human cost of political violence in modern Korean history. They confer dignity on the dead and enact consolation. In Human Acts, Han wrote about the Gwangju Democratic Uprising of May 1980, a democratic struggle against the military dictatorship, in which many civilians lost their lives. In We Do Not Part, she testified to the state violence perpetrated against the people of Jeju Island in 1947-1954. Han’s writings, based on meticulous archival research, interviews with survivors and their families, and visits to the sites in question, vividly represent such locations of violence. Her work dignifies those who were willing to lay down their lives as well as those who were innocently sacrificed. Her semi-autobiographical The White Book, set in Warsaw, similarly remembers and commemorates a dark moment in Polish history. During a brief sojourn in this city, which was almost completely razed to the ground by the Nazis after the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, the narrator repeatedly comes face to face with the sight of new walls raised above the preserved ruins of the old. These walls built on the fragments of the bombed-out walls of the past testify to the deliberate choice made by the people of Warsaw not to erase the traces of past violence. Instead of forgetting, they chose simultaneously to preserve and reconstruct.    This is an image—and a lesson—the narrator takes home with her. The acts of mourning and reconstruction are the means by which human beings who have experienced near annihilation hold fast to life and history. The writer performs these acts through writing. By reading Han Kang’s works, we share in the work of honoring the dead. And we gain the strength to continue our lives in their wake. Translated by Min Eun Kyung Kyung Hee Youn is an author, translator, and literary critic. She has written Wunderkammer (2021) and Shadows and Dawn (2022), and translated Anne Carson’s Nox into Korean. She teaches at Korea National University of Arts.

  by Kyung Hee Youn

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  [Essay] Reflecting on Han Kang

  As one of her many thousands of readers around the world, I have enjoyed witnessing the ongoing recognition for Han Kang's extraordinary body of work. In January 2016, when Human Acts was published in the UK, one poet and translator wrote to me: “I do think it is a major book, a landmark, a new kind of book about political violence and its effects. It adds to our sense of what it is to be human.”     The Vegetarian is still best-known work in the Anglosphere, thanks to being awarded the International Booker Prize back in 2016. The prize was in its first year, which meant that Human Acts also fell within the eligibility window. It surprised me that the judges chose The Vegetarian out of the two—books about historical, national traumas have traditionally been favoured by such prizes. Initially, I found it a shame that Human Acts was overshadowed, especially as this was the more recent work, which showcases Han’s development as a writer and is generally considered her masterpiece (many are now saying this about her latest work, whose English translation by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris—We Do Not Part—will be published in early 2025).      I haven’t read those books for many years, I think not even since I translated them. In the wake of the Booker, there was a lot of criticism of me and my translation, claiming that errors were due not only to inexperience but to a lack of respect and care. It was savage and personal and worse behind the scenes. At the other extreme, my translation was over-hyped in order to downplay Han’s own artistry. I was preoccupied with the literary world's violent racial inequality, where whiteness had eased my passage into the industry and contributed to my work being so disproportionately praised and visible, and I didn’t really understand the misogyny at play, or how to speak about both things at once. (To my knowledge, The White Book contains no mistakes, but the fact that it deals with the death of a baby means I haven’t been able to read it since becoming a mother. I read We Do Not Part yesterday and found that Han's narrative voice sounds just as I remember it from my own translations. So perhaps I didn't ‘distort’ her after all.)    In all this time, I’ve come to a deeper understanding of why I became a translator in the first place. Written language is my mother tongue, the place where I can achieve the clarity of precision that is almost sacred to me, and where patterns of stress and intonation produce an effect which I find pleasurable and meaningful. In an article for Asymptote, I described the process of reading / translating Han Kang (an inextricable binary for me) as one of being “arrested by razor-sharp images which arise from the text without being directly described there.” Like many autistics, I experience a form of synaesthesia, and language itself is vivid, has colour and taste and heft.    When I think of Human Acts, the images that come to my mind all cluster in the courtyard of the hanok in Gwangju. Water “crackling” into the tin pail. It took me a long time to get that word. Dong-ho feeling “lacerated,” behind the door as he listens to, or imagines, Jeong-dae’s sister crossing the yard. Toothpaste suds dripping from her brush. Images which capture the extraordinary sensory experience of being alive, of being young and in love.       From The Vegetarian, the only phrase I can recall directly is “armoured by the strength of her own renunciation.” From a young age, I felt that social conventions—of being made to speak, of being made to eat—are violence. (The editors of this article have pointed out that I misremembered the line from The Vegetarian. In 2013, the word I chose was power, not strength.)    My favourite thing about the Nobel has been the chance to read interviews with some of Han’s many other translators. I was especially struck by Sunme Yoon describing how she came to translate La Vegetariana (several years before the English translation) in defiance of the South Korean literary scene, which in 2007 was “dominated by old-school men immersed in a very socially conservative society” who ignored or denigrated the book as “extreme and bizarre.” I am one of the many women who have found Yeong-hye’s story to be neither extreme nor bizarre. Like her sister In-hye, I almost envy her magnificent irresponsibility.    In all its languages, The Vegetarian is a work which invites a particularly personal form of reading, the kind that those ‘old-school men’ would disapprove of, among a particular kind of reader— ‘sick women’ who refuse to be well in a world that violates and debilitates; “impressionable young girls” mocked for their fannishness; anyone who might defiantly reclaim some of the labels given to Yeong-hye—crazy, excessive, hysterical. Looking back, I think this is also how I translated it—with affinity coinciding with respect for alterity, agency, and unknowability, as well as protectiveness for how Yeong-hye would be read, knowing the prevalence of the reductive and frankly racist reading of ‘passive Asian woman struggles against (uniquely Asian) patriarchy.’ I love that a book described as “magnificently death-affirming,” and which is also, as more than one queer Asian has expressed to me, so queer, has such a high profile.     And Human Acts is not overshadowed. It was a bestseller when published in South Korea in 2014, and it is the book that BTS superstars were referencing when they tweeted their congratulations to Han and said they had read her book during their military service. This year, translated more than in twenty-five languages, it is being read in a different, and yet similar light to The Vegetarian. It describes Gwangju as “another name for whatever is forcibly isolated, beaten down, and brutalized, for all that has been mutilated beyond repair.” It has been personally moving for me to encounter so many readers connecting Gwangju to Gaza. I am inspired by their committed, intelligent reading to use my royalties from Human Acts to support Palestinian liberation, and grateful to every reader for making those royalties possible. Deborah Smith worked at Tilted Axis Press between 2015 and 2022. She has also translated several books from Korean, mainly by Han Kang, Bae Suah, and Kim Hyo-eun. She has been living in North India since early 2020 and is currently writing a critical memoir on translation, whiteness, misogyny, disability, and empire.

  by Deborah Smith

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  [Cover Feature] Let’s Meet in ○

  Someone I know once made the following remark to me:      “Don’t you think your stories are a bit. . . Seoul-centric?”      At the time, I assumed that this acquaintance of mine had just recently learned about the concept of “Seoul-centricism” and was looking for a way to make use of this newfound knowledge when he came across my books. His comment seemed to stem from the fact that most of the characters in my novels were Seoulites who wander the streets of Jongno, Gwanghwamun, and the Mapo district, frequenting the hotels, cafes, and independent bookstores in those areas.      I felt a momentary urge to argue with him but refrained. I didn’t want to spoil the mood and had an inkling that it would just lead to a pointless argument. I made an effort to change the subject with a string of jokes, and in hindsight, I think it was very wise to not speak my mind.       *My acquaintance’s remark has stayed with me for a long time.       It’s already been three years. . . My memory has become so clouded as of late that I can hardly recall what I had for lunch yesterday, and I’ve become so forgetful that when I go to my bedside table to get my glasses, I find myself putting on my earphones to listen to music instead. And yet, I somehow still haven’t forgotten that remark. Or rather, it seems like it refuses to be forgotten. I wonder why.     Perhaps my acquaintance’s words pricked something in me. It may have pricked so deeply that it stung, and I decided that I needed to be more careful in the future. Although I dismissed the ridiculous remark with a snort, perhaps I cared more about it than I was willing to admit.      Words hold that kind of power. They’re invisible, intangible, and seem to vanish into thin air the moment they are spoken, as though they were nothing. And yet, some words unexpectedly pry themselves into our minds where they linger and leave a long-lasting sting, like a needle in an acupuncture point.      Thanks to this, the more time goes by, the more I become aware of the fact that I was born in Seoul and lived here all my life, that I am a Seoulite through and through. I’ve come to realize that I’m connected to this city in so many ways, that perhaps we overlap, and that I am almost Seoul itself.       *Looking back, the beginning of my first short story, “In the Same Place,” really does seem to reflect the perspective of a Seoulite. My debut work features a character named Yeongji, who, after getting completely drunk, tells “me” the story of how she ended up losing touch with a friend in the past. She recalls how astonished she was one day after walking from Jongno 3-ga to Myeongdong to realize it had only taken her twelve minutes.      Yeongji previously thought the distance from Jongno 3-ga to Myeongdong to be thirty-seven minutes by foot. Ever since she was a child, Seoul had always been a world divided by subway lines in her mind, so the only way she could think of reaching her destination was by hopping on Line 3 at Jongno 3-ga Station and getting off at Chungmuro Station to transfer to Line 4 in the direction of Myeongdong Station.      That’s why Yeongji declined her friend’s request to come meet her at the Seoul Employment and Labor Office in Myeongdong. Her friend, who had gone there to apply for unemployment benefits, told Yeongji that she was shaking and feeling anxious for some reason and that she would appreciate her company. Even though Yeongji was reading a book inside a Starbucks in the vicinity of Nagwon Arcade—a short distance from there—she replied that it was “pretty far from where I am,” adding that even if she were to leave right away, it would take her between forty and fifty minutes, and that she didn’t want to keep her waiting for that long.       The two would never meet again after that conversation, ultimately bringing their eighteen-year friendship to an end.      Yeongji only realized the meaning of the long silence that preceded the end of the call, which was reminiscent of a theatrical blackout, much later. She then got into the habit of recalling this incident about how she fell out with her friend whenever she got drunk.       *This part of the story is mostly based on my own experience.       Rather than focusing on a friendship fallout, I chose to write about the astonishment I felt after walking from Jongno 3-ga to Myeongdong with my own two feet. If my memory serves me right, I was around twenty-three or twenty-four at the time. I was shocked to find out that Seoul was in reality much smaller than I had imagined it to be. It felt kind of absurd to me how such a small area had been divided into distinct zones as though each one was completely separated from the other.      Now, upon deeper reflection, I think that the astonishment I felt at the time did not merely stem from how small Seoul really was.      What came as an even bigger shock to me was the fact that I had been living in Seoul for over twenty years. I must’ve allowed myself to become complacent, thinking that I knew everything there was to know about Seoul. How could there be something that I didn’t know? And how could I not even be aware of that fact? My astonishment arose from having these assumptions I took for granted turned upside down. In other words, I was mostly shocked by my own ignorance.       *Since then, my ignorance of Seoul has revealed itself to me in all shapes and forms. I wonder when it was. . . I was once asked to provide a brief author bio to go along with a piece of writing by the editorial team at a publishing house. Since I had to include my place of birth, I wrote that I was “born in Seoul” without giving the matter much thought. However, the feeling I got when writing that sentence was actually closer to “born in ○.”      Not “Seoul,” but “○.”      Why did I feel this way? Seoul appeared to me to be something akin to an empty circle or a pair of parentheses with an empty space between them.       *Various factors surely contribute to why the place where I was born and raised feels like ○.      For one thing, I don’t feel like I own anything in Seoul. Regardless of what or how much I actually have, I always feel a certain emptiness. Why could that be? Perhaps it’s because I have a feeling that most of the things I’ve acquired in Seoul will not follow me when I leave the city. Those things will remain in Seoul. People might look at me with puzzled eyes or even think I’m pathetic when I leave. They might even see me as a loser or a runaway.      As such, I don’t feel like there’s anything that keeps me intimately connected to Seoul.       The Seoul I know is a city that collapses and is rebuilt every day. It’s like an amorphous organism which has never had a fixed shape of its own. Many of the places where I once lived, frequently visited, and created unforgettable memories have disappeared with the passage of time. They were erased without a trace and replaced with unfamiliar landscapes. This is the way things naturally unfold in Seoul. That seems to be the physiological cycle of a big city. That’s why I always get the feeling that I could be pushed out or expelled from Seoul at any time. One day, if I ever become physically unable to work, or fall ill and become poor, I think Seoul will spit me out.      If that ever happens, I’ll be completely broke.      Not just a poor person without money, but a poor soul stripped of the greater part of its existence. Something tells me that I can’t escape such a fate. Am I the only one? I find myself constantly overcome by this feeling which almost never leaves me.       Is this any different from depression?      Having been born and lived my whole life in Seoul, I might say that it has been no different from having to put up with an unresolvable sense of emptiness. Like living in a place where I could never put down roots, constantly floating some distance off the ground.       *Last weekend, I went to CGV Cine Library at Myeongdong Station to meet my boyfriend.       I took Line 5 and got off at Dongdaemun History & Culture Park Station where I transferred onto Line 4 to reach Myeongdong Station (now that I write this, I realize that I appear to be someone who goes to Myeongdong quite frequently). It was slightly past 2 P.M. on a Sunday, and since three different lines run through Dongdaemun History & Culture Park Station, it was packed with people of all ages and appearances. This includes many foreigners of varying skin tones using different languages. However, since I’m so used to squeezing my way through crowds of people in narrow places, this fact didn’t actually occur to me until writing the words “packed with people.” This particular scene merely flashed before me like a blurry, unfocused photo.      That’s because it’s natural for me when I go up the escalator from one subway platform to another, moving slowly toward the transfer corridor like an object on a conveyor belt, to absentmindedly look over at the other objects—or people’s faces—coming down from the opposite direction only to completely forget about them shortly after.        The city crowds fill me up in an instant only to be discarded at once.      I suck them up like a drain, then spew them back out and forget everything.       I leave no one behind. This sort of sequence repeats itself several times each day. I would have experienced the same thing on my way out of the cinema after watching a movie with my boyfriend and dozens of other spectators, while passing by the thousands of people crowding the streets of Myeongdong on my way to go eat dinner, and again in the subway on my way home.       Getting filled to the brim and then emptied out as though nothing had ever happened.       This phenomenon has repeated itself countless times within me while living in this city called Seoul. That’s why I think of it as being the same as ○. I believe that this Seoul-like ○ has also made me into something akin to ○ as well.       *      That’s why there is some truth when I say that when I write the words “born in Seoul,” I feel as though I were writing “born in ○.”       *When I was first asked to write this essay, I wanted to talk about the beauty of Seoul. However, after writing a few paragraphs, it occurred to me that I was probably not the right person for the task.      I could have written about the daily routine of a city dweller in detail, describing what a day in my life looks like—waking up, getting ready for work, spending a day at the office, and returning home only to relax and go to bed. However, I felt like I wasn’t the right person for this task either.      As I’ve already mentioned, having been born and lived my entire life in Seoul, I’m particularly unaware and ignorant about city life, especially when it comes to Seoul. Hence, it almost feels like ○ to me.      Perhaps that’s why I can’t help but refer to ○ as ○. In reality, it seems like the only way I can address the area inside ○, which is beyond the grasp of language, is through stories akin to thin and faint lines covering up ○.      One might be led to wonder about the point of this essay. . .      Through this piece of writing, I was hoping that someone else might also be able to relate—even just a little—to this feeling I have long harbored. I’m hoping it opens up the opportunity to have a discussion about ○, which is only possible among those of us who were born in a city and lived there for their entire lives. In so doing, we can perhaps cut through the void that surrounds language and, even if just for a brief moment, offer solace to each other. Translated by Léo-Thomas Brylowski       Korean Works Mentioned:•   Park Seon Woo, In the Same Place (Jaeum & Moeum, 2020)    박선우, 『우리는 같은 곳에서』 (자음과모음, 2020) 

  by Park Seonwoo

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  [Cover Feature] Becoming a Cog in the Emergency Room

  1.I work at a university hospital in Seoul. In exchange for my labor, I am paid a salary that I use to cover my rent and living expenses as a Seoul resident. However, my job is somewhat peculiar—I work in the emergency room, the busiest part of a university hospital. My contract with this institution as an emergency medicine specialist and clinical professor requires me to spend thirty hours a week in the ER. While I have other additional duties, my primary responsibility is patient care. Upon fulfilling these terms of my contract, I receive a fixed salary.       It may seem unusual, but to me, the ER mainly represents a workplace. Treating patients is how I earn my livelihood. I’m nothing more than a cog in the machine of society, made up of many different parts. My role just happens to be in the emergency room. Night or day, holidays or not, the lights in the ER are always on, so I work even when others are resting. The grievances of my workplace are similar to those of firefighters, police officers, restaurant workers, and convenience store clerks—we all serve citizens. While their customers are people in emergencies or who have been involved in a crime, or people in search of a meal, mine are sick patients. As customers, they have the right to make complaints, which need to be handled. Being part of an organization also means you must be mindful of your superiors. In my case, there is the ER director, the chief of medical staff, and the hospital director. In this sense, then, my work life isn’t that different: like everyone else, I experience the stress of working night shifts and holidays, dealing with customers, and answering to my superiors.      There is a common misconception that doctors working in the ER are bombarded with emergency calls. If I meet someone who’s not in the medical field, they ask me how I can be out and about when surely there must be some patient in urgent need of care. What they don’t know is that the responsibility for ER patients lies with the doctor currently on duty. Working in the ER is very intense—we don’t get weekends or nights to ourselves and if we also had to answer emergency calls at all times, our health would be at risk. So, while other physicians who have inpatients must pick up calls from the hospital even when they’re not working, emergency doctors like me are free to use our time off as we see fit: we can take our kids on a day trip to the amusement park, play golf, or go get groceries. We can also travel if we wish to. My main job might be demanding, but it leaves me the flexibility to have a side hustle. In my spare time, I usually read books and write.       Nevertheless, my job in the emergency room is different from others for many reasons, as it is with any profession that deals with accidents and disasters that might occur in our lives. Firefighters and police officers are in the same field as I am. They handle citizens who have faced the most horrific situations, and usually, their last destination is always my ER. While this is my job, patients would rather avoid the experience of ending up in the emergency room. I’ve witnessed many deaths in my workplace and let me tell you: there are certain incidents that only emergency medicine specialists can handle. I’ve been the bearer of critical, tragic news, and effectively communicating with caregivers and bereaved families can take an emotional toll on you. We as doctors have a lot of responsibility in our hands. However, what truly sets a specialist apart from any other profession is the lengthy, challenging education required to reach this point. 2.My path to emergency medicine was almost predestined, so allow me to retrace the steps that led me here. I was born in 1983 in Anyang, just two subway stops away from Seoul. I spent my childhood on the first floor of a three-story apartment building that was later part of an extensive redevelopment project. My father worked in a company, and my mother was a Home Economics teacher, but after she had me, she quit her job to be a full-time mom and manage the household. It was very normal for families back then to choose this option. In the morning, my father went to work, and my mother did house chores. I have a brother, two years younger than me, and we used to go outside to the playground and play with the many other children in the neighborhood, without supervision. I started taking the subway by myself in elementary school. In those times, children were very independent. When I was in third grade, my parents made an important decision: we would be moving to Gangnam.       Gangnam is now one of the most affluent areas in South Korea. It is known for its wealthy residents, luxury department stores, high-end restaurants, and astronomical housing prices. In this piece, however, the term Gangnam extends beyond the area south of the Han River to encompass the neighborhoods of Gangnam, Seocho, Songpa, and others, which are all included in the Eighth School District. It is the enthusiasm for education that gave birth to Gangnam as we know it. When I speak about education here, I don’t mean learning for the sake of learning, but studying to be granted a spot in the most prestigious universities, a door that opens the path to maintaining or elevating your social status. People gather in Gangnam in the hopes of getting into a ‘better’ university, bestowing the area its current fame as a status symbol. When my parents decided to move there in 1992, it wasn’t only in search of a better neighborhood—it was an investment in their children’s education.  The Gangnam I lived in was a bit different from today. For starters, real estate prices were similar to other areas. My parents sold our Anyang house, and they only needed to add around 10 million won to afford a place in Gangnam. The neighborhood didn’t differ much from the one we had left behind. When prices started to rise in 1998, my family purchased a standard-sized apartment, which at the time cost around 200 million won. Nowadays, the same apartment in redeveloped Gangnam is priced at a staggering 3.5 billion won. (In case you’re wondering, my family sold the place a long time ago.) Meanwhile, the apartment we left in Anyang is now worth around 550 million won. Over the years, the price gap between Gangnam and other areas increased dramatically. When we moved there in the early 1990s, it was certainly a hub of ambition, but it wasn’t the impenetrable fortress that it is now.      My school experience in Gangnam was nothing out of the ordinary. I endured the corporal punishments that were the rule back then, the bullying, and the monotonous classes—a mandatory rite of passage. I too had a rebellious phase during my teenage years, but eventually, I adjusted and managed to get through it. As I grew up, Gangnam gradually became the hot spot for education. On the other hand, college entrance exams required no creativity, and success depended on who best endured the dreary routine of shuttling between school and private academies and the strenuous tests they were given to solve. As a result, the academies didn’t hide their use of corporal punishments, grouped classes by test scores, and large institutions with tens thousands of students became the norm. The fairness of entrance exams has always been a huge issue. To address this issue, in 1993 the government introduced the Suneung, a nationwide college admission test that students would take on the same day at the same time, letting the results decide their future. At the time, it was surreal to witness thousands of students flooding the streets on the same day to take the test they had been preparing for twelve years, from elementary school through high school. My family had also moved to Gangnam for that very exam, a decade before it was my brother’s and my turn to take it. This system isn’t much different now.      Throughout middle and high school, I never thought about my future career. In fact, this was true for almost all college-bound students. While your career choices are heavily influenced by your university and major, there’s no guarantee you’ll be admitted to the institutions you apply to. During career counseling sessions I received in high school, all the counselors would say, “First, get the highest possible Suneung score, then you can think about what to do,” making those sessions meaningless. For high schoolers taking the Suneung, universities are ranked in a clear hierarchy. Except for a few campuses in Seoul, adults don’t hesitate to refer to the other universities as ‘crappy’ and label their graduates as failures. Both careers and universities are divided into good and bad—everything categorized by social standing. At the top of the pyramid stood medical schools. With no set retirement age and a guaranteed high income, it was inevitable that specialized professions like this would be the most sought-after. Medical majors are still highly desirable today, but as the competition for admission has become fiercer, but as the competition for admission has become fiercer, the debate over these exams has turned into a contentious and exhausting societal issue. As a student, I followed a conventional path and didn’t receive any special early education, nor did I attend an elite high school, leaving me oblivious to the intense battles of this world. Regardless, I was terrified of becoming a failure, so I listened to my parents and attended school and academies. I was lucky enough to get a good score on the Suneung, which ended up being the only exam I excelled at in my entire life.       During my teenage years I dreamt of becoming a writer. However, my career path was decided solely based on my exceptional science score on the Suneung. It was rare for students with a score like mine to give up medical school. So, at nineteen, I enrolled in university having no understanding of how it worked or what career opportunities lay ahead of me. Seoul is home to eight medical schools, and the lower your score, the further away from the city you have to go. My university was in Gangbuk, and I commuted every day from my house in Gangnam. While the latter was in a newly developed area, Gangbuk was the old downtown where many prestigious universities are located. 3.My future was set—I would become a doctor. Among those who entered medical school, very few chose to deviate from that career path, especially given the difficulty of securing one of the 3,500 spots available amid millions of applicants. Six years of rigorous, rote learning awaited me. Getting to that point had required family efforts and sacrifices, and medical schools had the most expensive tuition fees of all universities. Given all the expectations and financial stakes involved, it was impossible to consider a life outside of medicine.      Graduating from medical school was no small feat either. In just six years, universities must completely transform inexperienced high schoolers into full-fledged professional doctors, equipped with both theoretical knowledge and practical skills. Medicine is a vast field, and you can’t treat patients without actual clinical practice, which was the reason you could end up failing the entire program if you got an F in just one subject. The inhuman amount of memorization required, exam questions that seemed to have answers only the professors knew, the senior-junior hierarchy akin to that of military ranks, and the pervasive drinking and smoking were entrenched in the culture. Although I was at university, the schedule was predetermined, so I couldn’t choose which subjects I wanted to study. Classes that started at eight-thirty in the morning didn’t end until four or five in the afternoon. There was no room for creativity or serious contemplation about the future, let alone time to understand the meaning of the words I was memorizing. I poured all my energy into studying and passing to the next phase—disappointing my parents was out of the question.       After graduation, I entered a year-long internship at a university hospital. I was responsible for handling all sorts of menial tasks and although I learned a lot thanks to the monthly rotations, it was often felt more like labor exploitation. The pay was ridiculously low compared to the hours I worked, and I never really left the hospital. Isolated from society, I did whatever task I was assigned. The university hospital I worked at was infamous for its strenuous internship program, and truth be told, just by looking at the schedule and the intensity of the work, it could be compared to medieval slavery. To this day, the debate continues over whether internships should be retained since, from a rational standpoint, they are not essential. Once my internship was over, I applied for residency. My specialty was determined based on my grades, my exams, and interviews. I had long given up competing for top grades and thought I needed to focus on practical skills. My dexterity was good, so I considered a career in surgery. Instead, I applied for emergency medicine—I wanted to gain experience in different fields and see more of the world. I was twenty-six at the time.       My four-year residency began. If I’d felt like a medieval slave as an intern, being a resident felt like being enslaved during Ancient Egypt. During that period, I spent as many nights awake as I did asleep. I had roughly the same responsibilities as any emergency medicine specialist, but in addition, I had to work under professors to gain (excessive and hard) clinical experience, while reading numerous papers at the same time. After what felt like an endless residency, I had three years of mandatory military service. I went off to boot camp, wore my uniform, practiced close-order drills holding a spoon in my mouth at a right angle, fired rifles, and threw grenades. If you were a Korean man, you were supposed to be able to march in a line and handle a firearm in case of war. (Though I still wonder why the spoon had to be held at a right angle.) I served my time in a provincial area, and after a total of fourteen years since I started this journey, I finally secured a job at a regional emergency medical center in Seoul. Here, for the past eight years, I have been working as a cog in the system, treating people who have fallen from Han River bridges, been stabbed, hit by cars, or caught in explosions.  4.In hindsight, becoming an emergency medicine specialist came about through chance and unavoidable circumstances. My upbringing and academic environment, the rampant competition and hierarchical dynamics, my dreams, and societal pressures all shaped my career path, leading me to my current role at the regional emergency center. It is true that I invested most of my life into doing this, but I don’t regret it. Thanks to these decisions, I became independent in my late twenties, managing to pay rent while juggling my personal life and work. I’m glad that my job, although demanding, is valuable to society. Living a life where I can use my professional knowledge to help the sick and those in discomfort is a privilege that is not easily attained. Working in a specialized field can also lead to many diverse opportunities: as for me, I write, people invite me to give lectures, I am a university professor and occasionally I also offer advice on  hospital policies. When there are unfortunate accidents, the media often seeks out emergency medicine specialists, adding another dimension to my responsibilities. Some of my colleagues from university devote themselves to research, others set up start-ups, and some get a job at a regular company. All roles that contribute to society’s needs. Today as well, I will go to work and meet my many patients, each with their own inevitable story. It is my job and my duty to understand them.  Translated by Giulia Macrì 

  by Namkoong Ihn

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  [Cover Feature] Atop the Foot of the City

  I was born in Seoul.I have lived in Seoul all forty years of my life. I have dreamed of life outside the city on occasion, but never managed to take the leap. Part of it was probably a subconscious obsession with Seoul, which stemmed from watching my parents from the mountains and the seaside carve out a place here with great difficulty. But more influential was the fact that I didn’t have the confidence to live outside this city. I didn’t know much about life out there, and even after learning something of “not-Seoul” from books and YouTube, I was still too afraid. Finding work outside Seoul, too, was an obvious and significant challenge.     Seoul’s population surged rapidly in the twentieth century with an influx of out-of-town migrants. Young people, including my parents, left their homes in the countryside and made it their mission to settle down, get married, and build their wealth in the capital city. As time passed, the population density increased, and with the increase of aspiring Seoul residents, wealth disparity became a serious issue that gave rise to a housing crisis. I moved homes nearly twenty times over the course of my life in Seoul, and for a time, I thought that was normal. Seoul is my one and only hometown, yes, but ironically a place that has never been able to offer a permanent settlement.     The streets of Seoul are packed with high-rise condos. These stacks of households rising into the sky are considered upscale real estate in Seoul—the form of housing and investment that most people dream of. I, too, once dreamed of a condo, as did many people in my life. Most of us gave up as housing prices skyrocketed in the mid-2010s. Young people in particular felt a deep sense of despair and deprivation. National support programs for “young people” in Korea set the age of thirty-nine as the upper limit for what constitutes a “young person.” Denied the opportunity to acquire stable housing in Seoul, young people gave up their dreams for a better future, and now regard marriage and even dating as luxuries they cannot afford. Securing housing and a steady income takes priority above all else, and the long and arduous search for a place to call home is now a solitary rite of passage. It is difficult to find a young person in Seoul who doesn’t have deep concerns about housing. Many young people can scarcely find anything better than a seven-pyeong  studio or a half-basement unit, let alone a condo.      When older buildings are demolished to put up high-rise condos, residents of the old buildings are often displaced from their neighborhoods. I, too, have been displaced. Even now, development forces people from their beloved homes, pushing them completely out of Seoul. And leaving the city with the most jobs in the country feels like being pushed further from not only one’s current job, but from all future jobs to come. The biggest problem is the long, exhausting commute. When nine-to-six isn’t enough and overtime kicks in, the workday feels like a grueling journey worthy of the Fellowship of the Ring. Overwork has long been a chronic problem plaguing Korean society. Many laborers still can’t comfortably leave work on time, let alone take vacation days, without invoking the ire of their managers. As a result, many dream of living close to their workplace.     My short story “The Age of Mijo” features a young person preparing to move out of a neighborhood slated for redevelopment. Mijo, who lives with her widowed mother in a run-down district, is given an eviction notice by the landlord and must seek a new home for herself and her mother, using the inheritance her father left. But because housing prices have skyrocketed in the few years prior to the story, their only option is a half-basement studio apartment.     The half-basement style of housing, now famous thanks to the film Parasite, is extremely common throughout Seoul. Windows in such homes are positioned precisely at ground-level, letting in little sunlight but too much water in the rainy season. The only selling point of these homes is their price. It is often young people with little to their name and the urban poor who end up in such housing. In Mijo’s case, her financial situation is so dire that she can only afford a studio unit for herself and her mother. Far from comfortable, it’s the only option she has. She applies for job interviews, but due to her lack of distinctive experience, fails to attract any attention from hiring managers. Every night, Mijo wonders when she will find work. Being unemployed, she does not qualify for a mortgage, which makes a jeonse-style lease out of the question. There is no hope.Mijo’s problems are twofold: housing and employment, which are two sides of the same coin. Without a stable income, it is nearly impossible to find housing in Seoul. And with no clear solution on hand, Mijo falls asleep each night in fear and sadness. In “The Age of Mijo,” I wanted to indirectly pose the question: is lack of ability truly the reason Mijo is in this awful situation? I didn’t give an answer, because I believe the role of fiction is not to provide solutions but to invite readers to consider the question themselves. My own answer remains unchanged: lack of ability is not the reason for Mijo’s crisis. An individual’s poverty is not caused by simple misfortune and laziness. We begin the race of life at radically different starting points, and poverty is too easily passed on from one generation to the next. What was the government doing while the people struggled in poverty? I don’t claim that all individual failure is the fault of the government, only that we must remember that among individual failures are cases that are not actually failures of the individual.      In a city whose residences clearly display wealth disparity, an individual’s economic failure or success is made clearly visible—yet the self-blame and misfortune that arise as a result are ignored and unaddressed. In the continued operation of a system that makes success and failure so salient, the goal of the majority will always remain victory and the accumulation of wealth rather than solidarity and coexistence. And yet the city remains an attractive settlement for many, and rather than reject urban systems, we embrace them.     It has been several years since “The Age of Mijo,” and I now have a new question: why does Mijo insist on a home in Seoul? The answer is, of course, because most jobs are in Seoul. I am disheartened to see the masses in search of work crowd the cities and settle for nothing else. I, too, am faced with the eternal dilemma, unable to leave the city, but I believe it is important to understand the kinds of lives formed and destroyed by cities.     What is life in Seoul like?     A life of heading to work in the morning and returning home in the evening. A life where everything you ever need can be purchased. A life where you might recognize your neighbors but never know—or need to know—their hopes and dreams. A life hedged in by high-rises and shops and vehicles. A life without time for a stroll. A life where consumption continues into the weekends—and only increases on the weekends. A life where consumption is rest. A life far from green places and seas. A life where trying to get closer to anything comes with the stress of gridlock. A life where sleep-chasing coffee and relaxation-inviting beer must be within arm’s reach. A life where fresh air is a luxury. A life that is often lonely, with the loneliness technically caused by oneself. A life where, even in solitude, one cannot escape the clamor of the city’s machines and vehicles. A life of isolation even while surrounded by people. A life that still refuses to get to know people. A life that enjoys the benefits of public transit but feels suffocated by the sheer density of it all. A life of lying in the dark each night, thinking of all the work that awaits tomorrow. And above all else, a life lived in the home and the workplace. A life where no one can tell if they’re spending so much time at work to live in the city, or if they’re sleeping at home so that they can work in the city.     A day in the life of a city-dweller is oftentimes so chaotic it causes headaches, so lonely it drills holes in the heart, and is almost always a confusing mess of things we do not know or pretend that we don’t know. Do we love city life, or do we live in the city because we have no other choice? Do people who love city life love the elements that make up the city, or do they love themselves, as the individual who endures life in the city? Or do they love their own compassionate selves for forgiving the city?     Suyeong is another character in “The Age of Mijo.” A webtoon artist who works inhouse drawing explicit adult webtoons, Suyeong seethes in self-hatred but continues her work anyway. Although she glows with pride when her skills are recognized, she generally lives in a state of suffering. Each time she meets Mijo, complaints about work flood from her lips. By the time her self-esteem hits rock bottom, she begins to rationalize her work.     Suyeong works in Seoul’s Guro District, which has a long history as an industrial area. In the sixties, Guro was home to wig factories where young women Suyeong’s age put together wigs in small spaces crammed with machinery and laborers by the companies who ran them, demanding more than twelve hours of work each day. Suyeong cites this history and asserts that, as an artist of explicit webtoon content, she simply manufactures a product that is in demand, like the wig laborers of the past. By cleverly referencing the history of her city, Suyeong rationalizes her own work and applies the narrative of the laborer who is sacrificed in the name of progress to her own life. During the writing process, I always felt that Suyeong truly loved the city, unlike Mijo. And she also loved her own compassionate nature, which allowed her to love the city.     When you consider the connection Suyeong makes between the history of urban industrialization and her own work, the natural conclusion is that the city is, essentially, industry. Just like industry, a city requires a constant cycle of production and consumption to operate, and we, its dwellers, keep the cycle pumping. In our workplaces, we are producers, and outside our workplaces, we are consumers. But was that truly an active choice we made? Have we not been robbed of true happiness by the city? But the question of what constitutes true happiness mystifies us, because it is a deeper question that we might have expected at first: what is the nature of happiness? No longer are we able to give simple answers of “love” or “friendship.” Though we are more interested in the self than any other generation in history, so many of us claim that we don’t understand ourselves. Perhaps this is the reason Suyeong likens herself to the history of the city: the city’s history  appears much larger, better defined, and permanent than the history of any individual. The city is less contradictory than a person, with cause and effect clearly and rationally defined.     My personal experience of life in the city formed the foundation for my stories of city-dwellers. I remembered the struggle of house-hunting in Seoul, the despondency upon learning the home I narrowly secured turned out to be too small to accommodate a fridge. When I would tell these stories in public settings, I always encountered at least one reader with a similar experience, our eyes locking in camaraderie. They understood almost perfectly what I wished to say through my work. Through the thoughts and actions of my characters, I sometimes explored ways to live a decent life within the boundaries of the city. These characters eased their despair and anxieties by confessing their worries and sharing their thoughts with others. The act of writing regularly also gave me a great deal of comfort.     As I continued writing about the people who closed their eyes in fear each night, enduring awful living conditions, flitting from home to home like birds without feet, I pictured the things they might dream of. Things that were simply not possible in the city of Seoul.     A house with a large yard. Clean, quiet streets. Neighbors who stroll by without a care in the world. Exchanges of warm greetings. Clear skies and clean air. Walking to work with a spring in one’s step. A workplace without discrimination or violence. Work assigned in just the right quantities, never too much. Comfortable train rides home. Meeting friends without feeling envy or a sense of deprivation. Peaceful, restful evenings. A quiet dawn and a deep, comfortable sleep. . . and if I had written about someone who enjoyed this kind of life, the readers would have encountered not bitter reality but a comfortable dream.     I believe the role of fiction is to encourage us to dream of a better world, not to display the dreams themselves. That is probably the reason my characters are so much like us, people living in reality. If we want to dream of a better world, we need to point out everything that is wrong with reality. What readers dream of after those issues are addressed is entirely up to them.     Each time I take a trip far from Seoul, I find myself wondering—if I were to leave the city, what kind of life would I have? It feels as though the possibility I rejected might be living a life of its own somewhere, in a home outside Seoul. How does that other me wake up in the mornings, spend her afternoons, and enjoy her evenings? Whose faces does she picture in the serenity of night? Where do I drift, body and soul, far from the hectic speeds of the city?     When I return from my trips, those thoughts inevitably vanish. I strike my combat stance and consider what I must protect and what I must seek. The city goes on wanting, wanting, wanting, demolishing low-rise buildings and putting up sleek new high-rises each day. Rather than embrace me, the city looks down on me. Rather than look the city in the eye, I cling, squirming, to the top of its foot. Desperate not to fall, I fill another page of my book. Translated by Slin Jung        KOREAN WORKS MENTIONED:•     Lee Seo Su, “The Age of Mijo” from The March of Young Geunhui(EunHaeng NaMu, 2023)    이서수, 「미조의 시대」, 『젊은 근희의 행진』 (은행나무, 2023) 

  by Lee Seosu

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  [Essay] Some Women Are Not Welcome

  In 2011, a bright new talent, Son Bo-mi, emerged on the Korean literary scene. That year, she published six impressive short stories, including “Blanket,” “Bringing Them the Lindy Hop,” and “Downpour.” Her work was so fresh and unique that it shook the aesthetic landscape of Korean fiction. What drew such attention and enthusiasm to a debut writer? Her writing seemed unrelated to the traditional belief in realism, which claims to fully understand how everything in the world is connected. It also didn’t align with works that dramatized personal experiences as psychological tales, nor did it define itself as historical realism or as depictions of inner worlds. Instead, her sentences, devoid of moral judgments and emotional flourishes, featured a dry, impersonal style with subtle wit and a blend of fact and fiction, signaling a neutral, minimalist approach. Korean literature had now gained a writer who boldly declared, “I have no qualms about writing what I don’t fully know,” as she wrote in the afterword of Bringing Them the Lindy Hop. Her work rarely featured an omniscient or reliable narrator, emanated no heaviness or intensity, and even the cultural backgrounds of her characters seemed unclear.      On the topic of cultural backgrounds, some have observed that Son Bo-mi’s work is often set outside Korea and has a “translated feel.” However, since her work is published in Korean, it remains part of Korean literature, making discussions about identity and purity of style somewhat meaningless. Modern literary works, shaped by global interactions, can often feel like translations. The notion that literature must represent a nation contradicts the essence of literary creation and expression. Instead, Son’s work presents the potential for Korean literature to be free from the constraints and pressures of national representation. These qualities make her work uniquely captivating, ensuring her lasting impact on Korean literature.       If her first short story collection, Bringing Them the Lindy Hop, introduced her dry charm to the world, her second collection, Cats and the Elegant Night, offered penetrating insights into its characters while evoking a sense of detachment. Random, minor events disrupted the balance of her characters’ lives, creating cracks that shattered their entire existence. Through rich, yet concise character depictions, Son explored the profound question of whether it is possible to truly understand one’s own life and the lives of others.     In Son’s work, stories are rarely told from a woman’s point of view, and when there is a female narrator, she doesn’t know the whole truth. She remains in the realm of misunderstanding and doubt, unable to be “reliable,” even regarding her own inner world. Son’s depictions of “male bourgeois society” and the nuclear family, along with subsequent signs of their breakdown, are complex. The men in her fiction are not oppressive or violent patriarchs, but are usually competent, rational, and privileged elites. However, like the successful film producer in “Ferris Wheel,” they cannot shake the fear that something terrible is going to happen. Their trivial misunderstandings and errors in judgment, especially regarding women, reveal their contradictions, as well as the cracks and lies of their world. However, the women do not fight against the world dominated by men. Instead, they remain as extras in these narratives, or remnants of patriarchy, highlighting the men’s shortcomings and anxieties.      “The Substitute Teacher” stands out as one of the most evocative of Son’s female-centered narratives. “Everything was perfect, and nothing was wrong. Truly, nothing bad had happened.” In detached, precise language, sentences like this reveal the delusions and subtle signs of the protagonist Ms. P’s breakdown, along with her “wrong choices, misguided thoughts, futile hopes, resignation, and losses.” Ms. P becomes a nanny for the son of a young, elegant couple. This perfect family, consisting of a “handsome, polite young father, the lovely, elegant young mother, and the cute, intelligent-looking child,” sharply contrasts with Ms. P’s world of “modest wallpaper, synthetic fiber curtains, and narrow bed,” where she “[eats] alone, [gets] dressed alone, and [sleeps] alone.” Ms. P aims to become a cultured nanny for the couple’s child. However, the inescapable limitation of being a “substitute teacher,” as opposed to a permanent teacher, defines her life. As someone just “filling in” for a time, she is excluded from being officially integrated into the system and is instead used to fill its gaps.      The seemingly perfect couple cannot handle the practical issues of childcare, housekeeping, and caring for a sick elderly mother, so Ms. P steps in, making crucial sacrifices to hold together the life of the couple on the verge of collapse. At times, she feels like a member of the family, embracing their frailty, but these moments are temporary, and she is only “filling in.” Even though there are no devastating tragedies in this story, the instability of life as a “substitute” is mercilessly exposed, as well as the harsh realities of existence. Her pride in once being a teacher, along with her desire for culture and goodwill, are used to compensate for the bourgeois couple’s practical shortcomings. The hidden cruelty and class nuances within the term “substitute,” as opposed to “permanent,” are vividly portrayed in this story.      The issue is Ms. P’s unusual position as an unmarried, aging woman. Part of this family only when she fulfills their everyday needs, she is invited to join them at the dinner table when their demands become overwhelming. However, the couple has never truly welcomed Ms. P as a family member. They harbor subtle disdain for her, wondering, “Why do some women grow old without marrying or having children?” In the end, they pity her and label her life as “sad.” Even the young mother’s words to Ms. P—“Please, consider this your home”—are chilling and deceptive. To this affluent family, a substitute teacher is merely “that kind of woman.” The safe and comfortable bourgeois household cannot be sustained without the labor of such women. This sharp irony, reminiscent of the master-slave dialectic, exposes the anxiety and falsehoods of the nuclear family. “That kind of woman” reveals the cracks and self-deception within the seemingly normal patriarchal order. As outsiders to the family system, unmarried women in temporary positions highlight the fragile core of family ideology.      Son describes her writing style, which blends reality and imagination, as relying on “chance.” This element blurs the line between fact and fiction and plays a key role in shaping her characters’ lives. In her work, life unfolds as a series of chance events or network of coincidences that connect the world. Son’s writing challenges the belief that fiction can explain the world by uncovering a chain of events. Instead, her storytelling becomes a journey to encounter unpredictable moments where meaning loses its power.      Son discovers unexpected ways of mourning while exploring the meaning of existence. Her characters often fail to grasp the true significance of their own lives. Fiction affirms a person’s life not by fully comprehending it but by acknowledging their illusions, misunderstandings, longings, and the gaps in their understanding. Embracing all the chance encounters, fearful moments, and the unknown future a person faces can be seen as a kind of love. In this way, Son’s writing creates a fictional world that celebrates the lives of others. Her work possesses a unique charm that is universal, and readers who discover it will find joy. Translated by Janet Hong       KOREAN WORKS MENTIONED:•   Son Bo-mi, “Bringing Them the Lindy Hop,” “Blanket,” “Downpour” from Bringing Them the Lindy Hop (Munhakdongne, 2013)    손보미, 「그들에게 린디합을」, 「담요」, 「폭우」, 『그들에게 린디합을』 (문학동네, 2013)•  Son Bo-mi, “The Substitute Teacher,” “Ferris Wheel” from Cats and the Elegant Night (Moonji Publishing, 2018)    손보미, 「임시교사」, 「대관람차」, 『우아한 밤과 고양이들』 (문학과지성사, 2018)

  by Lee Kwang-ho

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  [Cover Feature] Korean SF is Always Korean

  A while back, I received a request from an American magazine to write an essay on the topic of “works that influenced me as an SF writer.” The first works that came to mind were Herman Hesse’s Demian, Korean manhwaga Go Yoo Sung’s Robot King, manhwaga Kim Jin’s Blue Phoenix and Kingdom of the Winds, Japanese mangaka Tezuka Osamu’s Astro Boy. However, the scholar who translated my essay said that it would be better if I chose works that American readers would be familiar with. I said that if that was the case, I would introduce “works that I like” rather than “works that influenced me,” and, with only Hesse’s Demian remaining from my initial list, I selected Tezuka Osamu’s Phoenix, Roger Zelazny’s Eye of Cat, Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed, and Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman.     However, during the editing process, what I said about these being “not works that influenced me, but works I like” was removed and the list was ultimately labeled as books that influenced me. (A strange line was published saying that “these are all books I like, apart from Damien” which ended up making me look like a weirdo who was recommending Demian without even liking it!)     Somehow, out of all the authors I mentioned, there seemed to be a strange fixation on Octavia Butler. It led to her ending up on the list of authors who influenced me on my English language Wikipedia page. When a book of mine was coming out in Taiwan, the cover had, “An author influenced by Octavia Butler” written on it (I asked for this to be redacted). and An Italian interviewer once said to me, “So I’ve heard you were influenced by Octavia Butler.” When I realized that essay was the cause of all these problems, I requested it be corrected.     I mean, no matter how much I may respect Octavia Butler, I published my first SF story in 2002, so it would be impossible for an author who was only introduced to Korea in 2011 to have influenced me. None of the books I listed apart from Demian had been released in Korea before my debut.     I made similar complaints in the introduction to that essay as I am making in this one. There is no way that I developed into an SF writer the same way as a Western SF writer would have. Why are they expecting me, a Korean SF writer, to have been influenced by writers “Western people know”?     I once heard it said that, “Previous generations of Korean SF writers depicted all their protagonists as white men because they grew up watching SF with white male protagonists. Starting from the 2000s, Korean SF writers began to try and escape this framing.” I do not agree with this statement. There may have been writers like that, but no more than a handful of people in Korea could be said to have grown up seeing SF with only “white male protagonists.” Ultimately, the works most accessible to Koreans were Korean works.     The first SF work I read in my life was Go Yoo Sung’s Robot King. It’s a series that began in 1977 and, of course, it was set in Korea and the protagonists were Korean. This manhwa even had a scene showing a Korean shamanic ritual and blessing being performed before the first time a robot is piloted.     I have read many SF works and have seen countless SF movies. All of them will have influenced me. However, the influence of works I came across after growing up, no matter how world-famous or highly-regarded the works are, will never compare to the influence of those I consumed over and over again when I was a child who knew nothing of the genre. A work written by a Korean is Korean. Always.I don’t believe that saying Koreans create Korean writings means we are writing anything that comes from our identities as citizens under the country’s administration. I believe that Korean-ness exists on an elemental level beyond embodying premodern traditional religion, ritual, or dress. What Koreans put into their creative writing are things that have naturally formed from being born into and living in this society; they are universal sentiments that occur unconsciously and naturally. Things that are so familiar that I even catch myself asking, “Isn’t that a universal human thought?” But what seems strange and alien to people from other countries is our own uniqueness. Let me show you a few examples. Ex. 1: Public Servants instead of Vigilantes When the Marvel superhero movie series became incredibly popular even in Korea, I heard of an ambitious plan to make “Korea’s Marvel” or the “Korean Avengers.” Every time I heard this, I would say that the Western superhero structure wouldn’t work for Korea, and one time in a meeting I elaborated, “Vigilantes don’t suit Korea. A Korean superhero would become a public servant. Just look at the Hunter subgenre in Korean fantasy.”     “What the hell are the police doing?” is a question that often comes to mind when watching superhero movies. Police are one thing, but how could the government just leave civilians to deal with massive disasters on their own? It’s bizarre even if you try to explain it away as a convention of the genre. The question arises in the Marvel movie, Captain America: Civil War. In this movie we see how registering and regulating superheroes creates conflict among the Avengers. Viewers from the United States see those on Ironman’s side, the side championing the registry, as the villains. Whereas in Korea, we can’t understand Captain America, who is against the registry. We see him as someone who can’t separate private and public issues due to his personal feelings of love for an old compatriot.     This difference in interpretations comes from the historical and cultural differences of these two countries. The United States is a country of immigrants, established by settlers. In the US, no matter how much crime and gun violence occur, there are still many people who are oppose gun control and believe that they must own a gun to protect themselves and their families. It’s only natural in a country like this to imagine a vigilante group fighting criminals.     But Korea is a country with a history of strong governance stretching back to ancient times.  All citizens have their fingerprints registered, and as soon as you are born you are issued a Resident Registration Number (RRN). Without an RRN almost everything in your life becomes impossible; you wouldn’t be able to attend school, to work, earn money, or open a bank account. Korea has become famous as a place where you can leave your wallet or other expensive items in the street and no one will take it since thieves are easily apprehended. And on top of that, even our ghosts can’t release their grudges on their own. Instead of going after the one who wronged them, they appear to the local governor and file a civil complaint to release them from their grudge, but handling these complaints runs the governor ragged.     The Netflix anime series Solo Leveling (story by Chu Gong, illustrations by Jang Sung-rak) is an adaptation of one of the most representative and popular Korean webnovels in the Hunter genre. The Hunter genre was first developed in Korea and is seen as a genre rooted in Korea with Korean heroes. In this genre, monsters usually show up and normal people suddenly develop superhuman powers. These people are called “Hunters.” When a Hunter’s powers manifest, they usually seek out a Hunter’s Guild, take a skills test, and are given a level. The Guild will create teams based on the Hunters’ levels and send them to dungeons where monsters have been sighted. If a team is sent to a dungeon that doesn’t match their level and a tragedy occurs, it is seen as the responsibility of the mismanaged Guild. It’s as if Koreans have naturally made a genre that centers on the type of registry that Captain America stakes his life on fighting against in Civil War.     If we suppose that superhero stories created by Koreans will always have a system regulating superpowers, then the main conflicts in these stories would arise, not from the appearance of a powerful enemy, but rather from the weaknesses or contradictions within the system.     This propensity for Korean SF writers to imagine their heroes regulated within a system can be seen in the Korean superhero story anthology, Superhero Next-door. In Yi Seoyoung’s “Old Soldiers,” those with superpowers are affiliated with the government and fight against “the reds” with superpowers. But after they grow old and senile, they realize that “the reds” were laborers and union members just like them, and the differences between enemy and ally become indistinguishable. In Kim Ewhan’s Superhuman Now, superhumans are able to share their location in real-time with one another through the collective intelligence of the internet, and a vote takes place on a law which would give police powers to superhumans. Ex. 2: Holding multiple beliefs instead of one When I was on a publicity tour for my book in Italy, one attendee at an event saw me standing with my hands placed one in front of the other and asked, “Is this a Buddhist stance?” When I asked my interpreter, they told me that when people give lectures in Italy they don’t speak with their hands gathered in front of them. When I thought about it, I realized that I had been strictly taught at school to stand in the “Gongshou Position.” I was indoctrinated to believe that this is a “polite” stance, and I usually stand this way without thinking about it. But what is the origin of the Gongshou Position? Confucianism?     Occasionally my works shared abroad are critiqued as being “Buddhist” in some sense. I’m not even Buddhist. But perhaps some aspect of my writing might appear Buddhist to Western eyes. This might be the case since, in my eyes, works written by Westerners seem very Christian even if the author says that they are not.     What is our foundational faith? Westerners might believe that Buddhism is the major faith in Korea, but if you look at the statistics, the highest reported “faith” is Atheism (60% according to a 2021 Gallup Korea survey). Among those who follow a religion, Protestantism (17%) and Buddhism (16%) were nearly tied for second followed by Catholicism (6%). A mixture of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Shamanism influences the culture at large. The way I look at it, there is no one predominant religion. I think this is a peculiarity of our culture. There aren’t that many countries with such a variety of faiths coexisting peacefully. When I visited Bali in Indonesia, the owner of the guesthouse I stayed at asked me what my religion was. As soon as I said I didn’t have one, the old man was utterly confused. “What do you mean? How can you have nothing you believe in when you could believe in anything?” This was apparently inconceivable in a place where you send offerings to countless gods every morning.     Exhuma directed by Jang Jae-hyun is an occult film dealing with Korean shamanism that is attracting interest all around the world. Musok, Korean Shamanism, is our indigenous faith and a uniquely Korean practice impossible to find in any other country. However, the most Korean thing about Exhuma to me was the protagonists’ differing faiths, and that this difference among them felt natural. In one scene, while the mudang (Korean shaman) performs an exorcism, the undertaker stands next to her and reads passages from the Bible. Lee U-hyeok’s wildly popular serialized occult novel, Exorcism Diaries, which began in 1993, has similar scenes. Of the four protagonists, one has powers based in the martial art of taijutsu, one is a mudang, one is a Catholic priest, and one is a reincarnation of the Buddhist deity Rāgarāja. Qigong, the power of spirits, the Holy Ghost, and divine power are all mixed together, but this is perfectly acceptable in Korean culture.     Rather, a world where only one faith dominates feels weird. Let’s take a look at Philip K. Dick’s alternate history novel, The Man in the High Tower. This novel tells the story of a parallel world where Japan and Germany have won the Second World War. Half of the world is steeped in Japanese culture. But when I read this novel, the strangest part for me was that these people used the I Ching to tell fortunes as a regular part of their everyday lives. Not only that, but when a big decision needs to be made, the I Ching is routinely consulted and treated as a significant indicator of the choice. There are people who study the I Ching in Korea too, but most people don’t use it. Even if you were considered an expert in the I Ching it is unlikely that you’d read its answers as definitive. There are a lot of fortune tellers in Korea and they have a variety of fortune telling methods.     The concept of there being one definitive answer is a Western one. It’s the perspective of a monotheistic culture. When Sang-deok, the geomancer in Exhuma, says “Well, not everything facing South is good!” we don’t know exactly what he means, but we know it has something to do with Feng Shui. There is no definite good and no definite bad. Koreans get their fortunes read with Saju and Tojeong Book of Secrets, yet hardly anyone believes that their predictions are absolute. When your Saju tells you you’ve got bad luck in store, you can get rid of it by going to the public baths, or if you’re told that you were born with itchy feet, you can play an online travel game. Taking action like this shows we Koreans don’t presume there’s only one singular sign in the world. Whatever Koreans write is KoreanWhenever people look for something “Korean” they often think of legends, clothing, myths, food, and traditional rituals that have only been passed down in Korea. But I believe that something more meaningful than that is the philosophy that comes from the culture embodied within us. Instead of mimicking other works, good writers will take a close look at their real lives and experiences and use their imagination to draw upon what they find. These are the stories that come naturally only to us.     When I was speaking on national tragedies at the Utopiales SF convention in France, someone from the audience asked, “How can reflections on colonialism be addressed in SF literature?” Very proudly, I replied, “Korea is a country that can only speak on the subject of colonialism from the position of the colonized. Therefore, Korea must tell more Korean stories.” These are stories that can never be created in Japan, which Westerners tend to imagine as representative of East Asia. I have sometimes heard that SF is the literature of Empire. They say that SF tells the stories of powerful nations who dominate the world, who have a sense of adventure and pioneering spirit, and usually center elite white male protagonists who conquer space as they conquered the world, fighting wars and settling on new planets. I have also heard that there may be limitations to what can be imagined in Korean SF literature because Korea does not have that colonizing history. I do not agree. Fortunately, since we have not taken part in the horrors of imperialism, we can write stories that those who do have that history would never be able to write. How amazing is that?     Sometimes I hear people lament that space opera isn’t popular in Korea. It’s a complaint that seems to miss the point. From the start, space operas are not a story we can understand. The stories that Korean people can write well are not the stories of imperialists who conquer space. They are the stories of aliens who must fight back against earthlings who have suddenly appeared on their planet saying they will claim it as their own. We can write those kinds of stories. Because our history comes from an entirely different position. Translated by Victoria Caudle      KOREAN WORKS MENTIONED:•     Robot King (Wolgan-Udeungseng, 1977)      『로보트 킹』 (월간 우등생, 1977)•     Blue Phoenix (Manhwa Wangguk, 1988)      『푸른 포에닉스』 (만화왕국, 1988)•     Kingdom of the Winds (Daenggi, 1992) 1      『바람의 나라』 (댕기, 1992)•     Solo Leveling (Papyrus, 2016) 2      『나 혼자만 레벨업』 (파피루스, 2016)•     “Old Soldiers,” Superhero Next-door (Golden Bough, 2015) 3      「노병들」, 『이웃집 슈퍼히어로』 (황금가지, 2015)•     Superhuman Now (Saeparan Sangsang, 2017) 4      『초인은 지금』 (새파란상상, 2017)•     Exorcism Diaries (Dulnyouk, 1994)      『퇴마록』 (들녘, 1994) 

  by Kim Bo-young