The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories

THE PENGUIN BOOKOFKOREAN SHORT STORIES Edited and with Notes byBRUCE FULTON Introduced byKWON YOUNGMIN PENGUIN BOOKS UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | AustraliaNew Zealand | India | South Africa Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com. First published by Penguin Books in 2023 Editorial material copyright © Bruce Fulton, 2023Introduction copyright © Kwon Youngmin, 2023pp. 453–7 constitute an extension of this copyright page Cover artwork © bowyerCover design: Tom Etherington ISBN: 978-0-241-44852-6 This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly. Chronology 1876Treaty of Kanghwa opens the Chosŏn Kingdom, as Korea was then called, to foreign trade. 1905Protectorate Treaty gives the Japanese Foreign Office control over Korea’s foreign relations. 1910Korea is annexed by imperial Japan. 1917Serialization of Yi Kwangsu’s Heartlessness (Mujŏng), regarded by many as the first modern Korean novel. 1919March 1 Independence Movement, calling for Korea’s liberation from Japan, is launched. Its violent suppression leaves tens of thousands dead or wounded. 1926Publication of Hyŏn Chin’gŏn’s The Faces of Korea (Chosŏn ŭi ŏlgul; story collection). 1933Proposition for the Unification of Hangŭl Orthography, which standardized the Korean alphabet. 1937Outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War. 1939–1945The ‘Dark Years’ (amhŭkki) of Japanese mobilization of Korea for wartime exigencies. 1945Liberation from Japanese rule. 1948Founding of the Republic of Korea (ROK; South Korea) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK; North Korea). 195025 June: North Korea launches an attack across the 38th parallel, which divides north and south, initiating the Korean War. During the war, the North is supported by the Soviet Union and China, while South Korea is supported by the United Nations, principally the USA. Over the course of three years, the war claims around 3 million lives. 195327 July: An armistice is signed, ending the Korean War (though in the absence of a formal peace treaty the two Koreas remain, technically, in a state of war). 196019 April student revolution forces Yi Sŭngman (Syngman Rhee), first president of the ROK, to resign. 1961Military coup places Park Chung Hee in power in the ROK. 1972Yushin Constitution enables Park Chung Hee to consolidate power. 1978Publication of Cho Se-hŭi’s The Dwarf (Nanjangi ka ssoaollin chagŭn kong; a linked-story novel). 1979Assassination of President Park Chung Hee and seizure of power by Chun Doo Hwan. 198018 May Kwangju Democratic Uprising in the ROK. 1987Resignation of President Chun Doo Hwan and democratization of the ROK political process. 1988Seoul Olympics. 1994–1998Widespread famine in the DPRK. 1997–2001International Monetary Fund-related economic crisis in the ROK. 2021ROK announces plans to recognize domestic partnerships between opposite-sex couples, but not same-sex couples. Introduction I was born and raised in Poryŏng, South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province, at that time a village of fewer than 200 households. My birth took place on Ch’usŏk, the day of the Harvest Moon Festival, 15 August by the lunar calendar, and I arrived around the time the full moon rose, after a morning of ancestral offerings of newly harvested crops and a day of fun activities. Middle school was the happiest time of my childhood. Despite the two-hour walk to school each way, I was proud to wear my school uniform, the hat at a rakish angle. My favourite subjects were history and Korean, which included literature, and I still remember our Korean teacher reading, a section at a time, ‘Mama and the Boarder’, the third story in this anthology. I, in turn, used to read it to my elder sister, who wasn’t able to attend middle school. Best of all, the nearby American army base had given our school library one thousand books. This was a blessing because in the early 1960s, so soon after the Korean War, it was difficult to buy books of any kind, even our middle-school textbooks. And so I took out one or two books a day. I was obsessed with reading, and by the time I finished school I had read almost all the books in the library. From the beginning I was thrilled by fiction, to the extent that my goal in life changed from ship’s captain to author. I never achieved that precious dream, which had taken form as I read in the light of the oil lantern, losing all track of time, but I never abandoned it either. It was also in middle school that I began to understand the importance of fiction as a form of prose literature. Until then, when my friends and I talked about fiction, we spoke of it as something nonsensical and fabricated – not surprising when you consider that sosŏl, the Korean word for fiction, derives from two Chinese characters that literally mean ‘small talk’, or, more commonly, ‘unimportant story’. But, ultimately, I realized that fiction bears a close relationship to everyday life. Leaving home at the age of twenty, decked out in a sweater and outsized police boots, I arrived in Seoul, the first in my village to enter university. Four years later, in my senior year at Seoul National University, I made my debut as a writer. In Korea, one of the ways you become an established writer is to win one of the New Year literature competitions sponsored by the daily newspapers in Seoul. You can submit work in one of three categories – poetry, fiction or literary criticism. I submitted a piece of literary criticism, and I won. And so it was that I made my debut as a literary critic, not as a writer of fiction. It took another four long years in an MA programme to disabuse myself of the notion of being a creative