The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories, edited by Bruce Fulton (who is also a contributing writer to the International Examiner) is a compilation of translated short stories from the Korean peninsula, mostly from the 20th century. This is a time period in which the Korean peoples saw the end of a dynasty, lived through Japanese occupation, experienced a civil war, and then a partition that exists to the present day. But the short stories in this collection, published between 1934 and 2013, are set up thematically rather than chronologically.
The introduction by Kwon Youngmin sets the tone effectively, introducing short stories as a genre imported from the West but made local by its Korean practitioners, both from the North and the South. There is a veneration for the difficult craft of creative writing, with the state offering prizes for both fictional and nonfictional writing. Kwon argues that the literary production of Koreans should be celebrated internationally, perhaps as part of Korea’s “global cultural production” (movies, film, music, and other aspects).
The stories may be read as individual works but also as part of a people’s narrative over time, and as observations on the universal human condition. Each of the works are translated by individual translators or translation teams. The following are descriptions of a few of the stories found within this volume.
Chu Yosŏp’s “Mama and the Boarder” focuses on Pak Okhŭi, a six-year-old daughter of a pretty mother. She has an uncle in middle school. That is the extent of her family, given her mother’s being widowed at 23. Her mother inherited land and a house from her late husband. She works as a seamstress. She is socially ostracized given the preference for two-parent families in a conservative and patriarchal society. The mother’s youth and attractiveness exist as a threat against social propriety. There are social conventions against remarriage, given the need for female virtue and social order. The mother can choose to pursue a second marriage or choose to live singly but burden her daughter to be by her side into old age based on filial duty. This story is poignant and sensitively rendered.
Horsehair is an important commodity in the world of both adults and children in Yi Munyŏl’s “The Old Hatter.” This short story opens with neighborhood children stealing horsehair from a local hatmaker, Top’yŏng. While he uses the horsehair to make traditional hats, the children need it to make squirrel traps and cicada nets for their playing. The children are clever and manipulative. One distracts him by telling him stories of others in the village while others swipe the goods. The narrator shares:
“Of course, old man Top’yŏng didn’t just put himself at our mercy. But we were indefatigable, and we needed horsehair badly, having neither toys nor recreational facilities. Old man Top’yŏng was bound to be defeated by our brilliant tactics.”
The hatmaker would apply the “hatband punishment” to those he caught as a form of painful corporal punishment (applying a knuckle in a line across the forehead). One year, one of the children swipes a hatbox with a horsehair hat in it, in what they recall as “the hat disaster.” The innocent fun escalates to sabotage when the children realize that the hatmaker had been extracting costs from their parents for their misdeeds. The story continues as the narrator grows into adulthood and sees their childhood antics against the hatmaker in new light.
Kim Taeyong’s “Pig on Grass” follows a low-born narrator with a tendency to kick a domesticated pig in the testicles and then root around in the mud near it. The narrator is overwhelmed by just being:
“I’ve lived my entire life without thinking. There’s the fact that I’ve always been a mere salesman, but also, I just don’t like to think, and when I do think of something, I pretend I’m too busy to think. If I’m in a whirl of activity there’s no room for thoughts.”
He revels in his experiential living. His only son, however, has earned a Ph.D. in philosophy. The narrator thinks his son is an imposter, a poseur. He is not willing to be challenged by others’ ideas or senses of the world. Readers may infer the boy’s revulsion of his father. Issues come to a head when the son comes back to visit before he goes abroad.
“Pig on Grass” introduces a character prone to acquiring and holding resentments. It explores a character who has reverted to wildness and grotesqueries, unmoored from civilizing influences.
Miss Pak Yŏngsuk is a tattoo artist in Ch’ŏn Unyŏng’s “Needlework.” She is non-threatening to her clients because she is not physically attractive, even as they are aroused from the tattooing process. The act of tattooing is an act of intimacy, the application of scarring through needlework on clients, to meet their psychological need, to use ink and symbols on skin and flesh to imbue strength. Pak is called in by the police because her mother is suspected of murdering the head priest of the Mirŭk Temple, Master Hyŏnp’a, his Buddhist name. Pak is cunning. She has something of violence to her. Pak observes:
“The will and determination to start over would enable people to bear the excruciating pain of needles penetrating the flesh. On the other hand, a tattoo also implies the upcoming trials of life that one must endure.”
In “Needlework,” all people are damaged and feral, yet unaware of their underlying motivations and appetites.
O Chŏnghŭi’s “Wayfarer” follows Hyeja, a woman who has returned home after a hospital stint to find her husband and two children gone. In the abandoned house are only her possessions. There is a Rip Van Winkle quality to her story but also elements of a cautionary tale, about choices that can change the trajectory of lives.
Choi Suchol’s “River Dark” echoes a recurring theme in the short stories. Here, a man goes to Ullŭng Island as a getaway to laze around. He encounters a wheedling waitress wanting him to buy her a drink. Perhaps she is offering something more. He observes the decay of the island’s natural beauty and compares that to the waitress’s grubbing after moneys, catering to the wealthy for their cut. He sees in her a lack of purity, a loss of self respect. His is a deep conservatism. The theme: Korean women are expected to uphold the virtue of a culture and a nation. To assure that virtue, their choices are curtailed and controlled.
Written in the style of a folktale, Ch’oe Inho’s “The Poplar Tree” follows a blacksmith who is an amateur village high jumper. He is the hope of fellow villagers for possibly setting a world record one day. The narrative covers decades in a few sentences. The high jumper experiences tragedy and the loss of his family. He plants a poplar tree that he will be able to leap over, even as it grows up to heaven. The observation is that human life on Earth is transient, but there is the human soul that transcends into forever, where the family unit exists still.
Han Yujoo’s “Black-and-White Photographer” is a harrowing story of a child kidnapping for ransom. This work is told through an omniscient narrator but one that is also the kidnapped child. There are shifts in time. The conclusion ends with ambiguity: the ransom was paid and the child released; the ransom was or was not paid, and the 10-year-old child was strangled. Han’s is a skillful ambiguity.
Kim Aeran’ “The Future of Silence” reads like a poetic celebration of humanity, human voice, and language, in the sweep of time. This tour de force evokes something of “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges.
The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories is a potent collection. The supplementary materials—an editorial note, further reading lists, observations on Korean name order and pronunciation, translators’ notes, and a map, all enhance the work. Bruce Fulton’s edited collection serves as a powerful collection and an important bridge to Korean short stories and fiction.
Shalin Hai-Jew has worked in higher education for many years. She has edited dozens of nonfiction educational books and authored a dozen with a number of publishers.
