Fans of Korean author Bora Chung’s strangely fantastic and weirdly dystopian—sometimes horrific—tales are in for a treat as her second collection of short stories, Your Utopia, was released earlier this year on January 30. As with her first collection of stories, Your Utopia is translated by Anton Hur, whose translation for Chung’s Cursed Bunny was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize.
Chung became interested in Russian language and Eastern European literature during the ‘90s after the fall of the Soviet Union and pursued a master’s in Russian and East European area studies at Yale, followed by a doctorate in Slavic literature at Indiana University. She taught classes in Russian language, literature, and science fiction studies at Yonsei University until 2022 but continues to translate Russian and Polish literature, mostly the work of modern Russian female writers, to Korean.
“People are usually frightened by unfamiliar things. People find things unfamiliar because they are different,” she said in an interview with Arirang TV. “Also, people are frightened by things they can’t understand. I would like to introduce readers to unfamiliar and different worlds through my stories.”
Your Utopia certainly delves into these frightening worlds. “The End of the Voyage” takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting mostly set in space after a virus leaves people with a taste for human flesh while they are alive; “A Very Ordinary Marriage” is about an ordinary man who finds out a disturbing secret about his wife; and “Your Utopia” is about a lonely and intelligent solar- and battery-powered vehicle that is left alone to survive after its owner (and eventually the human race) perishes from “chronic fatigue and pain syndrome.”
Though these stories may leave readers with a chill and faint sense of dread and horror, others are tender and seem to be inspired by Chung’s social activism, leaving a sense of hope: “A Song for Sleep” is about the compassion an intelligent elevator develops towards a frail elderly woman who has Parkinson’s disease, which rivals the lack of care her own son has for her; “Seed” is about the evolution of plants and humans as nature finds a way to continue surviving despite man’s destruction; “Maria, Gratia Plena” is Chung’s imagination of events after hearing about a domestic abuse story in France; and “To Meet Her” is about an elderly woman who, at the age of 120, manages to find the terrorist who bombed an event with a famous trans singer.
Despite having many dystopian tales, Chung manages to inject humor in some of her stories, often through the absurdity of the setting or situation. “The Center for Immortality Research” seems to parody the absurdity of Korean bureaucracy ad infinitum, highlighting its inefficiency and redundancy, while “The End of the Voyage” manages to describe chaotic scenes that readers could easily imagine with Strauss’ “The Blue Danube Waltz” playing in the background. Descriptions such as these can’t help but tease out a wry smile: “As he licked the blood coming out of his left wrist as if it were a scrumptious ice-cream cone, he gave a bloody smile at the crew who had come to get him.”
In the author’s note, Chung writes that 2020 was a “chaotic year” because she was busy supporting Korea’s Anti-Discrimination Act and the Serious Accident Punishment Act. Social activism is interlaced in her stories as it is a big part of her life: she has long been a member of a labor union, but she is also married to the labor union leader. She writes that through her hope for eventual change, she pushes on with her social activism despite constant exhaustion so that she “will not be ashamed before the victims and their families” and “to make a difference for the sake of [her] survival and the survival of others.”
Your Utopia will leave readers uncomfortable yet yearning for more. Thought-provoking and bound to take readers through a wild ride of emotions and experiences, the book will not disappoint fans of her work and is sure to add new ones with its release.
