Questioning Minds: Yung-Hee Kim

Korean literature
HAWAI‘I STUDIES ON KOREA
AVA IL A BLE FOR THE FIR ST TI M E in English, the ten short stories by mod-
ern Korean women collected here touch in one way or another on issues relat-
K IM
ed to gender and kinship politics. All of the protagonists are women who face
Questioning Minds
personal crises or defining moments in their lives as gender-marked beings in
a Confucian, patriarchal Korean society.
Their personal dreams and values have been compromised by gender
expectations or their own illusions about female existence. They are com-
pelled to ask themselves “Who am I?” “Where am I going?” “What are my
choices?” Each story bears colorful and compelling testimony to the life of
the heroine. Some of the stories celebrate the central character’s breakaway
from the patriarchal order; others expose sexual inequality and highlight the
Questioning Minds
struggle for personal autonomy and dignity. Still others reveal the abrupt
awakening to mid-life crises and the seasoned wisdom that comes with
accepting the limits of old age.
The stories are arranged in chronological order, from the earliest work
by Korea’s first modern woman writer in 1917 to stories that appeared in
1995—approximately one from each decade. Most of the writers presented
are recognized literary figures, but some are lesser-known voices. The intro-
duction presents a historical overview of traditions of modern Korean wom- SHORT STORIES BY
en’s fiction, situating the selected writers and their stories in the larger context
of Korean literature. Each story is accompanied by a biographical note on the
MODERN KOREAN
author and a brief, critical analysis. A selected bibliography is provided for
further reading and research.
Questioning Minds marks a departure from existing translations of Korean WOMEN WRITERS
literature in terms of its objectives, content, and format. As such it will con-
tribute to the growth of Korean studies, increasing the availability of material
for teaching Korean literature in English, and stimulate readership of its writ-
ers beyond the confines of the peninsula.
translated and with an introduction by
Yung-Hee Kim is professor of Korean literature in the Department of East
Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Yung-Hee Kim
COVER A RT: Kim Whanki, Moonlight (Wŏlgwang), 1959. Oil painting on canvas, 92 cm x
60 cm. Courtesy of the Whanki Foundation, housed in the collection of the Museum, Korea
University, Seoul, Korea.
COVER DE SIGN: Julie Matsuo-Chun
ISBN 978-0-8248-3409-8
90000
UNIVERSITY of
HAWAI‘I PRESS 9 780824 834098
Honolulu, Hawai‘i 96822-1888 www.uhpress.hawaii.edu
Questioning Minds
KimQuest.indd 1 9/22/09 1:56:23 PM

hawa i ‘ i stu di e s on korea
Wayne Patterson
The Ilse: First-Generation Korean Immigrants, 1903–1973
Linda S. Lewis
Laying Claim to the Memory of May: A Look Back at the 1980
Kwangju Uprising
Michael Finch
Min Yŏng-gwan: A Political Biography
Michael J. Seth
Education Fever: Society, Politics, and the Pursuit of Schooling in South Korea
Chan E. Park
Voices from the Straw Mat: Toward an Ethnography of Korean Story Singing
Andrei N. Lankov
Crisis in North Korea: The Failure of De-Stalinization, 1956
Hahn Moon-Suk
And So Flows History
Timothy R. Tangherlini and Sallie Yea, eds.

Sitings: Critical Approaches to Korean Geography
Alexander Vovin
Koreo-Japonica: A Re-evaluation of a Common Genetic Origin
Yung-Hee Kim, translator

Questioning Minds: Short Stories by Modern Korean Women Writers

hawa i ‘ i st u di e s on kore a
Questioning Minds
Short Stories by Modern Korean Women Writers
translated and with an introduction

by Yung-Hee Kim
University of Hawai‘i Press, Honolulu

and
Center for Korean Studies, University of Hawai‘i

© 2010 University of Hawai‘i Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
15 14 13 12 11 10 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Questioning minds : short stories by modern Korean women writers / translated and
with an introduction by Yung-Hee Kim.
p. cm. — (Hawai‘i studies on Korea)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8248-3395-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-0-8248-3409-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Short stories, Korean—Translations into English. 2. Korean fiction—Women
authors—Translations into English. 3. Korea (South)—Fiction. I. Kim, Yung-Hee.
PL984.E8Q47 2010
895.7'3010809287—dc22
2009030298
The Center for Korean Studies was established in 1972 to

coordinate and develop resources for the study of Korea at the
University of Hawai‘i. Reflecting the diversity of the academic
disciplines represented by affiliated members of the university
faculty, the Center seeks especially to promote interdisciplinary and intercultural
studies. Hawai‘i Studies on Korea, published jointly by the Center and the University
of Hawai‘i Press, offers a forum for research in the social sciences and humanities
pertaining to Korea and its people.
University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free

paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and
durability of the Council on Library Resources.
Designed by University of Hawai‘i Press production staff

Printed by The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group

To the memory of my mother

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: Traditions in Modern Korean
Women’s Fiction Writing, by Yung-Hee Kim 1
Stories
1 Kim Myŏng-sun: A Girl of Mystery (1917) 15
2 Na Hye-sŏk: Kyŏnghŭi (1918) 24
3 Kim Wŏn-ju: Awakening (1926) 55
4 Han Mu-suk: Hydrangeas (1949) 68
5 Kang Sin-jae: The Mist (1950) 83
6 Song Wŏn-hŭi: When Autumn Leaves Fall (1961) 100
7 Yi Sun: A Dish of Sliced Raw Fish (1979) 119
8 Yi Sŏk-pong: The Light at Dawn (1985) 150
9 Ch’oe Yun: Stone in Your Heart (1992) 164
10 Pak Wan-sŏ: Dried Flowers (1995) 186
Notes 215
Bibliography 223
Index 229
vii

Preface
Questioning Minds is designed to reflect the living tra-

dition of Korean women’s fiction writing through a representation of short
stories dating from 1917 to 1995, written by ten different women, with the
aim of making them available in English translation to a wider readership
outside Korea. This translation is especially intended for college-level audi-
ences and readers. My experience in teaching the course “Modern Korean
Women Writers and Culture,” which I implemented and have offered for years
at University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, has convinced me of the need for more
systematically organized introductory and textual material such as this book
for use by both students and teachers in Korean literature. The majority of the
stories in this anthology are translated here for the first time, whether into
English or any other language.1 In this sense, the present book represents an
attempt to explore thus-far-untraveled terrain and contribute to the expan-
sion of Korean literature beyond the confines of Korea.
A distinctive feature of this anthology is the thematic relationship between
the works included. These stories are chosen not simply because they are
by women writers. Rather, these works touch upon issues related to gender
and kinship politics, such as women’s search for self-identity, gender rela-
tions, marriage and family institutions, problems of old age, and women’s
creative engagement and professions, to name a few. All the protagonists in
these stories are women situated at one stage or another in their life cycle—
as daughter, daughter-in-law, wife, mother, or widow. These characters face
personal crises or defining moments in their lives as gender-marked beings
in a Confucian, patriarchal Korean society. They often find their personal
ix

x Preface
aspirations, values, and dignity compromised, threatened, or even violated by

gender expectations, marriage conventions, or their own illusions concerning
female existence. These circumstances compel the heroines to raise—some
directly and others implicitly—such questions as “Who am I?” “What have I
done with my life?” “Where am I going?” and “What are my choices?” A few
succeed in resolving their quandaries; in the process, some find invaluable,
even philosophical, insights into life itself. Some at least come to recognize
their entrapped condition, even while they remain deadlocked in their cir-
cumscribed existences. Essentially, these stories represent the variety of chal-
lenges and dilemmas Korean women have experienced since their country’s
modernization.
Such questioning postures by the female characters help the reader dis-
cern the challenges the individual authors faced amidst the dominant gender
assumptions/ideologies and cultural practices of their times. Notable targets
of their rebuke include the patriarchal prejudices against female education;
women’s enforced confinement to the domestic sphere; the denial of opportu-
nities for women to develop their intelligence and artistic talents; male sexual
license and egotism; the Confucian promotion of marriage and motherhood
as the one and only purpose of a woman’s life; the cult of women’s other-ori-
ented existence, that is, the emphasis upon their subservience, self-sacrifice,
and obedience; the hierarchical ordering of family relationships, with women
occupying the lowest rung; and the feminine mystique surrounding the con-
jugal and familial happiness of middle-class urban professional housewives.
At the same time, amidst such themes a number of these writers skillfully
capture key moments in Korea’s past and present. They are vigilant in reading
the signs of their times, and subtle in weaving a sense of historical reality into
the lives of their characters. That is, these short stories frequently reveal their
authors’ keen understanding of the crucial ramifications of the sociopoliti-
cal and cultural unfolding on the conjugal, familial, and intellectual lives of
women. This historical consciousness communicates their views of women
as historical-social beings and agents—not merely as entities submerged in
domestic isolation, as often assumed, but as integral parts of their respec-
tive sociopolitical landscapes. Often incisively evoked in these stories are the
irrefutable and far-reaching presence of colonial Japan in all aspects of the
daily lives of Koreans; the turbulence and tension of the postliberation period
and the ravages of the Korean War that contributed to the varied destinies of
their heroines; the growing consumerism and the vulgar materialism of the
middle classes, and the bourgeois complacence of the 1970s and 1980s; and
the escalating erosion of traditional values, marriage customs, and kinship
relationships of the 1990s. These stories can be seen as illuminations of the

Preface xi
intricately woven intertextuality of fiction with history, culture, and women’s

lives.
An effort has been made in this anthology to convey a historical sense of
the development of thematic concerns in the stories by including at least one
story from each decade of the twentieth century, beginning with the 1910s
and ending in the 1990s. Nevertheless, there is a gap between the 1920s and
the 1940s due to difficulties in locating a representative story that would meet
the anthology’s topical parameters. Such stories are scarce largely because not
all modern Korean women writers, including those with popular followings,
are interested in probing gender-related or feminist issues. In addition, there
has not necessarily been a qualitatively or even quantitatively steady growth in
these thematic areas from one generation to the next. Furthermore, depend-
ing upon the individual writer, interest in such tropes may be fortuitous or
temporary. My desire to avoid duplication of already translated works and the
space constraints in this anthology have also led to the exclusion of deserving
stories. In the end, however, these circumstances provided me with the chal-
lenging but rewarding task of looking for and listening to lesser-known voices
that reveal hidden talents and offer refreshing insights. Ultimately this task
presented valuable opportunities to widen my own literary horizons regard-
ing modern Korean literature as a whole.
The selected stories are arranged in chronological order from 1917, with
the very first work of the first modern Korean woman writer, to the narratives
that appeared in the mid-1990s. This arrangement will help the reader see
the changes in narrative technique and structure as well as the textual shifts
in vision and thematic articulation, depending on the time of their publica-
tion. Through this formal arrangement readers ideally will come to appreciate
the lives of modern Korean women, punctuated by frustrations, self-doubt,
anguish, rebellious impulses, and the occasional sense of accomplishment, all
of which contributed to the configuration of Korean culture and intellectual
history.
Another noteworthy aspect of this collection is the variety of narrative
viewpoints among the stories. A number of them are told by first-person nar-
rators and even make use of an epistolary format, while others are related by
third-person or omniscient narrators. Some stories are presented in chrono-
logical order, but a few employ memory modes and explore manipulation of
time and unconventional narrative organization. Such narrative and struc-
tural diversity adds color and tonal shades to these thematically linked stories.
The stylistic variety also represents the spectrum of Korean women writers
and reminds us that these are only a small sample of the available literature.
In modern Korean literature short stories have been considered a consum-

xii Preface
mate literary art form and a testing ground for an author’s talent. As such,
the genre has become an orthodox and mainstream channel, through which
writers make their literary debut; thus it is not unusual that the fame of some
major writers rests on a handful of short stories. This convention strongly
persists in contemporary Korea, including in women’s fiction writing.
Lastly, in accordance with the Korean custom, personal names were ren-
dered surname first followed by given name. It also should be noted that
Korean women do not change their surnames after they get married.

Acknowledgments
A number of individuals and institutions lent their

valuable assistance in bringing Questioning Minds: Short Stories by Modern
Korean Women Writers to publication. Several authors and families kindly
gave me their permission to translate the stories and reproduce photographs:
authors Pak Wan-sŏ, Song Wŏn-hŭi, and Ch’oe Yun; Nyle Kim, daughter of
Na Hye-sŏk; Yi Wŏl-song, disciple of Kim Wŏn-ju; Young-Key Kim-Renaud,
daughter of Han Mu-suk; Suh Im Soo, husband of Kang Sin-jae; Park Young,
son of Yi Sŏk-pong; and Han Ki-woong, son of Yi Sun. A special credit for
Ch’oe Yun’s photo goes to Choi Kwangho. I was also the recipient of thought-
ful support from colleagues in Korea, Pak Hyeju, Ch’u Ŭn-hŭi, Lee Duk Hwa,
and Choi Jung Sun, who went out of their way to secure information on in-
dividual writers, their works, and related matters. In addition, I will cherish
the graciousness and generosity of Park Mee-Jung and Chae Young of the
Whanki Museum in Seoul, who readily provided permission to use artist Kim
Whanki’s painting for the book jacket.
My manuscript received reinforcement from Michael E. Macmillan’s ever-
ready editorial input and computer-aided technical expertise and from Daniel
C. Kane’s skillful editing. My gratitude is also extended to Kichung Kim for
reading the entire manuscript and providing insightful suggestions and en-
couragements.
To Patricia Crosby and Ann Ludeman of the University of Hawai‘i Press
goes my sincere appreciation for their professional guidance and procedural
coordination. Most of all, I am deeply indebted to Rosemary Wetherold, whose
xiii

xiv Acknowledgments
patience, thoughtfulness, and meticulous copyediting contributed to the final

shape of this book.
I will always remain thankful to the members of my family who have been
there rooting for me to persevere and bring this project to a successful con-
clusion.
Despite my best efforts, I was unable to locate the owners of the copyrights
to the photos of Kim Myŏng-sun and Kim Wŏn-ju. I would be pleased to
include appropriate acknowledgments in subsequent editions of this book if
informed of the rights’ owners.
Financial support for research and translation from the Korean Culture
and Arts Foundation (the present Korea Literature Translation Institute) and
the Daesan Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.

Introduction
Traditions in Modern Korean
Women’s Fiction Writing
YUNG-HEE KIM
Modern Korean women’s engagement with fiction

writing began in the late 1910s under the adverse conditions of Japanese colo-
nial rule (1910–1945), which had put an end to the Chosŏn (or Yi) dynasty
(1392–1910) and with it Korea’s political autonomy. Notwithstanding their
national plight, first from Japanese colonization and then from national divi-
sion in 1945, Korean women have kept their voices alive, using their writ-
ing to express concerns about both themselves and their society. This pursuit
has been anything but easy, but these women have succeeded in forging an
unbroken line of their own literary tradition that stretches now through nine
decades.
Externally, these women writers have had to overcome formidable cultural
and sociopolitical obstacles—corollaries of Korea’s own historical vicissitudes.
Among these obstacles were Japanese government censorship, including the
surveillance of intellectuals and even the banning of the Korean language
during the colonial period; the postliberation ideological chaos and the
resulting national division; the destruction and social upheaval of the Korean
War (1950–1953); and oppressive military rule from 1961 until the reestab-
lishment of civilian government in 1993.
Internally, they needed to liberate themselves from centuries-old Confu-
cian gender injunctions imposed upon women—injunctions that demanded
they be submissive, silent, and invisible, as stipulated in “Three Rules of
Obedience” and “Seven Vices.”1 These actual and symbolic patriarchal
mechanisms—the Korean version of “the Angel in the House”2—to control

2 Introduction
women’s thought, speech, and behavior contributed to curtailing their dreams

and needs and silencing the voice to speak what was closest to their hearts.
Women writers who dared to speak out had to negotiate their careers through
the male-dominant milieu of the Korean literary world, where established
male figures presided as the supreme arbiters of literary standards and taste
and even controlled the channels to publication.
Furthermore, tagged with the belittling appellation yŏryu chakka (lady
writers), Korean women writers also had to conquer the public’s long-stand-
ing prejudice against their work as inferior, or at best secondary, to that of
their male counterparts—as the Other of Korean literary traditions. Even
their Confucian-scripted, other-oriented domestic responsibilities as daugh-
ters, wives, mothers, and daughters-in-law negatively affected their literary
production, denying them “a room of their own”—unhampered space, time,
and material reality—so essential to any creative activity.3 These extraliterary
factors may in part account for the brevity of the careers, or the entire disap-
pearance into obscurity, of a number of Korean women writers who boasted
promising beginnings.
Today women writers such as Pak Wan-sŏ (b. 1931) and recently deceased
Pak Kyŏng-ni (1927–2008) command high respect as elders of the Korean
literary world. Because of their consistent production of works that may rank
as modern Korean classics, they have even become household names. What’s
more, highly educated, talented, young women writers of the 1980s and the
1990s are now enjoying unprecedented prominence, particularly in the field of
fiction. Their innovative themes, narrative structure, and strategies challenge
old practices, and their works repeatedly make the best-seller lists. Many of
this new generation of rising women writers have garnered Korea’s most pres-
tigious and coveted literary accolades, such as the Hyŏndae, Tong-in, and Yi
Sang literature awards.4 Thus women writers have firmly carved their niche in
the literary, cultural, and intellectual history of contemporary Korea.
Historical Overview
The Pioneers
Since most of the writers in this collection are little known outside Korea,
it is helpful to begin with an overview of the major developments in the
Korean women’s narrative tradition and to ascertain the relative positions
these stories and their authors occupy therein. This survey is limited to pre-
senting landmark features and does not pretend to be thorough or even ana-
lytic in its approach; it may risk simplification or generalization for the sake

Yung-Hee Kim 3
of presenting essential information. Yet this chronological sketch provides a

sense of temporal flow and a proper context necessary for a better under-
standing of achievements by modern Korean women writers as well as their
failings.
The genesis of modern Korean women’s fiction writing is usually traced
to “Ŭisim ŭi sonyŏ” (A girl of mystery; 1917), by Kim Myŏng-sun (1896–ca.
1951). Kim’s story is an implicit critique of the tragic and far-reaching con-
sequences of concubinage, expressed in the suicide of a wronged wife and in
the suffering of her innocent young daughter. “Ŭisim ŭi sonyŏ” was closely
followed by “Kyŏnghŭi” (1918), by Na Hye-sŏk (1896–1948), which embodies
the author’s firm belief that women empower themselves through a modern
education, enabling them to obtain their own identities and to craft an indi-
vidualistic purpose for life. This radical challenge to the received notion of
marriage as the sole goal of a woman’s life is demonstrated in the tortuous
struggle of the Japan-educated, eponymous heroine, who in her determined
quest for an autonomous path in life dares to defy her father’s pressure to
accept an arranged marriage proposal. Together these works represent the
first literary voices of young women in modern Korea, raised in their com-
mon critique of the dominant gender ideologies of their society. They broke
the more than one century of silence since the court women of the Chosŏn
dynasty had last aired their personal thoughts and experiences from their
sequestered inner quarters.5
In the early 1920s the burgeoning literature of modern Korean women
attained a new momentum. In the wake of the March 1919 Independence
Movement, the Japanese colonial administration loosened its iron grip and
put in place the so-called cultural policy, notably in the area of publica-
tion and press law. Cultural and social activities by Koreans revived, albeit
still under the watchful eye of the Japanese authorities. Young Korean elites
launched major newspapers such as the Chosŏn ilbo (March 1920) and Tonga
ilbo (April 1920) and magazines such as Kaebyŏk (Creation; June 1920), and
literary circles mushroomed. Capitalizing on this turn of events, Korea’s first
feminist magazine, Sinyŏja (New woman; March 1920), edited by Kim Wŏn-ju
(1896–1971) with the assistance of like-minded colleagues such as Na Hye-
sŏk, made its appearance.
The aim of Sinyŏja was to foster the creativity of women by providing them
a public outlet, as attested by its policy of publishing only work by women.
With Sinyŏja and other contemporary magazines as her platform, Kim Wŏn-
ju spoke boldly of the urgency for the education and self-awakening of Korean
women, the reform of marriage and family systems, and, ultimately, gender

4 Introduction
equality. For instance, her “Chagak” (Awakening; 1926) epitomizes her belief
in education as the key to empowering women to construct unconventional
modes of life.
The contentions of these women writers, seen especially in the works of
Na Hye-sŏk and Kim Wŏn-ju, were informed by Western feminism. Most
influential were ideas advocated by Swedish thinker Ellen Karolina Sofia Key
(1849–1926) and the dramatic masterpieces on the “woman question” by
Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), especially A Doll’s House (1879). These progres-
sive notions from the West inspired Korean women writers, intermediated
by the activities of Japanese feminists of Seitō (Bluestockings), a group spear-
headed by Hiratsuka Raichō (1886–1971) and Yosano Akiko (1878–1942) in
the early 1910s.6 The works and thought of the pioneers of modern Korean
women’s writing therefore had an international dimension, transcend-
ing cultural and national boundaries and possessing an aura of intellectual
cosmopolitanism.7
Kim Myŏng-sun, Na Hye-sŏk, and Kim Wŏn-ju experimented with a
wide spectrum of genres, including poetry, short stories, essays, drama, auto-
biographical writings, and translations, frequently contributing to Tonga ilbo,
Chosŏn ilbo, Kaebyŏk, and other periodicals. These trailblazers rose to celeb-
rity status and became icons of the “new/modern woman” (sinyŏsŏng), and
they enjoyed close professional and even personal ties with Ch’oe Nam-sŏn
(1890–1957) and Yi Kwang-su (1892–1950), the two male giants of modern
Korean literature. Given the conservatism of early modern Korea, however,
these women’s iconoclastic thinking, behavior, and personal lifestyles, includ-
ing the advocacy of free love, multiple amorous relationships, extramarital
affairs, and divorce, made them the targets of condemnation and ostracism
and eventually caused their decades-long erasure from the memory of Korean
society itself.
Marxist Strains
The heyday of the Marxist-inspired literary activities of the Korean Artists
Proletariat Federation (KAPF) from the mid-1920s to the mid-1930s added a
new dimension to Korean literature and changed its contours. With “Art for
life’s sake” as its slogan, KAPF became the mouthpiece of the socioeconomi-
cally oppressed and displaced. The ubiquitous themes of KAPF writers were
poverty, the stark contrast between the haves and have-nots, and the condem-
nation of the wealthy as a social evil—all fraught with propagandist zeal. In
the midst of this ideological and literary agitation, the second generation of
modern Korean women writers emerged, and a number of them fell under the
sway of socialism. Led by Pak Hwa-sŏng (1904–1988), women writers such as

Yung-Hee Kim 5
Kang Kyŏng-ae (1907–1943) and Paek Sin-ae (1908–1939) became specialists

in “poverty literature,” producing works entirely different from those of their
immediate predecessors in theme and approach. Predictably, their preoccu-
pation was to depict the affliction of those at the bottom of society, to expose
the extremities of privation that Koreans—especially those at the social mar-
gins—were suffering under ever-intensifying Japanese colonial exploitation.
Pak’s “Hasudo kongsa” (Sewage repair work; 1932) and “Han’gwi” (Ghost
of drought; 1935) and Kang’s Ingan munje (Human question; 1934) and
“Chihach’on” (Underground village; 1936) are the most notable examples. As
a consequence, some of these writers criticized modern educated women as
lacking a commitment to larger sociopolitical issues beyond their own gen-
der identity or as having a superficial or even wrongheaded understanding
of feminism and modernity itself. Pak Hwa-sŏng’s “Pit’al” (Slope; 1933) and
Kang Kyŏng-ae’s “Kŭ yŏja” (That woman; 1932) are cases in point.
An exception during this period was Kim Mal-bong (1901–1962), whose
melodramatic love stories enjoyed considerable popularity. Serialized in
newspapers, her major novels, Millim (The jungle; 1935–1938) and Tchillek-
kot (Wild roses; 1937), entertained the masses and demonstrated the possibil-
ity of commercial success for both romance writers and their publishers.
Diversified Voices: The 1930s

During the mid-1930s, when the socialist fervor simmered down as a
result of the Japanese ban on Marxist activities in Korea, a third generation
of women writers came to the forefront. These included Yi Sŏn-hŭi (1911–?),
Ch’oe Chŏng-hŭi (1912–1996), Chang Tŏk-cho (1914–2003), and Im Ok-
in (1915–1995). Most of these writers eschewed gender polemics, focusing
their creative efforts instead on the domestic drama of women that revolved
around their love lives or conjugal complications. Their stories played on dif-
ferent shades of male-female relationships and at times featured strong-willed
women characters, such as the protagonist in Im Ok-in’s “Huch’ŏgi” (Notes
by a third wife; 1940), who orchestrates her marriage arrangements and con-
structs her marital life on her own terms, with complete disregard of the opin-
ions of others.
With the occasional exception, however, the works of this new group
lacked the forthright and provocative feminist-oriented urgency palpable in
the writings of women in the 1920s. Of the 1930s group, Ch’oe Chŏng-hŭi’s
works have been singled out as the foremost articulation of the competing
claims of womanhood and motherhood. Her major stories—such as her tril-
ogy of “Chimaek” (Earthly connections; 1939), “Inmaek” (Human connec-
tions; 1940), and “Ch’ŏnmaek” (Heavenly connections; 1941)—feature the

6 Introduction
lives of highly educated, willful heroines who aggressively attain what they
want, following the dictates of their passion while flouting society’s sexual
norms and gender expectations. They carry on affairs with married men, bear
children out of wedlock, become single mothers, and consider the possibility
of remarrying, even while taking along children from a previous marriage.
After their amorous excursions or sexual experimentation, however, Ch’oe’s
heroines eventually settle into conventional wifely or motherly roles, awak-
ened to the power of a reality that will not tolerate their individualistic, non-
conformist impulses.
Closing Days of the Colonial Period

The period from the late 1930s through the early 1940s marked the dark-
est hours of the Korean colonial period, culminating in Japan’s entry into
World War II in 1941. From that time Korea was transformed into a Japanese
military supply base. Koreans lost their language and were forced to adopt
Japanese-styled names, pay homage to the Japanese emperor, and worship at
Shinto shrines. Korean male students were drafted into the Japanese army,
while young Korean women were recruited as sex slaves (“comfort women”)
for Japanese troops. The two leading Korean newspapers, Tonga ilbo and
Chosŏn ilbo, were forced to fold. A number of writers, including Yi Kwang-su
and Ch’oe Nam-sŏn, succumbed to collaborative roles within the Japanese
war propaganda campaign.
Son So-hŭi (1917–1987) and Han Mu-suk (1918–1993) embarked on
their careers with these bleak developments as backdrop, but their principal
works were published after Korea’s liberation from Japan. The strength of Son
So-hŭi, a master of psychological realism, lies in her superb ability to cap-
ture the fine shades of emotions and dissect the emotional complexities of
her characters—usually those of women protagonists. Han Mu-suk debuted
with her award-winning full-length novel, written in Japanese, Tomoshibi o
motsu hito (The woman carrying a lamp; 1942). On the whole, Han’s works
are marked by a deep historical consciousness and an abiding concern with
the intriguing interplay between unfolding sociopolitical forces and human
destiny.
New Beginnings: Postliberation and Korean War Periods

The jubilant hopes shared by all Koreans upon liberation from Japan in
1945 were soon dashed. The postliberation years became for Korea a pro-
longed period of social and political anarchy, ending in 1948 with the division
of the country into two ideologically opposed regimes of South and North.
Within two years the Korean War (1950–1953) broke out. As with so many

Yung-Hee Kim 7
other aspects of Korean society, its toll on the development of Korean litera-
ture was colossal. A large number of Korean literary luminaries were killed,
kidnapped, or defected to the North, leaving a void in the literary world in the
South.
This turbulent transitional period witnessed the debut of such Korean
women writers as Kang Sin-jae (1924–2001), followed by the major post–
Korean War women writers, including Pak Kyŏng-ni, Han Mal-suk (b. 1931),
Ku Hye-yŏng (1931–2006), Son Chang-sun (b. 1935), and Chŏng Yŏn-hŭi (b.
1936). Their concerted efforts, together with those of their immediate prede-
cessors, Son So-hŭi and Han Mu-suk, helped Korean women’s fiction writing
win recognition as a credible and essential component of the modern Korean
literary repertoire.
Kang Sin-jae distinguished herself by her sophistication in deploying
natural objects, color schemes, and sensory descriptions to enhance the sym-
bolic significance of the narrative action and the inner lives of her characters.
Through these strategies of indirection and distancing, Kang “shows” with
classical restraint, lyricism, and aesthetic sensualism rather than “tells.”
Of the post–Korean War writers, Pak Kyŏng-ni has become a pillar of
modern Korean literature. Early in her career Pak was involved extensively
in Korean War issues based upon her personal experience as a war widow.
“Pulsin sidae” (An age of distrust; 1957), her best-known war account, is a
scathing indictment of the corruption, hypocrisy, and rampant mammonism
that inundated postwar Korean society. Pak’s greatest literary achievement,
however, is related to her fascination with the fluctuating, powerful opera-
tion of historical forces in human life, a concern crystallized in her master-
piece, Toji (Land; 1969–1994; sixteen volumes). A panoramic family saga,
Toji is built around strong-minded and domineering women in an upper-
class family over four generations from the late Chosŏn dynasty to the end
of the colonial period. This monumental project, completed in twenty-five
years, triggered the popularity of the so-called taeha sosŏl (long-river novel),
or roman-fleuve genre, to be emulated by a younger generation of writers in
the 1970s and 1980s.
On Firm Ground: The 1960s–1970s

The 1960s marked another watershed in Korean history. The decade wit-
nessed two major political events of lasting import: the toppling of the des-
potic and corrupt civilian government of South Korea by student revolutions
in April 1960 and the coup d’état of May 1961, resulting in the establishment
of military rule that would continue until 1993. A sharp social and politi-
cal consciousness crested among young writers, compelling them to embrace

8 Introduction
as their primary mission the critique of the dictatorial military government.

Such new literary visions led to a public discourse on the writer’s responsibil-
ity for and commitment to social causes.
A few new women writers arrived in this engagement-oriented literary
milieu: Chŏn Pyŏng-sun (1927–2005), Yi Sŏk-pong (1928–1999), Pak Sun-
nyŏ (b. 1928), Song Wŏn-hŭi (b. 1927), and Yi Kyu-hŭi (b. 1937). Of these,
Chŏn, Pak, and Song shared an interest in revisiting Korean historical expe-
riences spanning from the colonial period up to the post–Korean War era.
Their works scrutinize the ramifications of Japanese colonialism, Koreans’
anticolonial resistance movements, the ravages of the fratricidal civil war, and
the hardships of the war refugees. Some of these writers, such as Chŏn, ended
up writing popular newspaper novels about clandestine love affairs of well-
heeled women or the erotic pursuits of urbanites. In contrast, Yi Kyu-hŭi early
on drew critical attention for her focus on rural idealism, regional flavors,
and the folksy, unadulterated lives of countryside dwellers, which contrasted
sharply with the regression of other contemporary women writers into melo-
dramatic mass entertainment. In the end, however, the majority of this gen-
eration of women writers ceased to be of consequence, and their works fell
mostly into obscurity.
The 1970s saw an unprecedented acceleration in industrialization and
urbanization in South Korea, driven by a series of governmental economic
plans. The booming economy and new wealth, however, were attended by a
host of new social problems, such as urban overcrowding and pollution, the
disintegration of rural communities, the dominating influence of material-
ism and consumerism, and the loss of traditional values. The collective voice
of sociopolitically engaged writers grew louder than in the previous decade,
drowning out those colleagues less willing to be so committed. Some writers
appointed themselves as social consciences and launched literary activism.
In direct proportion to the military government’s crackdown on intellectual
dissidents and student activists, the antigovernment stance of the engagement
writers grew more belligerent and confrontational.
In this tense atmosphere a new crop of women fiction writers appeared,
represented by Pak Wan-sŏ, Sŏ Yŏng-ŭn (b. 1943), Kim Chi-wŏn (b. 1943),
Kim Ch’ae-wŏn (b. 1946), Yun Chŏng-mo (b. 1946), O Chŏng-hŭi (b. 1947),
Yi Sun (b. 1949), and Kang Sŏk-kyŏng (b. 1951). Collectively, this group con-
stituted the first real blossoming of writing by Korean women, evidenced by
their sweeping the most esteemed Korean literary prizes and demonstrating
the possibility their works might become part of the canon of modern Korean
literature.
Among these writers, Pak Wan-sŏ deserves special mention. A prolific

Yung-Hee Kim 9
and highly awarded writer of today, Pak has towered over the women’s liter-
ary world since the 1970s. She firmly established her stature as a sociocultural
critic whose thematic versatility ranged from vital social issues, gender rela-
tions, marriage and family, and problems of the elderly to the Korean War. Pak
is also one of the earliest writers of the 1970s to call attention to the necessity
of confronting the Korean War experience once again and examining its long-
term, debilitating effect on families. This theme found its first expression in
her debut novel, Namok (Naked tree; 1970), based on her own tragic experi-
ences of the war and has become the leitmotif of her literary corpus. Another
trademark of Pak is her uncanny ability to pinpoint social evils and shallow
fads, pitilessly exposing their sordidness and vulgarity. Her favorite targets
are the foibles of urban, middle-class housewives, often captives of consum-
erism and bourgeois pettiness. With her characteristic acumen, wry humor,
and deliberate verbosity, Pak levels her critical pen at her characters’ crass
materialism, obsession with social climbing, status consciousness, hypocrisy,
and familial egotism, often turning their antics into tragicomedy. Pak also
excels in problematizing women’s midlife identity crisis, as well as divorce and
the issue of gender inequity. She has proven pivotal in the revival of feminist
interest in Korean literature since its decline from the 1930s.
Sociopolitical Challenges of the 1980s: Expansion and Enrichment

The massacre of the antigovernment, pro-democracy demonstrators dur-
ing the Kwangju Revolt in May 1980 opened a dark chapter in Korean history.
A culture of violence began to prevail, most observably in the terrorization of
intellectual dissenters and in bloody street clashes between police and radi-
calized college students. In the midst of seeming economic prosperity, the
country was riddled with such problems as unremitting disputes between
labor and management, violent union-led strikes, intensifying deterioration
of rural areas, widening economic gaps between classes and between regions,
and the erosion of commonly held spiritual values. Popular discontent and
hostility grew against the government’s tyranny in the name of national secu-
rity, law and order, and economic development.
As college students, young women writers of the 1980s experienced first-
hand this oppressive social atmosphere. Few were left untouched by the pres-
sure to make the difficult choice between pure academic pursuits and mem-
bership in popular student movements. Many became politicized and turned
into willing and regular participants in street demonstrations and covert anti-
government activities. The list of major women writers who came of age dur-
ing the 1980s includes Kim Hyang-suk (b. 1951), Ch’oe Yun (b. 1953), Yang
Kwi-ja (b. 1955), Kim Hyŏng-gyŏng (b. 1960), Kim In-suk (b. 1963), and Kong

10 Introduction
Chi-yŏng (b. 1963). The collective trauma of citizens during the Kwangju
Revolt became the inspiration and material for Ch’oe Yun’s “Chŏgi sori ŏpsi
hanjŏm kkonnip i chigo” (There, a petal silently falls; 1988), which impeaches
the senselessness and inhumanity of the military regime’s civilian butchery
during those fateful days. Kim Hyang-suk and Yang Kwi-ja were leaders in
their focus on the lives of the “little people.” Kim drew her protagonists mostly
from women of lower classes, while Yang excelled in presenting snapshots
of an assortment of characters from the lower classes congregated in a satel-
lite city outside Seoul, as revealed in her Wŏnmidong saramdŭl (People of the
Wŏnmidong neighborhood; 1987), a collection of stories in the yŏnjak sosŏl
(linked short stories) genre.
Kim In-suk, who during the 1980s was absorbed in producing “labor nov-
els,” was one of the most ideologically radicalized writers. Some of her works
are inflammatory exposés of the industrial exploitation of wage earners. Kong
Chi-yŏng’s ideological path converged with that of Kim, and Kong produced
stories revealing the leading roles of young activists involved in organized
labor movements. In contrast, Kim Hyŏng-gyŏng took a more reflective and
eclectic stance toward the social developments of her time. Her major interest
was in showing the importance of striking a balance between the individual
and society, without group ideology hindering the individual’s pursuit of his
or her own personal self-fulfillment.
Another new factor adding impetus to the development of Korean women’s
literature in the 1980s was the implementation of women’s studies in Korean
academe in the mid-1970s and its resulting impact on Korean society as well
as contemporary literature. Increasing scholarly research on the history of
Korean women and current women’s issues stimulated interest in women
writers, both past and present. Especially noteworthy was the contribution
of Tto hana ŭi munhwa (Alternative culture; 1985), a feminist journal, to the
sensitization of the public’s and creative writers’ awareness of current feminist
discourses, theories, and praxis.
Wider Horizons: The 1990s and Beyond

After three decades of military rule, in 1993 Koreans celebrated the rees-
tablishment of the civilian government and ushered in a new cultural epoch.
With most of the tyrannical government controls removed, Korean writers
began to readjust to the freedom of self-expression and to chart their future
courses, while reflecting on their past work. The changed cultural atmosphere
of the 1990s coincided with an unparalleled upsurge in the creative activities
of women writers, as each year brought new faces and record-setting award
winners in the field of women’s literature. This new generation of women writ-

Yung-Hee Kim 11
ers, whose careers are still evolving, is represented by Ŭn Hŭi-gyŏng (b. 1959),
Yi Hye-gyŏng (b. 1960), Sŏ Ha-jin (b. 1960), Chŏn Kyŏng-nin (b. 1962), Sin
Kyŏng-suk (b. 1963), Kong Sŏn-ok (b. 1963), Ch’a Hyŏn-suk (b. 1963), Pae
Su-a (b. 1965), and Ha Sŏng-nan (b. 1967). Together with women writers of
the preceding decade, a handful of these contributed to raising the visibility
and credibility of women writers by reaping many respected literary awards.
One distinctive change of the 1990s was the slow but definite waning of
interest in topics dealing with political oppression, labor classes, and rural
populations—themes prominent in the late 1980s. The success of the democ-
ratization movement greatly reduced the pertinence and demand for such
subjects. In its place, there appeared a swing toward reassessing the true
implications of the previous decade’s democratization process and its effects
on participants in radical activities. Another characteristic of the decade was
a rekindled and widened interest in feminist and gender issues. As a result of
this development, the works of pioneers in women’s writing have been exca-
vated and rediscovered, and tomes of research are currently available in Korea
for specialists in women’s studies and Korean literature. Most notably, from
the mid-1990s to the present there has been a boom in Na Hye-sŏk studies.
Autobiographical writing has also become popular, especially among women
writers. Lastly, the “division literature” dealing with the political polarization
of South and North Korea has also gained prominence, underscoring the
complexity of Korea’s reunification project and expressing wariness of roman-
ticized visions of unifying Korea under one political ideology.
Over the past century, Korean women writers have bequeathed a laud-
able literary legacy, a result of their implacable urge to communicate what has
been of utmost concern—the dynamics between the lives of women and the
shifting social realities of their time. These days Korean women writers enjoy
a solid following among well-seasoned and discriminating readers and will
continue to entertain, educate, and inspire. Undoubtedly, in the new millen-
nium, these writers will again have to adjust to new sociocultural mandates
and demands for thematic diversification and depth, technical sophistication,
and conceptual maturity. It is expected that their efforts to meet such chal-
lenges will further authenticate the endeavors of modern Korean women’s
writing, bringing a gender balance that has long eluded Korean literary tradi-
tions, and, in the end, enrich the Korean cultural and intellectual heritage.

Questioning Minds
Short Stories by Modern Korean Women Writers

One
A Girl of Mystery (1917)
Kim Myŏng-sun
A native of Yungdŏk village in the P’yŏngyang district

of South P’yŏngan Province, Kim Myŏng-sun (1896–ca. 1951; pen names,
Mangyangch’o and T’ansil) was born to a wealthy merchant and his concu-
bine, a former kisaeng, or woman of the entertainment world. The stigma
associated with her mother’s former profession cast a shadow of gloom and
shame over Kim’s life and work. After finishing grade school in P’yŏngyang,
she entered Chinmyŏng Girls’ School in Seoul in 1908, where she was known
to be an industrious and intelligent student. However, her school years in
Seoul were difficult, as she was subjected to slurs about her family background
and to mistreatment from the family of her father’s legal wife. After dropping
out of school in 1911, Kim left for Tokyo in 1913 to pursue her studies at
Kōjimachi Girls’ School. Though she did not complete her education in Japan,
Kim returned to Seoul in 1916 to enter Sungmyŏng Girls’ School, where she
graduated in March 1917.
Only a few months after her high school graduation, Kim’s literary break-
through came with her first short story, “Ŭisim ŭi sonyŏ” (A girl of mystery).
The story won second prize in a literary competition sponsored by Ch’oe
Nam-sŏn’s magazine, Ch’ŏngch’un (Youth; no. 11, November 1917). It was
highly praised by Yi Kwang-su, a judge of the contest, for its realistic thrust
and unsentimental treatment of the subject—a departure from premodern
Korean fiction.
Sometime in 1918 Kim returned to Japan to study literature and music,
and in 1919 she joined the Ch’angjo (Creation) group, Korea’s first literary
circle, organized by Kim Tong-in (1900–1951) and other male Korean stu-
dents in Tokyo. In 1920 Kim Myŏng-sun’s first poem, “Choro ŭi hwamong”
(A flower’s dream in dewy morning), was published in the group’s magazine,
15

16 Questioning Minds
Ch’angjo. Thenceforward, Kim contributed her poems, essays, and short sto-
ries to a Tokyo-based Korean women’s student magazine, Yŏjagye (Women’s
world). During these years in Japan, many unfounded rumors linked Kim to
affairs with well-known Korean artists and writers.
Back in Korea by 1921, Kim began to actively produce literary works, be-
coming an important contributor of poems, short stories, and even transla-
tions, such as Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Assignation” (1845), to the
magazine Kaebyŏk. At one point she was also involved in a student drama
group as its sole female member. With her literary fame growing steadily, in
1924 Kim published her autobiographical novella, “T’ansiri wa Chuyŏng’i”
(T’ansil and Chuyŏng), in which she highlighted her anguish and umbrage
concerning the prejudice and discrimination she had experienced due to her
birth and family background, while protesting exaggerated rumors about her
private life in Japan. The year 1925 marked the peak of Kim Myŏng-sun’s ca-
reer—the publication of her collected works, Saengmyŏng ŭi kwasil (Fruits of
life), the first such publication by a woman writer in Korea. Throughout that
year and the next she concentrated on publishing her poetry in the news-
papers Tonga ilbo and Chosŏn ilbo. Toward the end of 1926, Kim passed an
examination to become a reporter with the newspaper Maeil sinbo, joining a
group of early Korean women journalists.
From 1927 to 1930 Kim ventured into cinema and played leading roles in
at least five movies. This new enterprise, however, was creatively draining and
financially disastrous. By 1932 Kim’s literary activity had diminished, and her
financial problems mounted. As an unmarried woman with no special skills
besides writing, she struggled to support herself and at one point was even
reduced to street peddling. Little is known of her activities and whereabouts
from 1932 to 1935, but reportedly she returned to Tokyo and studied music
and French. Back home by 1936, Kim tried to revive her literary career by pub-
lishing children’s stories and confessional poems, which recaptured her years
of suffering and despair from social ostracism. With her poem “Kŭmŭm pam”
(The night of the last day of the month; 1939), her literary career came to an
end. Little is known about her life or literary activity thereafter. Unconfirmed
rumors and hearsay claim that Kim Myŏng-sun returned to Japan sometime
in 1939 and continued to live in extreme poverty until her presumed death in
1951 in a Tokyo mental hospital.
It seems that Kim Myŏng-sun’s work was part of her effort to dispute and
rectify distorted views of her life and background, distortions that stemmed
from orthodox notions of family and marriage as well as gender prejudice.
Her continuous search for respectability, recognition as an authentic writer,
and nongendered acceptance of her total being eluded her during her lifetime.

Kim Myŏng-sun 17
Kim Myŏng-sun led a kaleidoscopic life, but its story contains considerable
lacunae, and even seemingly known details are often mutually conflicting and
sensationalized. Among the first generation of modern Korean women writ-
ers, Kim Myŏng-sun is the one for whom information is the most lacking.
Today scholarly efforts are attempting to excavate her lost works in order to
better assess her position in the lineage of modern Korean women fiction
writers. As more accurate information is collected, Kim’s biography may have
to be revised to correctly reflect her life story as well as her corpus of work.
A Girl of Mystery
[1]
The village called Saemaŭl was located about half a mile inland from
the eastern shoreline of the Taedong River in P’yŏngyang. It was a fairly large
village, and its inhabitants—mostly farmers—as well as their houses looked
rather respectable. A girl of eight or nine, named Pŏmnye, lived in the village,
and contrary to her rustic name, she was as beautiful as a flower and extreme-
ly gentle. She had moved to the village about two years earlier, appearing quite
suddenly and from out of nowhere with a Hwang Chinsa, an old white-haired
man in his sixties. After they had been settled in the village for several months,
a woman in her thirties, also an out-of-towner, came and joined them. They
didn’t work for a living but still appeared well-off. Year-round they received
no visitors, neither did they associate with the other villagers. This state of af-
fairs of Pŏmnye’s family aroused curiosity among the neighbors and became a
favorite topic of conversation in the tobacco-smoking gatherings of the rainy
summer season and during the long nights of winter.
The beautiful Pŏmnye seemed eager to get to know the other girls in
her neighborhood. On the occasions when she stood outside the house and
watched the village girls harvest greens, her lovely face and appearance daz-
zled them, making them glance at one another in admiration. Every time this
happened the old white-haired man was sure to call out, “Pŏmnye! Get in
here, Pŏmnye!” She then went back into the house crestfallen, glancing over
her shoulder at the girls. What roused further curiosity about Pŏmnye’s family
were the different dialects of each of its three members. The old man spoke
in a pure P’yŏngyang dialect, whereas Pŏmnye used standard Seoul speech,
and the woman, the Kyŏngsang regional dialect. Pŏmnye called the old man

“grandpa” but called the woman “nanny.” The simple-minded country girls
thought the woman must be Pŏmnye’s mother. Still, the countryfolk didn’t pry
into the details of her family affairs.
[2]
One market day in the summer, exactly one year after Pŏmnye’s fam-
ily had moved into the village, the old man left the house around one o’clock
in the afternoon, but by nightfall he had still not returned. Pŏmnye slightly
pushed open the clover-bush gate and stood peeking out from inside, as if she
couldn’t stand her boredom anymore. She caught sight of T’ŭksil, the daugh-
ter of the village head, who was wandering around looking for her mother.
Ever so quietly, Pŏmnye stuck her white face out through the opening of the
gate and, smiling as T’ŭksil stared at her, asked secretively, “Are you T’ŭksil?”
“Uh-huh,” T’ŭksil answered delightedly in the P’yŏngyang dialect. Then
she asked, “But where’s your grandpa?”
A smile lighting up her lovely face, Pŏmnye replied, “He went to town a
long time ago, but . . .” Before she finished her words, the soft rims of Pŏmnye’s
eyes turned red. The two girls remained silent for a while.
“Don’t you have a father?” asked T’ŭksil.
“He lives in Seoul with his mistress and my older sister . . .” Pŏmnye’s eyes
became red again.
“Who are those people living with you?”
“My mom’s father and the maid . . . ”
As the two girls began to talk in an increasingly friendly way, the old man’s
dignified and composed silhouette came into view. Pŏmnye whispered to
T’ŭksil in a sweet voice, “Come play again tomorrow.”
Pŏmnye walked hurriedly toward the old man and grasped his sleeves,
joyous at his return home. Holding her hand as he entered the gate, the old
man said, “You must have been very bored, waiting for me so long, right?”
[3]
After a long wait through the severe, sultry summer, autumn arrived
unannounced, and the paulownia leaves fell lifelessly at the stir of the clean,
cool wind. Once again, it was time for the Festival of the Harvest Moon. City
dwellers and countryfolk alike rose early in the morning to pay visits to their
ancestral graves. Villagers prepared rice wine and food, and men and women
of all ages headed for Pukch’on to comfort the lonely departed souls of their
ancestors, parents, husbands, wives, and children. Pŏmnye and her grand-

Kim Myŏng-sun 19
father of the Saemaŭl village were among these throngs, though it wasn’t clear
whose grave the two were visiting.
In no time, the sun set in the west over Moran Peak, and the soft waves
rippling around Nŭngna Island turned golden.1 The grave sites were deserted,
for the noisy visitors—so many during the early morning hours and day-
time—were gone. In the streets below Ch’ŏngnyu Cliff, a few folks—tipsy and
muttering to themselves—were seen scattered among those returning home.
Then two shadowy figures appeared, an old man and a child, making
crunching sounds on the sand as they headed toward Saemaŭl, beyond the
Taedong River. They were Pŏmnye and her grandfather on their way home—
all worn-out. Pŏmnye’s hair hung to her ankles, glossy black. Her white fore-
head looked as if it had been carved from marble, and a couple of strands of
hair on either side of her forehead fluttered now and then as the cool breeze
blew, heightening her beauty. She wore a Korean costume—a lightweight
dark blue skirt and a yellow double-layered blouse—and her shoes were pink.
Compared with the girls of Saemaŭl, she stood out like a crane among chick-
ens. She and the old man both walked in silence. Her lovely face wore a grief-
stricken expression, unusual for a child.
Along the river, village women were preparing for dinner. This was not the
first time they had seen the pair, but today their curiosity was whetted further
and they watched them intently.
One girl said, “She is so lovely. I wonder where she lived before.”
Another, “I can’t get enough of her, no matter how many times I look at
her. She is always pretty. I wish I saw her as much as I’d like to.”
Still another spoke to Pŏmnye, laughing loudly. “Where have you been,
Pŏmnye?” Only Pŏmnye’s eyes smiled at these village girls as she silently fol-
lowed the old man.
At that moment, a gentleman—it wasn’t clear whether he was a foreigner
or a Korean—was watching the scene with a pair of binoculars from the sec-
ond floor of a Western-style house on Nanbyŏk Cliff, high above the Taedong
River. The gentleman quickly called his servant. Following orders, the ser-
vant hung a lantern on a little green boat moored in front of the house, then
quickly rowed his master across the river. But by the time the boat pulled
ashore on the other side, the old man and Pŏmnye had already disappeared
into Saemaŭl.
The gentleman took the road leading to another village, not to Saemaŭl.
When he returned to the riverside, a disappointed look on his face, the round
moon in the eastern sky was graciously shedding its bright light on thousands
of figures in the dark. The whole area outside Taedong Gate on the banks of
the Taedong River was illuminated by bright electric lights and glittered like

a sleepless city. Small pleasure boats, decorated with ruby-like lights, floated
up and down the river, while men and women aboard sang “Songs of Melan-
choly” and enjoyed a day of merrymaking.2 The gentleman stood gazing at
the scene, distressed. After a long while, he dejectedly boarded the boat and
was rowed back toward the opposite side. He then entered the villa known to
belong to Mr. Cho, the bureau director. In all likelihood, this was a gentleman
who owned this summer house.
[4]
Among the village women who saw the gentleman at the river was
a meddlesome one called Ŏnnyŏn’s Mom. Urged by her desire to see Pŏmnye
as well, the woman came over to Pŏmnye’s house and told the family what she
had seen. The old man didn’t seem very surprised and calmly thanked her.
The woman left, and about two hours later the old man and Pŏmnye called on
the village head to say good-bye to their neighbors. This was only the second
time the old man had come to see the village head—the first was when he had
moved into the village.
The farmhands of the village carried to the riverside some seven or eight
travel suitcases, furniture, and the like. The old man and Pŏmnye were fol-
lowed by the wife of the village head and the kindhearted neighbors who came
to bid them off, although these villagers had never had close contact with the
two. As good luck would have it, there was a boat ready to leave downriver.
The calm waves reflected the glow of the bright moonlit night.
When the boatman announced that they were ready to embark, the old
man said his slow good-byes to the assembled neighbors. The villagers ex-
pressed with one voice their best wishes for the pair’s travels, which were
echoed by the mountains and rivers. Pŏmnye’s pale face looked wretched un-
der the moonlight, and wrapped with a snow-white blanket, she shivered as if
she had caught a cold. In a trembling voice, she also said good-bye and walked
steadily up to the boat, holding the old man’s hand. Just before boarding the
boat, however, she turned her head and, with her round sparkling eyes, took
one more look at the villagers.
As the evening deepened, all about felt desolate. The waters of the Taedong
River, holding the secrets of ancient ages, made soft lapping sounds, as if try-
ing to recount stories of old. The splashes of the oars broke the midnight si-
lence. When the boat had gone downstream a short distance, T’ŭksil shouted,
“Good-bye, Pŏmnye!”
“Goodbye, T’ŭksil!” Pŏmnye shouted back from across the water. Her
voice trembled like the sweet sound of the zither.

Kim Myŏng-sun 21
The villagers remained there at the riverbank, their opinions about Pŏmnye
and her family divided, until the boat looked dim in the distance and the
sounds of rowing could no longer be heard. They didn’t even notice that their
feet were soaked by the waves rushing against them. The village leader had
just learned from Ŏnnyŏn’s Mom what had happened earlier that evening,
and, tilting his head, he mulled it over quite a while. Then he asked Ŏnnyŏn’s
Mom, “Well, where was the gentleman coming from?”
She said, “He was looking out from the tall two-story house over there,
with something black over his eyes.” She seemed able to see things far away.
The village leader tipped his head again, and there was another long si-
lence. Finally, as if he had finally solved a mystery of many years, he said,
“Now I see. Pŏmnye is Kahŭi, the daughter of Mrs. Cho, the wife of the bureau
director, who killed herself two springs ago.” The eyes of those around him
grew wide, as if they had heard something dreadful. The village head sighed
and then said almost in a shout, “The poor child!”
[5]
The girl was Kahŭi, the daughter left as a legacy by Director Cho’s
wife, who had committed suicide the year before due to her domestic trou-
bles. Concerned about the extraordinary beauty of Kahŭi, in both her inner
disposition and her outer appearance, her grandfather had changed her name
to its contrary, Pŏmnye.3 Kahŭi’s mother had been well known in P’yŏngyang
for her beauty, and, overcome by the ardent pleas of Director Cho, who came
to the city for the summers, she married him. Mrs. Cho was the only daughter
of the wealthy Hwang Chinsa, who, after his wife’s death when his daughter
was fourteen, never remarried and raised her by himself like some precious
jewel. Who would have guessed the truth in the saying “There is no rose with-
out a thorn”? Director Cho came from a generations-old upper-class family
and had a way with and an eye for women. He had already married three
times and had changed concubines ten times. He relished his life spent in the
kisaeng world and even played fast and loose with the wives of the country-
folk. At his villa he made merry, day and night.
Kahŭi was born after Mrs. Cho married her husband. As the saying goes,
a woman’s physical beauty is short-lived, and Mrs. Cho’s misery grew in direct
proportion to her husband’s dissipation. His new concubine stole his love.
He severed his wife’s relationships with her kin as well. Cho’s daughter by his
previous marriage leveled false accusations at Mrs. Cho at every opportunity.
Mrs. Cho could receive neither the love she wanted, the freedom she desired,
nor even the separation she asked for. She was distrusted, ill-treated, and

locked away in his P’yŏngyang villa. At long last, driven to despair, Mrs. Cho
gathered all the strength of her ailing body and ended her own life. The young
twenty-four-year-old wife, in her lovely prime, stabbed herself to death with a
dagger one April day when even nameless little grasses on the road, trampled
by both man and horse, burst into blossom. The tragic death of this pitiable
wife had been known to people far and near, touching everyone’s heart.
In accordance with the old saying “People are missed more when they are
gone,” Director Cho sobered up a bit thereafter and to some extent grieved
for his dead wife. But that was crying over spilled milk. He then began to love
Kahŭi more than when his wife was alive. But Kahŭi’s grandfather, Hwang
Chinsa, fearful of Cho’s scheming concubine, who was out to hog his love,
took up the life of a piteous drifter, with his granddaughter in tow. When
would the wanderer Kahŭi see a spring day?
The warm spring will surely come around after summer, autumn, and win-
ter, but what of the poor child of a poor mother?
[First published in Ch’ŏngch’un (Youth), no. 11 (November 1917)]
Analysis of “A Girl of Mystery”
Kim Myŏng-sun’s first published work, “A Girl of Mystery” (Ŭisim

ŭi sonyŏ; 1917), which made her the first modern Korean woman writer,
is a compact piece involving a tragic family history centered on the lovely
Pŏmnye, her maternal grandfather, and her dead mother. A sense of mystery
pervades the entire narrative—the true identities of Pŏmnye, Hwang Chinsa,
and their family secrets withheld until the end. In the course of its suspenseful
narrative with the most famed sites in P’yŏngyang as backdrop, each section
contributes to the cumulative tension building toward the story’s conclusion.
Perhaps the most touching segments of the story depict the dark, sorrow-
ful side of Pŏmnye’s life, first illuminated under the brightness of the har-
vest moon. The grief-stricken Pŏmnye and her grandfather trudge along the
moonlit village road, having just visited her mother’s grave, highlighting their
forlorn and desolate existence lived out in complete isolation from the villag-
ers and, by extension, from the rest of humanity, a poignancy further accentu-
ated by the merrymaking aboard brightly lit pleasure boats on the Taedong
River.
“A Girl of Mystery” reaches its peak when the frightened, sad Pŏmnye
bids a reluctant nighttime farewell to her friend T’ŭksil on the banks of the
Taedong River to begin yet another uprooted journey. The helpless image of

Kim Myŏng-sun 23
Pŏmnye and her unsurpassed beauty becomes the center of the narrative fo-
cus, dramatizing the depth of her undeserved sufferings as the victim of her
father’s infidelity. Only after Pŏmnye and her grandfather are removed from
the main stage of the story do the family secrets, enigmatic and so anxiously
guarded by her grandfather, begin to be unveiled. It turns out that Pŏmnye
is none other than Kahŭi, the daughter of Director Cho’s wife, who commit-
ted suicide in protest of her husband’s philandering. Pŏmnye’s grandfather,
the guardian of his granddaughter, has changed her name from the refined
“Kahŭi” (“beautiful girl”) to the more countrified “Pŏmnye” (“plain maiden”)
and has deliberately chosen social anonymity and an itinerant life, as if seek-
ing to avoid the prominence his dead daughter had won in life. Further, the
grandfather’s determination to preempt Director Cho’s attempts to gain con-
trol over Pŏmnye suggests his intention to void Cho’s claims to fatherhood,
to symbolically punish Cho’s transgression against Pŏmnye’s mother as an
indefensible and unforgivable crime that destroyed the family’s happiness for
three generations, and most of all, to shield Pŏmnye from the tainted moral
and cultural sphere of her father. It is ironic that Hwang Chinsa, an old man of
Confucian tradition, elects to sacrifice his life for his motherless daughter and
granddaughter, whereas Cho pursues a lifestyle that the modernizing Korea
of the time tried to stamp out.
“A Girl of Mystery” is an implicit but powerful denunciation of male sex-
ual license, concubinage, and polygamous practices, practices that privileged
men and devalued women. In profiling a woman who rejects the humilia-
tion and suffering inflicted by her husband’s egocentric pursuits, the narra-
tive calls into question the patriarchal sanction of uncontrolled male sexual-
ity and its attendant destructive power. Pŏmnye’s mother’s suicide—the final
weapon of the powerless—is a metaphorical condemnation of male profligacy
and sexual exploitation of women that seeks to expose the far-reaching so-
cial ramifications of such behavior. Ultimately, the narrative illustrates how
male hegemony in patriarchal Korean society leads to the dehumanization
and victimization not only of women but also of men themselves, as is clearly
evinced in the frustration and helplessness of Pŏmnye’s father. Given the au-
thor’s personal experience as the victim of double standards of morality and
the duplicitous Korean marriage system, “A Girl of Mystery” argues forcefully
for much needed reform—a cry for fundamental changes in women’s position
vis-à-vis men. In this sense, the story articulates the author’s politicization of
the personal and her challenge to the native patriarchy of her society.

Two
Kyŏnghŭi (1918)
Na Hye-sŏk
The daughter of a well-established family in Suwŏn, in

Kyŏnggi Province, Na Hye-sŏk (1896–1948; pen name, Chŏngwŏl) attended
Chinmyŏng Girls’ School in Seoul, where her exceptional intelligence and
artistic talent in painting were widely known. Upon her graduation from high
school, Na, encouraged by her Japan-educated elder brother, proceeded to
Japan in 1913 to study Western oil painting at the Private School of Fine Arts
for Women in Tokyo.1 At the college, Na became a quick convert to feminism
under the powerful influence of the Japanese feminist movement led by the
Seitō (Bluestockings) group, as is evident in her first essay, written at age eigh-
teen, “Isangjŏk puin” (Ideal women; Hakchigwang [Light of learning], no. 3,
1914).2 During her college years, Na served as secretary to the Korean Women
Students’ Association in Japan and played a vital role in the publication of its
journal, Yŏjagye (Women’s world), in which Na’s first short story and master-
work, “Kyŏnghŭi,” was published (no. 2, March 1918). When she graduated in
April 1918, she became the first Korean woman painter with a BA degree.
Back in Korea, Na taught fine arts at various high schools, but her involve-
ment in anti-Japanese activities during the March 1919 Independence Move-
ment ended her teaching career and led as well to a five-month imprisonment.
She was released from prison at the end of 1919. In April 1920, Na married
a Japan-educated lawyer and widower, Kim U-yŏng, who had courted her
since her student days in Japan.3 Toward the end of 1920, Na briefly returned
to Japan to further her study of painting. Her subsequent one-person show,
held in Seoul in March 1921, was the first of its kind and a sensational event,
generating wide publicity and fascinating the public.4 Na’s growing stature as
a painter was nationally recognized by June 1922, when her paintings were
24

Na Hye-sŏk 25
accepted for the first Annual Korean National Art Exhibition, held in Seoul.
She was the only Korean woman thus honored, having successfully competed
against Japanese artists.
In 1923, Na left Korea to live in Andong, Manchuria, where her husband
held the post of vice-consul general for the Japanese Foreign Ministry. They
stayed there until 1927. During this period Na, a mother of three children,
established her artistic reputation by successively winning official recogni-
tion at the Annual Korean National Art Exhibition between 1923 and 1927.
Na also contributed a number of critical essays on art and culture to such
newspapers and magazines as Tonga ilbo, Chosŏn ilbo, Kaebyŏk, and Sinyŏsŏng
(New women). Her second short story, “Wŏnhan” (Grudges; Chosŏn mundan
[Korean literary world], April 1926), the tragedy of a tradition-bound wife
struggling with her husband’s sexual promiscuity, is a product of this period.
From 1927 to 1929 Na traveled with her diplomat husband on a world tour,
sponsored by the Japanese government for her husband’s exemplary service
in Manchuria, and thus became the first Korean woman to travel to Europe
and America.5 Making the most of this opportunity, Na took up painting les-
sons in Paris for about eight months. Occasionally she also accompanied her
husband, who traveled around European countries on diplomatic missions
and for legal studies. This tour presented Na with many occasions to carefully
observe European culture, arts, customs, family life, and women—topics that
she would write about extensively in later publications.6
Leaving Europe in September 1928, Na and her husband headed for New
York, and after their travels in the United States, they returned to Korea in
March 1929 via Hawai‘i and Japan. About six months after her return, Na held
a homecoming art show on September 23 and 24, 1929, in Suwŏn, her home-
town, exhibiting the paintings she completed in Europe together with fac-
simile prints she acquired in Europe of works by European painters—another
landmark in Korean art history. In spite of her responsibilities as a mother
now of four small children, Na consecutively won admittance to the Annual
Korean National Art Exhibition from 1930 to 1932 and to the Twelfth Japa-
nese Arts Academy Exhibition, the most prestigious show in Japan, held in
Tokyo in October 1931. During this period, Na was sought after by magazines
and newspapers for interviews and articles regarding her observations about
her world travels and art. This was the high point of her life, at least in terms
of social reputation and prestige.
Then personal tragedy struck. On the grounds of adultery, concerning an
affair she reputedly had during her stay in Paris, Na was divorced in 1931.7 She
lost custody of her children and was even denied access to them. Her private,
domestic affairs became a social scandal of epic proportions. The ordeal of

marital failure and family crisis caused a drastic decline in Na’s artistic activi-
ties as well as a loss of public esteem. From 1933 on, her works did not appear
in officially sponsored art exhibitions. In 1934 she created another social
uproar by publishing details about her marriage, family life, and divorce in
two installments of articles under the title “Ihon kobaekchang” (Confes-
sions on my divorce; Samchŏlli [All Korea], August and September 1934). In
these confessionals, Na denounced Korean society’s patriarchal sexual double
standards, underscored the difficulties of educated women living in such a
cultural milieu, and revealed her despair at life as a divorcée. Although the
piece was an attempt at self-vindication, it served only to expose Na to further
social disapproval and alienation. Her 1935 private show failed to regain her
former glory.
From 1932 to 1936 Na serialized observations of her world travels in the
magazine Samchŏlli, which may have been her main source of income. Dur-
ing this period, she also wrote on her personal life, and in one such article,
titled “Sinsaenghwal e tŭlmyŏnsŏ” (Entering into a new life; Samchŏlli, Feb-
ruary 1935), Na characterized herself as a pioneer victimized by her own
society. Sometime in 1937 Na visited Kim Wŏn-ju at Sudŏk Temple to paint
the countryside landscape and learn about Buddhism. During this stay she
reportedly attempted to become a Buddhist nun but left the temple, unable to
make a final decision. Until 1938 Na sporadically contributed articles, mostly
to Samchŏlli, on her views on Korean women and her own life. From 1939 on,
however, homeless and rejected even by her unforgiving natal family, Na wan-
dered the country. Some reports indicate that she visited friends and offered
her paintings as payment for room and board, but few details are known about
her life thereafter. With her physical and mental health in decline and with no
financial support, she stayed for a while at a nursing home in Seoul. She died
anonymously at a charity hospital in 1948. Na’s life story proved a cautionary
tale for generations of Korean women thereafter, and Na Hye-sŏk herself a
negative model for any sensible women to eschew.8
Na Hye-sŏk was forgotten for about a quarter century until a biography,
Emi nŭn son’gakcha yŏnnŭnira: Na Hye-sŏk iltaegi (Your mother was a pio-
neer: Life of Na Hye-sŏk), appeared in 1974.9 This was the first attempt to
remove from Na the stigma of a morally fallen “new woman” and contrib-
uted to reestablishing her identity as an intellectual pioneer as well as the first
modern Korean painter. It was only in the mid-1990s, however, that serious
research began, creating a virtual Na Hye-sŏk boom in Korean feminist stud-
ies that continues to this day and has made her the most researched woman
writer of the 1920s.10

Na Hye-sŏk 27
Kyŏnghŭi
[1]
“Oh dear! I can’t stand this rainy season,” said the portly lady, the
mother-in-law of Kyŏnghŭi’s older sister, lighting the tobacco in her pipe. It
had been a long time since she last visited Kyŏnghŭi’s house.
“I don’t blame you. How are your grandchildren doing in this weather? I’m
sorry for having neglected to send our servant over to ask after your family,”
said Lady Kim, lighting her own pipe. She is the wife of Yi Ch’ŏrwŏn, head of
the household. Her hair is streaked with gray; a few stray wrinkles crease her
forehead.
“Please don’t mention it. It is I who should apologize, not you. The little
ones are fine, but their mother has had stomach trouble the past few days. But
when I left home today, she was up and about.”
“This heat makes people sick so easily. You must have been very worried.”
“Oh, yes, but I’m relieved to see her better. By the way, I bet you are happy
to have Kyŏnghŭi back home from Japan,” the lady-in-law added, as if sud-
denly remembering something she’d forgotten.
“I am in constant anxiety when she is in Japan. So it’s good to see her back
home at least once a year for summer vacation.” Lady Kim tapped her pipe on
the ashtray.
“I know what you mean. It would be hard enough to send a son far away,
to say nothing of a daughter . . . Has she been healthy?”
“I think so. On the whole, she seems to be all right. But when she says
everything is okay, I get the feeling she says so just to set me at ease. She looks
tired, and I can see she hasn’t been eating well and hasn’t had an easy time
of it.”
Then, turning toward the back courtyard, Lady Kim called out, “Kyŏnghŭi,
come here! The lady-in-law from Sŏmunan has kindly taken the trouble to
visit you.”
“Yes, mother,” answered Kyŏnghŭi, who was sitting on the cool back porch
and chatting with her sister-in-law, whom she hadn’t seen for some time. Her
sister-in-law was mending a sock, while Kyŏnghŭi ran the sewing machine,
working on a summer shirt for her older brother to wear with his Western-
style coat. Kyŏnghŭi had been talking about her life in Japan—of an incident
where she was almost run over by a streetcar, something that still made her

shudder at the mere thought of it. She had also mentioned to her sister-in-law
that she often found her legs stiff when she awoke on winter mornings, for
she slept curled up tightly throughout the cold nights. Kyŏnghŭi explained to
her sister-in-law that in Japan not a day passes without rain, and related one
incident during a downpour. As Kyŏnghŭi was hurrying to get to school on
time in her high wooden sandals, she had tripped. She skinned her legs, tore
her umbrella, and, worst of all, completely soiled her clothes—much to her
embarrassment. Kyŏnghŭi talked of her studies, as well as a number of things
she saw in the streets of Japan.
At the moment her mother called, Kyŏnghŭi was in the middle of telling
her sister-in-law about a movie she had seen some time ago—one about a
young boy who, angry at his father for not allowing him to play, hung a notice
on a big tree outside his house, offering his father for sale. Almost immedi-
ately, he received an offer from a pair of small orphans, a brother and a sister,
six or seven years old—just around his age. They wanted to buy the boy’s
father with their last two pennies—all they had left from their wanderings
since the death of their parents.
Completely taken by the story, Kyŏnghŭi’s sister-in-law, not realizing she’d
dropped the sock she was mending onto her lap, exclaimed, “Oh, dear! So
what happened?” It was at that very moment that Kyŏnghŭi was called away
by her mother. “Hurry back,” her sister-in-law said, frowning. Even the maid,
Siwŏl, who was seated next to Kyŏnghŭi while starching the cleaned laun-
dry, clucked her tongue in annoyance, since she was also drawn to the story.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be right back,” Kyŏnghŭi said, and walked away smiling,
pleased that she had such a receptive audience for her stories.
Kyŏnghŭi made a respectful bow to the lady-in-law on the front porch. She
had actually forgotten about such ceremonial formalities during her stay in
Japan over the past year, but she had become quite good at them now, thanks
to the practice she’d had with her parents upon her return home a few days
earlier. Kyŏnghŭi, however, was tickled by her own prim and formal man-
ners—so different from her carefree lifestyle in Japan.
“Oh, dear, you look exhausted. Living away from home must have been
hard on you,” the lady-in-law said tenderly.
She even grabbed Kyŏnghŭi’s hands and stroked them, adding, “Your
hands feel as if you were living with tough in-laws. I’ve heard that girl students
have silky-smooth hands, but whatever happened to yours?”
“Mine have always been rough like this,” said Kyŏnghŭi, lowering her
head.
“I think her hands were roughened because she does her own laundry and
even cooks for herself,” Kyŏnghŭi’s mother cut in, as she relit her pipe.

Na Hye-sŏk 29
“Oh, my goodness!” said the lady-in-law. “Do you mean you do chores in
Japan that you never did at home? Does your school have such rules?” The
lady-in-law was taken aback. Kyŏnghŭi remained silent.
Kyŏnghŭi’s mother answered instead, “That’s not the case at all. Kyŏnghŭi
has taken it on herself. I don’t think she would do something like that even if
she were forced to. We send her enough money to cover her school expenses,
but she says she enjoys being busy and taking care of herself.” Lady Kim was
repeating what Kyŏnghŭi had told her at bedtime the night before.
“Isn’t that asking too much of yourself, though?” said the lady-in-law,
touching a few stray hairs hanging down on Kyŏnghŭi’s forehead and tuck-
ing them behind her ears. She then patted Kyŏnghŭi on the back and gently
stroked her face.
“I’ve heard that Japanese homes are not heated during the winter and that
Japanese side dishes are puny in amount. How can you live on that?”
“There’s truth in what you said, ma’am. But we get by without the heat at
home, and as we are served just the right amount of side dishes, we feel no
need for more food either.”
“Even so, isn’t it hard on you all to live like that? By the way, your older
sister couldn’t come to see you because she’s been ill the past few days. But I’m
sure she’ll come visit you this evening.”
“Thank you, ma’am. Please make sure she comes. I miss her very much
and can’t wait to see her.”
“Yes, I do understand! Even I got anxious to see you once I heard you were
back home. How much more so between sisters!”
The lady-in-law’s words were full of feeling, for she had herself experi-
enced longing for her parents and siblings after she married into a family far
from her own home.
“Kyŏnghŭi, are you planning to go back to Japan? Why do you need to go
so far away? Don’t you think it’s better for you to stay home like a genteel lady,
marry into a rich family, have children, and live a happy life?” the lady-in-law
asked, as if to tutor Kyŏnghŭi in such matters. Then she looked at Kyŏnghŭi’s
mother, seated opposite her, as if to ask her consent.
“Thank you, ma’am. But I think I should stay in school until I finish my
studies,” Kyŏnghŭi replied.
“Do you really need to study so much? Since you are not a man, you won’t
have to earn a living working as head of the county or even as a clerk in the
district office. Besides, even educated men have a hard time finding jobs these
days.”
The lady-in-law seemed very much worked up. She couldn’t understand
why her in-laws went the length of sending their daughter to Japan for school

or what the purpose of such education was. But since it was her in-laws’ fam-
ily matter—something she needed to be discreet about—she tried her hardest
not to betray her disapproval. Behind their back, however, she never failed to
criticize them, saying, “Who in the world would take such a girl in marriage?”
Today she seized this opportunity to let out what had been on her mind.
Kyŏnghŭi quickly figured out what the lady-in-law was up to, having
grasped the gist of her remarks—“Hurry up and get married, and be done
with this nonsense about education”—and she was prepared for anything the
old lady might say next. At the same time, Kyŏnghŭi couldn’t help but real-
ize that the lady-in-law’s words echoed those of her mother’s sister, who had
come to visit with her the day before, as well as those of her elder uncle’s wife,
who expressed the same concern every time she saw Kyŏnghŭi. Kyŏnghŭi was
convinced that this summer, just like last summer, these relatives would fire
similar barrages at her.
Kyŏnghŭi was itching to speak up to the lady-in-law: “Human beings don’t
live just for food and clothing. What makes us human beings is education and
knowledge. It is ignorance on the part of your husband and sons that leads
them to keep as many as four concubines among themselves. Your own lack
of education makes you feel helpless and sick at heart over this concubine
problem. We have to teach women how to keep their husbands from taking
mistresses and living with them even when they already have legal wives.”
Kyŏnghŭi wished she could show the lady-in-law more examples to illus-
trate her points. But she was well aware that the woman would repeat the
words Kyŏnghŭi’s grandmother had used earlier in the morning: “Listen,
dear, women of olden days—even with no education—lived long, happy lives,
blessed with wealth and a lot of sons. Women are better off when they don’t
know their right hand from left. Dear child, you should know that even edu-
cated girls wind up doing such menial work as milling barley. A man is no
man unless he keeps at least one concubine.”
Kyŏnghŭi realized that talking to the lady-in-law would be a waste of time,
only causing herself to lose sleep agonizing over such matters. She remained
quiet, for she sensed that the moment she started to speak her mind, she’d
meet with nothing but frustration. She also knew that if her talk with the lady
dragged on, she couldn’t quickly return to her sister-in-law and Siwŏl, who
were eagerly awaiting her on the back porch. Furthermore, she knew that the
lady-in-law was notorious for her slanderous tongue, given to embellishing
secondhand stories with her own lies, and that when it came to girl students,
she went all-out to smear and malign them. Now Kyŏnghŭi felt certain that
no matter how hard she tried, the lady-in-law wouldn’t take her explanation
or reasoning seriously. In fact, some time ago, her older sister had warned
her: “Listen, you have to be tight-lipped in front of my mother-in-law, espe-

Na Hye-sŏk 31
cially concerning anything to do with marriage. She says that the world has
now gone wild, what with girl students talking shamelessly about marriage—a
topic that in the past young girls didn’t even so much as allude to. And this
is not all that she tells me. I have no idea where she picks up all these rumors
about girl students, but she makes it a point to bring them to my attention.
Her word feels like a cut at me, and I am really sick of it, probably because I
have you, a girl student, as my own sister. She makes all sorts of ugly remarks
about how girls lose their purity once they go to Japan. So you had better
mind what you say in her presence.”
Kyŏnghŭi became restless, anxious to return to the back porch before the
old woman started talking again. “Ma’am, would you please excuse me? I have
to get back to sewing the summer shirt my brother will need very soon.”
Kyŏnghŭi breathed a sigh of relief as she moved away from the lady-in-law
and headed toward the back porch, feeling as if she had just had an aching
tooth pulled.
“What kept you so long?” her sister-in-law asked, who had already fin-
ished darning a sock and was now working on the front part of another. At the
sight of Kyŏnghŭi, she put her work on her lap and moved closer to Kyŏnghŭi,
pressing her to finish the story: “So, what did the boy do with his father?”
Kyŏnghŭi wore an irritated expression on her face, her brows knitted
and her cheeks sullen. Siwŏl, folding the clean laundry, glanced at her and,
quickly sensing what had happened, said, “Little miss, I bet the lady-in-law
from Sŏmunan talked about marriage again.” Earlier that morning, after the
departure of Kyŏnghŭi’s grandmother, Siwŏl had overheard from the kitchen
what Kyŏnghŭi was muttering on the porch: “When the time comes, I will get
married, but I’m sick and tired of hearing about it all the time!” It seemed to
Siwŏl that Kyŏnghŭi was mumbling something like that again now—though
she wasn’t able to catch it clearly—and she could discern the reason for
Kyŏnghŭi’s sour look.
A smile spread over Kyŏnghŭi’s face, brightening it up. She picked up her
sewing again and began to tell the end of the story.
Meanwhile, on the front porch, the two old ladies continued their talk of
Kyŏnghŭi, offering one another rice wine and smoking, just as before.
“Does Kyŏnghŭi even know how to sew?”
“Yes, and she’s quite good at it. Though she isn’t good enough to make a
man’s jacket, she does know how to sew her own clothes.”
“You don’t say! I wonder how she ever finds time to practice sewing. It’s
remarkable she can even make a shirt to go with a Western coat. Do girl stu-
dents even do needlework?”
The lady-in-law used to think that girl students didn’t even know how to
hold a needle, much less use one. Moreover, she was surprised to hear that the

happy-go-lucky, tomboyish Kyŏnghŭi, who made so much of going back and

forth between Seoul and Japan for school, could make her own clothes. Still,
deep down, she thought Kyŏnghŭi’s sewing was nothing to speak of.
Lady Kim hesitated, afraid she might seem to be bragging of her daughter,
but went on: “As you may know, Kyŏnghŭi is too busy to take the time and
the trouble to learn sewing. But it seems our children find motivation as they
grow older. Somehow Kyŏnghŭi managed to pick up sewing without even
taking formal lessons. I suppose our children, after they learn how to tackle
difficult subjects at school, develop such senses by themselves.”
Although her in-law seemed unconvinced, Lady Kim continued after a
short pause: “Kyŏnghŭi learned how to sew Western shirts last summer, when
she went for daily lessons to the machine-sewing school outside South Gate,
the one run by a Japanese woman. She started making Western outfits and hats
for her nieces and nephews and even made her older brother’s Western-style
summer suit. Since Kyŏnghŭi could speak Japanese, she became friends with
the woman instructor, who taught Kyŏnghŭi sewing skills she’d kept secret
from others. During the day Kyŏnghŭi studied at the school, and at night she’d
stay up till midnight or one o’clock in the morning, drawing sketches based on
what she had learned and jotting down all the measurements.
“At first I didn’t know what she was up to, but I learned the nature of her
work when the male supervisor of a sewing machine company visited our
home and told us his plans: ‘It’s been difficult for us to teach Korean ladies
because everything is written in Japanese. But from now on, we will put your
daughter’s book to good use.’ I realized that even the smallest bit of education
we may give our children can help them to turn out useful.
“Besides, I saw with my own eyes how highly Kyŏnghŭi was regarded by
those well-mannered Japanese. The other day, the same supervisor paid us
another special visit after having heard somewhere that Kyŏnghŭi was back at
home. Later Kyŏnghŭi told us that he really wanted her to work for his com-
pany after graduating. She says her starting salary will easily be fifteen hun-
dred nyang, and if it keeps rising, it could be twenty-five hundred nyang in
three years.11 They say that the highest-paid women workers usually get seven
hundred and fifty nyang. I think Kyŏnghŭi is an exceptional case because she’s
been educated in Japan.
“That piece over there is her work, made with a sewing machine.” Lady
Kim pointed with her chin to a landscape painting framed in glass, hanging
on the opposite wall. It depicted a village scene, with a winding stream in
front and a densely wooded forest in the background.
It had not been Lady Kim’s intention to dwell on her daughter at such
length, but she was carried away by her own talk and had ended by even

Na Hye-sŏk 33
mentioning Kyŏnghŭi’s salary. Lady Kim was more enlightened than most
women—far more so than her in-law. By nature she wasn’t at all given to gos-
sip, and when womenfolk got together and spoke ill of girl students, harping
on their shortcomings, she often argued against them. She did so because she
took pride in her daughter and regarded these women’s criticism against girl
students’ alleged inability to sew, do laundry, and manage household matters
as nothing but deliberate, malicious gossip.
However, Lady Kim was no different from other women in that she didn’t
really understand why Kyŏnghŭi wanted an education, why she needed to
go all the way to Japan, or what good her study would be after graduation.
When other women asked Lady Kim why she allowed her daughter to study
so much, she dodged their question by vaguely repeating what her son used
to say: “Who knows? Times have changed, and they say even girls should get
an education these days.”
Now Lady Kim came to a better understanding. She discovered that the
respect one commanded or the salary one received was in direct proportion
to one’s education. This realization dawned upon her when the respectable-
looking Japanese supervisor, sporting a flashy suit and dangling a gold watch
chain, took the trouble to call on her young daughter and bowed to her, saying
repeatedly, “I will make sure to offer you a salary of forty wŏn on condition
only that you produce within a year two embroidered folding screens of good
quality while working at your own pace.” The offer was something to reckon
with in light of the toil of primary school teachers, who, never free from care,
had to struggle year in and year out, usually for a meager five hundred nyang,
six hundred twenty at most. Lady Kim was thus convinced that children must
receive an education, and if they were to get it, they should get as much as
possible—not just a trifle—even if it meant going as far as Japan with their
parents’ support. Now Lady Kim understood the meaning of what Kyŏnghŭi
had said to her one evening: “If once I begin my education, I’d like to get it as
much as possible. Then people will treat me with respect, and I’ll be also able
to live like a human being.”
Now it became perfectly clear to Lady Kim why her son had insisted on
sending Kyŏnghŭi as far away as Japan and why women today ought to be
educated as much as men. In the past, she would feel her back break out in
sweat and her face flush whenever someone asked her, “What’s the point of
educating your daughter so much?” On such occasions, she’d felt a strong urge
to drag Kyŏnghŭi home that very moment and marry her off. Only her high
esteem for her eldest son’s opinion kept her from doing so. Looking back, she
was grateful to him for his firm stand, which stopped her and her husband
from bringing Kyŏnghŭi back home to get married. Lady Kim now felt that

from this point on, no matter who asked, she could give clear reasons for
educating girls: “Education motivates them to learn how to sew on their own,
and those who are sent as far as Japan for education are treated with respect
by others.”
So there was no hint of hesitation in Lady Kim’s attitude today, even as
she was carried away by her own talk in the presence of her in-law. Her face
glowed with happiness, her eyes brimming with pride in Kyŏnghŭi: “I enjoy
this honor and joy all because of my daughter.”
Although the lady-in-law didn’t quite believe what Lady Kim was telling
her, she heard her out. At first, her in-law’s account rang false to her, so she
just sat there, looking hard at Lady Kim’s eyes and lips as she went on talk-
ing, while inwardly criticizing her: “Now that you’ve ruined your grown-up
daughter and are worried about her marriage prospects, you carry on this
empty bragging.” But the longer Lady Kim’s story went on, the more it con-
vinced the lady-in-law. Moreover, when she heard about the supervisor’s visit,
his respectful treatment of Kyŏnghŭi, and his salary offer of up to two thou-
sand nyang—a figure even beyond the dreams of skilled male clerks in the
district office—she thought Lady Kim surely couldn’t be stretching the truth
to that extent.
Even though the lady-in-law was not quite ready to take Lady Kim at her
word, for some reason neither could she completely dismiss the story purely
as a tall tale. Besides, with her own eyes she could see Kyŏnghŭi’s embroidery
hanging on the wall and with her own ears could hear the ceaseless whirr of
the sewing machine at work. The lady-in-law felt rather confused. She felt as
if she had been soundly defeated. Suddenly, a pang of conscience struck her,
a firm resolve forming in her mind: “I’ve been mistaken about girl students.
Girls should be educated just like the daughter of this family. I will hurry
home and, beginning tomorrow, send my granddaughters, who until now
have been kept at home, to school.” Her head swam, and her ears were ring-
ing. She sat blinking in silence. The cool breeze blowing in from the backyard
carried with it the young women’s gleeful peals of laughter, strong enough to
crack a china dish.
[2]
“What are you working on in this heat, little lady?” the rice-cake
peddler asked, wiping away her sweat with an exhausted look as she set her
wooden rice-cake bowl down on the edge of the porch. About forty years old,
her face pockmarked, her hair twisted atop her head and carelessly covered
with a colorful cotton kerchief, the rice-cake peddler never missed her daily
visit to the Yi house.

Na Hye-sŏk 35
“Just killing time,” said Kyŏnghŭi. Donned with an apron and standing on
the edge of the porch, she was awkwardly chopping green onions.
“Miss, where did you find time to learn how to fix pickled-cabbage kimch’i?
I drop by your house every day but never see you idle, not for a moment. If
you’re not reading a book, you’re writing; if you’re not sewing, you’re fixing
kimch’i like this . . .”
“Look, I’m a woman. What’s the big deal about me doing women’s work?”
“I’ve seldom seen a girl student like you, though, miss,” said the rice-cake
peddler, slapping her thigh and moving closer to Kyŏnghŭi.
A soft smile floated across Kyŏnghŭi’s face. “That can’t be true. You know
girl students are human beings too, don’t you? They too have to work for their
clothes and food.”
“Yes, of course I do. But where are we to find such sensible girl students as
you, miss?”
“I’m flattered. For your compliment, I guess I should buy at least twenty
nyang’s worth of rice cakes. What do you say?”
“My goodness, you got me wrong, miss. It has nothing to do with my rice-
cake peddling.”
The peddler’s face, full of quirky whims, grew sullen. She pouted her thick
lips—resentful at Kyŏnghŭi’s misunderstanding. Kyŏnghŭi looked out of the
corner of her eye and read the woman’s mind.
“Don’t be so serious. I was only kidding. I was so thrilled by your
compliment . . .”
“No, it wasn’t a compliment. I really meant it.” The peddler snuggled up
closer to Kyŏnghŭi and let out a guffaw. “In all my years of daily rounds, I’ve
never seen such a young lady like you, miss—always doing something, never
once taking a nap.”
“That’s because I take a nap when you’re not around.”
“There you go again; you sure have a sense of humor, miss. Rice-cake ped-
dlers drop by whenever they please, morning, noon, and night. They never
come and go on schedule like students going to school. See! Don’t you agree?”
The peddler turned toward Siwŏl, who was grinding starch paste in a stone
mill on the wooden veranda.
“You said it! Little miss never takes a nap, unless she gets sick.”
“Come on! Look, your rice cakes are getting spoiled as you idly chat away
like this,” said Kyŏnghŭi.
“I don’t care, miss,” replied the rice-cake peddler in a dull tone.
The rice-cake peddler would have poured out a lot more gossip, had
Kyŏnghŭi urged her on by saying, “So, what’s new?” She could have told the
story she heard from a hired hand at her rice-cake mill. It concerned a recent
newspaper article about a girl student who went missing after school for sev-

eral days and, upon investigation, turned out to have been tricked by a hustler
into becoming a concubine. Another story had to do with a family whose
daughter-in-law, a girl student, unable to tell the difference between the warp
and the woof of cotton, ended up patching all her family’s socks the wrong
way. Reportedly, she also scorched a good half of the rice she was cooking.
The rice-cake peddler kept a large stock of tittle-tattle stories about girl
students, collecting on average about one per day in the course of her daily
rounds. That’s why she got all worked up and scooted up even closer to
Kyŏnghŭi, slapping her own thigh. But her high hopes burst like a bubble at
Kyŏnghŭi’s cool and reserved attitude. The rice-cake peddler felt empty for no
reason, as if she had lost something. She wondered whether she shouldn’t just
pick up her rice-cake basket and leave, but somehow couldn’t bring herself to
run off so abruptly. With her hands pressed down on her rice-cake basket, she
examined Kyŏnghŭi, who was chopping nonchalantly with a knife, and then
looked at the wooden floor, even counting the number of trays on the shelf.
She sat idly, a blank look on her face.
“Let me have white rice cakes, about five nyang’s worth, and bean-jam rice
cakes, about two and a half nyang,” said Lady Kim, who was fanning herself,
lying on a finely woven mat. Then she took money out of her pouch. Rice
cakes stuffed with bean jam were Kyŏnghŭi’s favorite, and white rice cakes,
her older brother’s.
Startled, the rice-cake peddler snapped out of her stupor, and after repeat-
edly counting the number of rice cakes ordered, she handed them over to
Lady Kim. Then, her basket on her head, she hurried out of the house with-
out a backward glance, but all of a sudden she stopped. Fearful of losing her
business with this house were they to stop welcoming her, the rice-peddler
shouted, “Little miss, I’ll come back tomorrow . . . ha, ha, ha!” Once outside
the gate she breathed a deep sigh of relief.
Kyŏnghŭi’s sister-in-law, who was stitching a coat string onto a silk over-
coat, exchanged a silent smile with Kyŏnghŭi and Siwŏl. Kyŏnghŭi felt satis-
fied. She felt she had gained something. Realizing the rice-cake peddler would
stop her gossiping, Kyŏnghŭi even felt she had done a good job teaching her a
lesson. Her knife still in her hand, Kyŏnghŭi sat lost in thought.
“There’s absolutely nothing impossible for you, Kyŏnghŭi,” said a woman,
who was sitting dispiritedly with her hands folded and a sorrowful look on
her face. After that brief remark, she heaved an enormous sigh and closed
her lips again. She seems to be weighed down with hidden worries and sor-
rows. Kyŏnghŭi and her siblings called the woman “Auntie,” for she had been
a friend of Kyŏnghŭi’s family for nearly twenty years, and she in turn loved
them as her own nieces and nephews. She regularly dropped by Kyŏnghŭi’s

Na Hye-sŏk 37
house, either to pass the time or to lift her spirits when she felt depressed. Her
face was always clouded, and she had the habit of heaving deep sighs even on
joyful occasions. Anyone familiar with the deep-rooted cause of her unhappi-
ness couldn’t help but feel for her.
Widowed young, this woman long mourned the loss of her husband. Her
only source of happiness was Sunam, the godsent son born after her hus-
band’s death. She spent each passing day and year looking forward to Sunam’s
steady growth. A doting mother, she raised him with the greatest possible care
through winter cold and summer heat. She used to wake in the middle of the
night to check on her infant son, and finding him sound asleep, she patted
him on his chubby buttocks over and over again in great relief. When this
precious son turned sixteen, offers of marriage flooded in. Sunam’s mother
shed many a nighttime tear at the prospect of welcoming a daughter-in-law
and receiving her bows at the wedding in the absence of her husband. But lest
her weeping become an ill omen for the future of her beloved son, she tried
her best to turn her sorrow into joy, her crying into laughter.
Sunam’s mother carefully saved money and trinkets to give to her future
daughter-in-law. In the process of arranging for the marriage of her only son,
she had to observe numerous rules and steer clear of various taboos. She was
told that if a future mother-in-law interviewed bridal candidates in person, her
son would spend his life in poverty; so she put all the matrimonial arrange-
ments into the hands of the matchmaker and made her decisions based solely
on propitious conjugal horoscopes.
The high expectations that Sunam’s mother had for gemlike grandchildren,
bustling prosperity, and showers of happiness were smashed by her daughter-
in-law. The young woman turned out to be a foe who caused Sunam’s mother
to heave the deep sighs heard today. To this day, eight years after her marriage
at the age of seventeen, Sunam’s wife had never given her mother-in-law the
gift of a Korean blouse sewn with her own hands. Instead, the young woman
sowed in her mother-in-law’s heart the seeds of a bitter resentment.
Sunam’s mother was by nature kindhearted and gracious, and she did her
utmost to instruct and mold her daughter-in-law for her own good, taking on
all the trouble alone. She racked her brains to come up with ways to improve
and mature her daughter-in-law. She reasoned with her and gave her count-
less instructions, but to no avail. If she gave her daughter-in-law something to
sew, she would doze off in no time, and if she asked her to cook rice, the rice
turned into thick gruel. What was worse, her daughter-in-law became more
brazen as she grew older, driving her mother-in-law to her wit’s end. Growing
daily more frustrated, Sunam’s mother became exasperated in the end.
Whenever Sunam’s mother visited Kyŏnghŭi’s house and observed Lady

Kim’s daughter-in-law doing such a fine job of sewing her mother-in-law a

Korean blouse, she couldn’t help but sigh. She lamented her miserable life
with a daughter-in-law incapable of making her even a single Korean blouse.
So it was only human for Auntie to sigh out her grief, watching Kyŏnghŭi busy
with her work, and to bemoan her misfortune for not having a daughter-in-
law as capable as her. The auntie made a truly pitiful sight—absentmindedly
watching Kyŏnghŭi fix kimch’i. And Kyŏnghŭi found it almost unbearable to
look at Auntie after she’d said with a sigh, “I’ll bet nothing is impossible for
you, Kyŏnghŭi,” following the departure of the loquacious rice-cake peddler.
Even though Kyŏnghŭi was busy at chopping, with her head bent forward,
she knew all too well the cause of her auntie’s unhappiness, and she felt waves
of deep sympathy for her. Listening to Auntie’s sigh, Kyŏnghŭi felt as if she
were witnessing the misery of a host of similarly unhappy Korean families.
She banged the handle of her knife on the cutting board and made a firm
pledge to herself: “My future home won’t ever be like that. I will never allow
such misery, not only in my own home but also in the homes of my offspring,
my friends, and even my disciples. Absolutely not!”
She jumped to her feet and rushed out to Siwŏl, who was dripping with
sweat as she prepared starch paste at the back of the kitchen.
“Look, Siwŏl, let’s do it together. Should I sit on the kitchen range and stir
the starch paste with a paddle, or should I sit in front of the furnace and tend
the fire? Which would you like? I will do whichever you tell me—I know how
to take care of both.”
“For goodness’ sake, you shouldn’t, miss. It’s so hot . . .”
Siwŏl was having a hard time stirring the starch paste and stoking the fire
at the same time, working all alone in the heat. A silent cry, “What hard luck I
have!” resounded in her heart, as she sat blankly, pushing the wheat straw into
the kitchen furnace. To Siwŏl, Kyŏnghŭi’s timely offer of help felt like a breeze
against the heat and like laughter amidst pain. Siwŏl thought, “I’ll go get some
delicious corn, miss’s favorite, and steam them to serve her at dinner.”
Reluctantly Siwŏl said, “All right, then. Please watch the fire, and I’ll stir
the starch paste.”
“Great!” said Kyŏnghŭi. “You’re an expert, so you take care of the difficult
job.”
Kyŏnghŭi kept the fire going while Siwŏl stirred the starch paste. Atop the
kitchen furnace the starch paste sizzled noisily and bubbled up, while below,
inside the furnace, the wheat straws snapped and crackled. They sounded to
Kyŏnghŭi like the orchestral music she had heard at a concert at the Tokyo
Music School. The gradually changing intensity of the fire—from strong
flames in the depths of the furnace to weak sparks near the front—reminded

Na Hye-sŏk 39
Kyŏnghŭi of a melody played from one end of a piano to the other, progress-
ing from heavy plunks to a light tinkle. Realizing that Siwŏl, intent on her
work, wouldn’t understand such pleasure, Kyŏnghŭi felt fortunate to have the
ability, albeit limited, to enjoy the intricacies of aesthetic beauty. Yet when
Kyŏnghŭi thought that there must be individuals who were tens and hun-
dreds of times superior to her in such sensibility, she almost felt like gouging
her eyes out and pummeling her own head to give them as offerings to such
people. The flames suddenly changed from red to blue. Kyŏnghŭi mourned,
“Ah, am I truly a human being, worthy of the food I take?” But then, even
before she had realized it, she exclaimed, “Isn’t this interesting!”
“Miss, how is it you find everything interesting? Doing laundry, you say
the grimy water dripping from the wash is interesting. When you mop the
floor, the hazy dust on the unclean side looks interesting. Sweeping the court-
yard, you enjoy the piles of dust. I wonder how far you’d go. How about the
maggots swarming in the outhouse? Are they interesting to you?”
Kyŏnghŭi said to herself, “You’re right, even those things should inter-
est me. But I feel pathetic and hopeless when beset by doubts whether I’ll
ever be able to attain such pure vision or reach such levels of intellectual
development.
“Look, Siwŏl, now that you mention it, when are you going to do the
laundry?”
“Why, miss? I should get it done by the day after tomorrow.”
“It will be late in the evening when you’re done, right?”
“I guess so, miss.”
“Tell you what. Even if you finish early, take a break at the wash area near
the stream. My sister-in-law and I will get supper ready, and you can have it
when you return in the evening. You’ll see how wonderful my cooking is.”
Kyŏnghŭi burst into laughter.
Siwŏl laughed too. She was deeply touched by Kyŏnghŭi’s kindhearted-
ness. She muttered, “Would someone give me a sweet melon so I could give
it to miss!” Indeed, whenever Kyŏnghŭi showed such kindness, Siwŏl became
so overwhelmed she didn’t know what to do. Since she couldn’t put her feel-
ings into words, she’d instead treat Kyŏnghŭi to her favorite fruits, corn and
apricots, which she’d come by free from places she’d visit in her spare time—
things Siwŏl would have been willing to pay for, had she had the money. Such
was the relationship between Kyŏnghŭi and Siwŏl. On top of that, this time
when Kyŏnghŭi came back from Japan, she’d brought toys for Siwŏl’s son,
Chŏmdong, toys better than those Kyŏnghŭi gave to her own brother’s chil-
dren. Siwŏl felt she could never thank her enough.
“Listen, Siwŏl, there is one chore we must do together.”

“What’s that, miss?”

“Whatever it is, are you ready to do just what I tell you?”
“Yes, of course, miss.”
“May I ask why you leave the wooden lid of the well so dirty? It’s so dirty I
can’t bear to look at it. So, starting from tomorrow, let’s make it our daily job
to clean it after your dishwashing. But it doesn’t mean you do it alone. Do you
agree?”
“Yes, miss. I’ll clean it every day by myself.”
“No. You’ve got to do it with me for the fun of it. Ha, ha, ha!” laughed
Kyŏnghŭi.
“There you go again with ‘fun.’ Ha, ha, ha, ha!” Siwŏl laughed too. The
kitchen grew noisy with laughter.
Kyŏnghŭi’s mother, who was on the inner porch listening to the laughing,
said, “There they are, at it again!”
“I don’t know what’s so amusing,” said Lady Kim to Sunam’s mother.
“Whenever Kyŏnghŭi comes back home, the three of them hang around
together day and night, driving us crazy with their laughter. You know there’s
a saying that when you are young, even horse droppings rolling away make
you laugh. It really seems to be true.”
“What could be better than laughing? Whenever I come to your house, I
feel revived,” Sunam’s mother said and let out another deep sigh.
As soon as the laughter reached Kyŏnghŭi’s sister-in-law, who had
remained alone on the porch working on her needlework, she rushed into the
kitchen with a shoe on one foot and a straw sandal on the other, saying, “What
are you up to? Let me in on it too.”
[3]
“Look dear, are you sleeping?” asked Yi Ch’ŏrwŏn. He opened the
door of the room in the inner quarters and stepped inside the mosquito net
under which his wife and Kyŏnghŭi lay asleep. He had just come in from the
front quarters of the house. Startled, Lady Kim sat up.
“What’s the matter? Is something wrong?” asked Lady Kim.
“No, no. I just couldn’t sleep . . .”
“What’s on your mind?”
Just at that moment, the clock on the wall in the wood-floored room struck
one.
“I’ve been lying in bed thinking carefully, and I decided to come to talk
with you.”
“What’s this all about?”

Na Hye-sŏk 41
“It’s about Kyŏnghŭi’s marriage. I’m so worried I can’t sleep.”

“That makes two of us.”
“This marriage proposal shouldn’t be passed up. I bet we’ll never get
another one like it. I’ve known the bridegroom’s father well and for a long
time; there’s nothing more to look into. The groom is fairly good, and besides,
people are much the same anyway. As the firstborn son, he will inherit the
whole of his family’s large fortune, and Kyŏnghŭi would make a perfect elder
daughter-in-law for such a distinguished family.”
“No doubt about it. I realize too that no other proposal will beat this one.
But I don’t know what to say, because Kyŏnghŭi is dead against it and will hit
the roof. Though she’s my own daughter, I don’t think I could handle her bit-
terness if something goes wrong after we force her into this marriage against
her will.”
“Why, what could possibly go wrong? The groom is good enough, and
the family is also well-off, with several thousand bushels of rice as its annual
income. If that’s not good enough, what more does she want? Don’t you see
she is no longer young at nineteen?”
Lady Kim remained silent. Her husband clucked and began to regret what
he had done: “It was my mistake to send her to Japan. What’s more appalling
than a girl who refuses to get married? This is outrageous. I’m nervous lest
people get wind of it. We’ve already let go of several good marriage proposals.
Good Lord, what should we do?”
“When do you think we have to decide on this proposal, then?”
“If she agrees, we can go ahead right away. Today I received another let-
ter from them, pressing for our decision. Now that we’ve gone the length of
educating her, it won’t do to give her away to a marriage arranged entirely by
parents of both families, as in the old days. I’ve been trying to reason with her
for the past three days, but she won’t listen. I’ve never seen such a pigheaded
girl. Time and again, the groom’s uncle insists on making her his nephew’s
wife, but . . .”
“So what did you tell him?”
“Well, I was ashamed to say that I had to ask Kyŏnghŭi first, especially
when people gossip about us for sending a grown-up daughter as far as Japan
and whatnot. So I told him I’d think the matter over.”
“They’ll be waiting for your answer then, won’t they?”
“That’s right. The proposal came to us in early January this year, and we
can’t make them wait with false hopes . . .”
“Oh dear! Then we have to come up with some decision sooner or later, but
what shall we do? Kyŏnghŭi says she won’t marry until she finishes her stud-
ies, no matter what. Moreover, she told me she couldn’t imagine herself living

in grand style and luxury in such a wealthy family in her wildest dreams. You
see, that’s why Kyŏnghŭi gave away all the fine clothes prepared for her own
marriage to her younger sister as her wedding gift. But, you know, I think
there’s some truth in the saying that money cannot buy happiness.”
Lady Kim herself had led a life of wealth and honor with no need to envy
others, but she had suffered because of her husband’s fast living when young.
She had also endured heartaches in silence when her husband had kept as
many as two or three concubines during his days as magistrate of Ch’ŏrwŏn
County. So each time Kyŏnghŭi gave her mother a piece of her mind, Lady
Kim could see her point quite well, although she didn’t say so openly.
Yi Ch’ŏrwŏn went on: “What a conceited brat! That’s why it’s no good to get
girls educated; it only turns their head. This is all because Kyŏnghŭi is utterly
ignorant of the world. You know, we have already married her younger sister
off, right? Look, what sort of family marries off its younger daughter ahead
of the older one? If Kyŏnghŭi weren’t such a good-for-nothing, we wouldn’t
have given away our younger daughter in marriage. Judge Kim’s family sent
this proposal because they know our family well; otherwise, who would ask
for the hand of a girl from a family that marries its children in reverse order?
Ah, ah . . . this time I must push it through—absolutely!”
Even though Yi Ch’ŏrwŏn was half persuaded by his wife’s talk, he suddenly
became edgy, recalling his younger daughter’s marriage. The more he thought
about it, the more he was convinced that once he let go of this proposal from
Judge Kim’s family, Kyŏnghŭi would never receive another marriage proposal
from a family of such pedigree and wealth. Yi Ch’ŏrwŏn made up his mind
to push this marriage without delay, and with force if necessary. He sprang to
his feet, saying, “What good is it for a girl to study so much? Kyŏnghŭi’s done
more than enough studying, and she won’t be going back to Japan. Absolutely
not this time around! I’ll make sure to marry her off to Judge Kim’s family.
I’ll talk to her again tomorrow, and if she won’t listen, I will go ahead with no
more talk.”
Yi Ch’ŏrwŏn was fuming. Lady Kim could neither agree nor disagree with
her husband. All she could do was mull over the thought, “Come to think of it,
unless I see my only unwed child Kyŏnghŭi married in my lifetime, I won’t be
able to die in peace.” Her concern was brought about by her apprehension—
whenever she lay sick in bed with palsy—of dying before she saw Kyŏnghŭi
married.
Yi Ch’ŏrwŏn stood to go but then took his seat again and asked his wife in
a low voice, “Say, you don’t think we’ve spoiled Kyŏnghŭi by sending her to
Japan, do you?”
“Certainly not! She’s grown more industrious than ever. She is the first

Na Hye-sŏk 43
to get up in the morning, and she finishes up for the day with mopping the
floor and tidying up the yard. When we make rice-cakes, she even helps with
the sifting until they finish the job of pounding the rice into flour. That’s why
Siwŏl is nuts about her.”
Each time Lady Kim saw Kyŏnghŭi taking care of household chores, she
was more and more pleased. After Kyŏnghŭi began her studies in Japan, Lady
Kim used to secretly worry about her whenever people made an issue of her
education. Lady Kim’s greatest fear was that Kyŏnghŭi would become con-
ceited, making a big deal out of her studies in Japan or showing off her learn-
ing and expecting to be waited on like a man. Had Kyŏnghŭi turned out to
be so dreadful, Lady Kim would have been ashamed of her, just as would any
mother who loved her daughter. So she felt enormously relieved when she saw
Kyŏnghŭi, donned in an apron, step into the kitchen on the very day following
her return from Japan, even though Lady Kim told Kyŏnghŭi to take it easy
and rest up after her year-long absence.
From way back, Kyŏnghŭi was famous among her family members for her
cleaning of the floors, loft, and closets. When she came back home from her
high school in Seoul three times a year for vacation, the loft closets were turned
inside out. And only Kyŏnghŭi’s cleaning could please her mother. When the
loft got messy or the closets became disordered, everyone knew it was time for
Kyŏnghŭi’s homecoming. Kyŏnghŭi’s older cousins, grandmother, and elder
aunt, who used to come see her the day after her return home, always checked
out the house and praised her: “The loft closets have had quite a makeover” or
“How clean they are!” Kyŏnghŭi used to look forward to this routine the night
before coming home, and the sparkling cleanliness of her house was the most
telling sign of her return.
Lady Kim expected that this time Kyŏnghŭi, upon her return from Japan,
would ignore her old routine of tidying up the loft three times a year. But the
first thing Kyŏnghŭi did upon her arrival, after paying her respects to her
parents, was to open the loft closets. The next day she cleaned them from
morning till night.
But the way Kyŏnghŭi cleaned had totally changed. In the past she used
to do her cleaning perfunctorily. She simply dusted and scrubbed the cer-
emonial vessels in the eastern corner of the loft and the small gourds hanging
on the western wall, and then put them back in their places. Her old idea of
cleaning was just getting rid of cobwebs and brushing away accumulated dust.
But this time her cleaning process changed—it was structured and innova-
tive. She altered the arrangement of things altogether, applying her knowl-
edge of orderliness learned in home economics, tidiness in her hygiene class,
color harmony in art class, and rhythmic variation in music class. Kyŏnghŭi

checked the effect of porcelain placed next to earthenware and the display of
a seven-dish set on lacquerware. She tried to see how a small bowl would look
nested in a larger bowl. She even tried the effect of a yellowish casserole pot
placed on a white silver tray, and put a bottle alongside a large vase to check
the contrast.
In earlier times, Kyŏnghŭi frowned at the musty smell of dust in the dark
loft; she also carried on her daylong cleaning job—drenched with sweat—in
order to receive the compliments of her family. But now she was different. She
loved her many chores in the dark loft. She even put down her broom in order
to pick up mouse droppings and smell them. Her day’s work was no longer
motivated by expectations of reward. She simply did the job because she took
it as her own task. Kyŏnghŭi’s every move was made with self-consciousness,
which helped her self-knowledge grow, and as time went on, she looked for
more and more work to do.
Kyŏnghŭi felt that if a friend did even a bit of her work for her, the finished
task belonged not to her but to her friend—even if the end product belonged
to Kyŏnghŭi. This belief in independence had led Kyŏnghŭi to a resolution
that so long as she wanted to have nice things or to be richer than others, she
shouldn’t ask others to do even a scrap of work—work she could do herself.
She made up her mind not to allow anyone to take tasks from her—even the
most negligible.
Kyŏnghŭi felt she was lucky to have strong legs and big arms. She could
envision countless jobs ahead—tasks that asked for all her physical strength.
There were also a lot of things Kyŏnghŭi hoped to own. So every time fol-
lowing a nap, she would recognize clearly how much her work had suffered
from her laziness. Still, after she put in a full day’s work, she became keenly
aware of her own inner growth—no matter how small it might be. In this way,
Kyŏnghŭi had come to realize how every effort counted, since it contributed
to the growth of her assets. Kyŏnghŭi’s desire to mature and increase her per-
sonal possessions pressed her to do her best from morning till night.
Everyday Yi Ch’ŏrwŏn himself observed Kyŏnghŭi exert herself and began
to feel proud of her. But he felt he had to confirm his impressions about
Kyŏnghŭi by talking things out with his wife, as he had been constantly trou-
bled by doubts as to whether or not they had ruined their daughter by send-
ing her to Japan, as their eldest son had urged. Kyŏnghŭi’s parents loved her.
It was this which led them to sit together this night and share their worries
about her marriage and their fears about her loss of womanly virtue. Now
that they were relieved of such fears, their smiling faces were filled with love
for their daughter. Nothing comes close to the concern and genuine love of
parents for their children—no love between friends or siblings, not even the
filial love of children, can surpass it.

Na Hye-sŏk 45
Yi Ch’ŏrwŏn began to feel somewhat less jittery about the lack of future
marriage proposals for Kyŏnghŭi. Nevertheless, when he stepped onto the
porch and, clearing his dry throat, said, “Come what may, tomorrow is the
day,” the firmness in his voice made it clear that his plans would not easily be
thwarted.
A crowing rooster announced a new day. The pitch-black of the night gave
way to the milky dawn. A portion of the eastern window gradually lightened,
slowly revealing a corner of the light green mosquito net. Kyŏnghŭi, until
then fast asleep, opened her eyes. She sprang to her feet and stepped out of the
room, excited at the prospect of another full day of work.
[4]
It was exactly noon, and a lunch table had been set on the porch
within the inner quarters of the house. Kyŏnghŭi came in from the front
quarters. Although her sister-in-law and Siwŏl begged her to take lunch, she
brushed them aside. Once inside the storeroom, Kyŏnghŭi shut its doors
tightly. She wept uncontrollably. She threw herself on the floor and then sud-
denly sat straight up. She again stood up and banged her head against the wall.
Hugging a post in the room, she circled around and around it. She was at a
total loss as to what to do with herself, her small bosom burning as if on fire.
Wiping her tears with a towel hanging on the wall, Kyŏnghŭi could only
moan now and again, “Oh my goodness, what am I supposed to do?” She
even wondered if her parents were trying to get rid of her by marrying her
off as quickly as possible in order to save themselves the expense of her food
and clothing. She felt as if this wide world held no place for her. Tears rained
down whenever she was struck by her insignificance and uselessness as a
human being. She was determined that if someone were to enter the room
and attempt to calm her, she’d pick a fight and, grabbing that person’s hair,
pull it all out at once. She’d scratch away at the person’s face till blood streamed
down from it, or even rip it apart.
What kind of fate awaits Kyŏnghŭi as she bumps into various objects in
the small, dark storeroom with its windows tightly closed? Kyŏnghŭi is facing
two paths, two clearly marked roads. One is a smooth one, soft to her feet,
leading to a rice-filled storehouse, wealth, and affection. It is a royal road,
simple to find and easy to walk along. But the other will lead Kyŏnghŭi to
tough, menial farmwork, such as hulling barley for a measly amount of food;
and as a hired hand, she will have to sweat all day for a few pennies’ wages.
Everywhere on this road, she will meet with no love but only ill treatment. She
will have to step on rough rocks until the tips of her toes bleed, and there will
be steep precipices and sharp mountain peaks to scale. She will have to cross

waters and climb hills; the crooked road has countless turns, and the farther
she walks, the rougher and more inaccessible the path will become.
Today Kyŏnghŭi stands at her life’s crossroads, faced with the task of decid-
ing which of these two paths to take. What’s more, she has to decide now. The
decision she makes today will be final and irrevocable come tomorrow. She
also knows that once she makes her decision, she won’t change her mind. Ah!
Which path should she take? This decision should be made independent of
her teachers’ counsel or her friends’ advice. A personal decision made in full
awareness of her own action would be lifelong and irreversible.
Again Kyŏnghŭi banged her head and moaned, “Oh my goodness, what
am I to do?”
Kyŏnghŭi kept thinking: “I’m a woman, and I am a Korean woman—a
woman shackled by Korean society’s family conventions. My society decrees
that women be meek and submissive, and the Korean family teaches that a
woman’s life consists in following the ‘Three Rules of Obedience.’ If a woman
tries to stand on her own, she will feel pressure from all quarters, and if she
aspires to accomplish something, she will be criticized from all sides.”
Kyŏnghŭi knows that all her friends—ten out of ten—will gently take her
by the hand and advise her, “Let’s live it up free from care till we die.” Kyŏnghŭi
herself has experienced the luxury of brocade clothes and has enjoyed all sorts
of delicacies.
“Ah! Which road should I take? What life should I live?” Kyŏnghŭi asked
herself.
Each time Kyŏnghŭi repeated these questions, her two dangling arms and
two limp legs curled up tightly to her bosom and stomach—just as a snake,
slithering flat on the road, might tense its limp body tightly and roll its eyes
wildly, darting its sharp poisonous tongue in and out, when its tail is touched
ever so slightly with the tip of a stick. Kyŏnghŭi looked like a toy, with nothing
but a head and torso, on display in a toy store. She felt as if her one-hundred-
pound body had suddenly become as light as a sheet of paper fluttering in the
wind. She also felt a dull, chilly pain in her head. Kyŏnghŭi’s eyes were trans-
fixed, unblinking, as if they were about to bore a hole into the wall. Her back
was soaked with sweat, and her limbs felt as cold as those of a corpse.
“Oh my goodness, what am I supposed to do?” This is all that Kyŏnghŭi
could utter, and she felt as if she had become deaf and mute.
Kyŏnghŭi passed her hand over her body. She touched her left wrist with
her right hand and then her right wrist with her left hand. She shook her head
too, to see how it felt. Kyŏnghŭi asked herself, “What purpose should I make
of my body, this short, tiny body? Where should I head?”
Once more Kyŏnghŭi surveyed herself from head to foot. She then mulled:

Na Hye-sŏk 47
“Should I choose a life of luxury, trailing silk skirts and decorating my hair
with ornamental jade and pearl hairpins? How magnificent it would be to be
inducted as the wife of the firstborn son of a powerful family! What fun to
play the game of a new daughter-in-law and bride! Think of the affection I’d
get from my future parents-in-law! How much I’d be adored by my own par-
ents, though I am now an object of their scorn! Imagine the envy and respect
of my relatives!”
“I’ve made a mistake,” Kyŏnghŭi said out loud. “Oh, what a terrible mis-
take I’ve made! Why did I spit out ‘no’ and not ‘yes’ when Father said, ‘Let’s
go ahead’? Oh why, oh why did I say that? What possessed me to answer him
back like that? Why did I say no to such fame and fortune? What will become
of me, once I let this golden opportunity slip away? Maybe it’s because I’m
ignorant of the world and lacking in judgment, just as Father said. Maybe it’s
already too late to take back my words. Indeed, Father did say, ‘You’ll regret
this forever.’ Ah, ah . . . what am I to do? Maybe before it’s too late I should go
straight to the front quarters and ask Father’s forgiveness. Should I say, ‘I was
wrong’? Yes, that will do. That’s the right way to go about it. And I’ll give up
this burdensome study as well. I don’t have to return to Japan, just as Father
said. Maybe this is the path I should take! This may be the right direction I
should head. Ah, this must be the proper course to be followed. But . . .
“Oh my goodness, what am I supposed to do?”
Kyŏnghŭi stared into space. She felt her whole body growing heavy, as
if it weighed many tons. Her head felt heavy too, as though a large bronze
helmet were pulled over it. Her curled-up arms and legs stretched out and
lay limp. Then her entire body contracted again as she wondered what had
possessed her to answer her father so fearlessly. When he had said, “Girls are
supposed to get married, bear children, serve parents-in-law, and be respect-
ful to their husbands, and that’s all that there is for them,” she answered back,
“That’s an old-fashioned idea, Father! Nowadays people say that women are
human beings just as men and that, as such, women can do anything. Just
like men, women can make money and hold public office. The time has come
for women to do everything men do!” Thereupon her father had raised his
long pipe and roared: “Nonsense! You’re nobody! Is this gibberish all that
you picked up in Japan, wasting precious money, while we thought you were
studying?” Kyŏnghŭi shrunk with fear as she recalled her father’s terrifying
glare.
Kyŏnghŭi was lost in thought: “Yes, Father is right. I am indeed useless.
Am I not aping others’ words? Ah, ah . . . it’s not easy for women to live like
human beings. Only exceptional women succeed in carrying out their tasks
like men. It takes women of brilliant scholarship and extraordinary talent to

break away from four-thousand-year-old Korean traditions. Such a feat can

be accomplished only by intelligent women such as Madame de Staël, who,
with her delicate discernment and power of eloquence, moved the hearts
of all Parisians during Napoléon’s times.12 Such an exploit will require the
indomitable courage and sacrifice of a Joan of Arc, who rescued Orleans in
life and saved France through her death. It will call for the lucid logic and
iron willpower of Mrs. Webb—the brave champion of British feminism, an
accomplished essayist, and a renowned writer of first-rate books on econom-
ics.13 Ah, ah, as I can see clearly, these women’s accomplishments are heroic
acts. Such acts will require unquestionable competence and self-sacrifice.”
When Kyŏnghŭi carefully examined her education up to now, she was sur-
prised to find nothing there. Her idiotic dull sensitivity had prevented her from
true enjoyment and appreciation of dance and musical performances. She was
poor at speech, often at a loss for a good answer and unable to articulate her
thoughts. She had a fastidious disposition, complaining about the smallest
pain and wailing at the slightest rebuke. She lacked backbone, was too easily
swayed by others, and was hopelessly feeble-minded. She wondered, “Am I
truly a human being? Is it impossible for someone like me to live as a human
being? All I have is a piddling, elementary education—something everyone
has anyway. My education is nothing but how to hold a spoon in the right
hand for eating rice that everyone knows how to prepare. It’s all pointless. If
great enterprising women of the past were to find out about me, wouldn’t they
laugh at me? It’s pure nonsense. Oh dear, what should I do?”
Such self-scrutiny led Kyŏnghŭi to feel sorry for Judge Kim’s family, which
was trying so hard to win her hand as wife to their eldest son. When such a
rich and distinguished family wants to take in an idiot like her, she should
accept their wishes in humble gratitude and get married without complaint
or delay, perfectly happy to offer up her maidenhood to them. Her rebuff
was simply outrageous, even to herself. Suddenly it seemed perfectly reason-
able to Kyŏnghŭi that her parents, grandmothers, aunts, and other relatives
expressed their concerns about her marriage every time they saw her.
Until now, Kyŏnghŭi had taken pity on married women, their hair done
up in buns and decorated with ornamental hairpins. She looked at them con-
temptuously, thinking, “You women have aged for nothing. Look how dull
your lives are, following your instincts like animals, without any love for your
husband! Stuffing your children with rice and meat is your way of expressing
your love, while you remain totally ignorant of their need for a good educa-
tion. Women of your sort are mere nothings, not human beings at all.”
Today, however, for some reason, such women appeared remarkable to
Kyŏnghŭi. Even Siwŏl, doing the dishes with her hair done up in a bun, seemed

Na Hye-sŏk 49
far superior to herself. The cries of farmers’ children from beyond the walls
of her house seemed to speak of a world far different from and better than
her own. Kyŏnghŭi felt that in all probability she could never be a woman
of that world and bear children as those women do. She wondered, “What
prompts these women to get married in droves, while I find it so difficult to
accept such an idea of marriage? How can they lead such a life of ease, while I
trouble myself about children’s education?” Kyŏnghŭi felt like a nobody when
compared with these women. They seemed many times better than she.
Kyŏnghŭi felt amazed: “How in the world can those women get married
with such ease? They go on living in peace, bearing any number of children.
How unbelievable they are!” The more Kyŏnghŭi considered them, the more
admirable they appeared. And she couldn’t quite figure out why she found it
so difficult to get married. She puzzled, “Are these women extraordinary? Or
am I? Are they real human beings? Or am I?” These perplexing doubts actu-
ally kept Kyŏnghŭi from sleep at night. The question “What then makes a
person’s life significant?” tormented Kyŏnghŭi.
“Oh dear, what am I supposed to do?”
Now Kyŏnghŭi had rephrased her lament: “Oh dear, I had no idea I would
come to this pass.”
Suddenly Kyŏnghŭi felt her hair stand on end. She felt as if her large face,
big mouth, and lanky limbs had all vanished. She glimpsed something like a
flame floating in the air—like a spark at the tip of a small straw of wheat. The
room grew hot and stuffy. Not fully aware of her action, Kyŏnghŭi threw open
all the windows.
Blazing hot sunlight poured in with a fierce intensity, like two groups of
ruffians charging at each other with their six-cornered cudgels and shouting,
“Come on!” Over the many-hued crepe myrtles and small-leafed lotus blos-
soms, large-spotted butterflies and yellow butterflies flew with abandon. In
the magpie’s nest on the pear tree, small black heads of chicks bobbed in and
out, waiting for their mother to bring food. The potbellied family dog was
snoring away, sprawled in the shade under the bush clover plants. About half a
dozen chicks followed after their mother hen as she searched for grubs under
the hedge.
Watching the scene, Kyŏnghŭi’s mind suddenly emerged from its stupor.
She shouted, “That’s a dog over there! That’s a flower, and that’s a hen. That’s
a pear tree. And those hanging on it are pears. That’s a magpie flying in the
sky. That’s a jar, and that’s a mortar.” In this manner, Kyŏnghŭi began to call
out the names of things as they came into view. She even touched the bedside
chest next to her and stroked its folded silk bedding. “Then what is my name?
It’s ‘human being’! I really am a human being.”

Kyŏnghŭi gazed at her reflection in the full-length mirror hanging on the

wall. She tried to open her mouth, blink her eyes, raise her arms, and stretch
out her legs. It was clear to her she had a human shape. Then she compared
herself with the dog lying on its belly, the roaming hen pecking at grubs, and
the magpies. These are animals—that is, they belong to the lower order, as
Kyŏnghŭi had learned in zoology class. But she was also taught that living
beings like her, who wear clothes, know how to speak words, walk around, and
work with their hands, are human beings—the lords of all creation. Kyŏnghŭi
came to the quick conclusion that she herself was one such precious human
being.
Kyŏnghŭi cried out, “Ah, ah . . . I think I’ve given Father a correct
answer!”
When her fearsome father said, “If you marry into this family, you will live
a good life, well-fed and well-clad for the rest of your life,” for the first time
in her life, and trembling with fear, she had snapped back at him: “Father,
you know Confucius’ disciple Yen Hui said that one can find happiness even
in a handful of rice and a small amount of water in a gourd.14 If we live only
for food, we are dumb animals, not human beings. I believe that, as human
beings, we must earn our food with our own hands, even if it turns out to be
only a bowl of coarse barley. Women who live off their husbands, who in turn
live off inheritances from their ancestors, are no different from our dog.”
Thus Kyŏnghŭi’s thoughts continued: “Yes, if human beings live only for
food, they are like beasts of a lower order. Besides, all sorts of tragedies take
place in rich families whose male members squander the property they have
received from their ancestors, without having lifted a finger, on drinking and
kisaeng. These men don’t know how to use their inheritance, let alone how to
make one themselves. They are not human beings but animals who die after
a life of fulfilling their appetites. There are numerous men who lead low lives
like animals. Such men are not human beings but animals in human skin. If
these men should attempt to take a rest under the bush clovers, even the dog
would laugh at them, saying the shade is too good for them.”
Kyŏnghŭi continued thinking: “So it is! What differentiates human beings
from animals is that the former know the principle of ‘Hard work is repaid’
and ‘Happiness follows tears.’ Human beings have thinking and creative facul-
ties, which animals lack. The difference between human beings and animals
is that the former pursue their goals on their own initiative and achieve them,
whereas the latter depend on human beings for food, expecting leftovers from
them, and feel happy when they are fed. This is the indisputable difference
between a human being and an animal and is an unquestionable truth.”
Finally, Kyŏnghŭi declared: “First of all I am a human being. Then I

Na Hye-sŏk 51
am a woman. This means that I am a human being before being a woman.

Moreover, I am a woman who belongs to the universal human race before
being a Korean woman. I am God’s daughter before being the daughter of
Yi Ch’ŏrwŏn and Lady Kim. After all, I was born with a human form. This
form, which includes not only the outer skin but also the internal organs, is
definitely human, not animal. Without a doubt, I am a human being! If I, as a
human being, don’t choose untraveled, rough roads, how can I ever ask that
of others? Human beings are expected to achieve high goals and be proud of
them, as if they were standing on a mountaintop and looking down below.
Indeed, what do I need these arms and these legs for?”
Kyŏnghŭi raised her arms and leapt up.
The burning sunlight softened. Slowly, dark clouds began to cover the
deep-blue sky. Southern winds, scented with fragrance, wafted in gently, car-
rying pollen. Kyŏnghŭi saw a flash of lightning, followed closely by claps of
thunder. In no time, a summer shower would come pouring down.
Kyŏnghŭi was ecstatic. She suddenly felt as if she had grown taller, length-
ened like a piece of taffy. Her whole face seemed to have turned into one
large eye. Kyŏnghŭi fell to her knees and offered a prayer, her hands pressed
together:
“Dear God, here is your daughter! Father, thank you for your grace!
“Please look at my face, glowing with life.
“Dear God, please give me eternal glory and strength.
“I pledge to do my best.
“Please make use of me. I’m at your disposal, for you have the power to
either reward or punish me.”
[First published in Yŏjagye (Women’s world), March 1918]
Analysis of “Kyŏnghŭi”
The longest of Na Hye-sŏk’s fictional narratives, “Kyŏnghŭi” (1918)

is also considered her finest in terms of narrative strategy, structure, character
choice and delineation, and thematic conceptualization. Autobiographical in
origin, “Kyŏnghŭi” is the author’s careful articulation of a new paradigm for
modern Korean women, which is undergirded by her feminist visions and
commitment to changing the lives of contemporary Korean women. Rep-
resenting Na’s reformative agenda, the story challenges the oppressive reali-
ties and mistaken notions about Korean women—both modern and tradi-
tion-bound—and to proffer new views about these women’s self-identity and

meaning in life. In a sense, “Kyŏnghŭi” is Na Hye-sŏk’s feminist-informed

response to the growing controversy over the “woman question” in Korea,
especially Korean society’s criticism of the so-called sinyŏsŏng (new women).
Kyŏnghŭi is an idealized figure. An artistically gifted daughter of an upper-
class family, Kyŏnghŭi possesses an aesthetic sensitivity that even reaches the
mystical dimension of synesthesia. Though a product of a privileged educa-
tion, Kyŏnghŭi is no snob. Her character traits—diligence, understanding,
practicality, discretion, modesty, and a maturity beyond her age—draw the
composite picture of a woman of integrity and warmth, something clearly
revealed in her dealings with her homebound sister-in-law and with the fam-
ily maid, Siwŏl. Kyŏnghŭi puts into practice what she has learned at school,
voluntarily takes up thankless household chores to improve her family’s living
conditions, and develops self-sufficiency and self-knowledge. In this connec-
tion, the embroidery skills Kyŏnghŭi cultivates on her own initiative convey
Na’s farsighted view—even by today’s standards—that a woman’s true empow-
erment and value come with her economic independence and a financially
compensated profession.
In essence, “Kyŏnghŭi” argues against the prejudicial image of “new
women,” who were popularly perceived as a troubling demographic group,
destroying traditional female morality, even rending the Korean social fab-
ric itself. They were considered mindless followers of Western fads and the
emblem of indolence, vanity, moral laxity, and the pursuit of easy money.
By contrast, Kyŏnghŭi’s personal qualities diagnostically differ from those
attributed to the sinyŏsŏng. Her education has perfected rather than spoiled
her. Kyŏnghŭi, therefore, is a testimonial to the success of modern Korean
women’s education and a symbolic rebuttal to the mounting criticism of such
educational undertakings.
The key mark of Kyŏnghŭi as a real “modern” woman, however, is her
refusal to reproduce the sanctified patriarchal gender ideology that relegates
women to the biologically determined roles of wife and mother. Instead, she
looks for ways to lead a life as a nongendered human, attempting a radical
departure from the traditional womanly life course. Kyŏnghŭi’s refusal to sub-
mit to her father’s order to accept an arranged marriage proposal is therefore
no less than a frontal challenge to the “Father’s Law,” both literally and figu-
ratively, and, by extension, signals the destabilization of the orthodox patri-
archal canon that circumscribed Korean women’s choices and destiny. Thus
“Kyŏnghŭi” presents a model of a genuine new woman—a self-determining
subject—who follows the dictates of her own soul.
Kyŏnghŭi’s story, however, makes it clear that becoming a new woman is
no small feat. As her struggle illustrates, it demands a ruthless soul-searching,

Na Hye-sŏk 53
true self-knowledge, and deep conviction. The weightiest part of “Kyŏnghŭi”

is devoted to her grueling self-analysis to ascertain her limitations as well as
the genuineness of her aspirations and her commitment. This process of self-
scrutiny also involves Kyŏnghŭi’s effort to make sure that her quest for a new
womanhood is neither a superficial imitation of Western feminist exemplars
nor a simple dismissal of the Confucian traditions of her society. She has to
take careful stock of both native and foreign feminine ideologies before arriv-
ing at her own version of the new woman. Thus viewed, “Kyŏnghŭi” serves a
double-edged purpose: a refutation of the popular misconception of sinyŏsŏng
as a frivolous and superficial mimicry of its Western counterpart, and a word
of warning to Korean women who have construed unscrupulous ideas about
sinyŏsŏng.
“Kyŏnghŭi” is an artfully fashioned text. Consisting of four sections and
told by an omniscient narrator, the story covers only a few days and involves
a small cast of family members and visitors who play out their roles within
the inner quarters of the heroine’s house. Almost nothing extraneous to the
development of the narrative intrudes. This constricted temporal and spatial
framework of the narrative helps heighten the tension and intensity of the
issues the protagonist has to grapple with.
Structurally, each section introduces different sets of characters close to
Kyŏnghŭi, who serve as mirrors to show her personal merits. The interactions
among these characters also permit a rare glimpse into the intimate space of
women’s domestic culture and the enclosed nature of Korean women’s expe-
riences within a tightly knit family and human network. At the same time,
Kyŏnghŭi’s appraisals of these dramatis personae contribute to revealing
problematic issues of Korean society such as the arranged marriage, in-law
relationships, concubinage, rumors about sinyŏsŏng, and the class divide, to
name a few.
A unique literary technique in “Kyŏnghŭi” is the use of verbal tense. Apart
from a few flashbacks, the entire story is told in the present tense.15 This
device engages readers in the unfolding events of the narrative as actual wit-
nesses and makes them experience the protagonist’s story as a timeless drama
reenacted in the present, not as a concluded past. The case of Kyŏnghŭi is thus
set in an eternal present, in which she becomes “everyone” and her experience
takes on unchanging and universal implications.
Na Hye-sŏk’s technical virtuosity in this story is at its best, as shown in her
choice of the dark storage room as the crucible for the heroine’s self-examina-
tion, from which she emerges as an authentically transformed modern woman
after a moment of visionary revelation. The author’s adoption of this time-
less archetypal image of cave or womb to convey a spiritual rebirth points to

her literary ingenuity and sophistication. Furthermore, Kyŏnghŭi’s extended

interior monologue in the final section of the story expertly highlights the
narrative’s emphasis on the need for individual women’s private, in-depth
introspection—a prerequisite for launching and completing the difficult proj-
ect of self-metamorphosis into sinyŏsŏng. In this sense, Na Hye-sŏk’s thematic
concerns and narrative techniques reinforce each other, making the novella
one of the best examples of early modern Korean literary ventures.

Three
Awakening (1926)
Kim Wŏn-ju
Better known by her pen name, Iryŏp, Kim Wŏn-

ju (1896–1971) was born in the village of Dŏktongni, near the port city
Chinnamp’o in South P’yŏngan Province, the first daughter of a Protestant
minister. Her mother, although uneducated, was the primary influence on
Kim’s formative years, proudly supporting her daughter’s education, but Kim
suffered the loss of her mother in her early teens. Kim’s caring father contin-
ued her mother’s enthusiasm for education by sending Kim to Seoul in 1913
to study at Ewha Girls’ School, which had been established by an American
Methodist woman missionary in 1886. In 1915 Kim’s father passed away, leav-
ing her the sole survivor of her immediate family. Later Kim memorialized her
parents in her works. Thanks to financial support from her maternal grand-
mother, Kim studied at Ewha Womans College, where she read extensively and
participated in the activities of the school’s literary club, Imunhoe. Reportedly,
Kim was an avid reader of both Ch’oe Nam-sŏn and Yi Kwang-su. Eventually
Kim and Yi established a close professional and personal association.1
After graduating from Ewha in 1918, Kim married Yi No-ik, an American-
educated professor of chemistry at Yŏnhŭi College (present-day Yonsei Uni-
versity) who was some twenty years her senior and suffered from a physical
disability. During the March 1919 Independence Movement, Kim took part in
covert anti-Japanese activities and narrowly escaped arrest by the police. Later
that same year, she left for Tokyo, where she briefly attended the Tōyō Eiwa
Girls’ School.2
Upon her return home, Kim organized a group called Ch’ŏngt’aphoe (Blue-
stockings) with the help of Na Hye-sŏk, apparently in imitation of the femi-
nist group Seitō in Japan,3 and in March 1920 began the publication of Korea’s
first feminist monthly journal, Sinyŏja (New woman). Serving as the journal’s
55

editor, Kim used it as a platform in her crusade for feminist causes, contribut-
ing a number of articles on the necessity for women’s education and their self-
transformation. Sinyŏja also provided literary and artistic channels for her
women friends, such as Na Hye-sŏk. Kim’s first short story, “Ŏnŭ sonyŏ ŭi sa”
(Death of a girl), which denounced the practice of concubinage and the abuse
of parental authority over children, was published in Sinyŏja in April 1920.
Sinyŏja’s fourth issue was its last; the journal folded in June 1920, sup-
pressed by Japanese censorship. One month later Kim Wŏn-ju joined with
Na Hye-sŏk to become the founding members of the literary circle P’yehŏ
(Ruins), whose membership was mostly male. After a brief visit to Japan in
the late spring of 1921, Kim published “Hyewŏn” (Sinmin kongnon [New peo-
ple’s public opinion], June 1921)—a short story about the betrayal of a woman
writer by her boyfriend, who pursues moneyed women. Kim’s debates with
Na Hye-sŏk about Korean women’s clothing in a series of articles published
in Tonga ilbo in September 1921 contributed to raising the national profiles
of these two women as cultural critics and public figures. By then, Kim had
become a pioneer in the bourgeoning literary and pro-women movements,
and her writings, usually in a feminist vein, were sought after by Tonga ilbo.
After separating from her husband in 1921, Kim chose to study in Japan,
where she met Ōta Seizō, a Japanese law student at Kyushŭ Imperial Univer-
sity who came from a wealthy and powerful family. In September 1922 a son
was born of Kim’s relationship with Ōta, but soon thereafter Kim returned to
Korea, having rejected Ōta’s insistent proposals of marriage and leaving her
infant son behind with Ōta.4
Sometime in late 1922 Kim’s first marriage was finally dissolved, and from
1923 on, she began to develop an interest in Buddhism under the tutelage
of the renowned Zen priest Mangong (1871–1946). From 1925 to 1928 she
worked as a literary reporter at Tonga ilbo as well as a grade school teacher. The
year 1926 proved the peak of Kim Wŏn-ju’s career, marked by the publication
of four poems and three short stories, “Sunae ŭi chugŭm” (Death of Sunae;
Tonga ilbo, January 31–February 8, 1926), “Sarang” (Love; Chosŏn mundan,
April 1926), and “Chagak” (Awakening; Tonga ilbo, June 19–26, 1926).
In 1927 Kim created a public uproar with her article “Na ŭi chŏngjogwan”
(My view of sexual purity; Chosŏn ilbo, January 8, 1927), in which she spoke out
about her radical idea that the spiritual, rather than sexual, purity of women
is the most important element in a love relationship. The clamor resulted in
Kim’s reputation as the epitome of sinyŏsŏng—a social rebel—and the article
became her hallmark. The same year, Kim began to serve as the literary editor
for Pulgyŏ (Buddhism), a Buddhist magazine, in which she published most of
her later work, mostly poems.

Kim Wŏn-ju 57
Her devotion to Buddhism deepening after years of practice and study, in

1933 Kim finally entered Sudŏk Temple of the Zen sect in South Ch’ungch’ŏng
Province, taking the tonsure as a disciple of Mangong. Until her death in 1971,
Kim lived as a Buddhist nun secluded in the same temple, burying her secular
fame as Korea’s earliest feminist. Although she had made a vow to her mentor,
Mangong, not to write, she left a sizable collection of short poems, essays, and
Buddhist tracts, which, together with her other work, was published posthu-
mously in two volumes in 1974.
Awakening
[1]
What happened to me was so unexpected and unbelievable that I
thought it best to keep it to myself. But, my friend, since you keep asking me
about it, I am going to jot it down just as it happened.
It was around this time two years ago that my husband left for Japan for
the first time. I can remember the date clearly. At first he had planned to go
a few months earlier in order to prepare for his studies before the school year
began. But his plan was delayed, first because of his father’s birthday and then
because of a cold. So it was toward the end of December that he was finally set
to leave.
The night before his departure, he spent time at the farewell party thrown
by his friends and came home around two o’clock in the morning. His face was
all flushed, apparently from drinking wine, although he was never a drinker.
An awkward smile on his face, he came into the room and said, “It’s so late and
you’re still up?” Then, only throwing off his hat and overcoat, he slipped into
the bedding I had spread out for him.
When he looked up at my teary eyes from his bed, he too became sad.
“Now, hurry and get undressed, and come lie down beside me,” he said. Then,
from his bed, he stretched out his hands toward me and untied the strings of
my blouse.
I burst into uncontrollable tears again and threw myself onto him,
sobbing.
Sitting up halfway, he said, “What’s the matter? Shouldn’t you be happy for
me that I’m going away to study? Besides, it won’t do you any good if I stick
around here at home. No matter how much I feel for you in my heart, it comes

to no good. Don’t you see it’s best for me to finish my studies as fast as I can
and return home to support you with the money I earn, freeing you from this
complicated, irritating, and confining household? So just close your eyes to
everything and be patient with me for three or four years. Now, come lie down
here.” And he held me tightly.
That night, it was the warmth of his deep affection—not the sorrow of
parting—that kept me crying uncontrollably. We ended up staying awake all
night, talking about the sadness of separation, about our love and our hopes.
I rose early in the morning, tearing myself away when he tried to keep me
in bed a little longer and for the last time. Knowing he would miss Korean
food once he went off to Japan, I put my whole heart into fixing his breakfast
and hurriedly brought it to him so he wouldn’t be late.
I was disappointed to see that the breakfast table I had prepared for his full
enjoyment was sent back, its dishes hardly touched, but I simply thought he
was in too much of a hurry.
I had been preparing for his departure myself, even before his parents had
given him permission to leave. I tried my best to do everything I could for
him, since I knew he would need a number of things while away from home.
I had heard that the rooms in Japan didn’t have heated floors like those in
Korea, so besides preparing the usual essentials, I took every care to get things
ready that would keep him warm—even those he thought unnecessary. I also
prepared a variety of Korean foods, packed them in leakproof containers, and
put them in his luggage.
After all his luggage had been carried out and loaded, his father and all his
friends lined up outside. As I was not supposed to go out and join them, I was
standing in the corner of my room weeping when I heard him stamp toward
my room, saying, “I forgot something.” Quickly wiping away my tears, I stam-
mered, “What . . . is it?”
He smiled, “Nothing, of course, you silly! I came back in to see you once
more. Now let’s shake hands. And while I am gone, please take heart. Just trust
me.” He shook my hand firmly and went out.
With no one around to notice, I slipped out through the back gate and,
standing hidden at the corner of the wall of the house behind ours, tried to
catch sight of him once more as he went away.
[2]
The steady snowfall covered the roads, filling in footprints and mak-
ing repeated sweepings useless. My husband plodded on his way with K, his
closest friend, leaving new footprints on the smooth snowy road. Our fam-
ily dog, which was so fond of him, trailed behind. So preoccupied was my

Kim Wŏn-ju 59
husband as he talked with his friend that he didn’t notice the dog following
him and went away without even looking back. Not heeding my sister-in-law’s
repeated summons, the dog just glanced back at her and then kept following
my husband. Finally, my husband hurled a stone at it and chased it away. I
felt so sorry for the dog as it came tottering back, shooed away by its master,
that I wanted to hug it and weep from my heart. After my husband disap-
peared into the spaces between the many houses, I hurried back home, for
fear my mother-in-law would be looking for me, all the while feeling choked
and heavy at heart. Although the empty house was in total disarray, I did not
feel like doing anything. I went into my room and sat there vacantly, as if
bereft of my senses, when I heard my mother-in-law’s yell, “You! Where have
you been? Don’t you even know how to tidy up this mess all over the house?”
Startled back to my senses, I sprang to my feet and went through the motions
of putting things in order; then I returned to my room, only to lose myself in
thoughts of my husband.
I felt very fortunate that it was winter, because I could close the door and,
with no one peeking in to see whether I was working or sleeping, could sit
idly and give full reign to thoughts of my husband. I drew a picture of my
life all the way from our early days of marriage to the time when he would
graduate, establish himself socially, and gain full economic independence so
that I could make a beautiful new home. Then, returning to the present, my
soul would follow him aboard trains and ships, crossing waters and climbing
mountains.
As I lay listless, without desire to eat, work, or even move around, I
hoped my soul could continue to travel along with my husband, unimpeded
by obstacles. But to my chagrin, I was unable to remain free of interruption
because my mother-in-law constantly stirred things up, and I had also to fix
meals for many other family members.
As you know, once your soul wanders off, your body cannot carry on its
work properly. My mother-in-law scolded me several times a day for not sew-
ing my parents-in-law’s clothes in time or for not seasoning side dishes tastily.
On occasions when I broke dishes, I secretly dumped them into the stream
to keep my mother-in-law from finding the broken pieces. In those days, my
husband was the center of my life. Whether I was awake or asleep, working or
resting, my mind was filled with nothing but thoughts of him.
[3]
When I happened to cook my husband’s favorite dishes, anxious
thoughts about him rose up. When it grew cold in winter, I worried about
his suffering from the cold in a foreign country. When it rained in summer,

I wondered whether he would have trouble getting to school, even though I

knew very well that the weather hundreds of miles away in distant Japan could
never be the same as it was at home. His friends’ visits to our home unbear-
ably deepened my yearning for him. Whenever I came upon his clothes while
putting the chest of drawers in order, it would make me happy to stroke them
over and over. My ears would perk up at the sound of the words “studying in
Japan,” and for no reason I would get excited about any visitor who had been
to Japan, trying to peep at the person through a small opening in the door.
And I was anxious to find out whether my husband’s parents had sent money
to him and answered his other requests.
I used to stay up all night thinking of him and finally fall asleep around
dawn, only to be awakened by my mother-in-law. I was put to work all day
long like a donkey working a millstone, whipped by my mother-in-law’s
scolding and stabbed by her scowls. Outwardly I did all I could to obey her
and plugged away. No matter how physically draining and painful the chores
were to me, I never once lay down to take a rest. But if I was just a little slow
in answering her call, my mother-in-law would kick up a fuss, lashing out at
me by saying that I had become spoiled in my husband’s absence. I became
fed up with her saying, “Young things these days think that a husband and
wife have to tag along all the time. When we were young, we faithfully served
our in-laws and kept house well, even if our husbands had gone far away to
the countryside on official duty and even if they left home to live with their
concubines for scores of years.”
Ah, my friend! How can I tell you all the miserable stories about my mar-
ried life in my in-laws’ home? A whole bagful of millet wouldn’t be enough
to count them. You won’t be able to imagine my sufferings at the time—what
with my heart restless from longing for my husband, and my body worn out
from work, and my spirit racked by my mother-in-law. My body, frail enough
to begin with, withered like a chrysanthemum leaf nipped by frost.
Yet my husband’s letters gave me fresh joy and energy amidst such pain.
Since I was living with his parents, he couldn’t send his letters directly to me,
and he used to put them in envelopes addressed to his younger sister. She used
to hand the letter to me with a sneer on her face, snickering, “I’ve brought
something you’ll like.” I would receive the letter from her and, out of embar-
rassment, set it unopened beside my sewing basket until she left after a few
moments of heartless banter. Then I would immediately tear the letter open.
My husband loved literature and was a talented writer, so his letters were
always endearing, interesting, and gracious. He recorded every detail of his
daily routine and described the places he had visited, leaving nothing out. At
the time, I thought no one in this world could be as affectionate and skilled in

Kim Wŏn-ju 61
writing as he was. His letters, like the one below, gave me the greatest strength
and courage at that time.
[4]
“My dear wife! What can I possibly say to you, who work your fin-
gers to the bone serving my parents and siblings, who have no understanding
or sympathy for you? Should I say I’m sorry, or should I say I’m grateful? All I
can say is that it’s for your sake that I keep studying and cultivating my mind.
My beloved wife! Please don’t laugh at me, but when I really miss you, I often
think I should stop studying just for a few days and . . . You should understand
that, if in nothing else, I can at least match you in self-sacrifice. And I’d like
you to remember that your letters are living water in my dreary life.”
At that time, were it not for his letters three or four times a week, I might
have either strangled myself or thrown myself into the river. If his letter failed
to arrive on the expected day, I would naturally become very dejected. So
during my husband’s absence, my feelings of hope or despair, happiness or
sadness, depended on his letters.
In the summer he used to return home, and although his stay was short,
those days and nights were our sweetest and happiest. When I had him put on
the Korean clothes I had sewn with all my heart, he stroked them gently, say-
ing they felt cool and comfortable on him. It was no small joy for me, too, to
watch him appreciate and enjoy the cookies and fruits I had saved for him.
During such summer vacations, there were times when we stood together
under the zelkova tree in the backyard or climbed up on it to talk through the
night about our love—the tree on which I used to climb alone to heave such
yearning sighs for our good olden days together. The fine gifts my husband
brought me from Japan were hidden away one by one in my chest of drawers,
kept secret from my mother-in-law and sister-in-law.
Even at that time, I heard now and then how some of his friends had
divorced their wives without warning, rejecting them as old-fashioned. But I
said to myself, “There must be good reason for it. Who knows what may have
gone wrong between husband and wife?”
In any case, I never doubted that, even if the whole world were shattered
by acts of betrayal, my husband would remain faithful, and I never tried to
pry into his life. He told me how all his friends seemed to have eyes for girl
students, but added emphatically that he had never felt any attraction toward
such girls, as they were vain, conceited, empty-headed, and impatient. He also
said that even though I had not received a modern education, I had as much
intelligence and understanding as those girls. And he seemed perfectly satis-

fied with me, as if I were the sole object of his love. So my relatives praised him
for his good behavior, and I became the envy of my friends.
Can you imagine how happy I was with my husband and how grateful I
felt toward him? In order to become worthy of his love, I looked after and
served my unappreciative in-laws to my utmost. That wasn’t all. I bought
school textbooks and studied them diligently at every spare minute in order
to understand my husband just a little better. Although I endured quite a lot
at my in-laws’ home, for two years I managed to cope, full of hope even while
under enormous strain.
Who, however, could have foreseen such a turnabout? I had been impa-
tient for the joy of my husband’s glorious return home after graduation, wish-
ing a month would pass as quickly as a day, and a year as quickly as a month.
Yet even before his long-awaited graduation day arrived, a piece of shocking
news was passed on to me like a death sentence. As the saying goes, “Even a
tower built over ten years crumbles in one morning”; my hard work over six,
seven years of marriage was shattered to pieces overnight.
[5]
My friend! I haven’t written you for a long time. My life and way of
thinking have completely changed now. Looking back, I find my story written
down for you earlier totally unworthy of such long and tedious elaboration.
But I’ll go on and wrap it up.
Compounding my misery, I was eight months pregnant at that time. I felt
heavy and painful, all the more sensitive to my long suffering at the hands
of my in-laws. I got very irritable and often struggled to calm myself while
standing in a kitchen corner, tearing at my hair. While all others were fast
asleep, I spent many a night alone in my bed, weeping bitterly and writhing in
pain that stung every joint in my body. Moreover, I had to smother in silent
tears the agony of my intense cravings for certain foods. Yet I held on to that
single hope of eventual reunion with my husband.
For some reason, however, he didn’t write to me for several months. All
sorts of thoughts crossed my mind, but I waited every day in the belief that his
letter would arrive in a day or two. The much-awaited letter did arrive in the
end. But it was the exact opposite of what his letters used to say. It was a notice
of divorce, so to speak.
Who could possibly measure the shock and grief I felt, especially at a time
when I was a nervous wreck inside and out? It seems incredible that I didn’t
pass out at that very moment.
The letter ran roughly as follows: As his parents had coerced him into

Kim Wŏn-ju 63
marrying me, he was not responsible for our marriage; he had stayed married
to me up to that point, pressured by social conventions and moved by pity for
me; he’d appreciate it if I decided the future course of my life by myself, leaving
him out of it.
Soon I heard rumors he was carrying on with an older spinster, a student
in Japan, sweet-talking her, telling her I was a wife in name only, that he had
anguished from the beginning over his inability to love me, and that after
meeting her he had finally come to know what real love was. I also heard
that the woman regarded me as an ignorant, stupid, and insensible wife just
because I hadn’t received a modern education.
Indignation and resentment engulfed me, but I clenched my teeth and
pulled myself together. Once I was awakened to the ways of the world and
understood the fickleness of the human heart, I knew I couldn’t waste even a
minute in hesitation. I hit upon a scheme of writing a letter to him that would
outwit his:
I clearly understand the meaning of your letter. I’m glad that you beat me
to it. I have long grieved at the misfortune of my extraordinary suffer-
ing caused by a miserable married life with you, who are not my ideal
type of a husband. Yet being a woman, I couldn’t release myself from
this wretched bond. I will send you the child upon its birth, regardless
of whether it is a boy or a girl, as I believe the responsibility of raising
the child would hamper my effort to make my own way through life. But
please remind the child that there is another person who wishes its hap-
piness more than anyone else in this world. Good-bye. Yours, Im Sunsil,
June 18th.
[6]
At first, I intended to take the time to pack for travel and leave my
husband’s house. Ironically, the persistent persuasion on the part of my in-
laws—who valued keeping up appearances more than moral principles or
kindness—that they’d keep me drove me to leave their house without prepa-
rations and to return immediately to my parents’ home.
My friend! When you hear about this action on my part, you may wonder
whether I really loved my husband. But the fact of the matter is that, no matter
how much pain I felt in my heart, I could never bring myself to beg him for
love and humiliate myself. Of course, my parents made a great fuss about me
as if some major disaster had happened, but I explained everything to them
in detail, quietly and coolly recounting what had happened. I also told them I

had made up my mind to go to school after giving birth. My father gave me a

long lecture on the old rules of propriety and morality and tried to drive into
me the stern message that a woman who left her marriage was totally ruined
and without future. But to me, who was so determined, his words meant little.
Besides, my mother, although aged and old-fashioned, was rather accom-
modating and even possessed a measure of understanding. She soundly told
my father off: “Even though she is our only child, you refused to send her to
school and, while claiming to give her an education yourself, ended up giving
her away in marriage without a second thought. Are you still against her going
to school?”
Thanks to my mother, I managed to go to school. That was already three
years ago. I will be graduating this coming spring. My dogged perseverance
helped me get high marks. Now, I make little of my ex-husband or my life in
my former in-laws’ home, which seems as unreal as a dream. However, when-
ever I hear about my child, I get a lump in my throat. He is now four years old,
and I hear that he is bright, good-looking, and quick at words. Sometimes I
miss him so much that I feel like sneaking up to the gate of my ex-husband’s
house to steal a quick look at him, but I control myself. I guess the human
heart is such that if I were to see my child once, I would want to see him again,
and then more and more often, until I would want to have him with me for
good. Then I would have to reestablish connections with the child’s father,
which would completely destroy my self-respect and character. I can never
sacrifice my whole life for the love of my child. I cannot allow myself to get
mixed up with my child’s life and be thrown into confusion. Of course, par-
ents are expected to raise and educate their children to become fine human
beings. But as long as the child’s other parent—his father—can bring him up
well, I don’t want to subject myself to indignity by undertaking the task of
raising him just because he is my child. Therefore, when the child grows up
and seeks his mother, I will see him, but if he does not, so be it.
[7]
Although my decisions were correct in that they were made to pro-
tect my pride and personal honor, secretly I have been in deep agony for the
past few years through seasonal changes and events. My friend, I trust that
you’ve already grasped my meaning by reading my letter. To be frank, when I
first wrote you, I still had lingering feelings for my husband. That’s why I spun
out such a meandering story about my warm and happy times with him. But
once I’d come to regard them as some fleeting dream, I couldn’t work up any
interest to write you again and so have kept silent for quite some time.

Kim Wŏn-ju 65
Anyway, as I now look back, my ex-husband wasn’t the ideal man for me.
He was weak and spineless. Although he liked women, he did not treat them
with respect, and he had no understanding of the fidelity required of a man
married to a respectable woman, no matter what. The love I had for him was
at first merely fondness for a man who treated me nicely—a natural feeling of
a woman who hadn’t had much contact with the opposite sex and had mar-
ried blindly on her parents’ order.
Soon after I left him, he sent me a letter of apology, pleading with me to
come back. Last fall, however, he sent messengers, and then he himself called
on me a few times to beg for reconciliation. Each time I treated him nicely and
then turned him down with good grace. Thereafter he kept sending me letters
with the same message—I don’t remember how many times—but I left them
unanswered, as I didn’t even feel like writing back to him. He pestered me so
much that finally I wrote to him something like, “Do you think that I’m like
an idiotic and frivolous plaything that comes and goes at your beck and call?
Do you think I am a half-witted woman who melts into smiles every time her
husband fondles her hands, even after he’s run around with a lot of women
and mistreated her for many years? I am no such slavish woman that abjectly
submits to her heartless husband’s abuse and beating, single-mindedly stick-
ing it out till death. I think it’s foolish for you to expect me to return to you,
who know full well that I hate indignity more than dying ten times over.”
Thereafter he couldn’t directly send me messages, and I heard rumors
that he was very much in distress. In any event, his problem is none of my
concern.
Now that I have escaped from a life of cruel slavery, I have the choice to be
a full human being, leading a worthy and meaningful life. And I am going to
look for a person who will take me as such.
[First published in Tonga ilbo (Tonga daily), June 19–26, 1926]
Analysis of “Awakening”
Kim Wŏn-ju’s final piece of fiction with a feminist agenda, “Awak-

ening” (Chagak; 1926), is a memoir in miniature of its female protagonist.
Presented in epistolary format, the narrative consists of undated letters from
a young divorced woman to her unidentified female friend concerning her
married life and its demise. As the opening sentence indicates, the heroine,
Im Sunsil, is at first reluctant to divulge her painful experiences. But goaded
by her friend, who remains a silent listener throughout, the narrator pro-

ceeds to unburden her heart. She reveals the intimate details of her conju-
gal life: a couple’s mutual affection, the anguish of separation caused by the
husband’s departure to study in Japan, the difficulty of life with her in-laws
during his absence, the joy of the temporary reunion during her husband’s
summer vacation, her high hopes for a permanent reunion at the end of her
husband’s schooling, and the destruction of her dreams by her husband’s infi-
delity. These revelations constitute the deepest secrets of her life, something
she could reveal only to a trustworthy and understanding friend, and without
fear of judgment or rejection. In this sense, “Awakening” is an example of
first-person confessional fiction.
The main point of “Awakening” is to show how even a kuyŏsŏng (tradi-
tion-bound woman) placed in an adverse situation can transform herself into
a sinyŏsŏng and lead a life with a new self-image and purpose, overcom-
ing indignity and humiliation. The key to this metamorphosis is education,
which empowers women to reconstruct themselves, retrieve self-esteem and
dignity, and in the end, pursue an independent life of their own design. In
presenting this portrayal of the protagonist’s success in self-reinvention, the
story emphasizes women’s awakening to the ills of their condition, accom-
panied by their will and courage to correct them. That is, the birth of a new
woman is a matter of inner change—not merely the surface changes often
wrongfully equated with sinyŏsŏng. In close thematic parallel with Na Hye-
sŏk’s “Kyŏnghŭi,” “Awakening” thus represents a revision of traditional wom-
anhood and a lesson on how a real new woman is made.
“Awakening” basically adopts the classic romance formula of a woman’s
fate going from happiness to tragedy. For a few years, the heroine enjoys a life
of mutual love with her husband, placing complete trust in him. But the hus-
band goes astray and in the end divorces her without even providing her with
any means of living. The main thrust of “Awakening,” however, comes from a
spin that is added at the end of this often-recycled setup: the jilted wife, rather
than wallowing in her misery, picks up the pieces and succeeds in reclaiming
her own life—the best vindication possible. This strategic narrative ending
subverts the customary views of women as victims.
Within this revisionist narrative framework, “Awakening” sustains critical
feminist discourses that address the realities of contemporary Korean women.
The story condemns Korean society’s gender asymmetry; oppressive role
expectations of women; the hierarchically arranged family, with its focus on
male sexual privilege and irresponsibility; the victimization of the daughter-
in-law by members of her husband’s family, the mother-in-law in particular;
and prejudice against divorce, as testified by the suffering of the near-perfect
heroine as wife and daughter-in-law. The heroine’s success in overcoming

Kim Wŏn-ju 67
these formidable social obstacles demonstrates the possibility of eliminating

such gender ideologies and practices—most of all, by women themselves. In
the history of Korean literature, “Awakening” is the first work about a divorced
woman’s self-validation addressed from the woman’s perspective.
What makes the story believable and appealing may stem from the hero-
ine’s initial resolve not to disclose her story, even to her friend. Her reserve
serves as an indication of her judiciousness and discretion and leads the reader
to trust what she has to say. In addition, her laudable qualities—most nota-
bly, her unwavering devotion to her husband and his family despite the odds
against her—highlight the unfairness of her treatment, justifying her decision
to leave her marriage. Such character traits of the heroine also authenticate her
story, even though the narrative is rendered solely through the protagonist’s
one-sided perceptions and interpretations. Likewise, the narrator’s precision
in describing the fine shades of her emotions not only ensures the truthful-
ness of her account but also underscores her intelligence.
The narrative’s treatment of time is also worth noting. The story opens
with the heroine’s letter written around the time of her husband’s infidel-
ity—somewhere about the sixth or seventh year of her marriage. At the time,
the heroine is expectant with her first child. Then the heroine stops writing
to her friend. When she resumes her communication, she retraces her life
since her last correspondence, bringing it up to the present, with her son now
four years old and her graduation forthcoming. This makes the short story an
autobiographical reminiscence, recounted from the vantage point of a pres-
ent in which the narrator has undergone a total self-transformation through
education. At the same time, this temporal lapse functions to distance the
narrator from her agonizing pains and helps lend objectivity and detachment
to the essential truths she wishes to communicate to her implied audience.
Furthermore, the epistolary narrative structure and the foreshadowing tech-
nique (the husband’s mistreatment of the dog and his inflated vows of fidelity)
make “Awakening” a well-crafted piece of fiction.5

Four
Hydrangeas (1949)
Han Mu-suk
Han Mu-suk (also spelled Hahn Moo-Sook; 1918–

1993) came from a family belonging to Korea’s modern-educated class, which
produced elites highly knowledgeable in Western thought and culture. Han’s
enlightened, Western-oriented, and well-to-do family environment favorably
affected her personal development from childhood into young adulthood.
Given the Confucian-dominant, conservative milieu of her society, Han’s pro-
gressive and nurturing upbringing and extensive exposure to a wide variety
of educational and cultural opportunities were exceptional and contributed to
her later literary development into a well-informed and productive writer.
Han’s artistic talent was discovered when she was young, and her parents
provided her years of private lessons in Western painting. She graduated from
Pusan Girls’ High School, and at age nineteen she was given the privilege of
illustrating the text of Millim (The jungle, part 2; 1937–1938), a novel by Kim
Mal-bong (1901–1962), which was serialized in the newspaper Tonga ilbo.
However, Han’s ill health from her early years cut short her budding career
as a painter and ended her formal education at the high school level. Yet dur-
ing her confinement at home due to poor health, Han devoured the Western
literary masterpieces of her family’s well-stocked library, reading such authors
as Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Mann, André
Gide, Maksim Gorky, and Nikolay Gogol—mostly in Japanese translation. She
also taught herself how to write stories. The basis of Han’s literary career—her
second vocational choice—was thus fortuitously formed through her struggle
against illness and even death.
In 1942, during the Japanese occupation, Han, by then the mother of
an infant and the daughter-in-law of an extended conservative Confucian
68

Han Mu-suk 69
family, made her debut as an author with her first novel, written in Japanese,
Tomoshibi o motsu hito (The woman carrying a lamp), which won first prize
in a magazine competition.1 Her postliberation literary breakthrough came
when her second novel, Yŏksa nŭn hŭrŭnda (And so flows history; 1948), won
another competition.2 A long, winding saga, the novel maps out the fates of
highborn Korean families intertwined with those of their lower-class servants
amidst political and social turbulence from the late nineteenth century to
Korean liberation. Han’s acute historical consciousness, clearly demonstrated
in And So Flows History, compelled her to examine the intricate relationship
between the unfolding of Korean society and the destinies of individuals and
became the leitmotif of her corpus.
Han’s short stories and novels often deal with characters and situations
involving Korean classical or traditional aesthetics, modes of thinking, and
practices—particularly as they related to women. Well-known examples are
“Yusuam” (The running water hermitage; 1963), “Yi Sajong ŭi anae” (The wife
of Yi Sajong; 1978), and “Saeng’in son” (The boil at the fingertip; 1981). Yet
works such as her novel Sŏngnyu namujip iyagi (The tale of the house with
pomegranate trees; 1964) also serve as carefully wrought and consistent testi-
monies to Han’s eclectic vision to accommodate elements of modern Western
culture within the framework of Korean traditional culture.
Spanning more than four decades, Han’s creativity flourished well into the
1980s, culminating with her last novel, Mannam (Encounter; 1986). Another
family epic, involving Chŏng Yag-yong (1762–1836; pen name, Tasan) of the
Chosŏn dynasty, the greatest scholar of Practical Learning, Encounter delves
into the complexity and far-reaching tragic impact of the Catholic persecu-
tion of Chosŏn intellectuals in the nineteenth century. In 1992–1993, a ten-
volume collection of Han’s work, ranging from novels and travelogues to
essays, lectures, and interviews, was published, showcasing her lifelong lit-
erary accomplishments and versatility. It is illuminating, however, that Han
Mu-suk never ceased to cultivate her first love, painting, as is evident in her
three personal exhibitions in 1976, 1985, and 1990.
Some of the most distinguished awards Han received include the Grand
Prix of the Republic of Korea Literature Award (1986), the Samil Culture
Award (1989), and the Korean Academy of Arts Prize for Literature (1991).
While raising five children, Han served as president and representative of
Korean literary organizations, such as the Korean Association of Women
Writers and the Korean PEN Club, and also lectured on Korean literature dur-
ing her extensive overseas travels later in life.3

Hydrangeas
“Oh dear! I’m really sorry to have kept you waiting,” said Myŏnghŭi
to her friend Chŏngsun with genuine sincerity, not for mere form’s sake. She
was having a busy day.
She kept giving orders to the maid: “Suni’s Mom, would you put the meat
and fish into separate wicker baskets, and trim and wash the vegetables? Oh,
pour the flour into a glass jar so it won’t spill, please.” Then she changed into
a Korean-style blouse of white calico and, letting out a deep sigh of relief, sat
down to face Chŏngsun.
“I had to shop around for quite some time in the market, trying to find
shrimp,” Myŏnghŭi said, with a delicate frown on her flushed face.
“What an adorable wife! A devoted wife, always cheerful and lovely!” A
flash of admiration for Myŏnghŭi passed through Chŏngsun’s mind.
“Right! Fried shrimp is a favorite dish of your husband’s, isn’t it? You are
truly a wise wife,” Chŏngsun said with a laugh. Then, turning her eyes toward
the garden, she said, “Your hydrangeas are gorgeous.”
“Aren’t they? They’re the pride of our house.” Myŏnghŭi took her apron off
the hook, tied it around her slender waist, and turned toward her friend. “You
know, I put ten years’ effort into them.”
“Ten years?”
“That’s right. Today is our tenth wedding anniversary, and that means the
hydrangeas have been with us exactly ten years.”
“Has it been that long already? Myŏnghŭi, but you haven’t changed at all—
still a sweet, young wife!”
Gently brushing her friend’s arm off her shoulder, Myŏnghŭi said, “You
silly . . . ,” and blushed like a young girl. She had such clear and transparent
skin that it seemed as if even the slightest agitation in her heart would show
through.
“I wonder why newlyweds would choose a hydrangea as the first flower to
bring into their home,” Chŏngsun said.
“What’s wrong with that?” Myŏnghŭi asked.
“You do know the meaning of the hydrangea, don’t you?”
“Ah, you mean fickleness?”
“Uh-huh.”
“The hydrangea may have such a reputation because its flowers change
colors, but I don’t agree. Look at its large and dignified leaves, its charming

Han Mu-suk 71
clusters of flowers billowing up like clouds, and its subtle shades of color. It’s
hardly glamorous, but it keeps our garden alive throughout the summer—just
like a devoted housewife.”
“Well . . .”
“I think the change in color is only a natural process and has nothing to do
with fickleness.”
The maid called out from the wash area, “I’m finished with the washing,
ma’am!”
“Okay. Please take it into the kitchen. We will be there shortly,” Myŏnghŭi
shouted back. She glanced at the clock on the wall. It was only eleven in the
morning.
“We’ve got plenty of time. The party begins at seven.”
“May I ask who your guests are?”
“Mr. Kim Chŏngmok, the police chief, and his wife; Dr. Yu Hŭiguk, the
pediatrician, and his wife; Mr. Sim T’aehun, the draper, and his wife; and Mr.
Chang Myŏngsik, the middle-school teacher, and his wife. All of them are my
husband’s old hometown friends from primary school days.”
“Are you expecting them all to come?”
“Yes, of course. Among these guests, we were the last couple to marry.
When we did, his friends in Seoul got together and threw us a party.”
“I bet today means a lot to you. Are tonight’s guests all from that group?”
“Uh-huh, except for Dr. Yu Hŭiguk. He got divorced and remarried last
year, I heard.”
The maid called out again, “Ma’am, I’ve cleaned the vegetables and put
them in the kitchen!” The two friends went down to the kitchen.
Myŏnghŭi’s menu was colorful. For the warm dish, she had prepared a
hot pot in which a variety of ingredients were carefully arranged in a beauti-
ful color scheme. Then there was a sea bream, steamed whole and decorated
with various garnishes, along with seasoned and steamed beef ribs, shrimp
gratin, and sweet-and-sour pork. Cold dishes included a salad served on
fresh green lettuce leaves, sliced boiled beef and boiled pork, and calf ’s-foot
jelly. As for fruits, there were cream-colored peaches in a lavender cut-glass
bowl that complemented them in color, as well as red strawberries on a snow-
white china plate. The fresh, sweet soft drink tasted like an early summer
evening. Myŏnghŭi was blissfully picturing her dinner party, complete with
this feast that would elegantly satisfy the appetites of her guests, seated around
the candlelit dinner table covered with a white tablecloth. She brimmed with
happiness.
Myŏnghŭi had a loving and successful husband. Dignified and trustwor-
thy, he was a smart businessman yet a gentle husband. And he and Myŏnghŭi

were parents of adorable children. Their oldest son, eight-year-old Hyŏk, was
gifted in science, according to his homeroom teacher. Nothing escaped his
eyes, and he was inquisitive and studious. Six-year-old Ina was a promising
beauty—lovely like a doll—and her voice was as fine and pleasing as the tin-
kling of a silver bell. Chin, the youngest, was a rascal, an adored tyrant.
Myŏnghŭi always had plenty to report about her children to her husband
when he returned home late at night from work. “Hyŏk got a perfect score in
math today”; “Chin mispronounced ‘bad’ as ‘busy’”; “A painter passing by on
the street asked if he could use Ina as his model”; and so forth. Myŏnghŭi’s
husband would smile or burst into laughter as he changed his clothes. Such
exchanges were the sources of their happiness.
Myŏnghŭi’s husband, Kang Minho, was the president of a large flour mill
company, and the family was well-off. Although the couple had been married
for ten years, they had never been bored with their life together. They were a
couple who, shored up by mutual understanding and enthusiasm, were solidly
united in their will to be successful in life and blessed with happiness.
Myŏnghŭi had once had dreams of love and marriage as lofty as the next
person’s, but in the end married passively, like a doll. She had felt neither love
for Kang Minho nor held any special opinion of him. She simply surrendered
herself to fate, eyes closed, because as a daughter she hadn’t the courage to go
against her parents’ will. Kang Minho was but a poor, ordinary young man,
and she could hardly understand what it was that her father, a man of consid-
erable social position, saw in his future son-in-law.
Soon after her marriage, Myŏnghŭi’s greatest disillusion was her hus-
band’s insensitivity. He was too rough-hewn. Unable to understand the deli-
cacy of a woman’s deep, hidden emotions, he couldn’t strike the right chord
in Myŏnghŭi’s heart. Focused only on concrete action, he was continually
destroying the dreams of his romantically bent wife. In due course, she aban-
doned her dreams, regarded herself as an “unhappy wife,” and found in this
label a bittersweet consolation.
One day about three months into their marriage, Myŏnghŭi was giving
a brushing to a suit her husband had taken off. Casual by nature, he had a
habit of stuffing his pockets with things, which ruined the shape of his suit
and irritated Myŏnghŭi. As she went through the pockets, she discovered a
bunch of newspaper scraps. Casually unfolding them, thinking they were
mere wastepaper, she noticed they were all advertisements for medicine for
stomach disorders. She was thunderstruck. Medicine ads for stomach trou-
ble! Her husband was paying attention to the newspaper ads out of concern
for his mother, who had long been suffering from stomach ailments. It never
occurred to Myŏnghŭi that her husband, whom she had thought insensitive,

Han Mu-suk 73
brusque, and self-centered, was so devoted to his mother and had such a deli-
cate, caring side. Myŏnghŭi felt ashamed. She recognized her own shallowness
that led her to self-pity whenever she’d heard people say, “The new bride is so
lovely, but her husband is so unrefined!” That night, and for the first time in
her married life, Myŏnghŭi finally felt happiness in her husband’s embrace.
Even when in needy circumstances, Myŏnghŭi and her husband kept peace
with one another, and they never lost hope in the midst of numerous setbacks.
Life might be a game played by its creator, but it was also a onetime chance
for everyone to experiment. Myŏnghŭi and her husband were determined to
put up a good fight and overcome life’s difficulties. Their goal to secure stabil-
ity was very ordinary, perhaps even trivial, but they sought to find the value
of their lives in the quest for this goal. Their life’s course was anything but
smooth, but behind the figure of her husband were Myŏnghŭi’s self-effacing
wifely devotion, hard work, and love. Most of all, there was her complete trust
in her husband. Now that he had attained social recognition as a successful
man, Myŏnghŭi sometimes felt apprehensive of the great happiness she was
enjoying.
It is true that one of life’s joys for a married couple is to live in mutual respect
and understanding in a fine, well-kept home, tastefully and handsomely deco-
rated, and to enjoy watching their precious children grow. Myŏnghŭi and her
husband were still young and accordingly had high hopes.
“Oh my, since when have you collected so many plates?” asked Chŏngsun,
looking wide-eyed into the cupboard she’d opened. She felt proud at the grow-
ing stock of Myŏnghŭi’s household goods, for she had loved Myŏnghŭi like
a younger sister ever since their high school days. To Chŏngsun, Myŏnghŭi
was too artless and innocent to be the object of jealousy, and her love for
Myŏnghŭi was too great to allow envy.
In fact, married during the most trying war years at the end of the Japa-
nese occupation, Myŏnghŭi and her husband had begun their life together
with little more than a pot, a cooking brazier, and a handful of bowls, and it
took a lot for Myŏnghŭi to acquire even these kitchen wares. Each and every
one of the utensils bore traces of a frugal wife’s sweat and devotion. For her,
every single coffee cup, soup bowl, and piece of cut glass was fraught with
memories. They were Myŏnghŭi’s treasures.
“You know what? Once in a while when I break one of them, I feel a real
physical pain, as if I’d cut my own flesh,” Myŏnghŭi said with a laugh.
As Chŏngsun watched Myŏnghŭi’s nimble fingers wield the knife, she felt
anew that those hands were much older and rougher than Myŏnghŭi’s face.
Myŏnghŭi suddenly smiled to herself as if she had remembered something,
and asked Chŏngsun, “Would you like to hear a story?”

“One evening during the Pacific War,” Myŏnghŭi began, “the group com-
ing tonight was gathered in our house. As you well know, that’s when the
blackout was in force. Our guests drew the air-raid curtains together and
shaded the electric bulb with a black cloth as if they were holding a secret
meeting, and they began to have drinks. In between serving the guests, I sat
knitting in the inner room. Suddenly I smelled something burning. I looked
around and noticed that the guest room was filled with thick smoke. Wonder-
ing what was going on, I rushed over and found that the black cloth placed
over the electric bulb had caught fire.
“A commotion broke out. The guests panicked and kicked up a row, but
didn’t do a thing to put out the fire. Finally, my husband pulled the burning
electrical cord from the outlet and hurled it out into the yard. By that time the
drinking party turned into pandemonium.
“After I cleaned up the drinking table and lighted candles, the group resumed
its partying. Then Mr. Kim Chŏngmok said, ‘Look, we shouldn’t be so careless.
The whole point of covering the electric bulb is to avoid air raids and fire.’
“Thereupon Mr. Sim T’aehun, feeling bad about the burned cloth, said, ‘It’s
terrible! These days it’s so hard to get fabric.’
“Then Dr. Yu Hŭiguk turned to me and said, ‘Mrs. Kang, you must’ve been
frightened.’
“Then Mr. Chang Myŏngsik chimed in with ‘What’s all this fuss over noth-
ing! Come on, bottoms up!’ and filled the wine cups.”
Myŏnghŭi laughed softly and said, “When I later recalled what every-
one had said, I was amazed how much casual remarks can reveal people’s
personalities.”
“Is Dr. Yu Hŭiguk the pediatrician who got divorced?”
“Uh-huh. I’m rather puzzled. He was a feminist and loved his wife very
much.”
“There must be some reason, though.”
“We thought his wife was a fine person too.”
“Well, it’s not always personal failings that cause such misfortune, you
know. Married couples break up simply out of change of heart,” Chŏngsun
said, sighing.
Chŏngsun was fully aware of her husband’s affair with the kisaeng Ch’uwŏl.
When Chŏngsun realized that she, as his wife, was still under his control,
she shuddered with humiliation, as if she herself had been defiled. She had
thought many times about leaving such a loathsome marital relationship,
but to her despair, it was not so much a matter of courage as one of power.
When she tried to realistically picture herself standing on her own without
her husband’s protection, she saw only a helpless woman with absolutely no

Han Mu-suk 75
means of supporting herself. Moreover, concern for her children stood in the
way of her desire to sever her conjugal ties completely, however rotten those
ties were.
Myŏnghŭi stopped her egg-beating and, glancing at her friend’s face, said,
“I wonder who would want to get married when the wife’s position is so inse-
cure and powerless.”
“Even so, that’s the reality, and what can you do?” Chŏngsun snapped
back, adding, “Do you remember Yi Myŏng’ok? You know—the girl famous
for her passionate marriage for love. I heard she got divorced recently.”
“You don’t say! Are you sure?”
“I didn’t believe it either at first.”
“Unbelievable.”
“That’s why it’s so incredible. Basically men are wild, and what’s worse,
these days they have too many chances to meet other women.”
“Why do you see everything so cynically?”
“You see, husbands with wives like you won’t ever go astray, but I think
women are born temptresses, no matter who they are.”
“That’s going too far!”
“Why, it’s true! I once played silly games myself. You see, women get cruel
pleasure from tempting men.”
“Do you mean it?”
“Oh yes. In my younger days, my mother had a Mister Right in mind for
me. Since I already had a boyfriend—who later became my husband—I had
no intention of marrying the fellow. But because of the pressure, I was obliged
to have a blind date with him. I put on elaborate, eye-catching makeup and
went out to see him.”
“How could you!”
“The fellow fell for me.”
“Ha, ha! How funny!”
Chŏngsun didn’t laugh. Instead she kept skinning the green onions—need-
lessly roughly.
Chŏngsun had learned from the fellow’s younger sister, whom she got to
know by chance, that he couldn’t get her out of his mind. Thereafter Chŏngsun
felt pangs about the man, of whom she had almost made a fool. Chŏngsun
regarded it as an ironic trick of fate that she, a wretched wife who had lost her
husband’s love to a mere kisaeng, still remained alive in another man’s heart as
his eternal love. “Isn’t it true then that the beauty of eternal love lives only in
parting?” Chŏngsun felt warm tears welling up in her eyes.
“Mom! Mom!” Hyŏk and Ina rushed in. At the same time, Chin waved his
arms and cried out, “Mommy, mommy!” as he was carried in on the back of

his nursemaid. Myŏnghŭi handed each child a peach and kissed Chin on his
forehead. “My beloved children!” A smile, like that of a spoiled girl’s, floated
across Myŏnghŭi’s lips.
For the evening party, Myŏnghŭi had made plans. In place of an opening
speech, her family would join in singing “Home, Sweet Home.” She thought
there was nothing improper in showing off her happy family to her husband’s
close friends. As she recalled how much she had both laughed and labored as
she tried to teach the song’s melody to her tone-deaf husband, she couldn’t
help but smile to herself.
“Ding, ding, ding—”
The heavy-looking clock on the hallway wall gently struck six o’clock. All
the cold foods were neatly arranged on the plates, while steam rose from the
hot pots, awaiting the guests’ arrival.
Myŏnghŭi gathered her children together and bustled about washing and
dressing them. After freshening herself up, she began her own careful groom-
ing. She rouged her cheeks—a dash more thickly than usual—penciled her
eyebrows carefully, and then applied heavy lipstick. She put on a Korean dress
made of cream-colored lace, slipped an Alexandria amethyst ring on her fin-
ger to match her dress, and tucked a spray of lavender lilac into her glossy
hair.
“You are exquisite! You look as pure and beautiful as a bride right after her
wedding,” exclaimed Chŏngsun in admiration. Myŏnghŭi smiled at Chŏngsun
in the mirror and felt a rush of self-satisfaction.
The two went to the drawing room.
The sweet-scented early summer breeze wafted in through the wide-open
windows, carrying the fragrance of acacia and lilac blossoms, and made pet-
als fall from the white roses in the Koryŏ celadon vase on the black piano. On
the bookcase, the clock in the shape of Atlas holding up the earth showed ten
minutes to seven.
The phone rang. Myŏnghŭi picked it up.
“Hello, yes, yes. Is it you, honey? Why? Oh dear, that’s too bad! Okay,
okay. Then please come home as soon as possible.” A shadow passed over
Myŏnghŭi’s face as she put the receiver down.
“Was it your husband? Did he say he’d be late?”
“Uh-huh. He’ll be a little late because of urgent business.”
“Today of all days!”
“Well, what can I say?”
“Ring!” This time it was the doorbell. Myŏnghŭi rushed out.
“How do you do?”
“How are you?” Yu Hŭiguk was the first guest to arrive. His voice sounded

Han Mu-suk 77
like a gentle embrace. His wife, who was far younger than he, only smiled and
bowed her head.
“I suppose Chin is doing fine these days?” he said.
“Yes, thanks to you.” Myŏnghŭi was close to Yu Hŭiguk, more as her chil-
dren’s doctor than as her husband’s friend.
“I guess no one is here yet.” He sat down on the sofa and looked at the
framed calligraphy of Ch’usa on the wall.4 As a medical doctor, Yu Hŭiguk
appreciated mothers like Myŏnghŭi, young mothers who paid close attention
to their children’s health.
The doorbell rang again exactly when the hour hand of the clock pointed
to seven. Myŏnghŭi rushed to the hallway.
“You see, it’s exactly seven o’clock,” Chang Myŏngsik said proudly as he
looked at his wristwatch.
Standing beside him, his wife said curtly, “What’s the big deal about being
on time, when it’s common sense for educated people to be punctual?” Every-
one burst into laughter. Mrs. Chang was a cheerful, funny, hardworking, and
entertaining woman, although she was no beauty, with her high cheekbones
and thick eyelids.
When Chang Myŏngsik was told that Myŏnghŭi’s husband would be a little
late, he said, “How come? No host?” Once inside the living room, however, he
went on chatting with Dr. Yu Hŭiguk. The knowledgeable Chang Myŏngsik
loved to talk and had plenty to say on any number of topics. He explained in
detail to Dr. Yu about the accidental discovery of penicillin and stressed that
Korean doctors should pay more attention to such mysteries hidden in nature
rather than trying to get academic degrees by simply conducting experiments
on guinea pigs. Dr. Yu Hŭiguk, every inch a medical doctor, simply listened
to his friend’s chatter, with his clean, long fingers clasped, a wry smile floating
across his lips.
“Look at him! Why, he is teaching the Buddha how to make an offering,”
Mrs. Chang Myŏngsik said, laughing and poking Myŏnghŭi in the side. Her
remark made even the prim Mrs. Yu smile.
The doorbell rang again around seven thirty, and the stout, beardless Sim
T’aehun showed up with his wife. Both were dressed in Korean-style clothes.
He wore a brand-new ramie overcoat, complete with his trouser cuffs tied
with jade-blue bands. His well-groomed wife had on an indigo skirt with a
silver-hued blouse accented by ornamental sleeve trimmings. A decorative
garnet hairpin peeked out of her hairdo. Sim T’aehun had a habit of agreeing
with everyone, saying “Right, right” and bursting into boisterous laughter.
Except for Mrs. Chang Myŏngsik, all the other wives were quiet. Mrs. Sim
had her silky hair done in a neat chignon with a maroon ribbon twisted into it.

The young Mrs. Yu let her wavy, permed hair hang loose over her shoulders,
without tying it up. She and the simply dressed wife of the middle-school
teacher didn’t mix well as the male guests did.
The host and last guest were still missing even as it approached eight
o’clock. Signs of boredom began to appear on the guests’ faces. Finally a car
stopped in front of the gate, followed by the ringing of the doorbell. Myŏnghŭi
went outside and greeted Police Chief Kim Chŏngmok, who was surrounded
by police guards. He made a hand salute to Myŏnghŭi in a self-possessed
manner. His wife, with thick makeup on her finely wrinkled face, clung to
him tightly and said in a haughty tone as if she were bestowing a favor rather
than making an apology, “We are sorry for being late, but my husband just
managed to get away from his work.”
Myŏnghŭi felt all the more flustered at her husband’s absence now that
all the guests were gathered. Chang Myŏngsik loudly rebuked the host, look-
ing at his watch several times, while Dr. Yu sat silent. The police chief ’s wife
grumbled as if someone had slighted her husband: “He barely made it to this
party, but . . .”
Chŏngsun left for home at eight o’clock, saying that her children were
waiting for her. Hyŏk and Ina sat dozing off, dressed in their best outfits
and waiting for a chance to sing “Home, Sweet Home” in chorus. Myŏnghŭi
became more and more heavyhearted. In fact, she no longer had any desire
to sing “Home, Sweet Home,” even had her husband appeared at that very
moment.
The guests Myŏnghŭi had waited for so eagerly turned out to be no more
than cold strangers. The police chief ’s smug wife was humoring her stuck-up
husband in an almost servile manner. The schoolteacher’s wife, who had no
qualms about snubbing her husband in front of others, irritated Myŏnghŭi.
Mrs. Sim, with her classic looks, seemed to be living worlds apart from her
husband, and the young Mrs. Yu looked like her husband’s toy. No genuine
human interaction seemed to be going on among them. Myŏnghŭi began to
yearn for her husband.
It was ten past eight. The atmosphere among the guests grew more and
more strained. At that moment, a car horn sounded in front of the gate.
Myŏnghŭi kicked open the front door and sprinted outside of the gate as
if catapulted from a steel spiral. She was too anxious and impatient to wait
for her husband to enter the house, and she wanted to throw herself into his
bosom without any attention to the others.
It was a beautiful evening filled with the fragrance of flowers. Myŏnghŭi
went to her husband’s side as he got out of the car, and clung to his arms.
“What has kept you so late, honey?” Myŏnghŭi asked tenderly, as she

Han Mu-suk 79
looked up at him. But he didn’t answer her. Instead he said, “Won’t you come
on in for a while?”
“No, I’d rather not,” answered the coquettish voice of a young woman.
Myŏnghŭi’s husband turned around and said to Myŏnghŭi, “You know my
secretary, Miss Wŏn Chaeok.”
Finally the woman in the car bent forward and said to Myŏnghŭi, “How do
you do?”
Myŏnghŭi suddenly felt tongue-tied and could hardly say hello. But she
noticed instantly that the heavily made-up woman in the car was extremely
good-looking. A terror ran through Myŏnghŭi as if the ground had opened
under her feet.
“Why don’t you come in for a short visit?” said her husband gently.
“No, thank you,” said the woman, stubbornly refusing his invitation.
“Well then, please make sure to phone Mr. Pak regarding those matters,
although I’ll come to the office early tomorrow. When Mr. Myŏng calls on
me, please ask him to wait.” Myŏnghŭi’s husband gave his secretary instructions
on matters Myŏnghŭi didn’t comprehend and then closed the car door for the
woman.
When Myŏnghŭi was about to enter the house ahead of him, her husband
for some reason stopped the car as it pulled away and, clinging to it, whis-
pered something in a low voice. His profile, with his soft-gray hat, his long
legs bent, and his jaw cupped in his hand—everything appeared to Myŏnghŭi
as though he was saying, “I love you.” The woman in the car suddenly looked
up and flashed a smile. Her pretty lips moved slightly. Myŏnghŭi imagined
she heard the woman’s soundless voice saying, “I do too.” Myŏnghŭi felt as if
a pitch-black darkness were descending upon her. She thought her heart had
broken open and its blood was gushing out in torrents.
As soon as the car left, her husband turned toward Myŏnghŭi, grinned
awkwardly, and then dashed into the house ahead of her. Drained of all her
strength, Myŏnghŭi found it difficult to control her body. She stood in the
darkness in front of the entrance hall and listened blankly to the increasingly
boisterous laughter coming from the living room, as if it were from a totally
alien world.
“Honey, where are you?” The loud voice of her husband looking for
Myŏnghŭi reached her.
Myŏnghŭi trembled like a leaf.
“I’ve got to get a grip on myself.” Clenching her teeth, Myŏnghŭi went
inside.
The last drop of strength squeezed out of Myŏnghŭi—a cruelly humili-
ated and dispirited wife—and propped her up, braced by her wifely pride and

pathetic bravado. More than anything else, she hated betraying to the guests,
there to celebrate her and her husband’s anniversary, her suspicion that her
husband might have been cheating on her.
Myŏnghŭi entered the drawing room with a soft smile on her face, as if she
were joining the guests again after having interrupted her food preparation.
Leaning against the back of an armchair, her husband was carrying on, talk-
ing and laughing. When laughing, his protruding tooth showed, which added
an unexpected attractiveness to his husky build. To Myŏnghŭi, her husband,
with whom she had lived for the past ten years, now looked like a stranger she
was meeting for the first time. Particularly tonight, he appeared to Myŏnghŭi
even more muscular, dignified, and distinguished. Broad-shouldered with a
full and well-formed body, long, straight legs, and fine conversational skills—
he, in his thirties, seemed to have all the assets of a man in the prime of life.
Even his plain-looking face now seemed to have a masculine appeal.
As if she were going through a strenuous ascetic practice, Myŏnghŭi put
all her effort into serving the guests at the party, which finally came to life. Her
head burning intensely as fire, she could not discern one thing from another,
and she felt as if her nerves, strained like a thread pulled taut, would snap at
the slightest touch.
“Is this the so-called jealousy?” Myŏnghŭi wondered, because she had
never experienced such a violent emotion before.
After all the guests had gone, her husband went straight to bed.
Myŏnghŭi sat in front of her dressing table, her heart still pounding. Her
thoughts wandered: “Weren’t we the happiest couple among those gathered
tonight? Is a wife’s devotion, no matter how great, worthless? Is this the kind
of reward for the wife who selflessly sacrificed her youth and beauty for her
husband? Is inner beauty of character so powerless, and is demonic external
beauty so powerful that it trumps all other virtues?”
They say that jealousy stimulates love, but Myŏnghŭi thought that at least
she and her husband hadn’t led such a stagnant and perfunctory married life
as to require such stimulus.
The woman in the car possessed the seductive attractiveness Myŏnghŭi
had already lost, the kind that could easily capture a man’s heart—a woman
who knew about the business of Myŏnghŭi’s husband and who aided him on
matters Myŏnghŭi knew nothing about. Then wasn’t Myŏnghŭi only a hateful
obstacle to her husband, blocking his happiness?
Myŏnghŭi recalled a comic skit she had seen some while ago in the
countryside, performed by a traveling troupe. The entertainers had staged
the story of the ugly, bungling, and dull-witted wife of the country farmer

Han Mu-suk 81
Pak, who—with her horrid face patched with powder—was madly jealous of
her husband’s nimble, deft, and pretty mistress. Myŏnghŭi now wondered,
“If a concubine, who is looked down upon with hatred by other people, has
such an absolute and bewitching power over Pak, then Pak’s wife—his lawful
wife—is simply a ludicrous and worthless being, the object of pitiful smiles.
Isn’t she? Then aren’t all men fiends, so cruel and wicked?”
Myŏnghŭi gathered that she and her husband would at least avoid an offi-
cial split, because he wouldn’t go so far as to lose his reason. Yet Myŏnghŭi
felt she was too pure to allow her husband to hold her in his arms again,
while he was embracing the image of another woman in his heart. But she
also knew she didn’t have the courage to leave her marriage, abandoning her
lovely children, Chin, Hyŏk, and Ina. Her only hope was that this was all sim-
ply a nightmare conjured by her misunderstanding. However, the awkward
smile on her husband’s face, which he’d shown her after he sent the car away,
was a complicated expression of his conscience-stricken heart that could soon
change into hatred.
Myŏnghŭi felt that her heart was going to burst. Suddenly her self-respect
as a wife, her joy and pride as a mother, became burdensome to her.
She stood and opened the window. In the silvery, moonlight-drenched
garden, the clouds of hydrangea clusters were wearing pallid smiles, embrac-
ing the moonlight.
[First published in Hŭimang (Hope), December 1949]
Analysis of “Hydrangeas”
In “Hydrangeas” (Suguk; 1949), Han presents a poignant picture

of a woman’s midlife crisis, which disturbs her complacency as a full-time
upper-middle-class housewife and makes her question her self-identity and
the meaning of her life. The shock is occasioned by suspicions about her
husband’s relationship with his attractive young secretary. Myŏnghŭi, the
protagonist, is a perfect housewife with an enviable social standing and eco-
nomic security—the rewards of a strong marriage that she believes she and
her husband built together with accord. In her opinion, even her children are
flawless. The heroine thus personifies the aspirations of middle-class women,
while her home represents the realization of the bourgeois dream.
Myŏnghŭi’s meticulous preparations for a dinner party are nothing but an
effort to show off her impeccable domestic and conjugal bliss, but her inflated
hopes are dashed by the shocking discovery of her husband’s interest in some-

one other than his wife and family. The glamorous secretary represents a new
type of woman with membership in the larger business world outside the
home, characterizing Myŏnghŭi by contrast as a domesticated, uninformed
outsider, excluded from a professional life. The secretary is also an intruder—
an insidious threat to Myŏnghŭi’s marriage and family. Most important is
that, to Myŏnghŭi, her husband seems to be an accomplice of his secretary,
in a liaison that threatens to destroy what Myŏnghŭi has so zealously worked
for. She feels betrayed, helpless, and lost in her own world as her self-created
“feminine mystique” is mercilessly destroyed, leaving her a tortured woman
caught between the sham of her publicly projected happiness and a private
nagging sense of failure. The main thrust of “Hydrangeas” is crystallized in
the heroine’s epiphany when she realizes the limitations of a selfless home-
bound life that has abandoned her in a stagnant and constricted domesticity
and has potentially put her wifely rights and privileges in jeopardy.
In this story Han effectively uses a number of techniques and devices for
foreshadowing and for creating an ironic tone. First, the image of the hydran-
geas, whose name means “infidelity,” warns of what the heroine will even-
tually experience, adding poignancy to the twisted turn of events. Repeated
references to the song “Home, Sweet Home” also enhance the foreshadowing
and irony. Further, the subnarrative of Chŏngsun’s marital trouble functions
to bind Myŏnghŭi to the common lot of betrayed wives, while puncturing her
hidden superiority over her old friend that largely derives from her false sense
of marital bliss. Actually, Myŏnghŭi’s misery is more devastating, as her hus-
band is the only man she has ever known—in mocking contrast to her friend’s
unhappiness, for Chŏngsun still has a secret admirer from her youth.
Han’s narrative skill is evidenced in her dramatic buildup of tension, which
steadily increases during the anticipated but prolonged delay of the arrival of
Myŏnghŭi’s husband, until the story reaches its climax with his appearance in
the company of his secretary. Then the story is swiftly brought to its denoue-
ment, intensifying the crushing emotional impact on the heroine. In addition,
Han Mu-suk’s masterful use of conversation, internal musings, and analysis
of characters through their physical traits, personal carriage, interactions, and
gestures discloses her cast’s temperaments, states of mind, and strengths and
weaknesses. The author’s aesthetic sensibility, as revealed by her attention to
the minute details of the home, the dinner menu, the table settings, the inte-
rior of the house, and even the clothing and accessories of the characters, is a
notable quality stemming from Han’s early training in art.

Five
The Mist (1950)
Kang Sin-jae
A Seoul native, Kang Sin-jae (1924–2001) was the

eldest child of a medical doctor and a kindergarten teacher. In her early
childhood, her father’s job took the family to Ch’ŏngjin, in rugged North
Hamgyŏng Province. The cold weather, harsh landscape, and wild seas of the
region made a deep impression on the bright and sensitive Kang, who later
used such natural scenery as the background in her writings. After her father’s
unexpected death when she was a fifth grader, her widowed mother, with four
young children in tow, returned to the capital of Seoul for the sake of their
education.
Kang’s literary talent was discovered by her primary school teachers, who
encouraged her creative writing, and in her early teens she won first prize
in national student literary competitions. By the time she graduated from
Kyŏnggi Girls’ High School and entered Ewha Womans University in 1943,
Korea had become a supply base for the Japanese war effort. Though wishing
to major in English, Kang was forced to change to home economics because
studying English in the war years was considered by university authorities to
be cooperating with Japan’s enemies. Kang’s college days were filled with dis-
content, frustration, and boredom with the Japanese-controlled curriculum
and school activities. Reading became her only escape from disillusionment
and a way to fill the educational vacuum. Toward the end of 1944, she quit
Ewha and married a Korean college student who was drafted into the Japa-
nese army. After liberation, Kang was reunited with her husband, but she had
lost her chance to complete her college education.
83

Kang debuted in 1949 with two short stories, “Ŏlgul” (A face) and
“Chŏngsuni” (The girl Chŏngsun). Kang’s primary interest lay in portray-
ing pure love, understanding, and human warmth. The majority of her pro-
tagonists—usually sensitive and refined—live in hostile or conflict-ridden
circumstances that pose obstacles to their aspirations and pursuit of happi-
ness. Eventually, however, the main characters transform their struggle into
one of rare beauty and elegance, even if their lives end in tragedy. Kang also
deploys shady and detestable secondary characters to form a contrast to these
protagonists and bring out their admirable inner qualities. In presenting her
characters, this author displays a refinement in craftsmanship, by maintain-
ing distance and objectivity, and succeeds in creating dramatis personae that
remain in control of their emotions and actions.
Kang’s signature work is unquestionably “Chŏlmŭn nŭt’i namu” (Young
Zelkova; 1960)—a provocative story about a love between a stepbrother (col-
lege student) and a stepsister (high school student) living under the same
roof. The impact of the story’s innovative view of morality—the relationship
was legally (though not biologically) incestuous—on contemporary Korean
society led to its being made into a film in 1968. Even today the challenge
and popularity of the story continue, as revealed in the extensive academic
research on it. Kang’s major works include Imjingang ŭi mindŭlle (Dandelions
on the Imjin riverbanks; 1962), a tragic love story of a woman and her fam-
ily’s hardships set against the backdrop of the Korean War. Another of Kang’s
novels, P’ado (Waves; 1963), is an episodic narrative concerning the compli-
cated life stories of a number of people living in a northern port, with a young,
rough-hewn but curious and extroverted girl as its unifying focus. The novel
reflects a strong regional flavor derived from Kang’s childhood experience in
Ch’ŏngjin. In 1974, Kang Sin-jae became the first Korean woman writer to
have her works published in a multivolume collection. From the late 1970s,
Kang began to turn to the historical genre and produced such serial novels as
Sado sejabin (The wife of Prince Sado; 1981, three volumes) and Myŏngsŏng
wanghu (Queen Myŏngsŏng; 1991, three volumes).
Kang served as president of the Korean Association of Women Writers
(1982–1984) and in 1983 became a member of the Korean Republic Academy
of Arts and a representative of the Association of Korean Writers. She has
received the Association of Korean Writers Award (1959), Women’s Literature
Award (1967), the Chung’ang Cultural Grand Prix (1984), the Korean Repub-
lic Academy of Arts Award (1988), and the Samil Culture Award (1997).

Kang Sin-jae 85
The Mist
Sŏnghye was sitting at her desk, vacantly facing a wad of money—

ninety 100-wŏn notes in mint condition—placed on top of a new issue of the
blue-covered magazine in which her story was published. An errand boy from
the publisher had delivered the money and the magazine. Sŏnghye received
them with wet hands, as she was doing laundry at the public tap-water area.
She carefully tucked the magazine under her arm so as not to soil its blue
cover and walked all the way home ebullient with pride and joy, her heart
beating wildly. Gently biting her lips and quietly smiling to herself, Sŏnghye
tried to keep her exhilaration, buoyant like a young girl’s, in check. But after
she’d again locked the front gate and returned to the tap-water area to finish
her wash, dark clouds had begun to gather and whirl about in her mind. As
time passed, she felt her gloom increasing.
The story published in the magazine was a product of Sŏnghye’s hard
work—the result of untold anguish and dogged perseverance. It also meant
her first victory after a long, nerve-racking and lonely struggle. Given that
her work had made it into this leading magazine, anticipating the public’s
attention—no matter how small it might be—was enough to stir up powerful,
inexpressible emotions in Sŏnghye. Her joy was like a warm spring breeze in
which she would like to indulge herself, forgetting everything.
On top of this, the stack of ninety crisp bills came in so handy to Sŏnghye—
a lucky break for her at the moment. For the past two or three years, Sŏnghye
and her husband had had no easy way of making money other than taking out
their own overcoats, jackets, books, or whatever else they had and pawning
them for cash. This payment would give Sŏnghye a timely excuse to escape
her unbearable daily routine, sitting, rain or shine, in her dark cubbyhole of
a room and sorting out bundles of tangled threads—a paid job brought in by
her husband, Hyŏngsik. As the cash payment would make their lives easier for
some time, it ought to have brought a glow to Sŏnghye’s face.
Instead, as Sŏnghye sat at the desk in her room after finishing her wash,
her face grew ever cloudier. The image of Hyŏngsik’s face began to trouble her
and wouldn’t ease up. As she pictured the ugly scene that was sure to follow
upon Hyŏngsik’s return home, she already felt sick at heart. The thought that
she would have to take the trouble to explain herself and apologize for having
written stories, and in the end would need to ask his forgiveness, turned her
stomach.

Too late Sŏnghye realized that it was a mistake for her to have done her
work surreptitiously behind her husband’s back while he was away from home
in order to avoid his snubbing her effort as a waste of time. Her greatest blun-
der—if one could call it a blunder—was keeping her writing practice a secret
from him until now, when her work had come out in print. She had held out
thus far, determined to accept the consequences of her actions whatever they
might be. Now that the time had come to actually face them, she found it
unnerving.
Sŏnghye had sufficient reason to fear that her husband, far from being
happy for her, would surely be resentful—worse still, she had reason to expect
an even nastier reaction. In spite of their pinched circumstances, Hyŏngsik
had stubbornly objected to her getting a job outside the home, even though
she had the qualifications necessary for teaching in girls’ schools. He would
rather have her work on tangled skeins at home.
“Imagine a housewife wandering about outside the house, day in and day
out! It’s filthy.”
“But what’s the point in drudging at this sort of hard work for a mere pit-
tance? You see it’s unhealthy too.”
“If you hate your work that much, quit anytime now! I’m not forcing
you.”
“It’s not that I hate it . . . ”
“Quit it, I say!”
Repetitions of such hopeless spats led Sŏnghye to conclude that the type
of ideal wife Hyŏngsik had in mind might have its own hidden, invaluable
beauty. This self-disapproval that kept gnawing at her turned into a sense of
resignation in the end, and Sŏnghye ended by letting her husband have his
own way. Yet she wondered if she hadn’t turned out a deceitful wife after all,
since she had been stealthily pursuing her story writing while simultaneously
trying to throw off the yoke of her inefficient way of making a living—the
chore of untangling threads—cooped up in a room.
Another concern intensified Sŏnghye’s discomfort. Hyŏngsik was a two-
faced man. Although he was an old-fashioned bigot at home, once outside,
he changed into a pompous liberal and a cultural aficionado, second to none.
From the start, therefore, it was altogether out of the question that he hold on
to a steady—“ordinary and insignificant,” according to him—job. Once in a
while he would take part in so-called cultural enterprises, but he rarely stayed
with a job more than half a year. Yet he never stopped writing poems. He also
took up painting from time to time and loved listening to music in tearooms
more than anyone.
He never lagged behind others in his love of these things, but that love

Kang Sin-jae 87
was all there was to it. Literary events and art exhibitions more often than not
passed him by. So he had chosen to live his life in his own way—at once harbor-
ing adoration and hostility, admiration and disdain, for these unapproachable
worlds. Sŏnghye’s attitude toward her husband, however, was far from such a
presumptuous feeling as pity. Exceptionally unpretentious, Sŏnghye simply
thought herself incapable of understanding either her husband’s “poetry” or
his “paintings.”
Sŏnghye had a hunch that her husband would be upset that her story had
been published by the very magazine constantly on his lips and that she had
already been asked to contribute another manuscript. With a heavy heart,
Sŏnghye looked around her small, destitute room and cast her eyes to the blue
cover of the magazine and the fresh bills. Her feelings were no longer simple
worries. They were much heavier, even draining.
It was time for Sŏnghye to fix dinner. With money in her grocery basket, she
left her house. Recalling their very skimpy menu of late, she bought meat, fish,
and even a dozen of eggs. As soon as she’d stepped into the kitchen, she busied
herself preparing various side dishes. She put in plenty of firewood to warm
the floor of the room, which had grown colder and more dismal even as the
ice outside began to melt and the weather grew warmer. Then she waited for
her husband.
After looking over the dinner table, Hyŏngsik let out a shrill whistle and
turned his palms inside out as if to ask what this was all about. Sŏnghye, who
had been sitting at the table waiting for him, told how she had been paid for
her manuscript, while drawing circles on the table with the end of her chop-
sticks, her head hanging low.
“Huh? What are you talking about?” The frown on Hyŏngsik’s disbelieving
face stung Sŏnghye’s nerves. With the kind of calm that comes with resigna-
tion, she explained how her story had come to be published—how she’d writ-
ten when the mood struck her, and how a friend of hers had taken the story to
a well-known author and then it finally saw daylight. But she didn’t mention
how many times she’d rewritten it, how she’d poured her whole heart and soul
into it. When he finished listening to Sŏnghye, Hyŏngsik appeared lost and at
a loss for words.
After a long silence, Hyŏngsik groaned, “Uhh . . .” Then he picked up his
chopsticks, a bland expression—something between annoyance and disin-
terest—floating across his face. Much relieved that the matter had at least
stopped at that point, Sŏnghye put her hand on the lid of her rice bowl to eat
her dinner too.
During dinner, Hyŏngsik again grew sullen, but then suddenly, lightening

up, he began to talk. He said he had an appointment the next day to meet the
critic Mr. Yun, to whom he had submitted his poems for review some time
earlier through his friend Mr. H.
“He’s well known for his harsh criticism, you know. He never praises any-
body. But they say that once his sharp eye catches a new gem, he doesn’t hesi-
tate a second!” So Hyŏngsik described the critic Mr. Yun.
Sŏnghye nodded and sincerely hoped for the best for her husband.
Hyŏngsik fell silent again. This time he gorged himself on the meat dish,
egg pancakes, and grilled fish. He kept stuffing himself, heartily enjoying the
food. All of a sudden, Sŏnghye felt a rush of emotion, something totally unex-
pected. Watching her husband’s mouth in rapid motion, his jaw and neck, she
felt that if she kept looking any longer, she’d break into tears. On the one hand,
she felt greatly relieved at such a surprisingly simple end to the discussion of
her story; but on the other, she felt unbearably sad. She herself couldn’t figure
out where this emotional confusion came from.
It turned out Sŏnghye was too hasty in concluding that luck favored her.
Although she got through the crisis without a hitch, the following evening,
Hyŏngsik, who had hurriedly left to meet Mr. Yun, returned home very tipsy
and began harassing Sŏnghye with sarcastic remarks about the events of the
day before. When she asked about his meeting with Mr. Yun, he replied,
“Great! From now on I’ll be able to live on easy street!” Then, darting a side-
long glance at her and twisting his lips, he added, “It looks as if the poet Pak
Hyŏngsik will be able to leap to fame at a bound, thanks to his wife. Well, let
him live on her generous bounty!”
His bloodshot eyes growing even redder, he rattled on sneeringly, “Look
at this cramped hole of a room! With all this mess, where can I set my foot?
And you have the nerve to talk about literature? First things first—how about
trying to get my trousers properly pressed for a start?”
Sŏnghye kept quiet.
“You don’t expect me to put up with all this nonsense? No wife to speak of
in the first place, and now she is about to be waited on by her husband!”
Sŏnghye remained silent.
“Hey, how about grabbing this as a chance to divorce me, so you can come
and go freely like a lady writer, eh?”
The barrage of his taunts went on without pause. With her head down,
Sŏnghye let him go on, but in the end, she raised her head and looked straight
into his eyes. She could no longer stand her husband’s twisted pride and mean
spirit. The sight of her husband in such a state inspired fear in her. Her impulse
to cover her eyes, however, made her raise her head instead.
Sŏnghye almost felt compelled to say, “I won’t ever write again.” She meant

Kang Sin-jae 89
to say it, no matter how painful it was to her. Yet she found herself immobilized,
unable to utter such words. This in turn dismayed and pained Sŏnghye, and
she desperately wished Hyŏngsik would blurt out just one more vicious word,
making her lose control of herself. But Hyŏngsik seemed to have exhausted
all he had to say, and after throwing a most scornful look at Sŏnghye’s somber
face, he stretched himself out on the floor without further haranguing.
Sŏnghye remained in her seat, as motionless as a rock. Blood surged up
wildly and throbbed in her bosom. Each time the flow of blood rushed down
toward her stomach, it seemed to strike against something heavy there, and she
grew dizzy, about to collapse. She closed her eyes prayerfully, earnestly hop-
ing this nightmarish moment would pass without a minute’s delay. The din-
ing table was pushed aside into the corner of the room, food hardly touched.
Hyŏngsik sat up and lay down by spells and eventually dropped off into sleep.
He even began snoring, but then abruptly opened his eyes and yelled like a
drunkard, “Jerks! Ugh, those crooked jerks! You guys call yourselves critics?
You talk about literature? Humph! Who cares about Yun and the like?” He
glared at Sŏnghye and then, turning over in bed, began snoring again. The
night stamped a gruesome, hellish mark on Sŏnghye’s memory.
A few days passed. When Hyŏngsik left home in the morning, Sŏnghye
followed a couple of steps behind as far as the gate and as calmly as possible
asked him to request some materials she needed for her usual thread work:
“I’ve finished with the last batch. On your way, please ask the boy at the tin-
roofed house to bring twice as many bundles as before.” Hyŏngsik stopped to
listen and then, without saying either yes or no, departed.
The errand boy from the tin-roofed house never came that day. Sŏnghye
thought it was awkward for her to press Hyŏngsik, and so, after a couple of
days, she decided to go to the shop herself. As she was wrapping the skeins to
deliver herself, the boy came to call. But for some reason, the boy came with-
out a back load of skeins. He only took out the payment money from his cloth
wrapper and handed it over to her. After receiving the finished work of skeins
from Sŏnghye, he put them inside the wrapper and tied it up. When Sŏnghye
asked if there was any material to work on, the boy said that he had been told
by her husband to bring no more work.
Sŏnghye remained lost in thought for a long time and then spent the
remainder of the day tidying up the house and sewing. She hid away the blue-
covered magazine.
Time passed. One evening, after a cheerless dinner alone, Sŏnghye looked out
at the small backyard as she leaned against the kitchen post. An old cherry
tree, its trunk all twisted, was standing close to the wall of the house. Almost

all of its branches were withered, but a few ricelike white petals were stuck
here and there on a solitary branch, stretching over the soy-sauce jar deck.
A light lavender darkness began to spread all over. Sŏnghye caught sight of
the crumbled corner of the sauce jar deck. It was a simple, rock-framed stand
covered with lumps of dirt she’d piled up with her clumsy hands. In fact, it
had been left in that condition since the previous summer, as she hadn’t done
anything about it save gazing at it out the window every day.
Sŏnghye found a blunt hoe and a stick and, holding them, went into the
backyard. She scraped up the scattered soil and stamped on it. As she worked,
her mind was free to roam to faraway places, bringing her vague memo-
ries back. From her childhood, Sŏnghye had been given to a habit of doing
things halfheartedly. Unless the task involved thinking or writing, she did
most of her work out of necessity rather than out of enthusiasm. But now
Sŏnghye began to wonder whether the joy of life might be found in such
tasks as she was doing at the moment—keeping the things around her clean
and well-maintained and improving and adding luster to them as best she
could. It even occurred to Sŏnghye that, in comparison with concrete, physi-
cal work, abstract thoughts might be ultimately meaningless, like patches of
clouds.
Straightening her back, Sŏnghye stood and looked up at the round,
pale orange moon suspended in the middle of the sky. Suddenly, and out
of nowhere, the phrase “human fate” entered her mind. She began to mull
over the recent complicated emotional wrangling between herself and her
husband. Ever since that incident, Hyŏngsik, for whatever motive, had not
stopped her from working on her writing. He even encouraged her with sur-
prising enthusiasm. He read everything she wrote and added suggestions in
red ink for her revision; at times he even inserted long new paragraphs of his
own. Sometimes he had Sŏnghye talk about themes or plots she had in mind,
but his criticisms were so harsh that she couldn’t even set to work on them. At
other times, he would give her his own ideas and ask her to write stories based
on them.
“Look, try to write this way. It came to my mind while sitting in a tea-
room.” And after relating his ideas in tedious detail, he would say, “You
need to reflect the trend of the times in this way, understand? Try it. I guar-
antee it will create a sensation.” Sometimes he sat next to her and dictated his
stories.
Sŏnghye had much to be thankful for as a result of such changes in
Hyŏngsik. Yet for some reason, she could not write a single line to her own
satisfaction. Her husband would plead with her just to write a draft based on
his suggestions, saying he would revise it himself. But the more he pushed, the
more stuck she became. She grew unbearably anxious, but nothing worked.

Kang Sin-jae 91
Worse still, even this anxiety seemed to be gradually fading. “How could the
likes of me write novels?” Such despair slowly began to take over Sŏnghye’s
consciousness. In her mind she began to go over a variety of odd jobs—besides
untangling threads—that would be appropriate for her to do at home.
Sŏnghye became greatly attached to the two works she had written so
far. The question of their quality aside, her attachment might simply have
stemmed from her having poured her soul into them. It was a poignant feel-
ing, as if her works were blood-relations, as if they were the only things that
understood her, and as if they were a longing for something that had already
disappeared beyond her reach. Her second story was handed over to the mag-
azine publisher after Hyŏngsik had gone over it. She was still bothered by a
scene in the story that Hyŏngsik vehemently insisted she cut. It was a scene
she considered indispensable. She knew the whole story hinged upon that
very scene like the pivot of a spinning top. If this pivotal point were jogged,
the top would stop spinning and lurch to a halt. Sŏnghye hesitated for a long
time, but in the end she sent her manuscript along with a letter to the edi-
tor—the “well-known writer”—requesting that, if he found it better to delete
the little scene unfolding in the moonlit field, he should go ahead and do so.
While writing the letter, Sŏnghye was thinking that in all likelihood it was
time for her to give up creative writing. Yet she was almost certain that the
scene in the moonlight would stay.
As Sŏnghye turned the soil and piled it up with her hoe, the smell of the
dirt wafted up from her fingertips. She even toyed with the idea of making a
flowerbed in front of the sauce jar deck come summer and pictured herself
standing at the back of a tiny flower garden. Even this scene, however, evoked
a sense of emptiness and sorrow in Sŏnghye, and she felt at a loss about what
to do with her emotional confusion.
Someone shook the gate, making creaking noises. Sŏnghye knocked the
dirt off the hoe and the stick and went over to unbar the gate.
“Honey, get dressed quickly! I’m taking you to a nice place. Hurry up!”
An absent look on her face and the hoe hanging loosely from her hand,
Sŏnghye looked at Hyŏngsik. He looked especially smart today in his gray,
plaid-patterned spring suit—the only one he had—into which he had changed
this morning. His broad-brimmed hat—fashionable, though poor in qual-
ity—and his red necktie brightened him up. His lively motions indicated that
a day full of spring sun had worked wonders on his mood.
“Where are we going?” Sŏnghye asked in a flat voice, unpleasant even to
her ears.
“To a nice place! To a dance party! Okay? Don’t you want to go? Why not?”
asked Hyŏngsik with a big smile, as if there were no reason whatsoever for her
to refuse.

“Hurry up and get ready! You do know how to dance, don’t you? After all,
you studied with those Western dames.” This was how Hyŏngsik always char-
acterized Sŏnghye’s education at a Christian mission school.
“If you don’t know how to dance, it’s okay just to sit down and watch. Any-
way, hurry up!”
Hyŏngsik took his hat off, and after tossing it on the wooden floor, he
went to the well to wash his hands. Sŏnghye remained standing, a blank look
on her face. First of all, she wanted to know the reason for this sudden outing.
On rare occasions, indeed, when in the mood, Hyŏngsik would surprise her
by asking her to go with him to a billiard room or to a bar. “But what on earth
was this dance all about?” Sŏnghye wondered.
Sŏnghye used to think it uncharacteristic of Hyŏngsik—always keen on
new fads—not to talk about dancing. Now that he hurried her to this party
out of the blue, however, she felt completely lost. Besides, why should he ask
her to come with him today of all days? Yet she sensed it was better for her
to simply tag along rather than poke and pry. An awareness of her miserable
circumstances—the suffocating life behind the tightly locked gate, the dark
cavelike room and kitchen, the patch of sky as tiny as the palm of her hand,
and her pathetic dream of growing flowers in the flowerbed—which she had
tried hard to bury, was impetuously raising its head.
As the mystified Sŏnghye cast a glance at the well, she caught sight of the
back of the trousers of her husband, who was squatting down uncomfortably.
All of a sudden, she was seized with the urge to get out of the house.
“All right, let’s go!” Sŏnghye flung the hoe and the stick under the raised
wooden floor and rushed to the well like a child, asking, “Whose house are we
going to for the party?”
It gave Sŏnghye a novel and joyful sensation to abandon herself to impulse
rather than to deliberation or reason. For the first time in a long while, she
breathed the evening spring air with her entire body and took light steps like
a young girl.
The party, however, was not held at a private home.
After turning to left off of Myŏngdong Street, Hyŏngsik led Sŏnghye down
a long, secluded alley, at the end of which appeared a run-down, two-story
wooden house.
“Are there many up there?” Hyŏngsik asked two young boys—vendors of
imported cigarettes—sitting side by side in front of the house. He pushed hard
on the broken, rattling glass door, which was very small, barely allowing one
person to slip by. Sŏnghye cautiously stepped in, stunned by the whole scene,
which turned out quite contrary to her expectations. The dark, steep stairway
was also very narrow, and it creaked—more like shrieked—with her every

Kang Sin-jae 93
step. With one hand on the wall, Sŏnghye climbed, getting her feet caught in
her skirt countless times. She opened her eyes wide in the darkness.
From upstairs, thumps of footsteps rang out along with a melody somewhat
familiar to her. Something akin to fear passed through Sŏnghye’s mind, as if
she had come to a place forbidden. Her apprehension grew stronger when she
pushed through another narrow door at the top of the staircase and stepped
inside the room. It was a shabby, wooden-floored room, which at first glance
looked like the interior of a large warehouse. There weren’t even electric lights,
and several carbide gaslights picked out the figures of men and women danc-
ing around. The shadows of the dancing pairs trembled like monsters on the
walls, full of smudges, across which strands of cobwebs, hanging down from
the ceiling like fishnets, were fluttering. Music flowed out of a phonograph in
the corner of the room, where broken tables and chairs were piled up.
The boric acid powder sprinkled on the floor made it gleam with a dull
shine. When the attention of the people dancing across the floor suddenly
turned toward Sŏnghye and her husband, Sŏnghye felt her face burning. Even
before Hyŏngsik motioned her to do so, she walked over to an empty chair
that leaned against the wall, from which direction the phonograph music was
coming, and hurriedly sat down. Meanwhile, Hyŏngsik hung up his hat and
seemed to be restlessly looking around the room. In no time, he greeted a few
people by tapping them on the shoulders and smiled at some women. When a
new piece started, he made a bowing gesture to one of the women and began
to dance with her.
Perched on her chair, Sŏnghye watched her husband’s awkward danc-
ing, which was actually uncoordinated. His movements were those of a mere
beginner—no, like those of one never even properly tutored. Yet Hyŏngsik
seemed thoroughly happy with his dancing. All smiles and without a hint
of embarrassment, he danced and tossed off brief remarks each time he met
someone he recognized.
The melody was a popular old Japanese song. It was played on the portable
phonograph by a woman with thick makeup, who, standing beside Sŏnghye,
relentlessly inspected her appearance. Sŏnghye found the woman repulsive
but remained in her uncomfortable seat. As she watched the dancers in their
shabby outfits, Sŏnghye wondered when her husband had begun to frequent
such places as this. A middle-aged man in an army jacket tottered about,
while in the corner a young teenager diligently practiced dance steps by him-
self. Hyŏngsik seemed to be well acquainted with most of the women here.
A woman trailing a long, light blue skirt walked toward Sŏnghye with a
swinging gait, her body swaying like billowing waves. She had been Hyŏngsik’s
first dance partner. Her eyebrows were thickly penciled, and she looked

rather vulgar. She sat on the chair facing the phonograph woman, her back to
Sŏnghye, and immediately put a cigarette to her mouth.
“Look at that guy over there,” the “light blue skirt” woman said, pointing at
someone with the thumb of her right hand, from which cigarette smoke was
rising.
“Do you know he’s a poet? Hah, my foot!” the phonograph woman said,
giggling loudly as if tickled by something.
“Hey, hey,” whispered the “light blue skirt,” as if to caution her companion,
clearly gesturing toward Sŏnghye with her eyes. But then, feeling no need to
hold back either, she too burst into loud giggles.
“That idiot, you know, he asked me . . .”
Sŏnghye couldn’t even tell which one of them was talking. All she felt
was the burning of her ears. Before long, she began to think the women were
probably talking about someone else. Nonetheless, Sŏnghye noticed that the
woman in the light blue skirt deliberately turned around to look at her.
At that moment, Hyŏngsik walked toward Sŏnghye, pushing people aside
as if he were swimming, a smile on his face. She stood to face him and was
about to tell him they should leave at once. The first thing Hyŏngsik did, how-
ever, was to flirt with those women.
“Hello, Miss Sunja. Why such a wallflower today? Why don’t you dance
with me later, after you put on some tango music?”
“Good heavens! You even know how to dance the tango?” Her brisk twang
expressed open disdain, and the thickly made-up woman spun around and
went away. The “light-blue skirt” also stood up and left without giving even
a side glance to Hyŏngsik, and huddled together, the two women burst into
another round of giggles. Mortified, Hyŏngsik turned to Sŏnghye.
After Hyŏngsik’s mood had brightened with a couple of more dances, he
and Sŏnghye left. The nighttime street was much nippier than before. Sŏnghye
felt a chill from the light, damp night breeze creeping in under her arms.
Hyŏngsik was whistling the melodies he had danced to. Sŏnghye walked in
silence with her eyes cast down to the tips of her toes.
“No good dancing girls seem to have shown up today,” Hyŏngsik said, as if
he was looking into Sŏnghye’s face. She remained silent.
The cigarette butt Hyŏngsik threw away fell into a puddle of water, making
a clear, long-trailing hiss. Even though Sŏnghye was listening to what her hus-
band was saying, she heard nothing but an endless, hollow echoing through
her head.
Sŏnghye and her husband continued walking until they saw a tearoom with
a green lantern hung on the outside. Insisting on having some tea, Hyŏngsik

Kang Sin-jae 95
dragged Sŏnghye in. She followed him inside, pulling her thin spring scarf up
to her ears. Sŏnghye felt as if everyone was looking at her. She sat on a chair,
her eyes fixed on the ashtray in front of her, which was engraved with the
tearoom’s name.
“Ah, well, if it isn’t Mr. Ch’oe! I’m so glad to see you. Please join us. Please,
please.” Hyŏngsik raised himself halfway up from his seat and hurriedly
greeted a man who had just pushed open the door to the tearoom. In a flurry,
Sŏnghye also raised her face and greeted the man with her eyes. It was the
same Mr. Ch’oe who had had Sŏnghye’s story published in the magazine.
“What brings you here? Have you been keeping up the good work?” Recit-
ing this customary greeting among writers, Ch’oe took a seat across from
Hyŏngsik and Sŏnghye.
“Far from it! There’s nothing easy about writing,” Hyŏngsik cut in crudely
in an argumentative tone, as he leaned back deep into his chair with his legs
outstretched.
Mr. Ch’oe kept quiet. After a long silence, he said awkwardly, “I’d like you
to keep on writing, even though it’s not so easy,” and smiled. Then he added,
“By the way, the magazine came out. I brought a copy with me to give to Mr.
Yun, but you can have it. You may be anxious to see it.” From a large enve-
lope in his hands, he took out a recent issue of the magazine, which included
Sŏnghye’s second story.
“Regarding the point you made at the time, I included it just the way it was
in the manuscript,” said Mr. Ch’oe. Then he looked at Sŏnghye as if he couldn’t
understand why she had even suggested leaving the scene out.
At that moment, Hyŏngsik, suddenly flared up, scolded the boy vendor
of imported cigarettes standing beside him for talking impertinently to him.
Sŏnghye turned her head toward her husband.
After the boy left, Sŏnghye, trying to return to the interrupted conversa-
tion, asked Mr. Ch’oe, “Have comments been bad?” even though things like
reviews were the last thing that concerned her.
“No, I hear they’ve been very favorable. Mr. Yun, too, mentioned that they
are far better than those for the first one,” said Mr. Ch’oe.
“Of course, the second story should be better than the first one. You bet!
You don’t know how much more effort Sŏnghye put in, although I did coach
her a little bit,” Hyŏngsik said, taking over the conversation as if he was very
much pleased. His voice fell especially loudly on Sŏnghye’s ears.
“Is that right?” Mr. Ch’oe said, dropping his gaze toward his cup.
“Well, let me tell you. Sŏnghye has taken up writing as a pastime, making a
big deal out of it, but her work is nothing to speak of, as you know. So I’ve lent
a hand, fixing here and there to beat it into shape and get it up to that level.

The process hasn’t been easy, though, given her stubbornness.” Hyŏngsik
looked at Sŏnghye and laughed loudly as if feeling good about himself.
Dragging the magazine all the way across the table toward him and hur-
riedly flipping through it, Hyŏngsik said, “She gave me a hard time about one
point in this story too. Let’s see, which scene was that . . . ? Right, it’s the scene
where the main character carries on a monologue, wandering alone around the
open field, right?” After confirming this detail with Sŏnghye, Hyŏngsik went
on talking to her, “That’s where you went wrong, you see. A short story has to
be tightly knit. You have to trim useless parts just as you prune vines or twigs—
you’ve got to clip any number of them—and set your eyes on the climax!”
The more excited Hyŏngsik became, the more dispirited became Sŏnghye.
She thought: “It may be necessary to remove branches and offshoots, but if a
story is robbed of the ground it stands on, where can it go except floating off
into the sky?”
Very much in line with what Sŏnghye had in mind, Mr. Ch’oe spoke up, “I
agree that disorganization is a fatal flaw in a short story. Yet . . . if I may cite an
example, the life of Miss Sŏnghye’s work lies in her skillful arrangement of its
material, in other words, in her subtlety of organization, which results in the
power of capturing the reader’s attention. It’s like the beauty of a mosaic craft-
work. If even one piece is missing, the piece looks as if something is lacking
and becomes flawed. And I believe Miss Sŏnghye’s talent in that area is worthy
of our trust. I’m convinced that the four scenes in her present work play an
absolutely decisive role in it.” There was a light sarcasm hidden in Mr. Ch’oe’s
calm tone.
Hyŏngsik sat silent for some time, his head cocked. Mr. Ch’oe continued,
“It is true that the monologue form often produces tedious results, but it can
also be used very effectively. For instance, the story “The Peony Peak,” which
some time ago became the object of criticism by Mr. Yun, I mean, the critic
Yun . . .”
Mr. Ch’oe turned the talk into a general discussion. Sŏnghye quietly daubed
the perspiration on her forehead with her handkerchief.
This time around, just as before, Hyŏngsik chattered on to show off his
independent opinion regarding criticism. In the end, he summarized his bab-
ble, saying, “In short, I think the novel is nothing but a matter of sensibility.
Selection of scenes for a story should be made intuitively, and it’s a waste of
time to discuss it at great length like this. Well, you said Mr. Yun approved of
Sŏnghye’s story? Hmm, then, he does have good judgment, doesn’t he?”
This time Mr. Ch’oe remained silent, looking a bit offended, and after a
while he said good-bye and left his seat to join others in the tearoom.
As Sŏnghye left the tearoom, she felt her cheeks burning more and more
intensely, and indescribable, violent emotions surged in her heart. She was

Kang Sin-jae 97
utterly crushed by an unbearable mixture of shame, exasperation, and uncon-

trollable impatience. Sŏnghye wanted to scream her heart out, “Why did you
ask me to come to the tearoom? How could you talk like that to Mr. Ch’oe?
How come you missed the point of his remark when he said so plainly that
removing the scene would have meant wrecking the story?”
Sŏnghye walked on much faster than Hyŏngsik.
“See, I told you. You haven’t lost anything by listening to me, have you?
Hmm, Ch’oe said even that fellow Yun spoke highly of it. Humph . . . does he
know who should get the credit for coaching it?”
For an instant Sŏnghye’s eyes flared. The moment she was about to pour
out her words, Hyŏngsik continued, “That Ch’oe is quite an arrogant chap, I
figure. Still he dared not behave poorly in front of me. You heard him talking
big, as if he knew something about the mosaic, the monologue form, right?
He even said that the four scenes played decisive roles in your story and so on
and so forth, but . . .”
Hyŏngsik suddenly stopped short and said, “There should be only three
scenes in the story. One where it rains, and that scene, and the other scene . . .
One was taken out, wasn’t it?”
Suddenly Hyŏngsik stopped counting the number of scenes on his fingers
and sprinted forward, pulling the magazine from under his arm as if struck by
some idea.
On the deserted entryway of the street, a light bulb hanging high on a
tall electric pole shed a dim light. Hyŏngsik dashed toward it, busily leafing
through the pages, moistening his right thumb with spit over and over again.
The street was completely deserted. It was breathlessly quiet, wrapped
in darkness and thick mist. Holding the magazine against the dim light,
Hyŏngsik continued frantically flipping through the pages.
A piercing pain passed through Sŏnghye’s chest. That pain turned into a
wretched scream and shook the quiet street for a moment. No, it was simply
Sŏnghye’s illusion that her scream shook the street. Yet it was true that at that
moment Sŏnghye’s soul let out a scream, writhing in unbearable pain.
In Sŏnghye’s eyes, Hyŏngsik was a grotesque clown. He was a clown, too
obtuse to be offhandedly dismissed from her heart as she used to do. The
winds lightly touching her dry cheeks felt as cold as ice.
Sŏnghye shouted silently in a tearful voice, “I hate it! I hate it all—the
novel, the writing, my husband, even life! I hate it! I hate it!”
The thick mist crawling on the ground began to rise like a column of
smoke, enshrouding the electric pole—the thick night mist, whose yellowish
hue looked as ghastly as the smoke of gunpowder.
[First published in Munye (Literary art), June 1950]

Analysis of “The Mist”
“The Mist” (Angae; 1950) depicts the difficulties and agonies of a

woman writer shackled by a dead-end marriage and dramatizes the destructive
impact of such a marital situation on a woman’s creative and professional pur-
suits. The heroine, Sŏnghye, an unassuming and discreet housewife, has suc-
ceeded in having her first story published by a reputable magazine, for which
she has received monetary compensation as well. Her next story is already on
order. She feels fulfilled and even elated. Yet her happiness is ruined by her
husband, a jobless, shallow, and untalented poet whose resentment and hos-
tility toward her success and bourgeoning career plunges her into a bottom-
less despair. His psychological oppression of Sŏnghye robs her life of mean-
ing, not to mention her will to write. By graphically exposing the husband’s
emotional and mental manipulation intended to crush his wife’s literary talent
and future, “The Mist” in large measure takes issue with the male bias against,
and intolerance of, women’s aspirations for creative self-expression.
Sŏnghye’s husband, Hyŏngsik, considers her accomplishment an assault
on his person. Driven by professional jealousy, insecurity, and unproven male
superiority, he taunts Sŏnghye with sarcasm and mockery and even threatens
divorce. His wounded ego forces him to demonstrate that he is in control
through attempts to nullify her public recognition and budding career by
arguing that her proper place is in the home. The most presumptuous move
Hyŏngsik makes, however, is to coach and direct his wife’s writing, something
Sŏnghye finds insulting and even appalling yet cannot refuse. This is a repli-
cation of the classic pattern of a husband’s gender-based control and domi-
nance over his wife. Sŏnghye’s case, however, is more insidious, as it involves
an infringement on artistic and intellectual independence.
Sŏnghye is the victim of her own creative talents at the hands of her hus-
band, who is convinced that the only way to regain hegemony over his wife
is to put her down by any and all means. For her part, she can find no way
to release her frustration and anger except by internalizing her emotions and
succumbing to his tyranny and hypocrisy. The only protest she makes is the
self-consuming scream buried in her heart. In the end, his oppression suc-
ceeds in smothering her creative impulses and even her desire to live. The
tragic implication of Sŏnghye’s story is that she, in spite of her acute aware-
ness of her marital entrapment, is a product of her times, late 1940s Korea,
when the majority of Korean women were captives of spousal control, with
no choice but to acquiesce to their flawed and crushing conjugal yoke. This

Kang Sin-jae 99
forced submissiveness of Sŏnghye becomes all the more wasteful given her
promising future as a writer.
“The Mist” is a fine example of Kang Sin-jae’s expertise in creating striking
scenes. The dance hall episode vividly illustrates Hyŏngsik’s churlishness and
superficiality, which heaps public embarrassment upon Sŏnghye. Sŏnghye’s
humiliation reaches its peak at their chance encounter with a literary critic
in a tearoom. The incident exposes not only Hyŏngsik’s mediocrity and inso-
lence but also his contemptible and excessive meddling in his wife’s creative
activity. The story’s final scene, depicting the husband desperately leafing
through the magazine beneath the dim electric light, highlights his lack of a
sense of honor as well as his morbid competitiveness, while also bringing to
light Sŏnghye’s undeserved victimization and degradation.
“The Mist” can also be read as a critique of the cultural frivolity of Korean
intellectuals during the postliberation period, when such Western cultural
products as popular music, social dancing, and American cigarettes made
inroads into Korea. Hyŏngsik’s dabbling in poetry and his artistic pretensions
caricature these trends. At the same time, his flirting with such passing crazes
forms a sharp contrast to his refusal to support his wife’s potential for real
cultural contribution, further underscoring the grievous burden Sŏnghye
must bear.

Six
When Autumn
Leaves Fall (1961)
Song Wŏn-hŭi
A writer recognized for her deep-rooted conscious-

ness of the political and historical development of Korea, Song Wŏn-hŭi
(b. 1927) was born in Seoul, the eldest of four children. Her parents’ trying
lives during the colonial period exerted an enduring influence over her life
and career. Song’s father, a descendant of an upper-class Confucian scholarly
family, became an anti-Japanese freedom fighter, having suffered the decline
of the family fortune and the brutal deaths of his elder brothers at the hands of
the Japanese police. To avoid police surveillance, Song’s family fled to China
in 1938, when Song was a fifth grader. There her father’s involvement in the
Korean independence movement continued up until Korea’s liberation in
1945. This early exposure to her father’s activism planted in Song the seeds
of a strong nationalism and a keen political awareness. During her family’s
seven-year sojourn in China, Song built the foundations of her future literary
development, absorbing a wide range of world literature from the library of a
fellow expatriate. The young Song found equal inspiration in the life story of
her mother, whose educational aspirations and happiness as the daughter of
a Chinese medicinal-herb doctor were cut short by the deaths of her parents
and the ensuing family breakup. The suffering of Song’s mother in her forma-
tive years helped awaken Song to women’s hardship within Korea’s patriarchal
society, something that would later serve as a motif in her work.
With the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, Song entered Tongguk Uni-
versity as an English literature major. Despite the war, Song took full advantage
of her studies as a refuge in Pusan by participating in a creative writing club,
100
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Song Wŏn-hŭi 101
performing in drama presentations, and taking in the ideas of such French

existentialist writers as Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Simone de Beau-
voir. Although her family’s financial difficulties prevented her from graduat-
ing, Song made her literary debut in 1956 with two short stories, “Hwasa”
(Floral snake) and “Singminji” (The colony). The same year, she married an
engineer who promised to support her writing career.
A number of Song’s stories from the 1960s and 1970s focus on Korea’s
colonial legacy and the scars of the Korean War, as evident in her “Nagyŏpki”
(When autumn leaves fall; 1961), “Pundan” (Korean division; 1967), and
“Hyŏlhŭn” (Bloodstains; 1968). By then Song was the mother of three young
children and had endured trying times as the daughter-in-law of a conserva-
tive extended family. In 1971 Song published her first collection of short sto-
ries, titled Floral Snake, reusing the title of her first short story. A second short
story anthology, Pit’ŭlkŏrinŭn chunggan (The tottering middle), followed in
1977.
Song’s award-winning first novel, Taeji ŭi kkum (Dreams of the great earth;
1984) again takes up Korea’s turbulent modern history, including the demise
of the Chosŏn dynasty, uprisings against Japanese police brutality, liberation
and national division, the trauma of the Korean War, and the changing status
of women throughout these upheavals. Although framed within a three-gen-
erational private family history, the novel elevates the suffering of individual
characters to national dimensions through the author’s quest for the spiritual
significance of Korea’s landmark eras. Song’s novel Mongmarŭn ttang (Thirsty
earth; 1986), the sequel to Dreams of the Great Earth and another award win-
ner, further elaborates upon the aftermath of the Korean War and the trag-
edies of families separated by the civil war.
In the 1990s, when Korea officially reestablished diplomatic relationships
with China and the former Soviet Union, Song made a number of field trips
to these regions in search of historic sites related to the Korean diaspora and
independence movement during the colonial period. One of the fruits of
Song’s travels was the publication of An Chung-gŭn: Kŭ nal ch’um ŭl ch’urira
(An Chung-gŭn: I’ll dance on that day; 1995, two volumes), the winner of the
thirty-second Han’guk Literature Award. The novel is a fictional biography
of a Korean patriot, An Chung-gŭn (1879–1910), who in 1909 assassinated
the Japanese statesman Itō Hirobumi (1841–1909), the prime plotter of the
Korean Protectorate Treaty of 1905, in Harbin, Manchuria. Another product
was Song’s fifth collection of short stories, T’aroksu wa noin (A prison escapee
and an old man; 2002).
Song has served as president of the Korean Association of Women Writers
as well as a member of the board of the Association of Korean Writers, the
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board of the Korean PEN Club, and the advisory board of the Korean Novel-
ists’ Association. In recognition of her contributions to Korean literature, in
2006 Tongguk University conferred on her its special literary award.
When Autumn Leaves Fall
Every now and then when the winds blew, leaves fell from trees and
rolled about the ground. Three or four high school students were walking
leisurely out of the exhibition hall, having apparently completed their rounds
of the art show. The autumn art show had only one more day to go. The area
around the gallery was so quiet that the clatters of Haryŏn’s high heels rang
out loudly in the emptiness. Haryŏn loved this road near the gallery’s front
entrance because it was a world apart from the crowded streets of Seoul.
Mr. R had once said that he found walking on this pathway unsettling. That
sounded very much like him. A place as quiet as this could be disconcerting
to Mr. R, forcing him to reexamine his life—one filled with drinking, billiard
playing, and so on.
Haryŏn didn’t know exactly why Mr. R had dropped out of the art world,
but she recalled having read his essay “A Loser’s Self-defense.” Originally an
artist of Western painting, Mr. R had become an illustrator for books and
magazines. After the Korean War he had gotten a painter’s job on a United
States military base to earn a living. Ever since, he had stayed in that line of
work as an illustrator. This regression was just one of many misfortunes that
could befall any artist. Without his realizing it, painting became the means
of earning a living for Mr. R—his life purpose, which he could not abandon.
Pointing out his failure as an artist, he said he had given up on Western paint-
ing as the result of losing his self-confidence. His own confession of occasional
restlessness, however, betrayed his lingering attachment to Western painting.
Haryŏn felt as if Mr. R’s anxiety were her own. Her love of this temple-like
art gallery might be a superficial sentiment—a by-product of the quietude
bestowed on her by her seasonal visits in spring and autumn. Like Mr. R,
Haryŏn also got edgy whenever she set foot in the art gallery, since such vis-
its made her acutely aware of her precarious position, barely hanging on in
the art world. It was no easy task for Haryŏn, whose life was one of tedious
routine, to submit new paintings to the exhibition twice a year. A few times,
she had stopped painting, despondent at the hopelessness of keeping pace
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Song Wŏn-hŭi 103
with current trends in modern painting. Looking back, though, she came to
marvel at her own perseverance for not entirely giving up the artist’s life. Her
solo art show ten years earlier was the only one she’d ever had. Since then, she
had participated only in public exhibitions and comforted herself with the
pitiable thought that she was at least keeping her name alive—no matter how
obscure it was—in the world of art. As a matter of fact, Haryŏn considered
her situation not so much distressing as sorrowful. She wondered whether
her decision to study at the Tokyo Art School twenty years ago against her
parents’ will had been doomed to lead to this stalemate.
Haryŏn softly stepped on a withered leaf that blew across her path. An
approaching young couple caught her eye, dazzling her like a beautiful picture.
The nape of the young woman’s neck and her short haircut boasted cleanli-
ness and youth. The pair was walking hand in hand. They leaned against each
other affectionately, unconcerned about the gaze of others. Haryŏn’s visit to
the outdoor art show on the street a few days earlier and her encounter with
this young couple today stung her to a realization of the gap between her and
the younger generation. Free and easy, they seemed to be running past her.
She looked back at the young couple. It was a glance tinged with unconscious
envy. A regret at the irretrievable loss of her youth swirled through her body.
At the gallery hallway, Haryŏn was greeted by the familiar custodian. She
started off with the calligraphy exhibit in Room No. 1. The chilly air pervad-
ing the marble building intensified its solemn atmosphere. In the exhibition
hall, there was a sprinkling of high school students holding schoolbags. The
sounds of Haryŏn’s high heels striking the cold concrete floor reverberated
quietly in the hall. When she walked into Room No. 3 for Oriental paintings,
Haryŏn became more relaxed. The stiffness she’d felt in the calligraphy room
slowly eased. She was happy to see a few familiar names among the artists,
but the majority were unknown to her. Only two or three old-timers stuck
to traditional landscape painting; the rest featured new elements in Oriental
painting. Haryŏn’s greatest surprise was the change in the use of color. Only
five years ago, few artists would have dared experiment with such bold col-
ors in this genre. Now these Oriental works seemed to resemble Western oil
paintings in their use of color for expressing the artists’ intentions. Haryŏn
felt her heart stirring, especially at the nuanced color scheme explored by Mr.
P’s painting titled Summer. Forgetting her envy of the young couple, Haryŏn
focused her attention on each painting in turn.
In art school it had been Haryŏn’s original plan to major in Oriental paint-
ing, but her fascination with Cézanne made her switch to Western painting.
Among all the trends and schools of art she had studied, Cézanne was her
favorite artist. She loved Cézanne. His influence appeared most clearly in
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her use of intense color, something that drew a great deal of attention from
her professors. They even predicted her future success. Cézanne had thus
been one of the direct causes for Haryŏn’s switch from Oriental to Western
painting.
Haryŏn walked out of the Oriental painting exhibit to the crafts exhibit
and then to Room No. 8, where one of the statues in the sculpture exhibit
attracted her attention. She went straight over to it. It was a statue of a naked
man, his right arm around a woman’s shoulder and his left arm holding a
child. Its title was Peace, and its sculptor, Son Hyesŏn. For a moment, Haryŏn
couldn’t believe her eyes. If she remembered correctly, Son Hyesŏn was a new
female sculptor who had made her debut only last year.
Haryŏn remembered reading a feature story in a magazine profiling Son
Hyesŏn as a rising new artist. Son Hyesŏn must have been about twenty-three
or twenty-four and was reported to have graduated from an art college a year
earlier. If the piece was the work of Son Hyesŏn herself, it must be her master-
piece, Haryŏn thought. It was not difficult for Haryŏn to imagine how much
time and effort the sculptor had put into creating this immense work, with its
five-foot-tall male figure as well as figures of a woman and a child. What fur-
ther amazed Haryŏn was the painstaking attention to the nude figure’s body
parts. The detail on the muscles of the young male’s limbs, chest, and genita-
lia was so meticulous that it almost made her blush. For a moment Haryŏn
floated in her mind the image of Son Hyesŏn absorbed in sculpting, with a
young man of incomparable build posing as her model.
At that point Haryŏn’s imagination leaped in an entirely different direc-
tion. She had known Kyŏngja well—a college art student who had been in
a physical as well as financial relationship with a middle-aged man, even
though she already had a boyfriend. According to Kyŏngja, the old morality
had lost its hold on her generation, and body and spirit were two different
matters. Such sexual morality was typical of the present young generation,
but it was far beyond Haryŏn’s common sense. Haryŏn also found it hard to
understand young people’s view of life and society, not to mention the speed
with which they were getting ahead in the world. Most of all, hadn’t their
recent street exhibition taken the art establishment by surprise? Their youth-
ful enthusiasm for rooting out unnecessary formalism and their unconven-
tional spirit for putting freedom into action were enough to shock Haryŏn.
She probably wasn’t the only one who felt that way. These young artists were a
blunt reminder of her stale artistic style, making her feel utterly insignificant.
Her self-criticism, compounded by the pressure from the massive influx of
new trends, withered Haryŏn’s creative spirit, and she felt that she had lost her
sense of direction.
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Song Wŏn-hŭi 105
Something rolled over softly and stopped in front of her feet. It was a dead
leaf. It seemed to have lost its way and drifted into the sculpture exhibit room
facing the gallery’s main entrance. The leaf had already lost its color and scent,
and it was so dried up and brittle that the mere thought of crushing it under-
foot made Haryŏn shudder. Would it be oversensitive for Haryŏn to compare
herself, a woman in her forties, to this dried leaf?
The Western painting exhibit began in Room No. 12. As Haryŏn stepped
into the room, she was struck by the special ambience of Western oil painting.
This room was also empty except for a couple of high school students and
one gentleman, and the paintings kept watch over the large room in dignified
and undisturbed silence. Haryŏn hurried to look for her own painting, River
Children. It was nowhere to be seen. Finally she located it in the next room.
She knew her painting wasn’t the sort to immediately attract attention. She
was further flustered by the irony that her painting was placed right next to
an award-winning piece.
She had painted River Children on the banks of the Han River the previ-
ous summer, while she and her children were staying at her younger sister’s
house in Noryangjin.1 It now seemed to Haryŏn that the painting’s subject
was too hackneyed. She no longer felt in the mood to look at her painting.
A totally indescribable repulsion toward her creative work began to arise.
Haryŏn was lost in thought: “Painters put heart and soul into their work until
it is completed, no matter what it is. Even with minor pieces, painters at work
are under complete control of their pride as artists throughout the creative
process. After a lapse of time, however, when a painter faces a completed work
again and finds it too far removed from the original conception, the painter is
tormented by self-revulsion and even by doubts regarding his or her artistic
talent. I’m no exception.”
As Haryŏn moved to the next exhibition room, she couldn’t help being
drawn to a painting—about the size of a door—directly facing her. She
intuitively knew it was Ch’ŏru’s. The painting, titled Paradise, depicted the
innocent Adam and Eve taking a nap far too peacefully in the shadow of the
forbidden tree. Above them, half-hidden in the tree, the serpent—an incar-
nation of Satan—eyed the couple. The juxtaposition of contrasting colors in
the scene created peculiarly appealing sensations. While the bright, beautiful
colors spoke more of the peace in paradise than of Adam and Eve, the darker
colors hinted at the devious plot under way.
Haryŏn felt a sudden rush of blood through her body. For the first time in
some thirteen years, she was looking at one of Ch’ŏru’s paintings. She knew of
his return to Korea from France the previous winter from the newspapers as
well as through Mr. Nokpong. The image of Ch’ŏru’s tall, slim figure crossed
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her mind as a pang of longing struck her heart. He was a man banished from
Haryŏn’s memory long ago, but now that she was again facing his work, a
pang of yearning for him pierced her heart.
As Haryŏn left the art gallery, she felt as if she’d lost all sense of compo-
sure, like some teenager. She couldn’t figure out why she longed so much for
Ch’ŏru. Unlike during the years he had lived abroad, she could have—had
she wanted—easily met him in Seoul since last year, simply by dropping in at
the Champs-Élysées, a tearoom patronized exclusively by artists, or through
the good offices of Mr. Nokpong. Yet Haryŏn had consciously avoided such a
reunion. For one thing, she feared meeting him again, but above all, she didn’t
want to knowingly disturb her peace of mind. Perhaps she lacked the passion
of an artist, she thought.
Haryŏn was quite shocked to learn that Ch’ŏru had come to the South from
North Korea during the January 14 retreat.2 In Pusan, where she had taken
refuge, Mr. Nokpong had suggested, “How about getting together with Ch’ŏru?
He seems eager to see you. And he looks quite changed too.”
“What’s the point of seeing him now?” Haryŏn had said coldly. Indeed,
what good would come of meeting him again? Hadn’t he defected to North
Korea, rejecting her love and all her attempts to talk him out of it?
“Look, Haryŏn, you shouldn’t be so unforgiving! I don’t expect you to
do anything more. My idea is simply for us to welcome him back—nothing
more.”
“What do you mean by ‘welcome’?”
“He seems to have gone through quite a lot, and besides, he’s still single. I
think he has some claim on your compassion in that regard,” Nokpong said.
“Compassion? I wonder for whom he has remained single. Did he say that
it was for my sake?” Haryŏn flared up.
“Okay, let’s drop it then. I’m sorry for making you so upset.” Mr. Nokpong
seemed to be at a loss, but Haryŏn flatly rejected his suggestion. It had been
exactly ten years since then. But now she wanted to see Ch’ŏru.
Shortly after Seoul was reclaimed during the Korean War, Ch’ŏru, who had
come to the South from North Korea, left for France on a certain category of
visa. Haryŏn felt an utter emptiness for the first time in her life. After Ch’ŏru’s
return to Seoul from the North, she had taken some comfort in the thought
that he was living somewhere under the same sky. His departure from Seoul
again, however, deeply saddened her. She even regretted her refusal to
see him.
Haryŏn heard about Ch’ŏru’s life in France through Mr. Nokpong. He had
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Song Wŏn-hŭi 107
married a French woman, and his paintings were well received in art shows in
Paris. Then, two years ago, he lost his wife.
Mr. Nokpong clucked his tongue as he relayed the news to Haryŏn. “Ch’ŏru
indeed has no luck with women. The old bachelor finally got married, and
now he’s already a widower.”
Mr. Nokpong knew the relationship between Ch’ŏru and Haryŏn better
than anyone, for he had been their best friend ever since their days together
in Japan. It was this very Mr. Nokpong—ten years the couple’s senior—who
had introduced Haryŏn to Ch’ŏru. In those days in Japan, he had often treated
them to Shiseidō ice cream and invited them to concerts at the music hall in
Ueno. He had occasionally said to them, “Love ennobles human hearts and
has the power to overcome difficulties as well, although I’m no advocate of
the idea of ‘love for love’s sake.’” It wasn’t clear how Ch’ŏru had taken this plain
truth at the time, but obviously he didn’t know what to do with Haryŏn’s love
for him.
Haryŏn was so wrapped up in thought that by the time she came to herself, she
was standing on Sejong Boulevard, heavy with traffic. With each day the high,
cobalt blue skies signaled the deepening autumn. Under such skies, the lines
of cars moving in an orderly manner looked like toys. Standing there on the
street, Haryŏn realized what she wanted to do. She wanted to go somewhere
and walk aimlessly. She wanted to meet someone and talk her heart out. She
even felt tempted to go to the Champs-Élysées tearoom. The Champs-Ély-
sées, known for its cozy atmosphere with comfortable cushions lying around,
never lacked for painters who took their seats there and whiled away the time
in chat. The tearoom buzzed with topics exclusive to painters, which blended
into the tender, sweet melodies of French chansons. Amid this crowd, a few
girls—aspiring painters—sat with sketchbooks at their sides. For a moment,
Haryŏn tried to visualize an image of Ch’ŏru seated among them. Indeed, the
smart young man she had known would now have turned forty, just like her.
It was difficult for her to picture a middle-aged Ch’ŏru. All she could come up
with was the hazy image of his face thirteen years earlier—a tall, bright-eyed
young man whose smile revealed a regular set of white teeth. “Really, what’s
the use of meeting him now anyway?” she thought. With her feelings dried
up like dead leaves, Haryŏn had nothing more to share with him. Still, she
couldn’t hold down the surge of her yearning. Haryŏn couldn’t figure herself
out—the woman who had rejected Ch’ŏru’s proposal for reunion years ago in
Pusan but now longed to meet him after all these years. “Is this just the typi-
cal restlessness of a premenopausal woman?” These days Haryŏn often felt a
sensation of inexpressible emptiness in her heart.
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In the end, Haryŏn didn’t go to Champs-Élysées. She went home, her nerves
on edge, and found her children absorbed in play. A short “Hi, Mom” was
their only acknowledgment of her return. They had not been like that even a
year ago. Her children used to cling to her—almost annoyingly—every time
she returned from a day out, as if they could hardly wait for her. But her kids
were different these days. As explained in Plato’s dialectics on love, affection
between mother and children changes. When children reach a certain age,
they leave their mother, like drops of water rolling off lotus leaves. Haryŏn
wondered whether all her children—from the oldest, a seventh grader, down
to the three younger ones—had reached that stage. An indescribable chill
passed through her body. She wished her children would greet their mother,
coming home depleted, and rush into her empty bosom at that moment. She
couldn’t have been happier if they would cling to her now.
After changing her clothes, Haryŏn went to her atelier at the back of the
house. The room was too drab to be called an atelier, but she felt an immense
sense of stability at the thought that it was a room of her own. After years of
moving her painting utensils from one room to another to accommodate the
children’s needs, she had finally had this studio built two years ago for her
own use. Feeling drained, Haryŏn lay down on her side in the room, barren
save for a few scattered sketchbooks and a bunch of withering chrysanthe-
mums. She closed her eyes but couldn’t calm her ruffled nerves. Thoughts of
Ch’ŏru lingered in her mind. She wondered how she would have felt had she
gone directly to the Champs-Élysées from the art gallery and met Ch’ŏru. She
decided it was a good thing she had come home instead.
With approaching footsteps, the maid, Nami, called out, “Ma’am, a phone
call from Master!” When Haryŏn went out to answer the phone, her little son
was talking into the receiver.
“Hello,” said Haryŏn, taking the receiver.
“Is that you, honey?” her husband’s deep voice came through the phone
line.
“Yes.”
His message was that he would be off to Pusan for two days on unexpected
company business and that because he had no time to drop by home, the
chauffeur would be picking up his traveling bag.
As she lowered the receiver, Haryŏn felt spent, like a piece of rock rolling
slowly downhill.
Up until about five years ago, Haryŏn’s husband had been an honest sala-
ryman. He was enough of an intellectual to appreciate and support her artistic
life. Since his success in casting off the pinched economic status of the lower-
middle class, however, his social life had grown busy. He became loose in
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Song Wŏn-hŭi 109
his conduct, what with sudden business trips and frequent visits to kisaeng
houses. Now he seemed to have some sort of a relationship with a woman.
Yet Haryŏn never showed him any hint of displeasure. Rather than feeling
grateful for her trouble-free family life, she thought she deserved such good
fortune. On occasions when she grew touchy for no reason, her husband
became apologetic, aware that his disorderly social life was causing her unhap-
piness. This was not, however, what Haryŏn wanted or expected from him.
She rather hoped that he would keep a mistress in the open so that she could
shake off the shackles of womanly virtue, justifying her action as a rebellion
against him.
After the chauffeur had come and gone, far colder winds swept across
Haryŏn’s heart. In times like these, she felt like talking to someone rather than
painting. Or, she thought, it wouldn’t be bad to lose herself in solitude—even
excessively—wandering about the crowded streets of Myŏngdong. At the
moment, she couldn’t even bear to look at her canvas. She was haunted by the
same sense of inferiority aroused earlier at the exhibit by her River Children.
She lost her sense of balance, desperately fearful that her artistic talent might
have run its course. Haryŏn felt a need for stimulation. She even longed to see
Mr. Nokpong and listen to his art criticism. No, to be more frank, she really
wanted to see Ch’ŏru.
Haryŏn detected a certain licentiousness lurking deep in her mind. In her
case, it would mean infidelity to her husband, but aren’t artists allowed such
license? While inwardly she did as she pleased, outwardly she must act like
a moral paragon. This self-contradiction was nothing but a dilemma to her
creative work. Artists shouldn’t be fettered by their society’s outdated moral-
ity. They need youthful passion and will without end. Haryŏn concluded that
a lighthearted romance could be of some use to her art.
Haryŏn remembered a double suicide—a woman writer and an up-and-
coming young male writer—that became a hot topic for journalists. The cou-
ple’s reasons for committing suicide remained a mystery, but Haryŏn couldn’t
dismiss it as a scandal, judging their affair from a simplistic moral point of
view. Such an incident was hardly a novelty, but at least for this couple it had
involved both love and art. Ever since the creation of human beings and for
thousands of years to come, love will continue to make a mosaic of history,
although social order, morality, and the system will always deal out isolation
and anguish to artists engaged in ceaseless artistic exploration. Haryŏn won-
dered why the couple’s suicide for love couldn’t be seen as a beautiful act,
epitomizing a fusion of love and artistic passion.
Haryŏn left home. When she arrived at the Champs-Élysées, its lighted
windows were framed in a thick darkness. It seemed highly unlikely that
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Ch’ŏru would still be in the corner of the tearoom. Haryŏn knew she would be
very disappointed if she found here neither Mr. Nokpong nor any of the other
painters she knew. How could she bear the emptiness that would continue in
the wake of such a disappointment? Haryŏn almost decided to turn back. The
disappointment at unfulfilled expectations can in some sense leave the artist
with a spiritual wound. As Haryŏn hesitated at the door, she sensed someone
approaching the tearoom. In her confusion, she pushed the door open.
As expected, the tearoom was almost empty. A chill instantly gripping her
heart, Haryŏn turned toward the small group of patrons that remained. At that
moment, a man stood up in the corner and raised his hand, calling out, “Hey,
Haryŏn!” It was Mr. Nokpong. Haryŏn couldn’t have been happier. Everyone
around Mr. Nokpong turned toward her. Someone sitting next to him rose up
hesitatingly. It was Ch’ŏru. To her embarrassment, Haryŏn blushed.
“Come on in! What a surprise!” said Mr. Nokpong, stretching out his
arms toward Haryŏn. Standing beside him, the tall Ch’ŏru simply looked at
her, flushed and in a daze like a teenage boy. His face expressed a longing for
someone truly missed. For a while he stood speechless, as if in shock. Hadn’t
it been exactly thirteen years since they had last seen each other? It seemed to
Haryŏn that Ch’ŏru had changed little. If anything, he was more filled out than
he had been as a young man.
“Just a minute. Did you come here to see me or Ch’ŏru?” the completely
baldheaded Mr. Nokpong asked as he yielded his seat to Haryŏn.
“Oh, let me introduce her,” said Mr. Nokpong to two young men sitting in
front of him. “This is Ms. Yi Haryŏn. I presume you recognize her name?”
The two young men rose halfway in deference. “You have submitted River
Children to the current art exhibition, haven’t you?” said one of them. Haryŏn
felt embarrassed at the mention of River Children. She couldn’t stand hearing
about it then and there. In fact, she wouldn’t have submitted her work to the
exhibition, had she known that Ch’ŏru had submitted as well.
Ch’ŏru was silently pulling at his black tobacco pipe. The aroma of the
Bond Street tobacco and its smoke spread toward Haryŏn. Mr. Nokpong said
a few more words, then stood up and announced, “Well, we should be going.”
The two young men followed him awkwardly, without exactly knowing why.
Remaining seated, Ch’ŏru grasped Mr. Nokpong’s outstretched hands.
“Why don’t you drop in more often?” Mr. Nokpong said to Haryŏn and
then strode out of the tearoom, followed by the two young men.
Ch’ŏru kept his silence even after the group had left. Only the sounds of his
pulling at the pipe and the sizzling of nicotine were audible. Chanson melo-
dies floated toward them from the tearoom counter, and Juliette Gréco’s mel-
ancholy tune spurred on feelings between Haryŏn and Ch’ŏru.3 Haryŏn found
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Song Wŏn-hŭi 111
Ch’ŏru’s silence unexpectedly cold. She wasn’t sure whether she should say
something first. Ch’ŏru remained tight-lipped. Haryŏn wondered what was
going on in his mind, whether he was thinking once again of the enormous
absurdity of human fate.
Country-raised Ch’ŏru had roomed at a boardinghouse in Seoul. Until the end

of World War II, he and Haryŏn had been living in Japan. Haryŏn had been a
college senior at the time, but Ch’ŏru, who had already graduated, remained
in Japan to join nationalist movements, dodging the Japanese student-army
draft. Ch’ŏru’s involvement in such movements continued even after Korea’s
liberation from Japan and his return to Korea. Before he knew it, his art circle
had joined the Communist artists’ union and become increasingly involved in
politics. Sensing what was going on, Haryŏn had repeatedly urged Ch’ŏru to
wash his hands of it all, but the tight control of the group had made it impos-
sible for the weak-willed Ch’ŏru to break away. Haryŏn and Ch’ŏru had often
clashed over the issue. Haryŏn insisted on the freedom of art, while Ch’ŏru
argued for the political responsibility of art. In the end, he defected to the
North. A few days before his departure, the two had had a heated argument
in his boarding room. For a week thereafter, Haryŏn had refused to see him.
Then one day she received a letter from him:
I know all too well that what you are saying is correct. I think you also
understand why I must take this road. I sense that I will be coming back
to you someday. I can’t promise when, but I think the day will come for
me to confess that you were right. This is not a premonition; it’s because I
can already see the word “disappointment” in my mind.

Haryŏn had waited the length of an entire year. But Ch’ŏru never returned.
He probably couldn’t have. When the electricity supply was cut off between
the South and the North, the secret routes across the thirty-eighth parallel for
merchants and escapees from the North were completely blocked as well.
Haryŏn had gotten married. Her husband, recommended by her father,
was a perfectly ordinary man. Haryŏn had felt, with unutterable sorrow, as
if her marriage had resolved all things in her life. She had concluded that the
season of love between her and Ch’ŏru, passionate like the scorching sun, and
their separation thereafter, similar to that of Solveig,4 were nothing but lovely
memories, a scene from a novel that she herself had experienced.
Ch’ŏru was now back here. He returned, just as he’d said he would. There
was no need for Haryŏn to ask Ch’ŏru about the disappointment that had fol-
lowed his defection; in their hearts they both knew it all too well.
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Suddenly Ch’ŏru said to the approaching waitress, “I’d like a cup of tea.”
“What would you like?” the waitress asked Haryŏn.
“Coffee, please,” Haryŏn said.
The coffee arrived. The waitress placed the cup in front of Haryŏn and
skillfully poured the coffee and cream. The milky liquid spread quietly on
the surface of the brown, creating a whitish brown. The brown of the pure
coffee disappeared completely. Haryŏn had very much agonized over the skin
color of the children in her River Children. Her efforts to emphasize the sun-
tanned skin of little children in summer had turned out to be the color of
coffee mixed with cream and made the entire painting gloomy.
As Haryŏn picked up her cup, Ch’ŏru said, “I never dreamed of your com-
ing here today.” He calmly emptied the ashes from his pipe. “How many chil-
dren do you have?” he asked.
It was an ordinary conversation. “What a dull topic, considering the long
silence that preceded those words,” Haryŏn thought, although she wasn’t sure
what to say either. They now live in certain orbits from which they are not to
deviate; it is impossible to satisfy their yearnings with embraces and kisses
like those in a scene from a foreign movie.
“Your painting is very good. Looking at it after such a long time, I felt like
I’d met you unexpectedly,” said Haryŏn, pushing away her empty cup and
straining every nerve.
“Ha, ha . . . it feels strange to hear praise from you.” Ch’ŏru laughed and
then gave a light sigh, sounding almost like a lament.
When one of Ch’ŏru’s paintings had first been accepted for a modern art
exhibition in Japan, he was so moved by his own confidence that he kissed
her for the first time and promised to marry her. Thereafter their love had
deepened, and they had returned to Korea together.
“It’s stuffy here. Shall we go out?” said Ch’ŏru.
They came out to the street.
“Have you eaten?” Ch’ŏru asked.
“Yes,” said Haryŏn.
Haryŏn didn’t feel like eating. Suddenly she felt as if their conversation was
as intimate as it had been long ago. The space of thirteen years seemed to have
disappeared. Ch’ŏru stopped walking for a moment to light his pipe. His pos-
ture demonstrated a mature composure that had been absent in his younger
days, and it roused a sense of trust in Haryŏn.
Each time the winds blew, dried sycamore leaves showered down and made
crushing noises under the feet of Ch’ŏru and Haryŏn. After crossing T’oegye
Street, the two went to Mount Nam, Ch’ŏru leading the way. Young dating
couples passed by in all directions. Occasionally, Sibal taxis went by with their
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Song Wŏn-hŭi 113
blinding high beams, and the antenna tower of the HLKA radio station soared
high into the night sky.5 There had been no radio station on Mount Nam
ten years ago. Twenty years ago, a Shinto shrine had nestled there, noted for
the clatter of Japanese wooden clogs. Witnessing the passage of time and the
changes it had brought, Haryŏn felt poignant emotions stirring inside her.
“I thought I would be leaving once more without seeing you again,” said
Ch’ŏru. Haryŏn was taken aback by what Ch’ŏru said.
“Why, are you going back to France?” she asked.
“My daughter is waiting for me,” said Ch’ŏru. This was news to Haryŏn.
“A daughter?”
“Her name is Alissa,” said Ch’ŏru. The name “Alissa” immediately reminded
Haryŏn of the novel Straight Is the Gate.6
“The name sounds very delicate,” said Haryŏn.
“I feel sorry for Julie—that is, my dead wife—but I came up with the name,
longing for the woman I could never erase from my heart,” said Ch’ŏru.
Haryŏn understood what Ch’ŏru meant. It was Haryŏn who had lent
André Gide’s Straight Is the Gate, her favorite book, to Ch’ŏru, and Ch’ŏru had
returned it with his first love note to her slipped inside.
“In fact, Alissa should have been born our child,” said Ch’ŏru. Ch’ŏru’s
excited tone made Haryŏn rather flustered. It was difficult to measure the
extent of Ch’ŏru’s love for her, but he was obviously trying to connect their
current relationship to the past.
“Dear Haryŏn, can you forgive me? Back then, on my way to the South
during the January 14 retreat, I believed you would forgive me. But you
refused even to see me. I was so disappointed.”
Haryŏn was quiet.
“I’m not trying to make excuses for the past, but after all, the past is the
mother of the present. I don’t know whether something was wrong with the
past or whether I was responsible, but now I’ve grown up and realized that I’m
nothing but an ill-fated spiritual vagabond.”
Haryŏn remained silent.
“I finally understand the plain truth that the values of all things are fully
appreciated when they are gone, including love, freedom, and art.”
Haryŏn wasn’t paying attention to what Ch’ŏru was saying anymore. She
stood, looking blankly into the Seoul night. The sky of the ripening autumn
stretched high above them, and the stars were retracing old tales. The wind
felt cold against her skin. Haryŏn felt twinges of self-reproach as she won-
dered why she hadn’t tried harder to rescue Ch’ŏru thirteen years ago when he
had been swept away by the waves of politics.
“Dear Haryŏn . . .”
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“Yes.”
With his impassioned plea, Ch’ŏru grabbed Haryŏn’s hand. His big warm
hand tightly held her small icy one.
“If it’s at all possible, please try to come to Paris. I couldn’t give you what
I want to, but even now, if I could be of any help with your painting, I would
like to do so as a friend.”
“I wish I could . . .”
“I saw your painting and noticed some fine points. I believe a little more
study could do a lot of good for your originality.”
“It’s all over with me. I lost my desire to paint a long time ago, and I’m sure
River Children barely made it into the exhibition,” said Haryŏn as she pulled
her hand out of Ch’ŏru’s.
“Ha, ha . . . you really do need to come to Paris, Haryŏn. You ought to
come and watch painters as old as fifty or sixty work on sketches in the Lux-
embourg Garden. The sight stimulates a painter like nothing else can.”
Haryŏn kept quiet.
“But please don’t think I’m trying to seduce you, my virtuous lady.” There
was a thorny ironic undertone to Ch’ŏru’s words.
As the two returned to reality, they smiled wryly to themselves in the dark-
ness. Walking down the hill, Haryŏn asked Ch’ŏru when he was going back to
Paris. She caught a hint of loneliness in his voice as he answered that he would
leave before winter. At parting, Ch’ŏru grasped Haryŏn’s hand once more.
On her way home, Haryŏn felt relaxed and somehow at peace in her heart.
Her long-accumulated resentment cleared up like clouds vanishing from an
autumn sky.
At home Haryŏn found her husband, who was supposed to be away, read-
ing the newspaper. She felt her heart leap into her mouth. “Would an unfaith-
ful wife feel this way?” Haryŏn wondered. She couldn’t look her husband
in the face. When he asked where she had been, she answered that she had
visited Mr. Nokpong at his house, feeling intense self-hatred at her duplicity.
After confirming Haryŏn’s return home, her husband went straight to bed
and fell asleep. Listening to his regular breathing, Haryŏn decided to go to
bed also.
Just then, the light of the rising moon filtered in faintly through the gap
between the curtains. Haryŏn turned the light off and threw the curtains wide
open. Moonlight poured into the dark room, filling it completely. She decided
that the waning moon of autumn was the most rueful of the year, and she
began to think that the downhill life of a woman past her prime would be
nearly as lonesome. From a corner of the house somewhere, crickets chirped
away like lonely women crying out for love. Haryŏn pictured Ch’ŏru in her
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Song Wŏn-hŭi 115
mind: a lonely, middle-aged painter leading a monotonous life with his

daughter, Alissa, in a glamorous foreign city. Having learned the value of love,
freedom, and art, he would once again search for love and dedicate himself to
art. Tears streamed down Haryŏn’s face for no apparent reason. Autumn was
certainly the season of remorse and self-reflection. It resembled the anguish
of a woman struggling to climb a mountain along her own life’s path.
Suddenly Haryŏn shook her husband from his deep sleep.
“What’s the matter?” Her husband looked at her with sleepy eyes.
“Oh, nothing. This room is awfully quiet, isn’t it?”
“Why bring that up now . . .?” Haryŏn’s husband couldn’t understand her
loneliness.
“Well, just . . . ,” said Haryŏn. She began to choke up.
“You must be stressed out about your painting submitted to the exhibition.
Let’s go back to sleep.” Haryŏn’s husband put his arm lightly around her neck
and drew her to him. Then, in no time, he fell back into another deep sleep.
Haryŏn buried her head deeply in her husband’s chest. A number of art-
works, solemnly displayed in the marble building, came to her mind. The art
show in the streets where dead leaves rustled around in great numbers, the
young generation standing in the hot sun, and Ch’ŏru wandering among the
lost generation—all these images passed through her mind like scenes from a
movie.
“I, too, will have to be painting more seriously starting tomorrow,” said
Haryŏn, confessing to no one in particular.
Her husband’s arm loosened around her neck as the healthy sounds of his
heartbeats reached her ears. In the moonlit sky, an airplane—not geese—was
flying with its searchlight on, and the satellites—not stars—were keeping
watch through the night. And on earth the sounds of falling leaves quickened
the passage of the season.
[First published in Hyŏndae munhak (Modern literature), October 1961]
Analysis of “When Autumn Leaves Fall”
Set within the tightly controlled temporal framework of a single

late autumn day, “When Autumn Leaves Fall” (Nagyŏpki; 1961) presents a
reflective account of a midlife crisis experienced by its protagonist, Haryŏn,
a married woman painter who has just turned forty. As the narrative unfolds,
the reader is led into the heroine’s inner turmoil while following her leisurely
and solitary excursion through a national gallery, where her own painting is
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on display. A discerning woman, Haryŏn finds herself faced with unsettling

questions about her identity as an artist, wife, and mother of four children.
She is even unnerved by concerns over her age. Such agitation can be char-
acterized as part of a personal crisis that middle-class housewives commonly
experience as they pass their prime, but in Haryŏn’s case, her profession as an
artist adds another critical dimension to her quandary.
The restlessness in Hayrŏn’s heart first presents itself when she runs into
a carefree young couple on the street and is sharply reminded of her age and
her loss of youthful vigor and spontaneity. This feeling of falling behind the
times grows stronger when Haryŏn goes to the art exhibit. When she views
the paintings and sculptures showcasing new faces of the art world, repre-
sented by such rising stars as the sculptor Son Hyesŏn, Haryŏn is beset by a
disturbing self-doubt. Moreover, Haryŏn feels challenged by the new morality
and values of the younger generation, as she considers the lifestyle of Kyŏngja,
a female college art student she knows, who indulges in promiscuous rela-
tionships and regards traditional sexual morals as old-fashioned. Haryŏn
perceives similar aggression and activism and will to break from the artistic
establishment in the activities of young artists who participated in the open
street art exhibit she had recently viewed. Feeling dispirited by the challenges
of these young artists, Haryŏn compares herself to a dried fallen leaf, artisti-
cally moribund and hopeless. The very sight of her own painting provokes
nothing but strong feelings of self-loathing and despair.
Haryŏn’s increasing distress reaches its peak when she unexpectedly
encounters a painting by her long-lost first love, Ch’ŏru. Ch’ŏru’s painting,
titled Paradise, features a bucolic scene of Adam and Eve immediately before
they fall prey to the snake. The biblical motif and the aesthetic appeal coming
from Ch’ŏru’s unique contrast of colors set off in Haryŏn a strong longing for
the man who shares a part of her past. Haryŏn recognizes his presence linger-
ing in her heart, which she has long denied for fear of destroying the stability
of her married life. This encounter with Ch’ŏru’s work triggers her memories,
which reach back to her college years in the last phase of the Korean colo-
nial period (1910–1945) and reveals a chapter of Haryŏn’s life thus far hidden
from the reader. The scene also furthers the pensive mood of the narrative as
Haryŏn’s focus shifts from her actual observations of artwork in the present to
her recollection of the past.
Haryŏn’s reminiscence partially discloses her past relationship with
Ch’ŏru, which developed during their sojourn in Japan as art students and
ended with Ch’ŏru’s defection to the North after Korea’s political division fol-
lowing its 1945 liberation from Japan. It also relates Haryŏn’s knowledge of
Ch’ŏru’s current personal situation, as described to her by Mr. Nokpong, an
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Song Wŏn-hŭi 117
older painter who played an intermediary role between the lovers during their
days in Japan: Ch’ŏru became a recognized painter in Paris; is a widower hav-
ing lost his French wife, who died two years earlier; and is even now on a short
visit to his homeland. For a while Haryŏn fondly traces her past with Ch’ŏru,
which is mixed with regret at losing him and a strong impulse to see him
again. At the same time, she is fully aware of the senselessness of any reunion
with him after a decade’s separation and wonders about her own contradic-
tory emotions.
Following her better judgment, Haryŏn suppresses her desire and returns
home toward evening, but at home she feels no longer needed by her chil-
dren, who seem to have outgrown her motherly care. She tries to escape this
sense of void by retreating to the private space of her own studio, but she
finds it almost impossible to concentrate, as the image of Ch’ŏru continues
to haunt her. Her efforts to settle her emotional turbulence by painting also
prove futile, her discomfort deepened by her suspicion that her husband is
womanizing. When he phones to inform her of an overnight business trip—a
probable excuse for his philandering—without even stopping by the house
himself to pick up his travel bags, Haryŏn feels the gap between them grow.
The lonely vacuum thus created in her heart leads her to surrender to her
earlier impulse to seek out Ch’ŏru.
The most poignant part of the story concerns Haryŏn’s evening get-
together with Ch’ŏru at the Champs-Élysées tearoom, with its exotic French
ambience—a favorite haunt for fellow artists—and their later walk together
on Mount Nam. What it reveals in fuller detail is the heartbreaking love story
of Haryŏn. Her relationship with Ch’ŏru, dating from their days in Japan, had
all the elements of romanticism, idealism, and promise. And yet it succumbed
to external forces beyond their control. The tragedy of Haryŏn and Ch’ŏru’s
love story derives essentially from the victimization of Korean intellectuals by
Japanese colonial oppression; by the ideological bedlam of Korea after libera-
tion, which presented Korean artists with the impossible dilemma of choosing
between the pursuit of artistic autonomy and active political engagement; and
finally, by the misfortune of Korea’s political division and the Korean War.
This section—the most elegiac of the short story—serves also as a con-
fessional on the part of Ch’ŏru to Haryŏn. He is filled with remorse for his
past actions that brought about their final separation and expresses his deep-
rooted love for her and his genuine concern for her art, which is received by
Haryŏn with a tint of self-reproach for not having given him a second chance.
Although Haryŏn realizes there is no turning back, the reunion with Ch’ŏru
helps relieve her of a burden she has carried for many years, allowing her to
reconcile with her past. In this section of the story, the author’s use of André
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Gide’s novel, Solveig’s song, and French popular songs effectively underscores
the poignancy of the pair’s star-crossed affair.
The narrative ends with Haryŏn’s return home. To her surprise, she finds
her husband at home rather than on a business trip and feels guilty, as if she
had committed infidelity by staying out so late with Ch’ŏru. Her efforts to
reconnect with her husband proving futile, Haryŏn once again feels the acute
sorrow of her love. At the same time, she realizes she and Ch’ŏru were among
a lost generation of Koreans, drifting on the seas without anchor. This realiza-
tion leads Haryŏn to a renewed determination to pursue life’s meaning in her
art. In the end, the season of autumn with its falling leaves turns out to be one
of self-rediscovery for the heroine, a new beginning—not the dead end she at
first feared.
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Seven
A Dish of Sliced
Raw Fish (1979)
Yi Sun
Yi Sun (b. 1949) comes from a family background that

sums up the turbulent life courses of modern Korean intellectuals, lives that
closely parallel Korean political history itself. Her father, educated at Chūō
University, Tokyo, was a student resistance fighter who suffered imprison-
ment by Japanese police until the liberation in 1945. Yi’s mother—a student
at Tsuda College, Tokyo—had to abandon her schooling due to unsettling
political developments in Korea during the colonial period. After the libera-
tion, however, she resumed her education at Seoul’s Yŏnhŭi University (pres-
ent-day Yŏnsei University), becoming the first woman student in the univer-
sity’s history and majoring in English. Her marriage in 1947 again interrupted
her college education, though she later completed her BA in English at
Sŏnggyungwan University, Seoul. The fortitude, commitment, and persever-
ance of Yi’s parents were to become the spiritual backbone of Yi Sun’s life and
work.
The first of four siblings, Yi Sun was born in Seoul in 1949 after her par-
ents had moved to the South from their native towns in South Hamgyŏng
Province, North Korea. Yi graduated from Paehwa Girls’ High School in Seoul
in 1967, where her mother taught English from 1960 to 1987. During her high
school days, Yi was known for her talent for writing, and she earned a BA
in Korean literature from Yŏnsei University in 1971. In 1972 she debuted by
winning a literary competition sponsored by the newspaper Taehan ilbo. That
same year she married a writer—from an impoverished large family—whom
she had met as a co-worker at a magazine company after college graduation.
After her marriage Yi taught at Yŏngnan Girls’ Middle School in Seoul for
more than seven years. While juggling the demanding tasks of teaching and
119
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supporting her family, Yi entered Yŏnsei’s graduate program in Korean lit-

erature and she received her MA in 1973. That same year she gave birth to
her first son. Her experiences during this hectic and strenuous period would
become the subject matter of her later writing.
The period from 1974 to 1980 marked the blossoming of Yi’s creativity, the
most significant landmark being her 1979 winning of a literary competition
sponsored by Tonga ilbo. In the same year, her first novel, Param i tadŭn mun
(The door shut by winds), began its serialization in a magazine. This was fol-
lowed by a string of short stories, notably “Pyŏng’ŏ hoe” (A dish of sliced raw
fish; 1979), “Uridŭl ŭi ai” (Our children; 1979), and “Nae noksŭn kigye” (My
rusted machine; 1979). Most of her short narratives during this time incor-
porate her personal experiences as teacher, daughter-in-law, and mother and
reveal the values, hopes, and drives of the contemporary Korean middle class,
as well as its frustrations and failings. In 1980 Yi began to serialize her novella
“Sumŏ innŭn ach’im” (A morning in hiding) in the newspaper Seoul sinmun.
In 1981 Yi entered the doctoral program in Korean literature at Yŏnsei
University and published Uridŭl ŭi ai (Our children), a collection of her
previously published short stories arranged in a linked-narrative format
(yŏnjak sosŏl). She also began to work part-time as an instructor at various
universities in Seoul, including Yŏnsei and Ch’ŏngju University in Ch’ŏngju,
North Ch’ungch’ŏng Province. With the serialization of her novella “Chiha
tosi” (Underground city) in 1982 in the newspaper Chung’ang ilbo, Yi estab-
lished her literary status as one of the new voices of the 1980s, characterized
by a witty style and sharp social observations. In the meantime, she became
a sought-after contributor to various magazines and newspapers. The result
was the publication in 1983 of her collected essays, Che-3 ŭi yŏsŏng (The third
woman).
The year 1984 saw Yi’s obtaining of her PhD from Yŏnsei University as
well as the publication of her novel Nege kang kat’ŭn p’yŏnghwa (A riverlike
peace to you). Yi’s academic endeavors were rewarded in 1985 by her appoint-
ment as assistant professor at Ch’ŏngju University, which was capped by the
publication of her short story collection Paekpu ŭi tal (My big uncle’s moon;
1985).
Following the publication of her essay collection Arŭmdaun kŏt (Beauti-
ful things) and a novel, Nŏ kŭrigo na ŭi pinbang (An empty room for you
and me), in 1986, however, Yi’s burgeoning professional and writing careers
were brought to an abrupt end by illness and memory loss. Thereafter, Yi’s
literary achievements were all but forgotten, and even her whereabouts, to
say nothing of her condition, remained generally unknown for a long time—
especially after the death of her husband in 1993. Currently, however, Yi Sun
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Yi Sun 121
is living in a nursing home in Seoul, where she continues to write in a daily

diary despite the memory limitations that hamper her.1 Her previously pub-
lished short stories, including “A Dish of Sliced Raw Fish,” reappeared in 2005
in an anthology titled 20-segi Han’guk sosŏl (The twentieth-century Korean
novel).
A Dish of Sliced Raw Fish
I’ll never forget the first time I met my father-in-law.

I was giving a gentle jiggle to the gate of my boyfriend’s house, feeling
awkward for showing up at his house before we were even married.
“Who’s there?” an unfamiliar voice roared from inside the gate, and I
felt my heart leap into my throat. I didn’t know how to introduce myself—I
couldn’t say, “I am the soon-to-be daughter-in-law of this house.” While I
groped for words, flushed to my neck with embarrassment, the same thun-
dering voice rang out again, “Who’s there, I said?”
“Well, it’s . . . me,” I barely stammered under the pressure of the moment.
Thereupon the harsh voice yelled back, “Who do you mean by ‘me’?”
Dumbstruck, I looked at the sallow forehead and small eyes, totally
unknown to me, that were thrust over the tiny, palm-size iron gate. I won-
dered, “Who can that person be?” Had my boyfriend’s family moved away
without my knowledge? The next moment, I realized with a start that this was
my future father-in-law. For some unknown reason I broke into giggles in
spite of myself.
At that time, my boyfriend, Kyŏngmin, was an upperclassman in my
department, so our dates were limited to our university campus or to the tea-
rooms, music rooms, and noodle shops around the campus area. Our conver-
sation, too, was usually limited to topics about our department: “The popular
Shakespearean scholar Professor K, if poked and pried, is nothing but a wind-
bag”; “It’s crude to translate Dylan Thomas’ Quite Early One Morning into
One Early Morning in Korean”;2 “Since the M University in the United States
and our university have become sister schools, our BA and MA degrees will
be recognized by our U.S. counterpart”; and so on. Our activities might have
been all the narrower in scope because Kyŏngmin, a returnee, and I, one year
junior to him, both planned to continue our studies by attending graduate
school.
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So we couldn’t leave out the topic of our families from our conversations
either. Everyone knew that success in scholarly pursuits depended as much
upon family backing as a student’s academic achievements—common knowl-
edge to anyone interested in such matters. In this regard, my boyfriend’s fam-
ily, lacking even a telephone, which was as common as dirt—so that I had to
rely on telegrams for urgent communication with him during school vaca-
tions—wasn’t much of a family in the first place, if you will.
But Kyŏngmin was optimistic at that time. He said all would go well with
his family if his father “successfully scooped up three or four times.” The
object of this “scooping up” was fish. Kyŏngmin told me that his father owned
a fishing boat. For me, growing up as the oldest daughter of an eternal section
chief in the Ministry of Communications, fish at most meant grilled croak-
ers or scabbard fish on our dining table. As for the fishing boat, I imagined
it to be something like the ones in a song I had learned in fifth grade, which
ran, “Over the morning sea, seagulls carry golden lights / And fishing boats
carrying songs full of hope row away . . .” I thought the fishing boat sounded
wonderful, and my wild imagination indulged in visions of it.
Contrary to Kyŏngmin’s hopes, however, his father’s boat never scooped
up anything right—not even once, to say nothing of three or four times. Far
from “scooping up,” his boat “dropped things” into the sea and lost them.
What it lost on the sea was its fishing nets. Fishing nets? They were even
vaguer to me than fish.
“It’s all because of my father’s greed,” Kyŏngmin used to fume. “He gets
greedier and greedier for a bigger catch, and then by bad luck the winds
spring up, and there go his nets! Ugh! I hate his greed!” I heard about such
losses three times altogether. Called barbwire nets—something I had never
heard of—those nets cost two million wŏn each.
One day, a month before his graduation exam, Kyŏngmin, who never
missed class, didn’t show up at school, and after several more days without
hearing from him, I set out in search of his house at the foothills of Hwagye
Temple, in Suyuri.3 I took his address with me, the one I used for sending
telegrams. After half a day of wandering, I returned home unable to find his
house, and that very evening I had a phone call from him.
Kyŏngmin was sitting in the corner of a noisy drinking establishment
near campus called Double Widows, continuously emptying rice wine into
his mouth and showing no desire to touch the appetizer—thin strips of sweet
potato—provided free of charge. I noticed that my male classmates had set
up camp across from our seats and were keeping a vigilant eye on me, trying
mischievously to have their presence noted. Ignoring them, I broke into tears
and wiped them away with my fingertips. I wasn’t quite sure why I was crying.
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Yi Sun 123
It could have been out of pity for Kyŏngmin, who had grown haggard and
sunburned in the past few days, gulping down liquor without food; or it could
have been shock at the squalor I had seen as I wandered around his neighbor-
hood with his address in my hand.
Kyŏngmin’s thoughts were alarmingly easy to read: the world was coming
to an end. More shocking, though, was my previous encounter with the nar-
row, sloping, unpaved alley of his neighborhood, full of potholes, where I saw
a dead puppy lying stiff on a garbage can overflowing with rubbish, and a little
girl, her buttocks bare, barking toward the gate of her house, “Mom, I’m done
with my pooh.” The experience was especially appalling to me, who had been
raised in a five-room Korean-style house. It was an old house, with an extra
simple frame greenhouse attached, but thanks to the hard scrubbing given to
it every autumn, its color-tiled entryway was tidy and its wooden posts always
had a sheen.
No, this doesn’t mean I was shocked because the alley in Kyŏngmin’s
neighborhood was the only such alley in Seoul or because I had never seen
anything like it. I was even aware that Seoul had backstreets far worse than
the one I’d seen—many times worse in fact than the better alleys of the city.
Furthermore, I was at the time deeply immersed in those intellectual theories
that insisted that the “better alleys” ought to feel ashamed of and responsible
for those alleyways worse off than they. I firmly believed that for a beneficiary
of a university education like me to be a champion of such theories was the
first step toward freedom, justice, and truth—the fundamental objectives of a
university education.
So I carried antagonism against a few upper-class women students who
went on to graduate school just to fill the void until marriage. I grabbed at
every chance to make scathing remarks against women in general, saying,
“I often feel it is all too natural for men to despise women. The obstacle to
gender equality is not male prejudice but female ignorance.” As an example,
I cited the tendency of women—whether students of top-notch or third-rate
universities, no matter whether they had attended college or dropped out after
primary school—to wager their whole lives on their choice of a husband. And
I didn’t hesitate to give a good scolding to the prevailing custom that judged a
woman’s success in life solely by economic stability.
Opportunities to make such criticisms were usually given to me during the
discussion sessions of my college club meetings. Since Kyŏngmin was a senior
member of that literary circle, I got to reap two harvests from the club—one
being the theories; the other, my boyfriend, so to speak. I never ceased to
feel embarrassed that those theories completely failed to ease the shock I had
experienced in the alleys of my boyfriend’s neighborhood, because to say that
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I didn’t want to find the house was closer to the truth than that I couldn’t
find it. The immaturity of those theories, I thought, was more embarrassing
than the shuddering disgust I felt in that neighborhood at the sight of streets
crowded by those so-called mini two-story houses standing on pint-size lots.
I noticed that these houses unfailingly had their first floors rented out to cot-
ton gin stores, comic book shops, hair salons, or handmade-toy workshops,
setting the neighborhood ablaze with its different colored shops.
Now I was sitting across from Kyŏngmin in the corner of the tiny, scrubby
rice-wine shop, the air thick with smoke from grilled pork and cigarettes,
mixed with the clamor of male students bawling out in chorus, “We are all
gentlemen, the same as you, no different from you. You, fellah, with a Rolex
watch on, you aren’t the only exceptional one. I, a gentleman in handcuffs,
am also exceptional.” Sitting in this chaotic drinking joint, I shuddered with
loathing at my irrepressible urge to retract my love—if that was even still pos-
sible—to which I had dedicated most of my college years, a period that comes
only once in a lifetime.
My intense desire to take back my love hurt my pride. Still I had to con-
sider my twenty-some years’ privileged life of drinking tap water, one of the
amenities of metropolitan life in Seoul, granted that the days I spent with my
love shouldn’t be discounted so easily. Tap water wasn’t all that I’d grown up
with. I grew up in a household that refused to be left out of the great television
craze spurred on by the government’s five-year economic development plans
in the early 1960s.4 My family had bought a TV set on a monthly installment
plan, adorning our tiled roof with a TV antenna that looked like the antlers of
a deer roaming in Ch’anggyŏng Garden.5 My house had also applied for a tele-
phone line, keeping abreast of the times, and we had that product of modern
civilization installed at our bedside. In the 1970s, the decade of great hope,
we had bought a two-door refrigerator so as not to fall behind the times. But
above all, I had been raised in a home that could afford to give its daughters a
college education. That’s who I was.
Kyŏngmin began, “I’ve been to Changhang.6 My father hasn’t sent us any
money for three months. We haven’t had any contact from him either. So I
went to see what was going on. Now I’ve got to support my whole family. It’s
a good thing I’ll be out of school soon. Of course, I have to cross off graduate
school. I have nine mouths to feed. You sure you know what you’re getting
into? If not, let’s call it quits now.”
I shook my head without even making the usual flimsy excuse, like “Give
me time to think it over.” My idiotic pride was to be blamed for it all. I was
fully aware that with the times the way they were, couples that had lived
together with children over ten years could split up with no regrets, like a ripe
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Yi Sun 125
peach cracking open, once they found their marriage didn’t pay. I knew quite
well, too, that the pure love pledged tearfully in the corner of a cheap drinking
place near campus would not be impervious to the whims and flip-flops of
later years.
As the saying goes, it is practical work, not knowledge, that has power, and
I realized that knowledge meant little in the real world outside of school. So,
one month before his graduation, Kyŏngmin got a job with a trading com-
pany, a subsidiary of a conglomerate. But he didn’t even own a new suit, which
was beneath the dignity of an elite employee of a booming major corporation.
Come to think of it, he hadn’t exactly been slick-looking in his college days
either, but his tutoring side job had earned him a monthly income on a par
with the wages of average salarymen. Of course, it was out of the question
for him to make free use of those earnings. Still, he had money left after pay-
ing his tuition fees and was able to date me, that is, to engage in the practice
known on campus as “bringing up one’s own woman.”
We used to see each other at school, book packs on our backs, but we
couldn’t simply spend our time together day in, day out sitting on a bench
outside the classroom either. On the contrary, we both loved to go to a tea-
room facing the campus, whose walls were decorated with a framed copy of
an Apollinaire poem and reprints of a Van Gogh portrait and Munch’s The
Scream and whose air was filled with the aroma of freshly brewed coffee with
whipped cream and the melodies of Bruch’s violin concerto.7 We also loved
the draft beer house, where we could watch the familiar faces of young popu-
lar singers playing the guitar on television. We also often went to movies or
plays, and Kyŏngmin even presented me with a fourteen-karat gold necklace
with a heart pendant when he got a bonus from the parents of a student he
was tutoring. The parents gave him the extra money as a token of gratitude for
their son’s remarkable improvement in school, taking the autumn full-moon
season as an opportunity to express their thanks.
The beginning salary of a new company employee, however, was just about
the same as Kyŏngmin’s former monthly income from tutoring. Now he had to
look after nine family members with that money. Eventually he had to take up
tutoring again, just three months after quitting it to take on his new company
job. His most pressing problem was paying the college entrance fees for the
first of his two younger brothers. At first his older sister managed to cover the
expenses by getting the first share from her kye.8 But the remaining dues for
her kye turned out to be 40 percent of Kyŏngmin’s monthly salary. Seeing my
boyfriend, worn out from working dawn till dusk and in a completely dowdy,
ready-made suit from the South Gate market, I simply couldn’t blurt out such
heartless words as “Let’s take more time to think about our marriage.”9
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On one occasion, I ran into an old high school classmate, a rather com-
monplace girl who, having graduated from a community college, was now
grooming herself as a bride-to-be. She babbled, “My future father-in-law is an
executive director of the S Company. I was told that he bought an apartment
for us in Yŏŭido.10 He thinks that young couples should live by themselves no
matter what. He really dotes on me. He took me himself and picked out this
ring for me too. Don’t you think it’s got a sophisticated design? Believe it or
not, this is a one-carat diamond.”
Some time after this encounter with the friend, my maternal uncle’s wife
dropped in and said to my mother, “Look at Chiyŏng! She’s bloomed into a
beautiful woman! Isn’t she graduating this spring, sis? You’d better be looking
around for marriage candidates. Let me see. Well, there is one who is bride-
groom material with a degree in engineering, but a drawback may be that he’s
a graduate of K University. Who cares about such a trifle as a school name,
though? You see, what matters most is the person concerned and his family
background. His father is a professor at K University, and the young man is
attending graduate school besides working. That is, he is planning to succeed
his father. Into the bargain, he is the second son, you see.”
These stories got me thinking about my situation. My head was full of
ideas for tactfully dumping my boyfriend, whose father was neither an execu-
tive director nor a professor, from whom I could expect neither an apartment
nor a diamond ring. To make matters worse, my Kyŏngmin wasn’t even a
second son. But once I met him, my heart bled at his haggard look. We hadn’t
been able to see each other even once a week. Immediately after his office
work, he would rush to the rented room he used for tutoring. Sometimes we
couldn’t see each other for three weeks on end. And now he’d had to go to
Changhang for two weekends in a row in search of his missing father. In addi-
tion to providing for his parents and siblings, Kyŏngmin had to look after
the needs of his ailing grandmother, who kept asking for her son. It was the
evening Kyŏngmin returned from his second search trip that he called at my
house. As our telephone happened to be out of order that day of all days,
he couldn’t get through even after repeated attempts, and so there he was at
our door.
My mother, who knew I had a boyfriend, wasn’t surprised by his visit.
What stunned her was the result of her census taking of his family, under-
taken with my father’s help, after they had led him into the wooden-floored
main room—our living room. My mother almost fainted at Kyŏngmin’s fam-
ily background—the bankruptcy of his father’s fishing business, making him
the sole breadwinner for the entire family; that he’d just returned from Chang-
hang after hunting every corner of the city for his father because he couldn’t
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Yi Sun 127
bear the sight of his seventy-something grandmother lying ill in bed demand-
ing to see her missing son.
Witnessing Kyŏngmin’s crushed expression as my parents’ faces instantly
turned icy, I made up my mind that I’d marry him for the life of me—an
impractical, moronic decision, some might say. I followed after him when,
completely dispirited, he finally turned his back on my parents’ cold faces and
left our house. I sat facing him in a tearoom near the bus stop, again wiping
tears away with my fingertips. When after a prolonged silence he said, “Let’s
. . . break up,” I burst into sobs, covering my face with my hands, unable to
hold back the tears. Yet I didn’t forget to shake my head. In the meantime, I
silently showered curses upon Kyŏngmin’s father—the man who had trouble
“scooping up”; got into debt; turned his hand to gambling, hoping against
hope (so common at fishing ports); and in the end gambled away even his
fishing boat. In short, the root cause of all our misery was this one irrespon-
sible middle-aged man.
My curses, however, turned to sympathy, which happened after I had
worked my way through a series of vexing procedures such as having an audi-
ence with Kyŏngmin’s grandmother and mother at his house. This was made
possible only after my parents gave in to my revolt following my failure to per-
suade them, which included my overnight stay with Kyŏngmin and returning
home the next morning. No, the word “sympathy” was actually too classy for
my feelings toward the father-in-law I had never met. The man whose fool-
hardy gambling had so splendidly brought the grand finale to his livelihood
appeared to me more like a comic character.
That’s why I broke into giggles when I’d first met him, but such behavior
obviously did nothing but incur the wrath of my future father-in-law. Listen-
ing to the argument going on at the gate, his youngest daughter rushed out and
said, “Why, it’s you, sis! Dad, this is brother’s girlfriend he is going to marry,
the one we talked about yesterday.” The gate opened, and when I bowed cour-
teously to him, he said grudgingly, “Oh, I see. I haven’t been around for a long
time . . . ” and then walked straight to the wash area.
The scene in the wash area made my jaw drop. Incredibly, there were
piles of hand-size fish in the earthenware tub, along with a cutting board,
a knife-sharpening stone, and a kitchen knife. As he squatted, Kyŏngmin’s
father said, “Where has your mom gone all this while?” without addressing
himself to anyone in particular but in a tone that said he was outraged by the
person addressed as “your mom.” I felt utterly scandalized. When I had come
to this house with Kyŏngmin and met his mother for the first time, I had felt
wretched at the sight of her careworn appearance, this woman who was going
to be my mother-in-law. The weary course of her life hurt my heart beyond
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description and convinced me that her husband who made her so miserable
was an unforgivable sinner. In this belief I was not alone. Kyŏngmin couldn’t
help but tongue-lash his father whenever he met me, overwhelmed by the
burdensome responsibilities of tutoring after his office hours, although later
I pitched in to help him out. After every rant he never forgot to add, “I am
toughing it out because of my mother, you know. I feel so sorry for her.”
In fact, stories about Kyŏngmin’s father had sometimes come up in our
college days, between our talks about Dylan Thomas. At that time, his father
had a great dream of “scooping up” in Changhang. But those stories were
different in that they had a sweet sentimental overtone, as tales of bygone
hard times always have. After our drinks in the draft beer house, we went to
our favorite tearoom near campus and requested Kyŏngmin’s favorite music,
“Andante Cantabile,” and he often reminisced about his father’s past while
we listened to it.11 Apparently his father had spent his prime years in Inch’ŏn,
where he had owned two fishing boats and even a rice store.12 In order to
expand his business, he had mortgaged his rice store and a fishing boat and
bought a new, modern-style motorboat. Blinded by greed, his inborn charac-
ter flaw, he had had the new boat and the two old boats sail out fishing at once,
wanting a quick return on his investment, but all three boats tragically sank.
“It was too awful for words,” Kyŏngmin said. “I still think hell would look
just like those scenes. Relatives of the dead crew marched into our house
like masses of hornets, demanding their men be brought back to life. While
creditors set up camp in the sitting room, Grandma wailed over the death of
Grandpa, who, out fishing with the crew in place of my father, had perished
with them. Amid this crazy mess, we had to do without dinner, and I slipped
out to the pier, taking my younger brother with me. The night sea was dark
blue, and the lights of ocean liners moored far away were blinking on and
off. Even though my empty stomach hurt, I thought the scene was beautiful.”
Kyŏngmin’s reminiscences, set against the background of “Andante Canta-
bile,” moved me deeply. I got hooked on his story as he continued.
“What could we do? We moved to Seoul because they said, ‘Even if one has
to beg, Seoul is a better place to do it.’ Our luggage was only a bundle of bed-
ding, rice bowls in a bucket, spoons, and chopsticks. Can you imagine how
many spoons and chopsticks we had? And each and every one of them was
for dishing up rice, you know. When I dropped by the marketplace on my way
home from school, I found my mom dozing off. My sister Myŏngae was lying
stretched out, my mom’s nipple in her mouth. Then, when the patrol squads
charged to chase away peddlers, my mom fled, one hand holding the wooden
board on her head and the other clutching Myŏngae to her side. But nothing
was heard of my father.”
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Yi Sun 129
These stories would have been preserved for eternity as beautiful house-
hold legends, had his father succeeded in “scooping up.” There was another
story about Kyŏngmin’s father that made all the family members burst into
happy tears. This man, who disappeared after moving his family up to Seoul,
sent a message a year or so later to say that he was working on a friend’s fish-
ing boat, was expecting to pile up a fortune in a little while, and was then
to take over his friend’s boat. He said that his friend was sick and tired of a
business that carried with it the bottomless netherworld under just a piece of
wooden board—and so he’d appreciate his family’s patience until he sent them
some money. If the story had ended at that point, it would have been fabulous.
But in reality, he ended up vanishing again.
It seemed, therefore, that my father-in-law’s specialty was cutting off com-
munication with his family whenever he fared badly. How irresponsible of
him! He was an utterly unpardonable sinner, as I saw it. Now this sinner was
griping about his wife, sprinkling water over the kitchen knife, and sharpen-
ing it on a whetstone while he said, “It’s your mother’s job to sharpen the
knife. Well, what’s taking her so long? Is she buying up the whole market?”
A shrill voice called from inside, “You don’t say! She’s gone too long. By the
way, is there someone who’s come to see us? I seem to hear Chiyŏng’s voice.”
Hurriedly I said, “Hello, grandma. How are you?” and went up to the main
wooden-floored terrace.
When I glanced at the wash area, I noticed Kyŏngmin’s father looking up
at me with the kitchen knife in his hand. He obviously took a dislike to me.
The moment I looked back, he averted his eyes and began to sharpen the
knife noisily on the whetstone. At that very moment someone shook the gate.
Kyŏngmin’s father went over and opened it, then hollered, “Why, what took
you so long?”
“I had to look around for cheaper cabbages, because they were quite
expensive,” said Kyŏngmin’s mother calmly. She went on, “Dear me, why are
you sharpening the knife? Knives are supposed to be sharpened by the same
person.”
“If you knew that, how come you’re so late getting home?”
Kyŏngmin’s mother was so distracted by her husband’s scolding that she
seemed to have failed to notice me even as I tried to say hello to her as I stood
at the corner of the wooden-floored terrace. She finally looked at me when
I stepped down from the terrace and approached her, saying, “How are you,
mother?”
Barely recognizing me, she replied, “How are you, dear? Too bad
Kyŏngmin’s not around, but . . . ” Then the first thing she did was take the
knife from her husband’s hand, saying, “Let me take care of that.”
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Only a few minutes’ brisk whetting by Kyŏngmin’s mother turned the knife
razor-sharp. Then Kyŏngmin’s father took the palm-size fish one by one out of
the earthenware tub, put them on the chopping board, cut off their heads and
tail fins, and scraped out their guts. After a short breather, he cut the fillets
of fish into thin slices one after another, this time working more quickly and
adroitly.
I’ve never since seen anything as dazzling as the white light glinting off
a knife blade or such precise hand movements as those Kyŏngmin’s father
showed that day. Transfixed in front of the stone terrace, I stood with breath-
less attention and watched the aged couple’s teamwork. Yet I couldn’t bring
myself to touch the dish of raw fish that resulted from their joint work,
because I’d never had raw fish before. Later on, I learned that those palm-size
fish were called harvest fish and that my in-laws all loved them, but even after
I had been married a year, I still could not bring myself to taste the dish. This
attitude of mine also contributed to my father-in-law’s displeasure with me.
Later I learned that my father-in-law had been irritated that he, the head of
the household, had been excluded from the business of his eldest son’s engage-
ment from the beginning. No, what hurt him most was that our marriage had
been decided upon during a period when he had once again abandoned his
position as head of the household. But what else could we have done? My par-
ents, appalled by my introduction of the candidate of future son-in-law, had
mobilized my maternal uncle’s wife and my aunts on both sides of the family
in a flurry of lining up other prospective bridegrooms. Apparently my parents
had made no attempt to contact Kyŏngmin’s family about marriage matters,
until I, desperate at my helplessness to thwart their plans, finally staged a coup
d’état and stayed away from home overnight in an act of open defiance. Any-
way, Kyŏngmin’s father must have felt sore about the development, and he
always mentioned it to my husband whenever he grew mellow from drinking
on such occasions as memorial services for grandfather: “Good heavens! Can
you believe you almost had to take care of your marriage matters without your
father? For some reason, your mother and my own mother both appeared in
my dreams, so I came up to Seoul, only to find . . .”
At first I was bothered by my father-in-law’s griping and the hidden mean-
ings in everything he said, but as time went by, my anger subsided and I began
to feel sorrier and sorrier for him. As the primary holders of economic power,
my husband and I were unconsciously becoming the real masters of the house-
hold. Indeed, who among my in-laws could have complained about me? Even
before my marriage, I provided financial support for Kyŏngmin’s family by
taking over his tutoring work—first, half the job, and later, the whole thing.
Upon graduating from college, I began teaching English at a girls’ middle
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Yi Sun 131
school. This meant that our lofty dreams were sacrificed as offerings to the
eight members of Kyŏngmin’s family—his grandmother, father, mother, two
younger brothers, and three younger sisters. His two youngest sisters, born
within a year of each other, were a first-year student in high school and a
junior in junior high, respectively. The older one was attending a commercial
high school, and the second-oldest one was supposed to follow suit. The case
of the youngest sister, a seventh grader, would be no different.
In the end it dawned on me what it was like to be middle class—a concept
that had been fuzzy to me before. On our first wedding anniversary, my hus-
band and I decided to get together after work, agreeing we couldn’t possibly
let the day go by without doing anything, though we were pinched for time as
much as for money. We went to the draft beer house that had been our haunt
in college days, and we had beef cutlets and draft beer. Then we went to our
old favorite tearoom and had coffee. But when I asked my husband, “Shall
I request ‘Andante Cantabile’?” he hesitated and looked ill at ease. In fact,
he wasn’t the only one who felt out of place. I felt the same, despite my sug-
gestion, and I couldn’t understand why music requests, guitars, draft beers,
and coffee had become so totally alien to me. So to get rid of the odd, awk-
ward feeling, I came up with a conversation topic for us, “In our society, what
should be the standards for the middle class?”
My husband betrayed uneasiness again. The academic-style opening of
my remark, “In our society,” seemed too affected to him. I myself felt that the
phrase was ostentatious even as I said it, and when I noticed the expression on
my husband’s face, I suddenly grew sad. I began to look back with amazement
at the enormous changes of the past year. The hurried way I went to work in
the morning, the pressure of work until five o’clock, the tutoring job thereaf-
ter . . . I felt tears welling up in my eyes for no reason. Noticing my mood, my
husband erased the discomfort from his face and resumed our conversation
in a deliberately cheerful tone: “Well, what could they be? Refrigerator, televi-
sion, and the like?” I was in no mood to answer him, but since I had to finish
my coffee before leaving the tearoom, I said spiritedly, “No, the criterion is
whether a family can send its daughter to college or not.” All of a sudden my
husband’s face grew cloudy. Then the dark expression changed into one of
ferocity. “Let’s go,” he said, and jumped to his feet.
All the way home, through the three bus-transfers, my husband kept
his mouth shut. When we reached the iron gate of our house with its new
buzzer—the result of my influence and an improvement over the primitive
method of shaking the gate to have it opened—my husband paused for a
moment with his hand on the button and spat out, “You’re right! We are a
lower-class family.”
KimQuest.indd 131 9/22/09 1:56:50 PM

Our first wedding anniversary thus ruined made it clearer than ever that
I was the daughter-in-law of a lower-class household. I felt frustrated at my
inability to make my husband understand how it was more painful for me to
be the daughter-in-law of such a family than for him to be the son of one. My
frustration, however, dissolved into insignificance before the problem of the
college tuition fees of my younger brothers-in-law.
My younger sisters-in-law were expected to get jobs with banks or pri-
vate companies after graduating from commercial high schools and earn just
enough to ready themselves for marriage. Moreover, my first sister-in-law, a
freshman in a girls’ commercial high school, had promised, bless her heart, to
at least take care of the future school expenses of her younger sister. I had to
wait and see whether she’d make good on that promise, but if she really meant
what she’d said, I thought, it couldn’t be that difficult for her to do so. The
situations of my two brothers-in-law weren’t so simple. Most urgent was the
tuition for my first brother-in-law’s engineering college.
I used to go see my mother whenever I had pressing matters at hand. She
asked bluntly, “Look, why on earth does that hard-pressed family send all its
sons to college, anyway?” Although I was the one who had asked her for a
favor, I huffed, “You know, the more hard up we are, the more important it is
to send our kids to college. You don’t mean that we should live forever in want,
do you? If you don’t have money, forget it!”
Though I was piqued at my mother, I was more irritated at my husband. I
believed that if he really wanted to give his younger brothers a college educa-
tion, he should send them to a two-year teacher’s college or, if not, then to
the less expensive college of education. I also thought it senseless to insist on
sending them into science and engineering fields—expensive choices because
of the extra fees charged for experiments and practical training—rather
than into the social sciences or humanities. Moreover, now that my younger
brother-in-law, two years junior to his second brother, had entered engineer-
ing college, I had to try my darned best to grab the top number when my
school’s kye club was organized. Even after paying the tuition fees of two both-
ers-in-law with the kye share money, I couldn’t escape the chore of tutoring
because of the expensive monthly shares I had to put into the kye, especially
since interest was added to the first-share recipient’s payments.
Around five o’clock in the afternoon, all the faces in the teachers’ room
brightened, and some teachers even sighed happily, saying, “Ah, thank good-
ness, I’m done for the day.” But I had to rush to my tutoring class, snatching a
hurried dinner between jobs—a pot of noodles or a bowl of slapdash mixed-
vegetable rice from a cheap eatery fronting the school. My heart ached when
I watched the young single women teachers, who, after endless touchups to
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Yi Sun 133
their makeup, put on their silk coats at the stroke of five and left the office as
swiftly as the wind fluttering their clothes. Sometimes I ran into my college
classmates in the street. Among them were friends who had gone on to gradu-
ate school, and I always came home grumpy on such days, my lips swollen
with grievances, especially when I saw my father-in-law.
Most distressing to me was that I couldn’t let go of tutoring. I usually
taught students in a group in a rented room, but sometimes I also gave private
lessons. In the latter case, I was expected to go to the student’s home. This was
partly due to the preference of the student’s parents, but the fact of the mat-
ter was that our house had no room to spare. We had only three rooms—the
largest shared by grandmother, my husband’s parents, and my two younger
sisters-in-law, the middle one for us, and the smallest for my two brothers-in-
law—altogether an appalling situation.
My privately tutored students were usually from wealthy families, and
their homes were warm like greenhouses in the winter and an autumnal cool
in the summer because of air conditioning. In the bathroom, the size of the
room I shared with my husband at home, there was always a glittering white
Western-style toilet, so awesome as to make me hesitate to do my business
while sitting on its seat. The bathtub was hidden behind vinyl curtains of
spanking new designs, and lined up in the glass-windowed cabinets were such
imported items as bottles of shampoo, lotions, and astringent and neat piles
of thick, gorgeous, colorful towels. Above all, there was the big, thick bath-
room mirror. Looking at my reflection, I was surprised to see darkish freckles
around my eyes and cheeks, which were deep and sunken. One day a student’s
mother stopped me after the lesson and sat me down in her room, saying,
“You must be tired, dear teacher. Please have some of this honey water.” Then
she was bold enough to ask, “Pardon me, but what does your husband do for
a living? . . . Oh, I see, he’s got a good job. Then you must have a large family
to support if you’re working this late, right?”
That night the woman gave me a set of imported cosmetics, telling me
that it was a present she had received and that she had no need of it because
she had so many such things. She insisted I accept it, since it was, more than
anything else, a token of her concern over my toils as a young woman teacher.
When I got home, the gift in hand, I gnashed my teeth and swore I’d never
set my hand to another job like tutoring again. At that time, however, I had
already joined three kye, from two of which I had already pocketed my shares,
and as if that weren’t enough, there were also payments for two installment-
savings accounts to be made.
My husband said, “Why don’t you quit tutoring now that I’ve gotten a
raise? Besides, my brothers are also working part-time, aren’t they? They
KimQuest.indd 133 9/22/09 1:56:51 PM

told me not to worry about their tuition fees next semester.” But I doggedly
shook my head. My dreams went beyond looking after my husband’s family.
I longed to move into a larger house. Once in a while, I had dreams at night
in which I stood in the sunny courtyard of a winsome Western-style house
with a flush toilet and a Western-style kitchen, looking down at my child on
a swing. The image of the child would vary—it could be either a girl or a boy,
either playing on the swing or running around the courtyard. But the picture
of me never changed. In the dream, I cut a flashy figure in a pink housedress,
and as I stood in front of the house and its large lawn, I would be wearing
a smile, puffed up larger than cotton candy. No, let me think! Actually, just
once I struck a different pose in the dream. Seated imposingly on a large,
thickly padded cushion spread out in the main room, which was splendidly
decorated with a tall wardrobe and a low stationery chest, both studded with
mother-of-pearl inlay, I am handing over a set of imported cosmetics to my
child’s female tutor. I say, “Pardon me, but what does your husband do for a
living? . . . Oh, I see, he’s got a good job. Then you must have a large family to
support if you’re working hard so late, right?”
In addition to the kye made up of women teachers at my school, I joined
another one that was organized by my mother. Once I went to pay the kye
money to my mother. My younger sister was horrified that I still wore clothes
from my college days or hand-me-downs that she’d grown tired of and tucked
away long ago. This sister, a college sophomore, asked me with a serious look,
“What are you going to do with all the money you’ve saved, sis?”
“Listen to this girl! You aren’t asking me because you don’t know why peo-
ple save money, are you? I’m at it for future use, okay?” I replied tartly.
“You mean you’re going to spend it? What’s it for?”
I looked askance at my sister without saying anything, thinking she was
joking with me. But she sat up a little closer to me and said, “What’s it for? Is
it for your brother-in-law’s tuition fees?”
Infuriated, I glared at her. With a nonchalant air, she continued, “I’m
sorry if I hurt your feelings, sis. But every time I see you, I get skeptical about
marriage. No, I guess it’s more correct to say I get cynical about love. Who’d
marry for love if they knew they’d turn out like you? Look at you, sis! Who’d
guess that you are a graduate of the top-notch H University with a degree in
English?”
I was speechless. But I couldn’t remain silent, so I said very childishly, “Oh,
and what a swell you are!” Flabbergasted, my sister looked over at me.
I went on, “It won’t be a problem for you as long as you don’t turn out like
me, right?”
“Right, I won’t be such a fool. What’s in it for you to go huffing and puffing
KimQuest.indd 134 9/22/09 1:56:51 PM

Yi Sun 135
to beg for tuition money and then offer it to your brother-in-law? Don’t they
think you’ve done more than enough in feeding their enormous family by
working side by side with your husband?” asked my sister pointedly.
For a while, I was lost in thought: “Well, she’s got a point. Why should I
carry on like this?” But I couldn’t give in and admit she was right, so I said
in an impetuous tone, “Well, perhaps you won’t follow in my footsteps. Who
knows? But I can’t help it. I’ve chosen a man and married him, and when a
man and a woman marry, it means that they forge a mutual benefit-sharing
system. What’s so strange about including in that system the welfare of the
husband’s parents and siblings? Do you think the academic backgrounds of
your husband’s brothers are irrelevant to you? They will become your chil-
dren’s uncles, don’t you see?”
I talked like this to avoid losing the argument to my sister, but I was more
moved by my own words than she was. She merely sneered at me, “You’ve
been born to this land for a historic mission to regenerate your husband’s
family, not for our country’s restoration.”13
Intoxicated by my own remark, however, I spoke with much more heat,
“What’s wrong with that? It’s my choice anyway. I want to be responsible for
my choice.”
I pledged to myself, “I’ll buy a large house with a lawn. I’ll buy a refrigera-
tor and install a telephone as well. In the end, I’ll succeed in lifting my house-
hold from the lower class up to the middle class—no, to the upper class. Isn’t
this household mine, anyway? If it has fallen from middle class to lower class
by itself, it can also climb back up by itself. What other choices am I left now
anyway?” I was burning with a fighting spirit.
“Good luck, sis! But don’t you think your priorities are screwed up? Before
you worry about your children’s uncles, shouldn’t you have children first?”
But I was deaf to my sister’s words.
We moved from a three-room mini two-story house to a five-room, slate-

roofed house in Changdong with a courtyard and even a pond, although the
area was a step closer to Kyŏnggi Province than to the Hwagge Temple in
Seoul. The morning after our move, my father-in-law went to Inch’ŏn at the
crack of dawn. There was a water pump in the corner of our front courtyard
with the pond, and the cold underground-water gushed out with a little help
from the pump lever. Upon returning home, my father-in-law let loose a bag-
ful of fish in this pump area. In an instant, the whole courtyard was filled with
the smell of fish. At first, I couldn’t stand it, but the fish smell soon lent the
house a festive air, and, humming a tune, I worked in the kitchen to let the
boiled rice simmer down.
KimQuest.indd 135 9/22/09 1:56:51 PM

Our kitchen was Western-styled, the way I had wanted. Above all, I was
happy to escape from the noise of the sewing machine, which used to clatter
as late as midnight from the handmade-toy workshop that had rented the
first floor of our old mini two-story house. Our entire family was ecstatic. My
sisters-in-law were overjoyed to have a room of their own. The room they had
shared with their grandmother and parents had been far too cramped. Even
more unbearable to them had been the stench from their aged grandmother,
who, with the lower half of her body stiffened, had to have help in taking care
of her bodily needs. Luckily, there was a room attached to the back of our new
house. Probably the room was originally built for renting out, but we were
lucky to use it as a separate room for grandmother. In fact, we had taken such
needs into account when we decided on this house.
My mother-in-law, whose back was bent even before sixty, often sighed,
“There’s no end to trouble in this world” as she emptied her mother-in-law’s
chamber pot. “Just when I thought I’d got rid of some worries, now there’s
grandma.” But the real worry for my mother-in-law was her husband. Since
returning from Changhang empty-handed just before our marriage, he had
lived the sad life of the jobless. Even so, he often went out somewhere in the
morning to return home late in the evening.
“Where are you going every day, dad?” my husband once asked. Hidden
in my husband’s question was disapproval of his father. My husband thought
that if his father couldn’t make a single penny, he had better stay home and
help his wife take a break from the chore of taking care of his own mother. My
mother-in-law had a total of nine family members to look after, all by herself,
including me, who had to work outside the home. But from the beginning my
father-in-law wouldn’t budge from his daily routine, even while fully admit-
ting he no longer qualified as head of the household. Rather, the person who
was adamant about this situation was his wife.
My mother-in-law never failed to insist, “Look, son, don’t ever say things
like that to dad! Men shouldn’t stay around the home. Only when they have a
life outside of the home can menfolk keep up their spirit.”
“So what’s he going to do with that spirit, Mom?” my brother-in-law, who
harbored many more grudges against his father, once snapped.
My mother-in-law almost hit the ceiling. “How dare you! He’d die if he lost
his spirit, do you hear me? Do you want your father to die soon? Is that it?”
Although my mother-in-law always felt intimidated by her working son
and daughter-in-law, she remained changeless in her position as the “mother”
of the family. She doled out chastisements to her family members at regu-
lar intervals. To her second son, she said, “Look, son! How come you’re so
late coming home, even though you don’t work part-time these days? Yester-
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Yi Sun 137
day morning I had a phone call from a girl. Tell me, do you come home late
because you’re fooling around with your date? I can’t stand the sight of guys
dating while neglecting their own studies.” Evidently her remark was also tar-
geted at her oldest son and his wife, that is, my husband and me, a “campus
couple” who had married for love.
My mother-in-law was equally pitiless to her daughter, who had just
landed a job after graduating from commercial high school. “What are you
doing spending so much time in front of the mirror? And do you have to buy
so many clothes and cosmetics? At this rate, you won’t be able to take care of
yourself, let alone your sister.”
My mother-in-law didn’t spare me either and periodically scolded me with
biting words: “When are you going to have a baby? You do know you and your
husband aren’t getting any younger?” Or “Listen, dear, you have to have babies
before it’s too late. What are you going to do if ‘it’ gets completely blocked by
having it plugged up like that?” Of course, her words expressed her own wish
to have grandchildren and also her concern that her son needed descendants
without delay. But I figured their main purpose was to strike a blow at me. It
was also clear that her periodic scoldings of family members had a good deal
to do with her husband. In a sense, her rebukes represented a ceaseless moth-
erly effort to bring up her children well.
Beginning with my husband, however, my younger brothers-in-law and
sisters-in-law were all perfectly well-brought-up children. Everyone knew
what they needed to do in order to turn out properly in a financially strained
family, and they were forever reminding each other of their duties. In this
aspect, my husband’s siblings were solidly united. They were all taking care of
themselves. My younger sisters-in-law, for one, were focused on getting jobs
after graduating from commercial high schools. As for my younger broth-
ers-in-law, they set themselves to successfully completing their college studies
in science and engineering—these areas better guarantee employment than
do the humanities—with an eye to securing jobs for a settled life thereaf-
ter. What’s more, my brothers-in-law were trying hard to cover at least their
tuition and pocket money by holding on to part-time jobs, while my sister-in-
law, who had just landed a job, was contributing a certain amount toward our
living expenses every month. They were truly flawless children. Moreover, I
had been told that until my father-in-law came to that fine pass, my mother-
in-law had been an indulgent mother who never scolded her children, as she
felt sorry that they had to grow up under such needy circumstances. So all of
us were fully aware that her scolding was an effort to solidify her position as
the matriarch of the family, as well as an attempt to cover for her husband,
who had lost his position as the head of the family.
KimQuest.indd 137 9/22/09 1:56:52 PM

So, on mornings when my father-in-law made a trip to the fish market in

Inch’ŏn, we often exchanged knowing smiles with each other, watching my
mother-in-law as she sharpened the kitchen knife in high spirits. She was
happiest when her husband displayed his confidence. There wasn’t, however,
any special ability left in him now. The best he could do was buy fish or veg-
etables at the wholesale market. In fact, the cabbages, croaker or harvest fish,
salted shrimp, and everything else he brought in from the market were always
exceptionally fresh and cheap, and we didn’t need my mother-in-law’s com-
ments to confirm it: “Only your father can get such good stuff at these prices.
I tell you, nobody bargains like he does.”
We always had a dish of raw harvest fish to celebrate occasions such as
family birthdays, my brother-in-law’s admittance to college, and my sister-
in-law’s getting a job, and each event required my father-in-law’s skill. When
we celebrated my brother-in-law’s success in passing the college entrance
examination, my father-in-law surprised us by shopping for fish with his own
money—a mystery to us. We all asked him out of curiosity, “Where did you
get the money?” but he said nothing, a solemn look on his face—the last thing
we expected from him.
It was my mother-in-law who spoke up on his behalf: “Why shouldn’t he
have money? After all, he gets around, and I tell you, men have to get around
one way or another.” We wondered whether my father-in-law had found
another boat-owner friend who allowed him on board or asked him to take
over his boat. But we had serious doubts about his having such luck for the
second time, although he kept his routine of going out in the morning and
coming home in the evening. In time, we satisfied our curiosity by concluding
he had savings stashed away from the allowance his wife gave him.
“I thought the slices of raw fish smelled a little like cigarettes. Now I know
it’s because dad bought the fish with his cigarette money,” quipped my young-
est sister-in-law. Undoubtedly, my father-in-law’s position in the eyes of his
family members was anything but lofty.
Then he stunned everyone by declaring, “I have been working but haven’t
told anyone about it.” It happened during our housewarming party when he
got quite tipsy. This unexpected announcement was followed by his remark-
ing that he’d been saving the revelation of this three-year secret just for our
party. From the startled look on my mother-in-law’s face, however, I gathered
that his sudden, blunt confession was clearly due to the shock he’d received
from an incident at the dining table earlier that day. To sum up the episode, it
happened as follows:
My mother-in-law opened the party by saying at the table, “Thank you,
everyone, for all your hard work for the move into this big house. Go ahead
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Yi Sun 139
and help yourselves!” Obviously, her overture was intended more for her hus-
band than for anyone else, because he had taken care of all the tasks of hunt-
ing for the house, bargaining for a better price, concluding the sales contract,
and even making repairs on the house.
My husband chimed in, “Mom, thank you for all your hard work too!”
“No! More thanks to you, brother. And you too, sister-in-law!” my brother-
in-law said.
“You’re right. Thank you, sister-in-law—you’ve done the most!” my sis-
ters-in-law blabbered, and went on, “I’ll say! Why don’t we put her name on
the nameplate of this house?”
Unable to remain quiet, I said, “Oh, no, don’t mention it! You ladies also
helped out a lot. Especially you, big sister-in-law, have chipped in so much for
living expenses from your small salary . . .” I got choked up, and this seemed
to have made my parents-in-law even more tense.
My sisters-in-law and I had often squabbled over kitchen chores when my
mother-in-law was away at a wedding or funeral in her own family, but at that
very moment all the past between us seemed to have been completely washed
away. And on top of that, I felt as if my nine in-laws—trying and burden-
some—had suddenly turned into people I could depend upon.
“Not just one name, but let’s inscribe all our names on the nameplate,” said
my second brother-in-law, which tickled me to burst into laughter.
“Why just on the nameplate? Why not on the refrigerator, and on the
telephone too? How about using gold letters while we’re at it?” said my first
brother-in-law, making me laugh even louder.
We had been able to buy the refrigerator because the price of the house
had been lowered more than we had expected. The telephone had come with
the house, as everyone in the family had hoped.
The trouble began when my second sister-in-law blurted out, “But you
know, we have to take out dad’s name from the nameplate.”
For a moment everyone fell dead silent, and my sister-in-law cringed at
her own blunder and hung her head low in embarrassment.
“What a spoiled brat! How dare you babble like that after all the trouble
your father went through to find this house! Who do you think did the repairs
on this water pump and the soybean-sauce jar deck?” My mother-in-law flew
into a rage, no doubt making my father-in-law more ill at ease.
Even if such an incident hadn’t happened that day, I guess my father-in-
law was supposed to say something to mark the occasion anyway. I had sensed
that his daily routine of leaving home early in the morning and returning
late in the evening was the result of his desire to stay away from his family as
much as possible, rather than an effort to keep his spirits up as my mother-
KimQuest.indd 139 9/22/09 1:56:52 PM

in-law said. My husband—stressed out by his company’s in-service training,

Japanese language lessons, and whatnot, on top of his office work—took out
his frustrations on his father by blowing up at him whenever the two met,
especially when such problems as his younger brothers’ tuition came up and
made him even more exhausted. My father-in-law had no choice but to suffer
such outbursts in silence. Besides, he also knew that not only his eldest son
but also his second and third sons and second daughter were ready to jump
all over him too. That was why, I guessed, he thought it best to disappear all
day. I could also see quite well that he had been taking care of chores such
as bargaining for fish and vegetables, house hunting, and slicing raw fish in
order to mollify his children by any means possible. It seemed to me, however,
that he knew better than anyone else that he couldn’t possibly go on that way
forever.
So on that day, when my mother-in-law was about to pounce on her
youngest daughter, my father-in-law gently checked her and said, “I haven’t
told you guys yet, but I’ve been working for some time.”
Struck dumb, we all stopped eating and looked at him. My mother-in-law
looked nearly out of her wits. Finally my husband asked, “Where, Dad?”
My father-in-law hesitated. Then he answered calmly, “Well . . . at the fish-
eries co-op in Inch’ŏn . . .”
“What did he mean by that? Did he mean the fisheries cooperative? Was
he working there as a clerk or something . . . ?” I wondered, but my specula-
tions came to a dead stop.
“Darn it!” My husband sprang to his feet and pressed on, “Dad, you’ve
been doing net knitting, haven’t you? You couldn’t possibly be doing desk
work or selling fish wholesale. All that you can do is backpacking or net knit-
ting, but who’d take you on for backpacking at your age? It’s net knitting for
sure. You see, I noticed pieces of net threads stuck on your pants crotch when
you came into the house the other day, and I wondered.”
My father-in-law’s face turned blank, and my mother-in-law swallowed
her breath.
“What’s net knitting, sis?” whispered my youngest sister-in-law to her
older sister, but the latter didn’t seem to know what it was either.
Only my first younger brother-in-law seemed to know, and he remained
quiet, his eyes cast down for some time. Then he said “Ugh!” and stood up,
throwing his spoon and chopsticks on the table.
In the meantime, my husband kept yelling, “Listen, Dad, have we made
you go hungry or have we given you no pocket money? What do you need
so badly that you have to go to the pier and do hard manual labor? Don’t you
know how old you are?”
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Yi Sun 141
My brother-in-law stepped down from the wooden-floored terrace and

said, “Ugh, it’s so humiliating!”
All of a sudden, I recalled the news I relayed to my husband that his
younger brother was dating a girl—a tip I’d gotten from my own younger
sister. I had expected my husband to get angry and say, “What? Dating? What
about his studies?”
However, the first thing he said was, “What does she do? Is she a
student?”
Surprised, I answered that she was a college student, whereupon my hus-
band asked what her college was. When I replied that it was the same elite
women’s university that my sister attended, he chuckled, saying, “I guess that
chap, too, is acquiring things one by one.”
“What do you mean by ‘acquiring things’? What is he acquiring things
for?” I asked.
“What else but qualifications for becoming middle class! Don’t you
remember what you said to me before—the most important qualification for
the middle classes is the ability to send their daughters to college? Isn’t it true,
then, that if a guy marries the daughter of such a family, he’ll move upward to
the middle classes? He’ll have a long way to go, but I bet it sure is the way to
get there,” said my husband.
Then and there I realized that my husband and I were all of one mind. I
got to know that he too loathed being part of the lower classes and set as his
life’s goal to climb up toward the middle classes and ultimately to the upper
classes. It became clear to me that in order to realize this dream he had chosen
only his younger brothers and sent them to college—engineering colleges at
that—and had been doing his utmost to look after them. And on the day my
father-in-law told us his long-kept secret, I read the same aspiration in my
younger brother-in-law, when he pushed the dining table away in anger and
stomped out. As he flung open the gate and stormed out of the house, I saw
his outrage written all over his back at his father’s “monstrous” choice of hard
manual labor at a time when everyone else in his family was making all-out
efforts to climb up toward the middle classes.
Frankly, nothing really bothered me anymore. I already had a larger house,
a refrigerator, and a telephone. We no longer needed to eat only cheap fish like
harvest fish. The time had finally come for us to eat things like flatfish. Now
all we needed was a swing on the lawn. No, first we needed a child who would
ride it.
Although our breakfast gathering that day had come to such a disastrous
end, it turned out to be a rally for family solidarity, both in name and reality. It
was only the outward appearance of our family that was cracked by my father-
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in-law’s ludicrous confession. In truth, I felt that our family was further uni-
fied after the incident. We were comrades heading with one purpose toward
higher-class living. In this respect, even my parents-in-law were our partners.
We were all in it together from the beginning. Whether we liked it or not, we
were one family destined to share both profit and loss. Now I could finally
plan to add one more member to that family. I had already been married for
three years by then.
We were lucky to see our plans for buying the house come off just in time.
Since our house was purchased on loan, we had to pay the monthly mortgage,
but my first brother-in-law’s graduation was just around the corner. Since he
was to join the army, he couldn’t get a paying job right away, but at least he
would no longer need financial support from us. In addition, my husband was
slightly hopeful about being promoted to a directorship. I quit tutoring. I also
made plans to quit school in expectation of my husband’s promotion. I could
almost see my pink housedress and my child’s swing.
My mother-in-law said, “Oh, dear, do you even plan such things as babies?
Having children depends on Heaven’s will, but it’s good that you won’t leave
‘it’ blocked off anymore. Our bodies are supposed to follow nature, and I’m
worried about whether something’s gone wrong with yours over these years.”
At first, my mother-in-law seemed quite displeased to learn of my family
planning, but she was overjoyed when I told her I would take out the loop. She
telephoned my married sister-in-law right away and prattled, “Chiyŏng says
she is finally planning to have a baby. I don’t blame her, considering how hard
up for money we’ve been. But I feel sorry for your brother to have children
this late, all because of his family burdens.”
I was amused to see my mother-in-law carrying on in this way, but at the
same time I felt resentful toward her. She had given birth to seven children in
all, according to Heaven’s will as she had said, but she and her husband had
dumped five of them on their oldest son to take care of by himself, which I
found shameless. All these things mattered little to me now, though. They
were to be classified as a new chapter of our household legends.
It seemed, however, that this family was doomed to have no luck with
legends. Two months afterward, I felt indisposed, and at my doctor’s office,
I learned that I was two months pregnant. That very evening, my husband
returned home unusually early, breaking his custom of coming back at nine
o’clock—at the earliest—due to his night shift and other work. He wore a dark
expression on his face and simply nodded his head at my news of pregnancy.
Sensing something out of the ordinary in his look, I kept my mouth shut
and took the portable dinner tray to him, but he shook his head—his eyes
closed—and stretched out on the floor without even changing his clothes. I
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Yi Sun 143
put the tray down on the floor, sat close to his head, and asked very carefully,
“Is something wrong?”
He sat up quickly, as if he had decided it was now or never for him to speak
up, and spit out, “I turned in my resignation today.”
Resignation? Resignation? What was that? Resignation . . . ah, the thing I
intended to hand in to my school when my husband was promoted! But this
guy had turned it in?
Shocked, I cried out, “Honey!”
“I learned that I was omitted from the list of promotion to directorship. It
happened the day before yesterday. Yesterday, my co-worker, an upperclass-
man from my college, asked me to see him outside the company and advised
me to quit. According to him, the old-timers who were left out of this pro-
motion are scheduled to be transferred to the business department,” said my
husband.
I gasped out, “What do you mean by the business department? What do
they do there?”
“Don’t you know? It’s a salesman’s job. It wouldn’t be a simple matter of
transferring either. I heard that when we’re ‘transferred,’ we’ll be asked to write
a memorandum stating that we will resign if we failed to sell the given amount
of merchandise within a given period. That’s no different from asking for a
resignation from the beginning. I thought it would be better to quit now as
suggested, so I submitted my resignation today.”
I took a deep breath. My husband seemed to feel better after unbosoming
himself. He fumbled a cigarette pack out of his jacket pocket and asked me to
bring an ashtray and a match. Heading for the main room, I felt my legs trem-
bling all over. Salesmen! All I could imagine were the faces of peddlers selling
books by monthly installments—those thick-faced book hawkers who, float-
ing gawky smiles, stepped timorously into the teachers’ office at my school
when I took a rest there once in a while.
I plopped to the floor before I could make it across the wooden-floored
terrace. My mother-in-law, who was coming out of the main room at that
moment, ran over to me, saying, “My Goodness, dear! You got dizzy! Lis-
ten, you’d better be careful now that you’re in a delicate condition.” She was
already informed of the news of my pregnancy. I began to wail, falling on her
lap, “Oh, mother, what shall we do? Kyŏngmin’s quit his job.”
I felt my mother-in-law’s arms around me growing stiff. The doors of sev-
eral rooms opened, and the rest of the family rushed out. But what’s the use?
In silence, they simply looked down at me as I sobbed convulsively, collapsed
on the floor.
Four days later, my husband returned home with his retirement pay. My
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hands trembled as I received the envelope. It felt like scores of decades, not
four days, had passed. Yet my husband himself looked surprisingly calm.
“Don’t worry too much. I am looking for jobs here and there. I’m also
thinking of taking this as an opportunity to change the direction of my life—I
mean to go to graduate school,” said my husband.
His idea of graduate school made me feel more hopeless than his job hunt-
ing. What did he mean by going to graduate school at this point? The days
of passionate discussions about Dylan Thomas and Shakespeare and about
grubby alleys floated up like a dream. Just four days before, hadn’t I been filled
with joy at having brought my “middle-class family transformation project”
to completion? I felt a sudden rush of hatred for my husband and glared right
at his head. He was looking at the retirement envelope, which he had taken
back from me for some reason and laid in front of him on the floor. “Graduate
school?” What nonsense it was for him to depend on his wife’s teaching job!
My husband jabbered in an idiotic and inexcusably light tone, “Ha, ha . . . I
feel as if a life jacket has just been thrown to me, after having been abandoned
in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”
I shot him down, “What do you mean by a life jacket? To me, it looks more
like bullets, those given out to a commando unit dispatched into the jaws of
death for their final suicidal use.”
I couldn’t fall asleep until late that night. My husband’s cold stare, full
of misgivings after he had been stung by my venomous “bullet” theory, had
me thinking hard. I began to think that now was indeed a chance for me to
change the direction of my own life as well. The first step would be to resign
from the school. Next, I would go to my parents and have a discussion with
them. They wouldn’t be too happy, but wasn’t it about the trouble their eldest
daughter found herself in? Moreover, my father was still disappointed that his
daughter had given up her dream of going to graduate school. Since I would
have my own retirement pay, I wouldn’t bother them financially for the time
being.
The real problem was my pregnancy. I made up my mind with clenched
teeth: “Well, I’ll have to have an abortion. What else?” I felt silly as I remem-
bered my earlier indulgence in dreams, like the one about my baby on a swing.
What did this house, with its numerous rooms, refrigerator, and telephone,
have to do with me anyway? Overflowing with emotion, I finally fell asleep
around daybreak.
When I opened my eyes, the sunlight was bright on the window, and my
husband was gone. Noticing the empty space in the bed next to me, I sud-
denly felt forlorn, so I sat up quickly and made the bed. When I went out
to the wooden-floored terrace, I saw my father-in-law standing in the front
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Yi Sun 145
courtyard. The smell of fish struck me. It was harvest fish. My mother-in-law
was sharpening the knife, sitting next to the water pump.
“How are you?” said my father-in-law. I couldn’t look him in the face,
though. It was because of the secret plans I had made in the night.
“Kyŏngmin’s gone to the hills behind the house. Ah, how good it is to call
him a father now!” said my father-in-law.
“What’s so special about today?” I asked, looking at the silvery, palm-size
fish heaped up in the earthenware tub.
“Don’t you know? It’s the day your husband lost his job,” said my mother-
in-law as she sharpened the knife, and she suddenly burst into laughter, look-
ing up at the skies.
“What foul language!” my father-in-law snapped, but his face was lit with
a bright smile.
“What are all these fish for, Dad?” asked my brothers-in-law as they came
out of their room.
“Whoa! Is something going on today? We’ve got harvest fish!” my sisters-
in-law joined in, coming out of their room at the sound of their brothers.
“Nothing very special! Your father bought the fish, thinking that Chiyŏng
needs more nutrition. He’d gotten some money from the fisheries co-op.”
“Hurray!” said my youngest sister-in-law.
“But I’m not quite in the mood. Isn’t it true elder brother is out of work
now?” butted in my youngest brother-in-law. Almost before he’d finished, my
father-in-law thundered, “How dare you!”
Everyone was startled. My first encounter with my father-in-law quickly
flitted across my mind. I realized it had been a long time since he’d last
exploded like that.
“Your brother quit his job, that’s all. Is he dead or something?” said my
father-in-law.
Silence fell over the courtyard.
“We’ve got to eat all the better in times like this, you see,” said my mother-
in-law, feeling the blade of the sharpened knife with her fingertips.
My father-in-law said to me, “Don’t worry, dear. We’ve never lived by
depending on things or other people in this world. Kyŏngmin is the same
way. After all, what’s his company to him? It’s nothing but a total stranger to
him, right?”
He continued, “Dear, there’s nothing to worry about, for sure! Why when
we have so many guys in the family? Four of them, you see—we’ve got four.
When push comes to shove, they’ll work as packmen before they’ll let their
family go hungry.”
My younger brother-in-law cheered, “No doubt about it, sister-in-law!”
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“That’s right. Please don’t worry, sister-in-law. Everything will blow over
in no time,” said my first brother-in-law.
I said to myself, “Right. We’ve got each other. Even if we’re stripped of all
other power, we’ve got our own special strength. Yes, we do.” All my overnight
plans were vanishing from my mind. I even thought I’d tell my husband when
he came back home: “I’ve realized that we should direct our shots, to the last,
toward the outside. Our target is never us inside. The bullets are absolutely
not for suicide. Till the end, we’ve got to shoot toward the outside with all our
combined strength.”
How wonderful to learn that it was not “I” but “We”! Strength is not
bestowed from above but springs up from below. I looked around the court-
yard, dazzled. Just then, the gate opened and my husband stepped in. The first
thing he said was, “Huh! What are the fish for?”
“Is today something special?” he asked.
“Nothing special,” I said in a bouncy voice. “It’s the day you lost your job.”
Laughter rang out. The whole courtyard overflowed with our family’s laugh-
ter. The sunlight flashed white on the kitchen knife, whetted razor-sharp.
[First published in Hyŏndae munhak (Modern literature), October 1979]
Analysis of “A Dish of Sliced Raw Fish”
The novella “A Dish of Sliced Raw Fish” (Pyŏng’ŏ hoe; 1979)—a self-
narrative told in memory mode by the story’s heroine, Chiyŏng, the young,
college-educated daughter-in-law of a large extended family—is an intimate
genre painting of a modern Korean home in the context of the changing
Korean society of the late 1970s. A delightful picture scroll delineating the
joys and frustrations of a lower-class household, the semiautobiographical
narrative often presents implied commentaries on prevailing notions about
marriage, conjugal relationships, family dynamics, gender politics, and eco-
nomic class divides—all perceived through the eyes of the affable, hardwork-
ing, and committed Chiyŏng. The author’s consistent use of such techniques
as humor, exaggeration, euphemism, deliberate self-mockery, erudite and
high-flown vocabulary, and overstated, long-winded sentences—all for comic
intent—contributes to the story’s optimistic tone and makes it a heartwarm-
ing family drama drawn from a refreshing, uplifting perspective.
One of the central concerns of the narrative is its critique of the domi-
nant cultural milieu, which sees marriage as an expedient means or even a
commercial transaction for safeguarding a woman’s social status and financial
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Yi Sun 147
security. Chiyŏng’s parents, relatives, and friends are eminent proponents of

this position and exert pressure on her to conform to these unwritten but
powerful rules. Chiyŏng, however, “marries down” for love, defying her par-
ents’ expectations and the conventional wisdom that says women should
“marry up.” Yet in the end, the respect and trust she obtains from her hus-
band’s family, including her crusty father-in-law, demonstrates she has proven
herself against the dominant materialistic marriage culture of her time and its
shortsightedness.
Another point of interest is the author’s treatment of two sets of conjugal
relationships: one between the heroine and her husband, Kyŏngmin, repre-
senting a new paradigm of a married couple; the other, between the heroine’s
parents-in-law, epitomizing an old-school traditionalist model. Chiyŏng and
her husband are the products of a 1970s Korean university education and pos-
sess a progressive outlook on life as well as on gender relationships; they marry
for love based upon personal decision and commitment to one another. An
unspoken understanding and a sense of camaraderie exist between the young
couple. Here the narrative also offers a vivid window into the prevailing co-
ed culture of the 1970s—college students’ dating practices; their indulgence
in Western music, literature, and art; popular part-time jobs; and even their
favorite foods and drinks.
By contrast, Kyŏngmin’s parents maintain a typically conservative hus-
band-wife relationship. Kyŏngmin’s father, due to his unrealistic, get-quick-
rich schemes, causes hardship for his family and repeatedly demoralizes
them, even losing credibility with his children. Nevertheless, he insists on
commanding an authoritarian position vis-à-vis his wife, to which she sub-
mits herself without complaint, even defending and supporting him against
their children’s contempt and criticism. Thus, Chiyŏng’s mother-in-law per-
sonifies an archetypical female figure, whose preservation of the patriarchal
family order is her life’s mission and meaning, even while being subordinate
to the husband in the familial hierarchy.
Still, Kyŏngmin’s sudden decision to quit his job at the story’s climactic
point parallels his father’s impulsive and erratic behavior, driving Chiyŏng to
anguish and despair—something her mother-in-law would have experienced
time and again. Thus by juxtaposing these two husband-wife relationships,
the author seems to suggest that each possesses its own merits and imper-
fections and to indicate their complementariness and need for coexistence—
rather than rejecting one in favor of the other.
As the narrative unfolds, the reader witnesses the family’s varied dynam-
ics—for instance, the practice of privileging sons over daughters, especially in
matters of education. Chiyŏng’s sisters-in-law sacrifice themselves for their
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brothers’ college education, and even Chiyŏng joins in these women’s self-sac-
rificing projects for the sake of the family’s males. Another noteworthy feature
is the relationship between Chiyŏng and her in-laws, especially the women.
First, there is no acrimonious hostility or power struggle in Chiyŏng’s rela-
tionship with her mother-in-law, as is so often the case in traditional Korean
homes. Although there is a generational, educational, and even economic
gap between the two, from the beginning Chiyŏng sympathizes with her
mother-in-law’s suffering. Even though her feelings toward the older woman
are at times clouded by her own exasperation at her heavy financial burden,
Chiyŏng’s attitude is one of acceptance and sympathy for her mother-in-law’s
inner strength and love for her family.
Also absent is the proverbial bickering, jealousy, and petty-mindedness
among the sisters-in-law. On the contrary, Chiyŏng appreciates their self-sac-
rifice, and her sisters-in-law in turn are the first to openly express their high
regard and indebtedness to her. In this sense, Chiyŏng is a far cry from the
image of the victimized daughter-in-law often found in stories of the tradi-
tional Korean family. It is important to note that this revision of the conven-
tional position of a daughter-in-law may have its justification in the fact that
Chiyŏng is not only good-hearted and accommodating but also capable of
earning a living and supporting her in-laws. That is, women’s earning power
and economic leverage play a crucial role in elevating their position even in
private homes and in redefining their personal value and significance.
One final point to consider is the economic chasm between the haves and
have-nots of 1970s Korea, which is amusingly delineated through Chiyŏng’s
description of the upper-class home of her student and her encounter with
the student’s mother. The ultra-Western-style house filled with imported
luxury items burlesques extravagance and even immorality on the part of the
wealthy—a world apart from the lives of most Koreans, such as Chiyŏng’s in-
laws. Furthermore, the description of the condescending attitude of the stu-
dent’s mother toward Chiyŏng critiques the insensitivity and arrogance of the
rich, a small minority of unworthy beneficiaries of the Korean government’s
rush for economic development in the 1970s. Chiyŏng’s wounded pride and
repulsion, although expressed in a humorous manner, speak for the alienation
existing between the classes due to the unjust economic distribution of the
period.
“A Dish of Sliced Raw Fish” is the personal chronicle of a heroine who suc-
cessfully adjusts to her in-laws’ unfamiliar household with firmness of pur-
pose, self-sacrifice, and most importantly, largess of heart and good cheer. It is
in essence a tribute to the strength and resilience of women, the value of fam-
ily solidarity, and the undying dreams and optimism of middle-class Koreans.
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Yi Sun 149
At the same time, the invulnerability and single-minded drive of the heroine,
who makes a difference in the environment she has chosen and becomes the
centrifugal force amidst all of its trials and obstacles, make the novella a fresh
rearticulation of the image of the daughter-in-law and a new, young genera-
tion of Korean women. The story’s upbeat conclusion suggests that families
like Chiyŏng’s prove the universal premise that love and understanding—all
movingly illustrated in this family’s unique “sacrament” of sharing the dish of
sliced raw harvest fish—not wealth and social prestige, are the foundations
of wholesome relationships. Here the reader also discerns the author’s neo-
familism, that is, her fundamental affirmation of the merit and value of the
extended-family institution, which she sees as a functioning and even neces-
sary support system in postmodern Korean society in spite of its occasional
snags and hurdles.
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Eight
The Light at Dawn (1985)
Yi Sŏk-pong
Esteemed by her friends and colleagues for her

straightforwardness, uncompromising integrity, and aversion to publicity, Yi
Sŏk-pong (1928–1999) was the second of three siblings, and the only daugh-
ter, born to a wealthy merchant family in Kimch’ŏn city, North Kyŏngsang
Province. Gifted and bright, Yi was a top student until her graduation from
high school, upon which she entered Sungmyŏng Women’s College (then a
two-year program) in Seoul in 1946 to major in Korean literature. During
her college years, she devoted herself to cultivating creative writing, especially
poetry, and some of her poems found publication in period newspapers.
Meanwhile, she continued to live up to her high academic standards by main-
taining a top rank in her class.
Upon graduation in 1948, Yi married her literary mentor, a poet who was
sixteen years her senior. Yi’s marriage took her to her husband’s hometown
in South Chŏlla Province, where she raised two sons and taught in girls’ high
schools for nearly a decade, mainly to help with her family’s finances. Her
married life, however, proved to be disappointing and difficult—conflict-rid-
den and financially straitened. This personal experience of marital challenges
later became the subject matter of Yi’s major works, many of which address
the problems of mismatched couples, dilemmas of wives trapped in frustrat-
ing and stressful conjugal and family relationships, or the issue of a husband’s
infidelity. Most frequently featured are financially incompetent and irrespon-
sible husbands who fail to meet their wives’ basic need for simple domes-
tic happiness—to say nothing of their pursuit of identity and independence.
These shortcomings of the husbands often cause marital breakups through
150
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Yi Sŏk-pong 151
separation or divorce. These leitmotifs appear as early as in Yi’s debut work,

Pich’i ssainŭn haegu (The sea channel drenched with sunlight; 1963), a novel
that won honorable mention in a literary competition sponsored by the news-
paper Tonga ilbo. Such dark visions run through Yi’s works, such as “Ŏgŭnnan
kyesan” (Miscalculation; 1964), “Hwajangjang esŏ” (At a crematory; 1966),
and “Che samja” (The third person; 1979), with occasional exceptions such as
“Saebyŏk pit” (The light at dawn; 1985).
After her husband’s death in 1962, Yi moved back to Seoul and took up a
teaching job in Chung’ang Girls’ High School. With her literary debut the fol-
lowing year, she quit teaching and concentrated on writing, which continued
uninterrupted until nearly the end of her life. Over these years, Yi became one
of the most productive professional women writers of her generation. To her
credit, she published more than sixty short stories, two short story antholo-
gies, and thirteen novels. Yet Yi seldom compromised the quality of her work,
as testified by the eminence of the literary journals to which she contributed
her stories—especially from the mid-1970s on, when her accomplishments as
a woman writer with substance and style had been established.
As a devout Catholic, from early on Yi demonstrated her interest in the
relationship between religion and literature. One of her special achievements
in this area was the publication in 1973 of her Korean translation of Kōfuku to
iu na no fukō (Misfortune called fortune; Haengbok iranŭn irŭm ŭi pulhaeng,
in Korean), a work by the Japanese Catholic woman writer Sōno Ayako (b.
1931). Later in life, Yi’s deepening Catholic faith was manifested in stories
such as “Adela” (Adela; 1986) and “Rutki” (The story of Ruth; 1990) and her
novel Yŏjŏng (The travel itinerary; 1992), which won the eighteenth Korean
Novel Award in 1993. Yi’s last novel, Tto tarŭn mannam ŭi sijak (The begin-
ning of new encounters; 1997), is the culmination of her religious conviction
that human trials and tribulations are but gateways to God.
Yi Sŏk-pong was the recipient of the Korean PEN Literature Award in 1989,
and in acknowledgment of her contribution to Korean literature, Sungmyŏng
Women’s University, Yi’s alma mater, bestowed on her the second Sungmyŏng
Literature Award in 1993. Recently, Yi Sŏk-pong was chosen as a subject of a
research project launched by Sungmyŏng Women’s University to reappraise
and preserve the legacy of those modern women writers whose works have
either been neglected or underpublicized.
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The Light at Dawn
In a sour mood, Hŏ Sunok followed after her husband as he stepped

out the front gate, carrying his small traveling bag. Instead of feeling happy,
she found herself growing increasingly cheerless. When they reached the end
of their neighborhood block, she could hold out no longer.
“Dear, do we really have to go as far as Pusan?” she asked.
Her husband kept walking, ignoring her. At the end of the alley, he made a
turn in the direction of the bus stop.
She continued, “I’ve given it a lot of thought. I can’t bring myself to take this
trip. What fun is it for the two of us to go to the hot springs by ourselves?”
Her husband slowed his pace but remained mum.
“We can tell our kids later that we went to Pusan. Let’s stay in a nearby inn
for tonight and go home tomorrow evening. For these two days, fifty thou-
sand wŏn is plenty for us to spend on meals and even go see a movie. Then
every bit of the one hundred and fifty thousand wŏn will fall into our hands
untouched. Just think how much that is! I really don’t feel like taking a trip. If
you want, you go alone, taking just fifty thousand wŏn with you,” she said.
Finally, her husband stopped. He turned around and, glaring at her, said,
“I feel just as bad as you about going to the hot springs alone with you. I’m
only doing this because the kids forced me.”
“How nice! We finally agree with each other on something! Well, then,
why don’t you forget about taking the bus and look for an inn around here
instead? You should be able to find one that is right for us—neither too fancy
nor too shabby,” she said.
Her husband continued walking in the same direction as before without
replying. Hŏ Sunok cast her eyes down to avoid looking at her husband’s
stooped back. His back was not the only thing she hated to look at. She
detested his waddling gait and simply couldn’t bear his skinny, spindly build.
Had it not been for her children’s insistence, she would’ve never considered
taking a trip alone with him.
Her eldest son, an employee at a small pharmaceutical company who was
hard-pressed enough to take care of his own family, had pushed a white enve-
lope to her containing two hundred thousand wŏn, and said: “Mom, you and
Dad haven’t done any traveling. We’d like the two of you to go on a trip to
someplace like hot springs for Dad’s sixtieth birthday. All of us chipped in
and collected two hundred thousand wŏn. This won’t cover the cost of a trip
to Cheju Island, but I think it will be just enough for Pusan. From there you
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Yi Sŏk-pong 153
can go to the Pugok or the Tongnae hot springs. Don’t you think the farther
you go, the more you’ll enjoy your trip? This trip should help ease the tension
between you and Dad. Don’t tell us you won’t go! No excuses.”
Her son had added that the envelope included the goodwill of her second
son, a match-factory worker, and that of her son-in-law, a primary-school
teacher. This morning her husband’s sixtieth birthday had been celebrated as
a simple family get-together. They couldn’t afford a large party.
As Hŏ Sunok passed a couple of bus stops with her husband, an inn caught
her attention. It was a three-story brick building in the middle of a side street,
away from the main thoroughfare. The building seemed new, the color of its
bricks clear, and its signboard tidy and attractive.
“How about that inn? It looks comfortable, and it probably won’t cost too
much since it’s in the outskirts of the city . . . ,” Hŏ Sunok said. Her husband,
looking silently at the building his wife had pointed out, made an immediate
turn in that direction.
They were shown to a second-floor room. It had the sour smell of wallpa-
per paste, but they were pleased to discover the building was as new as they’d
thought. As she watched her husband hurriedly fish out a cigarette—the first
thing he did after tossing the travel bag into a corner—Hŏ Sunok sensed his
feelings immediately. No doubt he was as uneasy as herself. They had slept in
separate rooms for the past six years, though they continued to live under the
same roof. When Hŏ Sunok had some business to take care of, she’d go to the
front of his room and call him to come out for discussion. Her husband did
the same. They had not been alone in the same room in all those years.
Whenever people asked what had happened between her and her husband,
Hŏ Sunok used to explain openly and in an agitated tone: “My husband’s only
skill was piano tuning, you see. Then one day out of the blue he gave it up.
That day, he visited a house for piano tuning and found out the homeowner
was his old friend and neighbor. The house was a large three-story mansion
and had interior decorations and furniture like those in wealthy Westerners’
houses in the movies. My husband didn’t mind it at first, but the deadly blow
came from the mansion owner, who recognized him first and said: ‘Look at
you! What have you been up to, man?’ The remark pierced my husband’s heart
like an arrow. He flung the pay he’d gotten from his friend at me and shouted,
‘From now on, I’d like to take it easy too. I’ve done my share of supporting this
family. Now you guys are on your own!’
“At first, I thought his bluffing would last only a few days. After two
months, however, I realized it was no mere show—no nonsense or simple
crankiness. I realized that unless I took charge of earning a living, my whole
family would starve. At that time my oldest son was finishing his senior year
in college after serving in the army; my daughter, a graduate of a commer-
KimQuest.indd 153 9/22/09 1:56:55 PM

cial high school and an office employee, was engaged to be married; and my
youngest son was cramming to repeat a college entrance exam he had failed.
I had to look after all these household matters by myself, and my struggle was
beyond description. I went from house to house selling insurance and even
took a milk delivery job. In the end, I couldn’t send my youngest to college,
as I had no means of supporting him, though granted his heart was not in
studying.
“Facing these hardships alone, I developed deep, bitter grudges toward
my husband almost without realizing it. One day, after a violent argument
between us, my husband moved into my children’s room. I was glad because
I hated seeing his shiftlessness and couldn’t even stand his breathing sounds.
Since then nothing has changed between us. At least having separate rooms
helps me cope with it.”
Thus lost in thought, Hŏ Sunok sat staring at the ceiling. When startled by
her husband’s voice, she turned toward him. “You aren’t going to stay in the
room forever, are you?” he asked. “How about going somewhere for lunch? It’s
about that time, and I’m hungry too.”
Hŏ Sunok looked at her watch. It was a little past noon. She wanted to snub
her husband by asking what he had done to already feel so hungry. But with-
out a word, she stepped out of the room ahead of him. Her husband hurried
after her and said, as if trying to please her, “Why don’t we go to a place nearby
and have Chinese noodles or something?”
Hŏ Sunok kept looking around without replying. Her eyes lingered on a
sparerib barbecue house. After all, she thought, it was his sixtieth birthday,
whether she liked it or not. He shouldn’t just make do with Chinese noodles
for lunch. Besides, she remembered her daughter whispering as she’d left the
house, “Mom, during your trip, please let go of your old grudges toward Dad.
I’d like the two of you to enjoy plenty of delicious food and have lots of fun
sightseeing. Please make sure you don’t give Dad a hard time simply because
you’re the one with the money.”
“Let’s try there. One can’t make a lunch of Chinese noodles on one’s birth-
day,” Hŏ Sunok said. She pointed to the sparerib barbecue house, and her
husband answered, “That sounds wonderful!” with more gusto than he had
shown in a long time.
Facing each other at the table by themselves, Hŏ Sunok and her husband
felt no less awkward. Ever since they had moved into separate rooms, they also
stopped having meals together. When alone with her husband at home, Hŏ
Sunok served his meals first and ate by herself afterward. When her youngest
son was home, she would set a separate table for the two—father and son—
and eat by herself.
Hŏ Sunok noticed that as soon as her husband got settled at the table, he
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Yi Sŏk-pong 155
ordered rice wine and began drinking it. Evidently feelings of embarrassment
made him too impatient to wait for the food to be done.
“Take it easy, and have as much as you like. You won’t have another chance
like this anytime soon,” said Hŏ Sunok, feeling a little sorry for her husband
as he picked up the spareribs before they’d even finished grilling well and hur-
riedly gnawed the meat off the bones.
“Help yourself too,” said her husband, chewing the pieces of beef with a
contented look on his face.
Leaving the barbecue house, Hŏ Sunok paid far more than her budget
allowed, but she felt good. Her husband looked better after finishing off a
bottle of rice wine and six spareribs, and she noticed some color in his face for
the first time in years. She also had to admit that even her harsh feelings had
been softened somewhat by the three spareribs she’d had herself. It occurred
to her that she hadn’t put meat dishes on the table for several years, with the
exception of special days. To be sure, she couldn’t afford any better, but it was
also true that she had made no extra effort to make things easier at home.
As soon as they returned to their room at the inn, Hŏ Sunok’s husband
propped the upper half of his body against a pile of bedding in the corner
of the room and began to snore. The lunchtime wine seemed to be working
nicely. With nothing special to do, Hŏ Sunok sat facing the window and looked
far beyond it at the sky and clouds. Someone’s runaway balloon appeared in
the distance, bobbing up and down under the clouds. It had indeed been a
long time since she had last gazed at the skies. Over the past several years her
frenzied struggle to earn a living had given her no opportunity to take her
eyes off the ground. Instead of gazing leisurely at the clouds or balloons above,
she always had to busy herself rushing around on the dusty, mud-splashing,
tiring, and dirty roads. Unless her husband changed his mind and returned
to work, she couldn’t even dream of a future unharried and carefree like those
clouds or balloons. All she could hope for was the strength and good health
that would allow her to hang on to her job till the end.
Her children often suggested that Hŏ Sunok and her husband move in
with their eldest son’s family so that they could take it easy and enjoy their
grandchildren. But each time it was suggested, Hŏ Sunok shook her head
firmly. She knew how uncomfortable and humiliating such a life would be.
She was also sure that her son’s filial devotion would create trouble between
him and his wife, bringing her misery rather than happiness. Her daughter
had already hinted that her brother and his wife had had a big fight over the
cost of his father’s suit and trip.
Hŏ Sunok had no intention of moving in with their second son either, even
if he were to marry. It would make no difference if his future wife, unlike his
older brother’s, should turn out to be a good-hearted, gentle, and levelheaded
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person. Hŏ Sunok knew the limits of her second son’s abilities. It seemed
unlikely that he would advance much further in the world than he was now.
Poverty in many cases could turn good, gentle people rough and mean.
Resentment rose anew in Hŏ Sunok’s heart. She hated her husband for
walking out on a job restricted by neither office hours nor retirement age.
How could the head of a household abandon his duty to his family overnight
just to save face? How could he let his family go hungry? Concern for his pride
and dignity was just a convenient excuse; the real reason behind his decision
to quit was most likely laziness, she figured. This thought never failed to make
Hŏ Sunok feel gloomy, because it led her to conclude that her husband failed
to qualify as a decent human being.
Hŏ Sunok picked up her purse and left the room. She couldn’t stand her
husband’s snoring—not even the puffs of his breath.
It was still broad daylight outside. Hŏ Sunok walked toward the main
street and then abruptly changed her direction. She was hit by a desire to look
around the marketplace. She needed no help finding it. It was right there, not
far from the place they’d had lunch. Winter clothes were already on display,
although it was only mid-autumn. She entered a general store.
Hŏ Sunok fingered a few sweaters and jackets for men. Her oldest son had
bought a suit on layaway for her husband to wear on his sixtieth birthday,
and his youngest son had bought him a pair of shoes. Her daughter had also
bought a trench coat wrapped up in gaudy paper, but Hŏ Sunok knew that her
husband’s winter clothes were all worn out. She felt the goods, checked and
rechecked them, but left the store without buying anything. She decided she
had more urgent things to attend to than her husband’s winter clothes.
Hŏ Sunok wandered about the marketplace. She liked browsing even if
she didn’t buy anything. Nothing in the market felt threatening, hostile, or
alien to her. No matter which marketplace she went to, she always felt secure
and intimate, as if she had returned to her hometown. She felt comfort and
encouragement from all the people milling around with their apron-like
money pouches tied around their waists. She had discovered that she was not
cut out to be a traveling insurance agent or to do milk delivery. The insur-
ance job didn’t match her personality, while milk delivery had been too physi-
cally draining. For now Hŏ Sunok was working as a traveling cosmetics sales-
woman. Whenever she looked at her young colleagues wearing their beautiful
makeup, however, she realized that she wouldn’t be able to stay in this line of
work for long either. But for the moment, she couldn’t find any other work
suited to her. She had no choice but to continue to do her present job as best
and as long as she could.
Even at a leisurely pace it took only about an hour for Hŏ Sunok to make
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Yi Sŏk-pong 157
the complete rounds of the market. She felt drearier and heavier at the thought
of returning to the room at the inn where her husband was. The wild idea of
running away right then and there crossed her mind. She thought she might
be better off working as a maid somewhere than going back home. It even
occurred to her that, if she went off to a faraway place like Cheju Island and
made a living there as a farmhand in an orange orchard, she might be able to
take things easier than now. The kind of comfort Hŏ Sunok had in mind, of
course, wasn’t physical ease but inner peace.
It was irritating—even unbearable—for her to watch her husband live in
idleness despite his perfect physical condition. Without even realizing it, Hŏ
Sunok left the marketplace and started walking in the opposite direction from
the inn.
“Hello, but . . .” Suddenly a man stood in her way. He was a fine-looking
gentleman in his fifties. Taking a close look at Hŏ Sunok, he continued, “Aren’t
you originally from Anyang?”
Staring at him in bewilderment, Hŏ Sunok muttered, “Yes, but . . .”
“Aren’t you the daughter of the rice mill owner there?” he said.
“Yes, I am,” she answered.
“I knew it! Don’t you recognize me? I’m Mun Kilsu, who worked at your
place—do you remember me?”
“Oh, yes, I remember. How have you been? It’s been quite a while since I
last saw you,” Hŏ Sunok said, feeling pleased and flustered at the same time.
She followed him to a tearoom in the basement of a nearby five-story build-
ing. The madam of the tearoom greeted Mun Kilsu: “Hello, Mr. President.”
Mun Kilsu said to Hŏ Sunok, “This is my building. After all sorts of hard-
ship, I finally got to own it. My office is on the second floor. Please drop in
again next time you’re in the neighborhood.”
He extended his name card, and Hŏ Sunok took it and put it in her purse.
He asked nothing about her. It seemed he had already formed some idea about
her personal situation from the impression she’d made on him. She didn’t feel
like volunteering personal information anyway. Indeed, she had nothing to be
proud or pleased to share.
Obviously Mun Kilsu had worked hard to establish himself since leaving
the rice mill at the time Hŏ Sunok decided on her future husband. He talked
on about himself in a very dignified manner with no hint of obsequiousness
or arrogance. The point of his story seemed to be that her past rejection of
him had served as an incentive—rather than a hindrance—to brace himself
up and lead him to worldly success.
After a cup of tea, Hŏ Sunok left the tearoom. Mun Kilsu’s five-story build-
ing had all sorts of signboards on it—a medical clinic, a go game club, a bil-
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liard hall, a barbershop, and so on. Hŏ Sunok couldn’t help but feel down, as
if her victim had gotten even with her good.
Mun Kilsu had been a hired hand at her father’s rice mill. He had been a
solid, diligent, strong young man supporting his widowed mother and three
younger siblings. Besides, he was bright. Her father had never ceased to praise
him, saying that Mun Kilsu, though he had only a primary school education,
was far more intelligent than others with college degrees. After her graduation
from high school, Hŏ Sunok had taught at the local primary school for two
years, when her father urged her to marry Mun Kilsu. She rejected his sug-
gestion on the spot. The suggestion that she marry Mun Kilsu, who had less
education than she, and a hireling in her household no less, had badly hurt
her young woman’s pride. After turning down Mun Kilsu, Hŏ Sunok began to
be attracted to Kim Ponggyu, a fellow schoolteacher. She thought Kim Pong-
gyu a pretty good catch for a husband—tall and handsome and good at piano
to boot. Her parents weren’t against the match, although they felt it a pity to
lose Mun Kilsu. Kim Ponggyu, the second son of a dry-goods dealer, had liv-
ing standards similar to hers and was a good-natured, decent young man. He
had also taught himself how to play the piano and even started learning piano
tuning.
One year into their marriage, they quit teaching and moved to Seoul. At
first they lived on the money his parents sent, but eventually Kim Ponggyu
went to work tuning pianos. He had turned in his resignation to the school,
saying that teaching was incompatible with his personality and that he saw
no future in his teaching job. He brashly insisted that the piano would soon
become a part of the daily lives of Koreans and seemed to take great pride in
and hope for his newly chosen profession. Indeed, given the number of piano
schools and stores sprouting up those days, Kim Ponggyu’s big talk wasn’t
entirely off the mark. But it was beyond anyone’s wildest reckoning that he’d
voluntarily quit his profession at precisely that point when he could fully
demonstrate his skills and ability.
Hŏ Sunok felt wearier and wearier as she walked. The urge to go off some-
where by herself again flashed across her mind. She worried about her young-
est, unmarried son, but she imagined her family would do fine without her.
Yet she knew too well that she couldn’t run away from reality. No choice but
to go back to the inn.
Her husband woke at the stir of her returning to the room. He picked up
the kettle on the table and gulped water from its spout. Then he looked up at
Hŏ Sunok as if he had finally come around. His eyes were bloodshot.
“I’ve been to the marketplace,” said Hŏ Sunok. She put her purse down
and sat crouched over. In silence her husband took out a cigarette, put it in
his mouth, and struck a match. Hŏ Sunok had nothing to do but gaze at the
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Yi Sŏk-pong 159
whiff of smoke from her husband’s cigarette. There was nothing she wanted
to talk about or needed to do. Gradually she began to feel as if the room were
her prison and her husband a cellmate she was meeting for the first time. An
insufferable burdensome feeling began to weigh on her.
“I’m going out and will be back soon. Why don’t you give me ten thousand
wŏn?” said her husband. She figured he couldn’t stand the heavy feeling either,
no matter how many cigarettes he smoked.
As soon as her husband left the room, a ten-thousand-wŏn bill in his hand,
Hŏ Sunok stretched her legs and leaned her back against the wall. She felt
comfortable and free. She had long ceased taking this kind of relaxed pose
when her husband was around. This was a habit grown on her since she’d
started bearing grudges against him, probably prompted by a desire to keep
reminding him of her bitterness.
Her husband didn’t return soon as promised. Hŏ Sunok turned on the light
in the darkened room. On the one hand, she hoped he wouldn’t be back until
it was time for them to return home, but on the other, she couldn’t help wor-
rying about him. This was the same sort of conflict she always felt at home.
She hated the dilemma, but she found it difficult to settle her feelings one way
or the other.
Right after the front desk called to offer room service for dinner, she heard
footsteps stop outside the door. Her husband entered the room, quite tipsy.
Given the length of time he’d been gone, Hŏ Sunok thought, he’d gotten unbe-
lievably drunk. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but once he had a drink, he got
dead drunk. Apparently something had happened to make him behave so
unlike his usual self.
“What do you say to a game of cards after dinner? We don’t have anything
special to do, and we have a very long night ahead, right?” her husband said.
“The best idea from you in ages! I’ve been wondering what to do tonight
too,” Hŏ Sunok said.
“I hope you still have your old skill?” asked her husband.
“We’ll see. You don’t think I’ve had the time to play cards in all these years,”
she snapped.
Silence fell over them. No doubt Hŏ Sunok’s last words had driven a wedge
in their conversation, just when it had reconnected them after so long. Luckily
dinner was brought in and eased the awkward atmosphere.
After dinner, Hŏ Sunok’s husband pulled a cushion toward him and laid
the cards out on top of it. He shuffled them a few times, collected them, and
skillfully reshuffled them two or three more times, making rustling sounds.
He held his hand out toward Hŏ Sunok, “Now, go ahead and cut the deck.”
Hŏ Sunok moved toward him without hesitation. In old days, their bet had
been a slap on the loser’s wrist, but now that seemed out of place. Hŏ Sunok
KimQuest.indd 159 9/22/09 1:56:56 PM

offered to play for one hundred wŏn, and her husband agreed to the stakes
without objection.
As the game went on, Hŏ Sunok kept losing. She hated losing one hundred
wŏn each time, but losing itself was more upsetting. Occasionally she did win,
but she was not satisfied with the amount of money she won back. In the
end, Hŏ Sunok suggested raising the stakes to five hundred wŏn. Her hus-
band smiled and again agreed. Playing cards made them forget the awkward-
ness between them. They were oblivious to the flow of time as well. Two ten-
thousand-wŏn bills, along with some small change, passed into her husband’s
hands. Hŏ Sunok won a couple of times after they’d raised the stakes, but these
couldn’t compare to her losses. In the end, Hŏ Sunok gave up, tossing the
cards away. It was past midnight.
“Huh . . . you must have been doing nothing but practicing cards with
all your idle time,” sneered Hŏ Sunok, frustrated. Undisturbed, her husband
smiled, picked up the bills, and put them in his trouser pocket. He then spread
out the bedding and tucked himself into bed. Hŏ Sunok placed the cushion
they had used for cards as a boundary marker between herself and her hus-
band, spreading her bedding as close to the opposite wall as possible. Lying in
bed with the light out, she suddenly felt an overpowering sense of exhaustion.
She felt all the more keenly that although she’d lost money, playing cards had
been a good idea. Otherwise it would have been the most tedious, unbearable,
irritating night of their lives.
As Hŏ Sunok was about to fall asleep, her husband said, “Are you sleep-
ing?” He obviously knew full well she was awake. She kept quiet.
“There’s something I’ve never told you. It’s about my quitting piano tun-
ing. The real problem was that I had already begun to lose self-confidence. I
had to use magnifying glasses and couldn’t do the job properly because of my
shaky hands. Who wants to pay for such a bungler? People could hire young
technicians far more skillful and quicker than I, you see. What my friend, the
owner of the big mansion, told me was used only as an excuse for my decision.
The incident was simply a coincidence, like in the old saying, ‘A pear drops
just as a crow flies from the tree.’”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” Hŏ Sunok—dumbstruck—barked at her
husband, as she sat up abruptly.
“At first I didn’t have the courage. At that time, you remember, I was fifty-
four. I thought I was too young to tell my family that I’d become a good-
for-nothing. Later, as you grew colder and colder toward me, my false pride
egged me on to be pigheaded. I thought I’d rather die than tell you what had
happened. Then I mulled the matter over and decided that I’d tell you about it
when I found a job that would allow me to give you some money, even a little.
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Yi Sŏk-pong 161
Some time ago I started to learn wallpapering. I trained myself while hanging
around the paper goods store. I learned a lot in helping out. It may not be a
lot, but I can give you some housekeeping money. I don’t know how much it
can ease your hardships, though.”
Speechless, Hŏ Sunok remained seated in the dark. She felt an urge to
spring at her husband and pound on his chest with her hands. When this urge
subsided, tears began to fall from her eyes. Her hatred toward her husband
turned back on her and began to tear her heart to pieces. She hated her utter
insensitivity to her husband’s long, secret struggle to deal with his frustration
by himself. At the same time, she felt utterly ashamed of her shallowness in
treating her husband so harshly.
“Let’s go to sleep,” her husband said after a long silence. Soon he began to
snore.
Hŏ Sunok remained sitting up, waiting for dawn. A new pain of guilt drove
sleep from her and made her wide-awake and clear-headed.
By and by, the hazy light of dawn filtered into the room. Hŏ Sunok looked
in the dim light at the face of her husband, sound asleep. For the first time in a
long while, she felt a sense of intimacy and wanted to call his name softly. But
she didn’t want to wake him up. After quietly washing her face, she sat down
again and gazed down on her husband. The light of dawn, which had bright-
ened, clearly revealed the outlines of his face. For the first time, Hŏ Sunok
realized that it had grown haggard and wrinkled.
Hŏ Sunok decided that as soon as her husband awoke, she would insist
they leave for one of the hot springs. She was determined to persuade him,
even if he refused out of false pride. Insisting on the trip seemed the only way
to comfort him now.
[First published in Han’guk munhak (Korean literature), no. 135 (January 1985)]
Analysis of “The Light at Dawn”
Recycling the perennial theme of conjugal misunderstanding and

unhappiness, “The Light at Dawn” (Saebyŏk pit; 1985) dramatizes a wom-
an’s mending of a conflict-ridden marriage and, in doing so, underscores the
importance of thoughtful, open communication and genuine compromise
to the maintenance of a constructive and meaningful relationship. When the
narrative concludes on a reconciliatory note, the reader is reminded of the
wastefulness of the couple’s drawn-out suffering, which stemmed from their
miscued readings of one another, rush to judgment, and silly pride.
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Narrated from the viewpoint of the middle-aged, hardworking, but resent-

ful Hŏ Sunok, wife and sole breadwinner of a lower-class household, the story
begins with the friction between the heroine and her husband, Kim Ponggyu,
focusing on her grievances against him. Hŏ Sunok alleges that the root cause
of her family’s financial insecurity and her unending misery lies exclusively
in her husband’s reckless abandonment of the responsibility of supporting his
family. In the eyes of Hŏ Sunok, Kim Ponggyu is but a contemptible loafer,
living off his wife’s hard-earned income, and someone who doesn’t even
deserve to be called a human being. When her husband unexpectedly dis-
closes the true cause of their discord to her, Hŏ Sunok is shaken into a sud-
den realization of her own limitations and shortcomings, which, she belatedly
acknowledges, have equally contributed to their unduly prolonged destructive
relationship.
Befitting a story of awakening, “The Light at Dawn” is structured within a
framework of travel—a symbolic rite of passage—through which the heroine
gains a new and deeper understanding of her relationship with her husband
and insight into herself as well. The couple reluctantly undertake a trip under
pressure from their children, who financed it to mark their father’s sixtieth
birthday—a critical juncture in the life of Koreans, especially for the head of a
family—and are immediately deadlocked, as the prospect of the trip triggers
an unleashing of their mutual and long-standing resentment. After bickering
and wrangling, they settle upon spending the travel money to stay at an inn
near their house instead of going to a hot spring. This awkward overnight stay
at the inn is skillfully divided in a crisscross manner between the couple’s real-
time interactions and the wife’s reminiscences about her past—in a pseudo-
stream-of-consciousness fashion. The narrative mosaic thus woven draws a
sketch of the major landmarks of their life together.
As interpreted by Hŏ Sunok, her bitter alienation from her husband origi-
nated with his rash decision to quit his own business of piano tuning, just
when it began to show promise and when their three children most needed
his financial support. With no other option left, Hŏ Sunok was forced to take
up odd jobs, drifting from one low-end job to another, intensifying both her
wretchedness and her antagonism toward her husband. She condemns her
able-bodied husband’s freeloading and refusal to support his family as an
unforgivable, self-serving desire for an easy life. The couple’s relationship has
so deteriorated that, except for their mutual silent treatment, there has been
no direct communication between them for over six years, despite still living
under the same roof. Hŏ Sunok feels such a strong repulsion toward her hus-
band that she is even seized by sudden impulses to run away from home, only
to be deterred by her concern for her unmarried son.
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Yi Sŏk-pong 163
The chance meeting with Mun Kilsu further aggravates Hŏ Sunok’s feel-
ing of failure and misery, while also revealing part of her personal history
and character. Mun Kilsu is not only a man from her past but a once poten-
tial marriage candidate who had been highly recommended by her father but
whom she rejected. Although Mun Kilsu was a perfectly decent young man
with a promising future, she thought he was below her matrimonial standards
because of his poverty, lack of education, and lower social status as a farm-
hand in her father’s mill. Hŏ Sunok instead chose Kim Ponggyu, her school
colleague, because she was attracted by his family’s good financial standing,
his handsome appearance, and his skill in piano playing and tuning. Now Mun
Kilsu reappears as a successful businessman, in full command of his thriving
fortune but still retaining the qualities of an honorable man. The complete,
dramatic reversal of their respective fortunes makes Hŏ Sunok feel she has
been soundly punished for her former shallowness, arrogance, and flawed
judgment. This totally unexpected encounter adds a further sense of dejec-
tion, mortification, and remorse to her already unhappy domestic situation.
The final episode of Hŏ Sunok and Kim Ponggyu’s card playing is their
symbolic as well as literal engagement in a marital seesaw game. Neither of
them is willing to concede defeat, especially the wife, but the husband’s ulti-
mate win symbolically restores him to his original stature as the head of the
family. In the end, the pastime serves to reconnect the couple to happier times
and occasions the ultimate disclosure of the husband’s long-kept secret. This
revelation brings Hŏ Sunok a sobering moment of self-knowledge, a “dawn-
ing,” as well as a reaffirmation of the bond between her husband and herself.
In a sense, both the husband and wife have been controlled by rigid con-
ventional gender-role expectations, particularly the concept of male domi-
nance, which insists that men always be in control, competent, and invincible
and the main source of family income. When Kim Ponggyu fails to live up to
such expectations, Hŏ Sunok is disappointed and blames him for being an irre-
sponsible man and father. This masculinity trap in turn renders Kim Ponggyu
unable to frankly display his vulnerabilities or communicate his setback to his
wife. The couple ultimately has fallen victim to artificial gender ideologies
and gender-role stereotyping, which prolong their painful estrangement. The
happy ending of “The Light at Dawn” depicts their liberation from the grip of
these expectations and past mistakes. It also accentuates the healing power of
reconciliation, which is released upon an honest admission of one’s failing, a
more discerning appreciation of one’s spouse, and a willingness to begin anew.
The husband’s sixtieth birthday—pitilessly snubbed earlier—is thus correctly
honored and becomes a turning point in the couple’s life together.
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Nine
Stone in Your Heart (1992)
Ch’oe Yun
A professor of French literature at Sŏgang University in

Seoul since 1984, Ch’oe Yun (real name, Ch’oe Hyŏn-mu; b. 1953) is known as
one of the most thought-provoking, innovative, and original novelists of con-
temporary Korea, and a rare example of a woman writer who combines cre-
ative writing with university teaching. A precocious, gifted child with dreams
of becoming a cartoonist, Ch’oe was also an avid reader and a self-cultivated
writer from her teenage years, often giving her stories to friends as birth-
day gifts. With her writing skills groomed at the Kyŏnggi Girls’ High School
in Seoul, Ch’oe went on to major in Korean literature at Sŏgang University,
where she served as the editor of its student magazine, Sŏgang. As a politically
radicalized college student of 1970s Korea, Ch’oe participated in covert anti-
government activities and street demonstrations and had her share of police
surveillance, home searches, and even arrests. These experiences became
both the inspiration for and the substance of her early fictional works, which
expound upon her critical views of the ideological and political struggles of
modern Korea as well as her deep-rooted sense of social consciousness and
responsibility as both intellectual and writer.
After obtaining her BA (1976) and MA (1978) in Korean literature from
Sŏgang, Ch’oe debuted as a literary critic in 1978 with an article on the struc-
ture of contemporary Korean novels, published in the leading literary jour-
nal Munhak sasang (Literary thought). In the same year, Ch’oe entered the
University of Provence in Aix-en-Provence, France, to study modern French
literature and earned her PhD in 1983 with her dissertation on Marguerite
Duras.1 Since her return to Korea to teach French literature at her alma mater,
164
KimQuest.indd 164 9/22/09 1:56:57 PM

Ch’oe Yun 165
she has earned a reputation as a groundbreaking literary critic by publish-

ing articles on Duras, Julia Kristeva, and Mikhail Bakhtin and on semiotics,
structuralism, and other topics related to postmodernist discourse.
In 1988, Ch’oe’s debut novella, “Chŏgi sori ŏpsi hanjŏm kkonnip i chigo”
(There, a petal silently falls)—an indictment of the massacre of innocent citi-
zens by the military regime during the Kwangju Revolt of 1980—launched
an auspicious literary career. Following soon thereafter were her major short
stories, such as “Pŏng’ŏri ch’ang” (A mute’s chant; 1989), “Abŏji kamsi” (Keep-
ing an eye on my father; 1990), “Tangsin ŭi mulchebi” (Stone in your heart;
1992), and “Soksagim, soksagim” (Whisper, whisper; 1993)—all concerned
with illustrating the often tragic complexities of cold war ideologies and the
Korean War. They often hint at the need to bring about ideological resolution
and reconciliation between the two Koreas to lessen, if not eliminate, the suf-
fering of the ordinary people.
Ch’oe Yun’s growing literary stature as a novelist was first recognized by
the Tong-in Literature Award for her “Hoesaek nun saram” (The gray snow-
man; 1992), which reappraises the ramifications of the underground dissident
movements carried on by the author’s generation of college students. Ch’oe’s
novella “Hanak’o nŭn ŏpta” (There’s no Hanak’o; 1994), a feminist-perspective
critique of contemporary coed colleges that devalued female students, won
her the Yi Sang Literature Award. In 1994, Ch’oe also saw the publication of
her first collection of essays, titled Sujubŭn autsaidŏ ŭi kobaek (Confessions
of a shy outsider), which permits its readers to gain a glimpse into the author’s
personal life and thoughts.
The publication of Ch’oe’s first full-length novel, Kyŏul, At’ŭllant’isŭ (Win-
ter, Atlantis; 1997), further consolidated her position as an intellectually chal-
lenging writer continuously prepared to experiment with new subject mat-
ter, language, styles, and narrative strategies that defy simple categorization.
Ch’oe’s most recent novel, Maneking (A mannequin; 2003), is a postmodern
allegorical subversion of the conventional notion that the family is a haven
from a dog-eat-dog world. It is presented through multiple narrative voices,
another avant-garde stylistic attempt by the author.
Besides creative writing, Ch’oe, mother of a son, has published French
translations of a number of works of contemporary Korean fiction in col-
laboration with her husband, Patrick Maurus. In the summer of 2005, Ch’oe
served on the steering committee for the ninth International Interdisciplinary
Congress on Women held in Seoul, which attracted more than two thousand
participants.
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Stone in Your Heart
Reflected in a darkened window at night, the lighted interior of our

lives seems to be veiled in secrets deeper and more beautiful than they are in
reality. Is this because only a cross section of it is mirrored in the window?
The long glass window on the veranda, standing there as if to obliterate the
world without, as if its purpose were to reflect only beautiful things, reveals
half of the chest of drawers, the vase of dried flowers placed upon it, and
only a portion of my living room scattered with odds and ends. The effect is
unique, uneven, and illusory, created by the angle of reflected light.
I feel as if the picture reflected in the window were hiding secrets and
forbidding easy access to them. This reflected scenery of my room, which
undoubtedly contains me, things connected to me, and the traces of my life,
appears alien to me—something faraway. I prick up my ears. First, I hear the
far-off ticktock of a clock. Who arranged the “drops of time” so precisely as to
make them fall on the dots? Yes, the night is deep. Though I strain my ears, all
I hear is the ticking of the clock and some dull buzzes—incomprehensible—as
if they were coming from behind a “bulwark of metaphor” set up far off.
Straining once again, I lean my body toward the sound I am trying to hear.
I capture clearly my child’s even yet very feeble breathing in the next room. I
try to breathe to the rhythm and pitch of my child’s breathing. One, two, one,
two . . . But the ticking of the clock and the buzzing noises, now that they’ve
entered my ears, will not go away.
Ah, the night is late—so late. My husband, who left for a trip this evening,
won’t be coming back home. Sometimes, for no good reason, I am swept up in
an anxiety that verges on primeval fear. I fall under the illusion that the reflec-
tion of my room in the window, with its almost artificially perfect beauty,
all jagged edges removed, has suddenly turned into a treacherous minefield.
How unstable the beauty of that reflected scenery! Life seems more like liquid
than solid matter.
There is another sound, that of my own breathing, which suddenly seems
unfamiliar to me, as if a stranger were inhabiting my body. There are times
when a trifle, though often ephemeral, can abruptly transform the near-per-
fect harmony of the reflected scenery into a dark, lonely cabin of a ship on a
perilous sea.
Yes. Once I spent time trapped within a sinking ship. I call my story “the
story of a stone,” for I know no other way of telling it except under that title.
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Ch’oe Yun 167
There was a woman, and there was an old man. The old man had a stone.
I suppose everyone has a stone lodged deeply in the corner of his or her heart.
They water it and take care of the area around it, until one day, much later,
they realize that the stone is nothing but a worthless pebble of the sort often
found on the road or in the fields. It is to overcome the pain that befalls us on
our life’s journey that we plant and cultivate this stone. Before we accept the
pain, we turn it into a question mark, and we foolishly and doggedly pursue a
secret that may not even exist. Ah, a sad and difficult pursuit! Such a pursuit
might be a ritual required before casting the stone away after it has turned
into something ordinary—just like any number of other rituals we perform in
order to return to its proper place the pendulum of our life, which, unlike the
scenery reflected in the window, often goes amiss.
Around nine o’clock that evening, I received a phone call from the police.
An hour and forty minutes later, I arrived at the site of a horrible accident. A
crowd of people had formed a circle in the darkness, and all of them were look-
ing in the same direction. I caught sight of the blackish body of an overturned
car lying on a dark slope near the riverbank far below the highway, forming
a sharp contrast to the dazzling congregation of car headlights around the
accident scene.
Two policemen grasping my arms in support, I barely managed to remain
standing. I was deaf to their urgent request that I identify the dead as quickly
as possible. I was screaming madly, almost deafening my own ears, trying to
overcome my shock. Still yelling and violently shaking my head, I was led
down the slope by the policemen. The scene of the accident was horrific.
A moment later, I stopped yelling. The car was left overturned, and the
passengers had been dragged out of it and were lying sprawled below. First, I
saw a man. He was definitely my husband. The expression on his face—a fee-
ble smile, in contrast to his gruesome wounds—caught my attention despite
my utterly distracted state of mind. And he was my husband. I looked at his
face again. It clearly wore a smile—a smile expressing utmost contentment. A
thin line of blood trickled down from the edge of his lips, as if to materially
indicate the faint stir of the air created by his smile. There was another dead
body lying beside that of my husband’s. Of course, it wasn’t my husband. Its
face was mangled beyond recognition and its clothes all torn, but it was the
body of a woman. Her copious hair, wildly disheveled, was covering her face.
Obviously, at that moment I passed out.
When I opened my eyes again, I found myself laid down on something
unfamiliar. I was lying in the backseat of a car, and my eyes, having just man-
aged to recover their function, first discerned the vague outline of something
KimQuest.indd 167 9/22/09 1:56:57 PM

like a human face. Then I partially caught sight of a very familiar face—a soft
face with deeply creased wrinkles. What I saw was the smile of an old man
looking relieved. Even before the face of the old man became whole, I closed
my eyes again, overwhelmed by fatigue. As I came out of this nightmarish
state, I vaguely heard voices talking.
“Did we really have to show her the accident scene? The shock was too
much for the young wife.”
“If she’s the dead man’s wife, then who is the woman found with him?”
“They say that it took an awful lot of time to pull the two from the car.”
This jumble of voices fell on my ears very, very slowly, as if played at a low
speed on a tape recorder. Then I heard a transparent twang—as when a taut
guitar string snaps—coming from somewhere in the distance, and with it, I
lost consciousness again, submerging lazily into sleep.
It was more than a coincidence to me that Dr. Min had come to my aid. At
that time, I was an immature twenty-five-year-old who, after graduating from
nursing school, had worked briefly at the D University Hospital until quitting
my job to marry the man I had been dating. When I regained consciousness
at the accident scene, I should have recognized Dr. Min Chuhwan, who had
spent most of his life working at that hospital and had won worldwide fame as
a surgeon. To be sure, it was not because I had once worked with him that Dr.
Min took care of me. He happened to come upon the accident scene while on
a road trip and stayed on longer than others simply because he was a doctor
and wanted to give help if needed.
I was not put under Dr. Min’s care, for he had already retired. Besides, I
really didn’t require any treatment. My only symptom was an incoherent talk-
ing, triggered at times by a high fever. It was diagnosed as a combination of
high fever and mild delirium, brought on by shock and requiring complete
rest. To my embarrassment, every time Dr. Min came by, I developed symp-
toms of frenzy, pestering him about whether he remembered my husband’s
smile and firing off questions about the circumstances under which people
meet death with a smile. With a troubled look, the old man always patiently
repeated in a low voice the same answer: although he himself confirmed my
husband’s death at the accident site, he’d noticed no smile on his face.
My recovery was speedy. Not an accident victim, I required no special
treatment other than drifting off to sleep in my hospital gown after sedative
shots. Except for occasional muscular spasms of unknown origin, I had no
symptoms of physical weakening at all, so I was discharged in no time. During
my stay in the hospital, Dr. Min phoned me every day to ask how I was doing
and even dropped in on me three times. His hellos were brief, and with all
sincerity he repeated his answer to my same question.
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Ch’oe Yun 169
Did the misfortune of a young woman kindle the old man’s sympathy, I
wondered. Later on, I learned that he had asked my attending physician to
take various protective measures for me while I was in the hospital. It was
again Dr. Min who insisted I be hospitalized—at least until I regained stabil-
ity—to eliminate any possibility of shock from the visit of the police on mat-
ters related to the accident. Not only the police but also my family members
were turned away, and even my mother-in-law, who stormed into my hospital
room in sobs, vanished like a shadow in the dusk after being admonished by
the nurses. In fact, I slept through most of my stay in the hospital, habitually
waking up only to drift back into a blank sleep.
May stole over me. In the garden, a worn-out water sprinkler spun feebly,
squeaking like a mouse. It was a garden more for trees than for flowers, and
it was in disarray—far from being well-groomed—but there I could feel the
pulsation of thick leaves and saturated sap. I had seen the four seasons pass
twenty-five times, but this was truly my first spring. All of us have such firsts
in our lives. We have our first winter or our first journey, although we have
passed countless winters and stepped out of our daily routine time and again
under the pretext of travel. The very morning following my move into Dr.
Min’s house, I finally learned that many people never get their first taste of
things before death. Among such experiences was the first taste of the death
of one’s beloved.
Before I realized it, it had become my habit to rise at the crack of dawn,
turn on the water pipe in the garden that waited most eagerly for my touch,
and walk around the garden, which was not that spacious. Could I have pulled
through had it not been for Dr. Min? I don’t mean just my physical life, for
I wasn’t the one who had had an accident or died. In many respects, I truly
owed Dr. Min my life. My destiny was joined to his by that accident barely a
year after my marriage.
At any rate, the whole business of settling the accident proved to be end-
lessly disconcerting and complicated—a stark contrast to the simplicity of
death. But when it was finally over, Dr. Min suggested that, if I didn’t mind,
I board at his house and help him in his work. I eagerly accepted his sugges-
tion, feeling relieved, as if I had narrowly caught the last train of life—my life,
which I had to begin again one way or another. Since his retirement, Dr. Min
had dedicated much of his time to research on herbs, which he had carried
on only sporadically during his tenure in office. For his work, Dr. Min had
another boarder at his house besides me—Mr. Chang, a young Chinese-medi-
cine specialist who served as his research assistant.
Spring didn’t last long for me. It ended abruptly, even before summer had
KimQuest.indd 169 9/22/09 1:56:58 PM

time to begin. This was not because I lacked the common sense that says,
“Firsts can’t last forever.” It was because my mind resumed its sinister activi-
ties, which, held down by the long, dragged-out procedures in the wake of the
accident, dared not draw my attention.
Indeed, my husband was dead. His death was a “regrettable loss,” as every-
one said. As he was only twenty-seven at the time, his life had been nipped
in the bud and his death was truly regrettable. These views, however, were
from his angle. No matter how lamentable his death, I had no chance to give
free rein to my grief after the accident. My delirious ravings in the hospital,
bordering on fits, couldn’t be characterized as grieving.
I simply could not accept my husband’s death. There was no room in my
mind for grief. My mind was filled with a scene from the accident—that smile
fixed forever on my husband’s lips, never to be erased, and accompanying it
like its shadow, the woman with copious hair. But the incomprehensible, sub-
lime smile haunted me so powerfully that it erased the image of the woman
from my mind. That smile marked not only the end of my twenty-five-year
life but also the beginning of something impenetrable—something that made
everything meaningless.
Was it love? Or was it jealousy? No, it was neither. The question that seized
me belonged to neither category—it was above and beyond them both. I won-
dered about the identity of that something—so inscrutable and extraneous to
me—that had made him smile at the very moment of death.
Dr. Min gave me two tasks. One was to sort his books, which were scattered
all over his two-story Western-style house, and put them in order according
to their contents. The other was to transcribe during morning hours what Dr.
Min had dictated on his small tape recorder the night before. The job could
have been done by anyone—not just by me—and it was as different from my
former job as it was different from the kind of life I imagined for my future.
Dr. Min’s books, which were piled up evenly on either side of the staircase,
were as numerous as the contents of the tapes he handed me to work on. How-
ever, the task of sorting them didn’t appear difficult to me, and the amount of
material he recorded in one night didn’t add up to much either. Sometimes I
would play the entire side of a tape, only to find it completely blank. I could
certainly take Dr. Min’s dictation right in his study if he allowed me, but the
idea didn’t sit well with him. He told me that he was not used to having other
people around in his study. Telling me this habit came from the weakness of
an old man who had lived alone for a long time, he gently turned down my
suggestion.
I could enjoy a measure of peace and even freedom transcribing the tapes
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Ch’oe Yun 171
because there was an unusual sense of equanimity in the voice of an old man
in his seventies who was closer to death than to life. Moreover, the content of
the tapes—too specialized for me to comprehend—allowed me to be mechan-
ically absorbed in my task, free from idle thoughts. The work indeed gave me
great comfort.
My book sorting was done mostly in the afternoon. I was mistaken in
thinking the task would be easy. Time and again books kept getting mixed
up and slipping out of my hands. The simple task of grouping the books
demanded my unremitting concentration. And it was endless.
Dr. Min usually left home in the afternoon for lectures or to take walks,
and since even Mr. Chang went out to care for patients at his colleague’s herb
medicine clinic in the afternoons, the house suddenly felt huge to me. Feeling
much like one trapped in a large space with several somber questions clinging
like destiny, I used to long for the end of those afternoon hours. Even if I went
out to the garden to sit, all I saw was a garden already withered and forgotten
by the season. How in the world had the accident happened?
That morning, I awoke early to prepare things for my husband’s business trip
to the country. Since he was scheduled to stay in Kangnŭng for three days,
I packed a small bag for him.2 My husband continued to lie in bed while I
packed, and I, every bit a newlywed wife, thought about slipping a brief note
in his bag saying I loved him. But I ended up putting in a bland note telling
him to bring back some local products from the place of his business visit.
Then I snuggled up close to him in bed, and before his departure on his busi-
ness trip and before his death—I wonder if even a person as insensitive as I
had a premonition of death—we made quite memorable love for the last time.
He phoned me from his office at around seven o’clock in the evening to tell me
he was leaving on the trip and gave me the name and the phone number of the
hotel where he would be staying.
That was all I knew about the day of the accident—all that I could recon-
struct of it, and which became almost fictional as I later recalled it to my mind
so many times. From that point to the accident and to the inscrutable smile
on my dead husband’s face, there was only a tunnel, too long, too dark, and
blocked off at that.
The police were unable to establish the identity of the long-haired woman.
She was, of course, not my husband’s co-worker at his company. Except for
the fact that she was wearing street clothes, nothing was found to help iden-
tify her. Even two weeks after the accident, there were no reports of a missing
woman. The police, just like my in-laws, claimed in high-pitched voices that
I had full knowledge of the situation and was concealing the details, whereas
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my own family remained hush-hush, lest the affair blow wide open. The police
questioned me thoroughly on my activities that day, their tone suggesting I
was the schemer who’d hatched the whole plot. They seemed to think that I
was feigning innocence and that I had engineered the accident by deliberately
removing parts from my husband’s car.
Right! That morning I got up earlier than usual. Let’s see, what time was it?
Yes, it was around five thirty. As soon as I got out of bed, I took out the small
travel bag and put in his underwear, ironed shirts . . . and then what else did
I put in? My thoughts kept going in circles without beginning, end, or mean-
ing. The trees in the warm afternoon garden seemed to be spinning on their
tops.
“To cling to an unanswerable question, to try to find an answer to it while
aware of its impossibility, is like slipping into madness. There lurks a danger
of insanity in all human attempts to get to the bottom of the truth. All scholars
perpetually approach this lunacy in the name of reason.” I used to write such
cryptic short sentences on the corners of discolored pieces of paper I found
stuck among Dr. Min’s old books, and then threw them into the wastebas-
ket. As people say, this sort of thing might have been the amusing result of
my fortuitous accumulation of scraps of knowledge from overhearing others
during my stay at Dr. Min’s. At any rate, I was aware that a streak of insan-
ity was already living within me. Isn’t this madness exactly like the briquette
gas—silent and formless—which steals into your nerves and drills them with
holes when you are off guard? And can this book sorting, to which I devote all
my energies for a full half day without making any headway, protect me from
going mad? I wondered.
Over the course of a week, at least I finished one task. I succeeded in separat-
ing Dr. Min’s writings from those countless stacks of books. It was a weight
off my mind. Altogether there were twenty-six books (five of them in foreign
languages), one hundred and three articles (twenty-one in foreign languages),
and eight essays. I hoped that one day those books would somehow find their
proper places on the bookshelves, like birds, which, after crowding frenziedly
onto a jujube tree the night before a rainy day, eventually find their own places
again and perch on the branches in an orderly manner.
I found one fact peculiar. All of Dr. Min’s eight essays, published mainly in
medical journals, were on Kap’yŏng, a city near his hometown.3 Of course, it
shouldn’t be strange that Dr. Min wrote about his native place, granted that he
really had little to do with something like the essay genre. Kap’yŏng, however,
was the very place where my husband’s car had overturned.
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Ch’oe Yun 173
“My decision to end my six years’ abroad and return to Korea was not, as a
friend had remarked, due to a love of my country or hometown. There was a
matter that badly needed looking into. It was related to my hometown, but, by
not revealing it here, I should like to leave more room for the reader’s attrac-
tion toward it. It is only a short train ride to Kap’yŏng, but my peculiar per-
sonal history made it impossible for me to visit my hometown with the same
sort of excitement other people have when they go back home. Speaking of
Kap’yŏng. . . .” [Medical News, 1959]
“On quiet weekdays, and late at night at that, I often drop in to Kap’yŏng
and the scenic spots along the nearby river, although these places have now
become popular pleasure resorts for young people. One of the reasons I
visit these places is the unforgettable memories of my experience during the
Korean War, when I risked my life to get passage on a boat at night. But the
more important reason is that I enjoy the calm of the nocturnal boat ride. . . .”
[Favorite Scenic Spots of Prominent Men, 1964]
“Around the Kap’yŏng area there grow numerous medicinal herbs, but I will
mention only one. This herb, popularly known as “stalk shrub” and usually
found at the water’s edge, belongs to the shrub family and is believed to be
good for purifying blood. Its physical properties are rather singular, however.
People usually clean and dry its stalk, then brew it and drink the extract. What
makes the herb unusual is that, depending on the quality of the water used
for brewing, the effect of its extract varies—it can be either a tonic or a toxic
poison. . . . Because of this defect, the herb can’t be used as a reliable medici-
nal ingredient. . . . Its stems are simply too long, and the herb is not much to
look at, and it doesn’t even form its own colonies. . . .” [Bulletin of the Herbalist
Association, 1976]
I combed through these old writings as if they contained the truth I was seek-
ing. But the remaining five essays were written in a drier, more colorless style
than the earlier ones and contained long-winded accounts of the geography
of the area near Dr. Min’s hometown and the physical features of its moun-
tains. The essay published in the Bulletin of the Herbalist Association was his
last, after which Dr. Min stopped writing essays or anything else about his
hometown.
I must have dozed off—I found myself still sitting on the stairs. I saw no
sign of Dr. Min, but I noted that the separate pile of his publications I had
made was now divided into two smaller piles. I went up to his study. Dr. Min
told me to throw away one of the piles as it was no longer of use to him. I had a
KimQuest.indd 173 9/22/09 1:56:58 PM

lot to ask him, but without breathing a word, I came down and took the books
and articles outside the gate as he had instructed. Of course, his essays were
among them.
I finally began to understand the nature of the task Dr. Min had given me.
My sorting of the books according to different fields was to help him better
weed out the books he didn’t need. Dr. Min showed uncharacteristic impa-
tience in this matter, and as soon as a small pile was formed, he immediately
made a separate pile of books to be discarded. I was quietly enjoying the job of
getting rid of the books. Was it because I was a layperson? That I was sorting
and organizing only to throw away gave me a peculiar sense of opulence.
Dr. Min and Mr. Chang left to pick medicinal herbs in the mountains for a few
days. Seizing the moment, I made up my mind to go out. I felt frightened, not
because it was my first outing in a long while, but because of certain facts that
I might have to face. I boarded the bus bound for the police station concerned.
It was already the time of year when the sun was hot and the wind sparse. I
felt as if the bus were passing through a vacuum. If there were a miracle-like
atmospheric stratum at the end of this vacuum that would suck up my past
and all its memories, I was more than ready to give up whatever I had to rid
myself of that single memory. “That” single question . . . ah, the one I hate even
to name! I took an empty seat and opened the folded page of the magazine I
had brought from home to kill time.
“. . . Dr. Min experienced the massacre of his entire family just after the out-
break of the Korean War. At that time he and his wife, Yi Chŏnghyang, had a
son and a daughter. At present, he has only Mr. Min Poktong, entered in his
family registrar as his adopted son.
“He went to the United States in 1954, where for about five years he
worked actively as a surgeon. Since returning to Korea, he has served until
the present as head of the surgery department at the D University Hospital.
Having refused to remarry, Dr. Min has dedicated himself solely to medicine
and writing. From the early 1960s he began to develop an interest in Eastern
medicine, and from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s he traveled throughout
the country, collecting medicinal herbs. At one time, he even joined an eso-
teric medical organization that attempted to prove the attainability of immor-
tality through Eastern medicine, and his name became well known through
his publication of several articles on the subject. . . .”
Again and again I read over those words that refused to register in my mind.
But what I was really looking at was the inside of a car running along the
highway.
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Ch’oe Yun 175
—At his office, the man finishes calling home and quickly dials another
number. A woman’s voice answers. The man waits by the roadside. He opens
the car door for an approaching shadow. A woman climbs into the car. They
drive on. The highway darkens, and their quarrel becomes fierce. The man
laughs sardonically. The woman’s eyes are fixed on the side of his face. Her hand
is on his thigh and then slowly moves upward . . . and in a moment . . .—
—Leaving Seoul, a man gives a ride to a woman in need of help along the
highway. She is trembling because she is on the run. The man sees something
in her face. There was in her face something he hadn’t known before but for
which he may have been searching a long time. No one knew exactly what
that was, not even he. He is driving, looking straight ahead. A strange calm,
a serenity such as is felt only by those who no longer desire anything, seizes
him. The woman, her eyes closed, has already fallen asleep. The man doesn’t
realize that this serenity is death’s lure. He also slowly closes his eyes. The car’s
high beam on the dark highway glaringly illuminates the uneven outline of
the woods . . .—
But none of these scenarios match the man.
—The man is sunk deep in thought. In his mind he goes over the phrases
he’ll use in the letter home to his wife. Do you remember Hajodae, which we
visited together three years ago?4 It was autumn. Sand dunes loomed up on
the beach, a transparent white against the dark blue band of the sky. How long
do you think we slept in the sand? When we awoke, what a terrible time we
had with the sand in our hair! How wonderful your smile was as you shook
the sand off! Your smile was the symbol for our endless love. Whenever I run
into difficulties, I immediately bring to mind our afternoon nap at Hajodae
and your smile at the time.—
None of these scripts fit the smile I saw on my husband’s face. Was that
expression on his face that night under the policeman’s light really a smile?
Could I be certain? It occurred to me that I saw that same smile again when
his body was transferred to a hospital in Seoul for an autopsy.
Detective Cho told me that after the case was closed, he disposed of the
photos taken the day of the accident. But I couldn’t ask him to describe in
detail the facial expression of the man in those pictures. Suppose he were to
answer. Where could it lead? For the smile was lodged in my mind and was
already eating away at my life bit by bit, like a strong, thick corrosive liquid.
Once the virus called memory gains entry and gets stuck, it operates on its
own and is difficult to deal with.
Although I hadn’t asked, the detective volunteered the information that the
woman remained unidentified even after three months. Then he asked with
obvious annoyance over my visit, “Do you have any idea how many others like
her are missing in Korea?” He added that, during those months, over half a
KimQuest.indd 175 9/22/09 1:56:59 PM

dozen people looking for missing family members had come to ask about the
woman, only to leave empty-handed. I asked him for their addresses. Detec-
tive Cho said, “Why, aren’t you a pain! What’s the use of finding out who
the dead person is?” Still, he complied with my request. In fact, for my part
I couldn’t quite understand why I’d made such a request. There was nothing
to connect me with those people except meaningless coincidences. I left my
address with the detective, asking him to be sure to contact me if anything
turned up that might help identify the long-haired woman. When Detective
Cho said, “You may feel mortified, but why don’t you forget about it now?”
it took a while for me to catch his meaning. He seemed to be thinking I was
making secret inquiries into the woman’s life because of my suspicions con-
cerning her relationship with my husband. I suppose others were thinking
similarly.
The following day as well, I left my book-sorting job untouched. I spent
the whole morning watching the lines made by files of ants swarming about
their newly dug nest beside the flowerbed. Then, in the afternoon, I went
out again. This time, I visited the office of my husband’s closest friend. There
is nothing so difficult as carrying on a conversation with someone who has
already concluded in his own mind that he is talking to an unhappy person.
Was I unhappy? Could there be anything more vapid and meaningless than
that expression?
My husband’s friend said, “You know how much I liked that fellow, don’t
you? It’s a real pity he had to go so young. After he met you, Chiyŏn, he
became a different person and didn’t know what to do with his happiness . . .”
He soon fell silent. I could guess why he’d clammed up. For some reason, I
couldn’t bring myself to say anything either. It was better that way. What ques-
tion could I possibly put to him? Could I say, “Would you please describe your
friend the way you knew him? Would you please make a list of possibilities
that would explain what circumstances and what muscular or nerve activi-
ties cause a person to smile at his death? Was the smile simply a momentary
twitch of his cheek muscles?”
As I lay quietly down in my room at Dr. Min’s house, which seemed to be

calmly drifting away with its back to the world, I sometimes had the illusion
that I was onboard a submarine cruising through the depths of the ocean on
an oceanographic research mission. The passage of time was just as indis-
tinguishable, like the flow of light-blue seawater passing by the ship’s small
portholes. But there was no trace of the ancient rare-breed fish for which the
ship’s old scholar-skipper was searching as in old adventure movies. The ship
was like the imaginary one of a forgotten legend, which, so it is said, anchors
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Ch’oe Yun 177
only long enough to refuel. At times the sunlight briefly made its way into
the depths of the sea, and it was so ideally lukewarm that it kept undisturbed
the calm of the sleeping water plants and that of the fish floating leisurely
around.
One day a man in his mid-forties entered through the gate. He had the
sunburned face of a country farmer—every inch of him—and he was carry-
ing two large bundles in his hand. While carefully depositing his things in the
entrance hall, he asked me if “Father” was upstairs. Looking at me standing
there bewildered, he explained that he was Dr. Min’s son. Dr. Min was in his
study. The man asked me to unpack what he had brought and rushed upstairs
at a stride. He entered the study without even knocking. It occurred to me
that he was the very adopted son of Dr. Min I had read about. His bundles
were carefully packed with small paper bags of honey, wild vegetables, newly
harvested rice and glutinous millet, and even a chunk of warm steamed rice
cake. At the sight of these crops, I was choked with emotion, tears welling in
my eyes. This event occurred at the time when I was still in the same limbo,
unable to take even a single step forward, even though more than a whole
season had gone by since the beginning of my stay at Dr. Min’s house.
Sitting on the staircase landing, I absent-mindedly let my ears catch the
voices floating down from upstairs. In his loud, dialect drawl, the man who
just arrived was apparently telling Dr. Min about the farming that year, about
his neighbors, and so forth. Dr. Min was listening to the visitor’s interminable
talk, at times exclaiming, “Huh,” “Heavens!” “And then,” and “My goodness!”
When the man said, “Why, Father, you must remember him. I mean that wee
harelipped owner of the tobacco field,” Dr. Min would chime in, “Of course,
I remember!” Their manner of conversation was more focused on affirming
the flow of each other’s feelings than on content. I knew I hadn’t seen anyone
have such a long chat with Dr. Min since my arrival at his house. Their warm
talk continued far into the evening.
That evening, Dr. Min had dinner alone with his son. A doctor-father with a
farmer-son! Indeed, Dr. Min was an unusual person. That evening, he became
quite someone else, unlike his usual self, just as if he had been living with his
son all his life. I retired to my room early and tried to fall asleep. Late in the
evening, I heard Dr. Min asking Mr. Chang to give his son a ride back home to
the countryside, as it was quite late. The man calling himself Dr. Min’s son was
rattling away as before and talked to Mr. Chang in familiar terms as if he were
an old acquaintance. Far from turning down the offer of a ride, he egged on
Mr. Chang to take him for a night drive and taste the rice wine he had waiting
at home. After they’d left, the house regained its customary calm of the ocean
depths and its frozen blue time. There was neither the captain nor his assistant
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in the submarine, and outside the portholes there was only the maze of water
plants.
For no apparent reason, I had trouble sleeping after the car left, although
there was no direct connection between their departure and me, except that
their night driving served as an intermediary triggering an automatic associa-
tion in me. I stayed awake until after four o’clock in the morning, when I heard
the car stop outside the gate and the key clicking in the gate’s iron lock.
It seems that, when people set out in search of something, they tend to find
unexpected similarities between facts that appear totally unrelated. This
seems especially true in desperate situations when people can’t see the end of
that which they are pursuing. Or perhaps this is only true of me?
About six months after I began my sojourn at Dr. Min’s house, I happened
to discover a fact concerning his life. By then, the area around the staircase,
once crowded with columns of books, was cleared out, and the bookshelves
that walled Dr. Min’s entire upstairs study were also cleared enough to reveal
vacant spaces here and there. A startling number of books and writings had
been dumped into the trash. The books in the house, except for those scat-
tered around in the attic or in the storeroom, were being put in fairly good
order. According to Dr. Min’s instructions, I had to mark with classification
labels those books arranged orderly on the shelves. The day I brought home
a bundle of sticker labels, I gave Dr. Min and Mr. Chang the gift of a bright
smile, probably the first since I had become the boarder in the house.
In truth, however, I was in a state of exhaustion. Over the months, I had
been engaged sporadically in a secret investigation. When in pursuit, I clung
to my inquiry with an intensity verging on madness. Perhaps there was noth-
ing secret about it, for Mr. Chang was well aware of what I was doing. I had
met with numerous people—my husband’s co-workers, his close and dis-
tant friends, and others who were informed of the accident. I had called on
Detective Cho a number of times more to badger him, and taking whatever
addresses he gave me, I often visited people completely unrelated to the inci-
dent and asked them ridiculous questions. How numerous, painful and futile
were those steps, which were bound to start with such negative prefaces, “no
better than before,” “nothing,” and “nobody”!
I realized that it was about time for me to leave Dr. Min’s house. The book
sorting was for the most part completed, and the transcription of the contents
of the recorded tapes could be taken up by anyone. For that matter, the book
sorting was no different. Perhaps the job could have been finished within a
month had it been done by someone other than me! I thought that this grace
period of life, fortunate but cumbersome like a pair of parentheses, shouldn’t
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Ch’oe Yun 179
be drawn out too long. I had to seek a new way of life. I needed at all costs to
free myself from that smile that had covered up and made a prison of my uni-
verse—no matter what! I called on Ms. Hong, head nurse at the D Hospital,
who occasionally phoned Dr. Min at home to say hello, in hopes of getting at
least a nurse’s aide position somewhere.
It was then that Ms. Hong told me a story related to Dr. Min about a stone.
As head nurse, when young, she had helped Dr. Min with his work just as I
did. Instead of asking her to find a new job for me, I came back home with a
story about an old man and a stone. No, it was a story about a stone growing in
my heart. One evening when Dr. Min had gone out, I also pestered Mr. Chang
to tell me the story about Dr. Min’s stone. The story could be banal—the sort
we might find in any family if we only paid a little attention. At that time,
however, the story was an exit sign for me, lost as I was in a secret maze with
no way out.
How can I simplify this story that defies easy understanding? The follow-
ing is the way I understood an ordinary war story experienced by a doctor.
Am I stepping out of line? Would Dr. Min himself agree with this narrative?
Here is Min Chuhwan, a surgeon in his early thirties—a young doctor with a
wife, a son, and a daughter. Then the war breaks out. Min Chuhwan hears the
news of the war at his office in a Seoul hospital and returns home. The family
leaves home to take refuge, but torrential rains force them to turn back before
reaching even the end of their block. The following day, Min Chuhwan tucks
his children away in the basement and monitors the situation while putting
his belongings in order in his room. At that moment, the window breaks and
a small stone lands in the sitting room—a pebble with its middle part com-
pressed narrow. A note is tied around it, which says: “Dr. Min, your name is
on the list for the third purge. Please take refuge quickly. Go to a farmhouse
at the entrance to Saekkol Village and look for Mr. Ch’ae Minhyŏng. He will
help you find passage on a boat to your hometown.”
Min Chuhwan doesn’t know who wrote the note. Who can this person
be that seems to know so much about his personal circumstances? Could he
be from his own hometown? If not, someone who cares for him despite their
differences in political ideology? To be sure, neither has Min Chuhwan ever
heard of Ch’ae Minhyŏng, whom the note writer asks him to look for. After
burning the note, Min Chuhwan wakes his family in the middle of the night
and sets out to seek refuge. After walking several days and nights, they arrive
at Saekkol, where he meets Ch’ae Minhyŏng, whose name was written on the
note, and with his help they safely reach his hometown, where his parents
are living. His younger brother has already come there from his home in the
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Taegu area. And then . . . before ten days have passed, the entire assembled
family is massacred—from his parents sitting dignifiedly in the inner room,
to his brother hiding in the attic, to his wife, who came back from her short
visit to the mountain behind the house, to his children playing in the yard.
Min Chuhwan alone is spared as he waits, hiding in a hole dug in the out-
house, for the retreat of the North Korean army from the village.
When he finally comes to his senses, he searches the half-burned-down
farmhouse in Saekkol and asks the locals of his hometown about Ch’ae
Minhyŏng, who had helped him cross the river and whom he had met only
once. However, he discovers nothing. Ch’ae was not a local. No one in Dr.
Min’s hometown recognizes his name. Having lost everything, Min Chuhwan
leaves Korea all alone. And then he returns to his country.
Following his return to Korea, Min Chuhwan has undoubtedly dedicated
the major part of his middle age to one task: collecting medicinal herbs. But
prior to that, he must have gone back to the neighborhood of Seoul where he
lived before the war and done everything possible to find the identity of the
person who threw the stone. All those pits with only unproven hypotheses;
those insidious rumors, in which all sorts of people—his hometown people
and strangers, his enemies and benefactors, students and traitors—were jum-
bled together only to darken his personal history. What he had to discover,
by discarding vague and dangerous assumptions, were the traces of Ch’ae
Minhyŏng, whom he had surely seen face-to-face at least once.
He returned from the United States asking only one question: who on
earth, and for what purpose, threw that stone into his house in the middle of
the night? Was it to save him from the purge, as was written in the note tied
around the stone? Or was it to more easily eliminate his family by collecting
them together in one place?
For fifteen years, from age forty-two to fifty-seven, Min Chuhwan wan-
ders the country in hopes of getting to the bottom of this one question.
The locations of the numerous trips he takes in the name of medicinal herb
research must have coincided with the areas where people connected with
Ch’ae Minhyŏng were living. Yet obviously nowhere could a trace of Ch’ae be
found. Dr. Min’s inquiries and tracking must have been as thorough, system-
atic, and meticulous as was his research. The information people offered about
Ch’ae, no matter how much or how little, was all obviously meaningless. It was
because the object of Dr. Min’s search was the very owner of the stone and that
person’s exact motive for sending Min Chuhwan to Ch’ae Minhyŏng.
The only result of Min Chuhwan’s search was an orphan, supposedly Ch’ae
Minhyŏng’s son, although even that was not confirmed. After he finds Pok-
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Ch’oe Yun 181
tong, aged thirteen or fourteen, he meets several more people mentioned

in the orphanage’s personal records for the boy. Even these meetings must
have been meaningless detours that strayed too far from the relevant time
and human connections. However, a bond between Min Chuhwan and Pok-
tong, which at first appears incomprehensible, is established. Min Chuhwan
takes Poktong out of the orphanage and puts him under the care of a woman
in his hometown and then, with true fatherly thoughtfulness, takes care of
his upbringing and education until he comes of age. All along, however, he
continues his painstaking tracking, without mentioning anything to Poktong,
even when Poktong at the age of twenty-nine is legally entered in his family
register as his adopted son. By that time, Min Chuhwan is fifty-seven.
In the end, Min Chuhwan never finds any answers and ends up abandon-
ing his quest, having acquired only a pointless, unclear, and irrelevant hodge-
podge of facts. There is no way to determine what made him decide to give
up. It is possible that no single concrete incident occasioned the decision.
I never gave Dr. Min any hint that I knew all these facts and did not even try
to confirm the details through others. That was the least I could do to repay
my enormous debt to him. And that was the way I understood an old man,
Min Chuhwan. I also felt it was my right to positively assert that Dr. Min saw
that smile, lingering so vividly on my dead husband’s face, at the site of the
accident nearly a year before. What did Dr. Min see in a young woman’s eyes,
transfixed on the smile of the dead? I could put it this way: what he saw was
the beginning of a twisted labyrinth created by grief. Dr. Min must have dis-
cerned it even before I did, because someone who has been trapped in a maze
without exit himself can read the world with an intuition learned from utter
loneliness. But what is the use of all this now? At any rate, from that point in
time, I slowly moved away from the spectral smile of my dead husband.
I stayed on at Dr. Min’s house for six more years. And then, even after Dr.
Min breathed his last on the tear-soaked knees of a sobbing Poktong, I con-
tinued my stay. Without realizing it, I had become close to Dr. Min and felt at
home with him, and some time before his passing on, I asked him, as a pam-
pered child would ask of her grandfather, of the whereabouts of the stone that
had so violently shaken one half of a scholar’s life. Ignoring me, he suggested
we go for an outing. The place we went was the riverside village where Pok-
tong lived, near Dr. Min’s hometown. As we strolled along the river, Dr. Min
picked up a pebble from among those scattered along the road. He handed it
to me and told me to throw it far, far out into the river, as far as possible. The
flat pebble left my hand and flew away, skipping across the smooth surface of
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the water—once, twice, three times—nimbly, like a swallow kicking and glid-
ing across the water. This was my finest try, in my short life, at the game of
ducks and drakes.
After Dr. Min’s departure from us, I belatedly accepted Mr. Chang’s dry,
unromantic marriage proposal, and helping him, I took over the task of put-
ting Dr. Min’s works in order and publishing them. The following paragraph
that I read in one of Dr. Min’s articles long remained in my memory. It was
from a brief article titled “A Short Study of Scientific Contingency,” one of the
rare pieces that escaped the fate of being dumped into the trash bin:
“. . . Even if an enormous amount of knowledge has been exhaustively

collected on two separate parts of the human body, surgical experi-
ments to suture them—regardless of the variety of their attempts—
rarely produce exactly the same results as calculated by a scientist.
This phenomenon parallels what happens in human history, where an
action or an intention will not always yield exactly the anticipated out-
come. Whereupon, the scientist questions whether there is an error
somewhere in his knowledge. Yet time and again, the world of science
constantly produces surprising results defying expectations, having
nothing to do with agnosticism. In the face of this development, the
scientist confronts both finitude and infinitude—the extremely beauti-
ful, contradictory law of the universe. At that moment, the scientist
learns to admit that he asked the wrong question and that he must
recast his question in a different way.”
This article was published the very year after Dr. Min stopped his onerous
quest.
[First published in Hyŏndae sosŏl (Modern novel), Fall 1992]
Analysis of “Stone in Your Heart”
A medium-length novella, “Stone in Your Heart” (Tangsin ŭi

mulchebi; 1992) poses the epistemological question of whether one can attain
ultimate truth or decipher the mysteries of life.
Narrated in the first-person memory mode, on one level “Stone in Your
Heart” deals with a young woman’s trauma caused by the sudden and mys-
terious death of her first husband in an automobile accident and how she
comes to terms with her tragedy. The protagonist, Chiyŏn, now remarried
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Ch’oe Yun 183
and the mother of a child, reminisces about the shock of the incident and
its impact on her life. As remembered by the heroine, what drove her to the
point of mental and psychological paralysis were the peculiar circumstances
of her first husband’s death—an enigmatic smile on his face and an unidenti-
fied woman found dead beside him. Her long and arduous pursuit to get to
the bottom of this puzzle ends in limbo, draining her of desire for life and
pushing her to the edge of insanity. However, the heroine’s chance encounter
with Dr. Min—a retired medical doctor who has his own personal trauma of
a magnitude far greater than hers—delivers her from a maiming inner suffer-
ing and provides her with a chance to begin anew. Thus the narrative takes
on additional dimensions beyond simply the story of a woman’s heartbreak. It
is an account of the intractable enigma of life, which defies human reasoning
or knowledge and, further, compels human beings to surrender themselves to
this truth, thereby acquiring the wisdom of letting go.
Structured very much like a detective story, with such elements as acci-
dents, deaths, suspicious circumstances, unresolved secrets, police inves-
tigations, and even a hint of illicit love, “Stone in Your Heart” has marital
betrayal—suspected but never proved—as its central narrative focus. The
story begins with the narrator’s search for the truth surrounding the death
of her first husband, who is found dead beside an unknown woman at the
scene of an automobile accident. What torments and tantalizes the heroine
most is the inscrutable smile on her dead husband’s face. Despite her tena-
cious efforts, the heroine ultimately fails to make sense of this mystery. Even
the police cannot establish the identity of the dead woman. The husband’s
death and everything related to it remain unresolved to the end, although
circumstantial evidence implicitly suggests his infidelity. The heroine is left at
an emotional stalemate. Her life stands still.
At this point Dr. Min’s story is introduced into the main narrative line,
overlapping the heroine’s, and tells of another betrayal. However, in contrast
to the heroine’s private ordeal, his is derived from the political and ideological
dimensions of the Korean War and involves a far more gruesome and heart-
wrenching personal loss. At the outset of the Korean War, a stranger’s tip to
the young Dr. Min to take refuge turned out to be a trap that brought about
the death of his entire family. The first and foremost mandate of his life there-
after was to pursue the person who had caused the massacre and discover his
motive. His decade-and-a-half search, however, yielded nothing, leading him
to a hellish deadlock.
Yet Dr. Min (by then in his mid-fifties) chooses to redeem this experience
of treachery through his unquestioning love and care for Poktong—the sus-
pected son of Ch’ae Minhyŏng, a partner in the murderous scheme—thereby
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transcending his personal tragedy. The implication of Dr. Min’s choice pro-
vides the heroine an insight into her own inner quagmire, which resulted from
her self-destructive obsession to make sense of her husband’s likely extramar-
ital affair and death, and leads her to stop her futile search. In essence, the
putative betrayed woman is given a priceless lesson of wisdom from Dr. Min,
who has learned how to let go of the inexplicable and has unwittingly given
the young woman a new lease on life, just as he did for his adopted son.
At a deeper, subtextual level, “Stone in Your Heart” communicates the
enormous and absolute enigmatic nature of life, too deep and elusive to fully
comprehend. All one can do is to approximate truths, just as the heroine does
when she rescripts the different possible scenarios of her husband’s amorous
escapades or when she reconstructs Dr. Min’s past history as best as she can
with the pieces of information provided to her. Discerning this indecipherable
aspect of life can provide a human being with the wisdom to let the unyielding
mystery remain and to get on with one’s life.
In “Stone in Your Heart” the author skillfully deploys her favorite narra-
tive strategies: use of a dual narrative structure and traumatic memory as a
means of establishing the significance of human affairs. The story is filtered
through the memories of the narrator, retracing the traumatizing end of her
first marriage, and is then interlaced with Dr. Min’s story of misfortune. This
juxtaposition of two seemingly unrelated but thematically interlocked stories
sheds light on the muted suffering and silent struggles of the two main char-
acters, while subtly and effectively delivering the story’s central message.
Especially central is the symbolism of the stone—the emissary of the
destruction that had fossilized and haunted Dr. Min’s life. At the story’s con-
clusion, when Dr. Min has the narrator fling a stone into the water, across
which they watch it skip like a swallow, he symbolically demonstrates the
cathartic and liberating power of letting go of one’s past.
Another distinctive element of the story is the near absence of direct words
of other characters, which might otherwise break the contemplative fluctua-
tions of the heroine’s thoughts. There is hardly any direct dialogue between
her and the old doctor, although they implicitly share the most intimate and
raw experiences of their lives. This indirect communication and the general
restraint maintained throughout the story prevent it from the potential danger
of sentimentalism, while providing the reader space to infer the deep empathy
and understanding communicated silently between the injured woman and
the discerning old man.
Finally, “Stone in Your Heart” is yet another variation on the atrocity and
absurdity of the Korean War—Ch’oe Yun’s favorite topic and one to be found
in her other short fiction, notably “A Mute’s Chant,” “Keeping an Eye on My
KimQuest.indd 184 9/22/09 1:57:00 PM

Ch’oe Yun 185
Father,” and “Whisper, Whisper.” The author’s repeated visitation of the com-
plex issue of the civil war and the incomprehensibility of the tragic fratricide
of Koreans undergirds her sense of urgency to attend to the cold-war legacy
that still stands as an impasse in divided Korea. In this sense, “Stone in Your
Heart” can be read as Ch’oe Yun’s literary endeavor to sharpen awareness of
the irrationality of the war and its senseless sacrifice of human lives, which
call for thorough reexamination and reparation.
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Ten
Dried Flowers (1995)
Pak Wan-sŏ
Despite her late debut as a writer in 1970, at the age

of thirty-nine, Pak Wan-sŏ (b. 1939) is known for her indefatigable creative
energy spanning four decades. One of the most prolific modern writers, Pak
has nine collections of short stories, fifteen novels, and seven essay collec-
tions to her credit. Pak is also noted for her wide thematic versatility, which
ranges from critiques of patriarchal marriage institutions and extended family
systems, to asymmetrical husband-wife relationships, gender discrimination,
the generation gap, immigration, consumerism, social injustice, government
corruption and repression, to name but a few. Armed with her characteristic
wry humor, sarcasm, and deliberate exaggeration and verbosity, Pak pokes
fun at familial egotism, obsession with social standing and prestige, and crass
materialism—most often observed in urban middle-class housewives.
Born in a village in Kaep’ung District near Kaesŏng in Kyŏnggi Province,
Pak Wan-sŏ lost her father at age three. Her widowed mother then moved to
Seoul to further the education of her two young children. Upon graduation
from Sungmyŏng Girls’ High School in 1950, Pak entered Seoul National
University to study Korean literature, just before the outbreak of the Korean
War. During the war, her older brother, her mother’s greatest hope in life,
was killed, making it necessary for Pak to abandon her schooling to sup-
port his family and her mother. She was never able to resume her college
education.
In 1970 Pak’s Namok (The naked tree) was published—a fictionalized
autobiographical account of her own family’s Korean War experience that
186
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Pak Wan-sŏ 187
won first prize in a competition sponsored by the women’s magazine Yŏsŏng

tonga (East Asian women). This made Pak, a middle-aged housewife and
mother of five children, a literary sensation. The theme of war trauma and
its long-lasting repercussions, expressed in The Naked Tree, was to become
one of the central leitmotifs of her major works. Many of Pak’s most memo-
rable stories belong to this category, including “Puch’ŏnim kŭnch’ŏ” (Nearby
the Buddha; 1973), “Kamera wa wŏk’ŏ” (Camera and walkers; 1975), “Kyŏul
nadŭri” (Winter outing; 1975), “Tŏwi mŏgŭn bŏsŭ” (The heat-stricken bus;
1977), Mongmarŭn kyejŏl (Thirsty season; 1978), “Ŏmma ŭi malttuk, 1, 2, 3”
(Mother’s stake; 1980, 1981, 1991), “Pogwŏn toeji mothan kŏttŭl ŭl wihayŏ”
(To restore what’s lost; 1983), and Kŭ hae kyŏul ŭn ttattŭt haenne (That winter
was warm; 1983).
One of Pak’s distinctive contributions is her pioneering effort to address
women and gender issues. Pak is particularly skilled in exposing the cha-
rade of appearance-conscious, middle-aged housewives obsessed with social
climbing and fads of the consumer-driven urban culture of Seoul. Pak’s
Hwich’ŏng kŏrinŭn ohu (The tottering afternoon; 1978), which levels criticism
at the egotistic and foolhardy ambitions of a mother who drags her entire
family into destruction, is the best example of this group of work. On the
other hand, “Ŏttŏn nadŭri” (An outing; 1971), “Chirŏngi urŭm sori” (The cry
of an earthworm; 1973), and “Chippogi nŭn kŭrŏkke kkŭnnatta” (Thus ended
my housekeeping; 1978) share a common theme of the awakening of middle-
aged housewives to the oppressive nature of their lives in a patriarchal family
system, and their efforts to find their true identities. Pak also played a leading
role in addressing the issue of divorce, as shown in her full-length novels Sara
innŭn nal ŭi sijak (The beginning of living life; 1980) and Sŏ innŭn yŏja (A
woman who is standing; 1985). The prevalence of “boy preference,” a form of
gender discrimination in contemporary Korea even among educated upper
classes, is indicted in “Haesan pagaji” (Gourds for a birthing mother; 1985)
and “Kkum kkunŭn ink’yubeit’ŏ” (The dreaming incubator; 1993).
From the late 1970s, Pak began to focus her attentions on the problem of
the elderly in light of the disintegration of the traditional family network in
an increasingly urbanized and industrialized Korea. The most notable devel-
opment is the power shift from the older to the younger generation, accom-
panied by a diminution of respect for seniors and a tendency to regard the
aged as burdensome. The problem of this alienation of the gray generation is
variously dramatized in Pak’s short stories such as “Thus Ended My House-
keeping,” “Gourds for a Birthing Mother,” “Odong ŭi sumŭn sori yŏ” (Ah, the
hidden sigh of the Paulownia!; 1992), “Hwan’gak ŭi nabi” (A butterfly of illu-
sion; 1995), and “Marŭn kkot” (Dried flowers; 1995).
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Although autobiographical strains underlie many of Pak’s narratives, she

began to produce full-scale self-narratives from the 1990s. Kŭ man’tŏn singa
nŭn nuga ta mŏgŏssŭlkka (Who devoured those luxuriant singa plants?; 1992)
and Kŭ san i chŏngmal kŏgi issŏssŭlkka (Was the big mountain really there?;
1995) are full-length novels tracing her childhood and life thereafter. In writ-
ing the first book, Pak observed that she came to feel the need to give voice
to her personal experiences as a human witness to the historical realities of
Korea’s recent past.
Pak Wan-sŏ is the most awarded Korean woman writer today. She has
been the recipient of the nation’s most esteemed literary awards, including
the Korean Writers’ Award (1980), the Yi Sang Literature Award (1981), the
Republic of Korea Literature Award (1990), the Isan Literature Award (1991),
the Hyŏndae Literature Award (1993), the Chung’ang Cultural Grand Prix
(1993), the Tong-in Literature Award (1994), the Hahn Moo-Suk Literature
Award (1995), and the Daesan Literature Award (1997). In view of Pak Wan-
sŏ’s literary and cultural achievements, Seoul National University conferred
an honorary doctoral degree on her in May 2006.
Dried Flowers
At first I saw only his hand.

It had a ring on it. I could tell at a glance that the dark blue stone set in the
white-gold ring was an aquamarine. I knew it was not an expensive stone, but
it was not a common one either. That’s not to say I had a good eye for gems.
That wasn’t the case.
I once had a friend who owned a gemstone shop (it’s now gone) in the
underground shopping mall below a five-star hotel. Charmed by my friend’s
talent for talk, I frequented her shop. Her talk, however, was mostly trivial and
had little to do with practical skills like judging the quality of jewels or telling
genuine stones from fakes. I wondered if the beauty of a precious stone could
control the destiny of whomever it charmed, just as a beautiful woman unwit-
tingly falls prey to her own beauty. My friend knew all too many sorrowful
and mysterious tales associated with gemstones, and she also had plenty to say
about humans’ uncontrollable desire to own masterpieces in jewel work. Her
clever, colorful explanations were so captivating that I fell completely under
the spell of her words. At times it seemed as if she were running the shop
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Pak Wan-sŏ 189
because she had herself become a captive of such tales—not to make money
or for love of gemstones.
Her story about the aquamarine was, however, somewhat different from
her other mesmerizing stories. She said that a good-quality aquamarine
should be the color of the deep sea, but that such stones were very rare, for
the following reason: “There once was a young man who lost his true love at
sea. He devoted the rest of his life to buying first-rate aquamarines with all the
money he made, and when he died, he had a large burlap bag full of them.” For
some reason, my friend told me this story in a rather brief and lackluster man-
ner—a story about a young man who, robbed of his lover by the deep sea, had
thrown his soul into sea-colored crystals instead of jumping into the water
to die with his beloved. I wondered whether the apparent artlessness of my
friend’s talk was in fact consummate artistry. For, though I wasn’t particularly
impressed by her story at the time, whenever afterward I saw an aquamarine,
I shuddered as if pierced by the stone’s deep blue color, slicing my chest like a
cold, sharp razor.
When I reached the express-bus terminal, panting and puffing—having

missed the last train—the place was jam-packed and the tickets for the last
bus already sold out. I couldn’t believe it, because I was there a good two hours
before the departure of the last bus, and Seoul-bound buses were scheduled to
leave every ten minutes. It was a Saturday afternoon. What I had missed at the
train station was not the train itself but the time to buy the ticket.
I was on my way back home after attending my youngest nephew’s wed-
ding in Taegu.1 As one of the elders of his family—at least in name—I felt
betrayed and piqued at the thoughtlessness of his family, who had sent me a
wedding invitation without reserving a return ticket. Granted, I was to blame
for not having purchased a round-trip ticket myself, not expecting I’d have to
return home the very day of the wedding. My oldest nephew had moved to
Taegu because of his job and had made his home there for the past five years.
Every time I called him, he asked me to visit his family, so I thought he would
invite me to stay at least a couple of days when I, his father’s younger sister,
came to attend his youngest brother’s wedding.
My family were Seoul natives, but after my oldest brother and his wife
died in quick succession, their four children scattered throughout the coun-
try, each led by his job. Even this groom, their youngest son and the only one
working in Seoul, had chosen a girl from Taegu and decided to get married
there. If he had chosen Taegu for his wedding simply because of the influence
of the bride’s family in the local community, I would have been annoyed. But
since my oldest nephew also lived in Taegu, I decided to put up with it. As
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a matter of fact, the groom, though not particularly choosy, had had diffi-
culty finding a wife, and it was his older sister-in-law living in Taegu who had
finally succeeded in bringing this marriage off, after arranging dates for him
with a number of girls; naturally, the bride was a local girl.
The wedding hall was filled with the jarring sounds of the regional dialect,
which made me feel rotten, already dampened by the disrespect shown by
my oldest nephew’s wife toward her elders. She told me she had informed the
bride’s family to omit the p’yebaek, and without knowing this beforehand, I
had come all the way from Seoul draped in a Korean dress solely for appear-
ance’ sake at the p’yebaek ceremony.2 She defended her handling of the matter
by saying curtly, “We don’t even have any older relatives left who would miss
the ceremony.” What does she mean by saying there are no elders? What about
me, her aunt-in-law? Shocked by the way my nephew’s wife dismissed me so
rudely to my face, I looked around for someone who would take my side—for
some older folks who would join in chewing out the disgusting “favor” my
nephew’s wife had done the bride’s family and to get upset about it.
“Good heavens, why should a bride have a wedding if she is not to go
through p’yebaek? The couple might as well just live together and skip the
wedding altogether. To tell you the truth, this is the first time I’ve ever seen
such a thing. We are a respectable family, and this is simply outrageous. Truly
preposterous! Anyone who looks at us will laugh at us. Don’t you think there’s
something indeed wrong with a family like the bride’s, who jumps so readily
at such a suggestion? Believe me, this is more than a simple family matter to
squabble about. This is about our beautiful traditions, and they require care-
ful handling, you see.”
But I found no such allies—everyone was a stranger to me. Who am I—an
aunt-in-law—to my nephew’s wife anyway? Even according to the law, I am
but an outsider who married into her husband’s family. It occurred to me
that my nephew’s wife deliberately treated me in accordance with this view,
because she didn’t even offer me a proper place for elders and or help me to
mingle with the partying crowd. All of a sudden, I lost confidence in myself
and even felt unsure whether it was appropriate to perform a p’yebaek cer-
emony when the groom’s parents were no longer alive. I wondered if I knew
anything for sure. I would turn sixty next year, and the young people’s disre-
gard of me made me feel dismal and even panic-stricken.
In the reception hall, decorated with a pair of Chinese phoenix figures
carved in ice, the bride and the bridegroom cut their wedding cake. A cloud
from dry ice floated up around them, and cheers, applause, and the popping
of champagne bottles rang out. Even here, where the festive mood was reach-
ing its peak, all I heard was the dialect of the bride’s side. The insult inflicted
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Pak Wan-sŏ 191
on me by my nephew’s family turned into a miserable loneliness, as if the

dialect of the bride’s side had ganged up to alienate me. I suspected that the
ridiculously voluminous skirt of my pink Korean dress—one that I had made
for my own daughter’s wedding—which would either balloon up or trail on
the floor, appeared ludicrous—or worse, wretched. I realized how pathetic
it was for an unimportant guest to put on such a garish outfit and attract
unnecessary attention. As if I were being punished for my dress, I grew more
self-conscious every minute, and having lost my appetite, I was only going
through the motions of eating.
“By the way, what train ticket did you buy, auntie?” asked the wife of my
second nephew, staring at me without batting an eye. Although I was seated
right next to her, she hadn’t even said a proper hello to me because she had
been so busy feeding her own children. At first, I didn’t catch the meaning of
her first expression of interest in me. I stammered, “Ticket? What ticket?”
“I mean your return ticket, auntie. My goodness, you came down from
Seoul without a return ticket? You know, today is Saturday and . . .”
Instead of answering her, I searched with my eyes for my oldest nephew’s
wife, who was still busy threading her way through the crowd, greeting guests.
My second nephew’s wife, however, tracked down her older sister-in-law much
quicker than I and fussed over me as if some disaster had occurred—me, who
was cutting my beefsteak slowly and clumsily like an idiot, showing no con-
cern about my return trip.
“It may not be too late, if only we hurry,” said the older one, looking at her
watch. At that moment, it finally dawned on me that I had to return home that
very day. My expectation that they would ask me to stay overnight—at least
out of courtesy—was dashed. For fear of tears welling up in my eyes, I stuffed
roughly cut pieces of meat into my mouth.
“Take it easy, auntie, as we still have some time,” said the younger one.
“No, I don’t think so. We have to consider the time it takes to get to the
station,” said the older one.
“We’ll drop her there on our way home, then. I feel bad that I won’t be able
to help you out, but we will leave a bit early,” said the younger one.
“Really? I think that’s a good idea. Even if you stay here, there won’t be
much left to do. Taking auntie to the station is helping me. I leave it to you,
then.” Completely ignoring me, my oldest nephew’s wife and my second
nephew’s wife, who had come from Ulsan, carried on their discussion.3
The younger one and her family seemed to have come to the wedding in
their own car. It was a rather old Hyundai Excel model. All my nephews and
their wives, except for the newlyweds, came to the car to see us off.
My second nephew’s wife sat in the back with her two children, a boy
KimQuest.indd 191 9/22/09 1:57:02 PM

and a girl. I sat in the front passenger seat and kept looking at my nephew
as he drove.
“Why are you staring at me, auntie?”
“You seem to take after your father the most . . .”
“When I was young, people told me I took after my mother’s side,
though.”
“No, no,” I disagreed strongly but without much confidence.
“I haven’t seen cousin Hyŏngsŏk for a long time. I hoped he’d come with
you this time . . .”
“He’s just left the country on business, and his wife also has to work,
so . . . ”
“Honey, when are you going abroad on business?” cut in my nephew’s wife
from the backseat in a ringing, almost impudent voice.
“Why, do you want to live alone?”
“Because I’d like to get away from this kind of function once in a while
too . . .”
“Hey, don’t you know there’s a difference between brothers and cousins?
What’s wrong with you?” The smile on his lips, however, betrayed a loving
adoration for his wife.
“What’s the big difference? I didn’t even get any gifts from the bride’s
family. I heard your sister-in-law told them to omit gifts. You see, in my
case, she made every effort to make me bring gifts for your family. Look at
me, honey—do I look as spiteful as all that?”
“Okay, okay. Hey, what’s the problem, as long as I care for you?”
They carried on this sort of frivolous teasing all the way to the station, not
giving me a chance to say anything.
The parking lot at Taegu train station was full, and the attendant whistled
to stop us from driving in. Taking advantage of this, my nephew and his wife
dropped me like a piece of luggage and drove off. I could almost hear their
“Good riddance!” in unison. My feelings about them were the same. It was
great to be freed from their disgusting antics, and my worries about the ticket
were secondary. It also felt good to say in favor of my sons, Hyŏngguk and
Hyŏngsŏk, and their wives, that they don’t behave in such a poor manner in
my presence.
Saemaŭl train tickets were sold out, and the remaining Mugunghwa train
had standing-room-only tickets. I sprinted toward the express-bus termi-
nal, clutching my silk skirt—six feet across—on which half a dozen people
could have easily sat without touching the dirt if I had sat sprawled out on the
ground. Luckily, the terminal was not far from the train station. When I was
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Pak Wan-sŏ 193
told that even bus tickets were sold out, however, I could no longer keep my
spirits up.
The jam-packed crowd, the stale air, and the totally unintelligible clamor
of the regional dialect were unbearable enough, but far worse was my pink
Korean dress. I knew I had to return home that very day—if for nothing else—
to free myself of this absurdly flashy attire. Obviously, my distress was written
all over my face, because someone asked me if I was traveling by myself. I just
nodded. The person told me that I would have better luck in the boarding
area than standing in front of the ticket window and wasting time. His idea
was to get on board right before departure and grab the seat of someone who
had missed the bus. As the saying goes, “Where there’s life, there’s hope,” and
I found a way out of this pandemonium! I rushed to the boarding area with-
out even properly thanking the person who had provided me such precious
advice in this unfamiliar place.
But I wasn’t the only clever one—not by a long shot. There was a separate
long line of people who had bet their luck on unclaimed seats. I was greatly
relieved, though, that we were to board in due order—never to sneak in or
fight with one another for a chance to get on the bus. Although the ten-min-
ute intervals felt long, each time a bus left, one or two in the waiting line
boarded. Still, my chances of leaving the city that day were growing slimmer
and slimmer, because passengers who had bought tickets but missed their bus
were given priority over those who were waiting with no ticket at all. I had
no patience to stick around waiting for that slim, unreliable chance. I got all
the more impatient because of my darned silk dress. The silk fabric of former
days had clung to the body warmly, but for unknown reasons, today’s silk was
so flimsy that it billowed up uncontrollably at the slightest stir of the wind,
regardless of the season. To make matters worse, the boarding area was in the
open air. As the autumn sun began to set, I could feel the drop in temperature
on my skin.
I gestured urgently to the young woman behind me in line that I had to go
to the restroom and asked her to save my place. I felt the only way to get lucky,
if it were even possible, was to go inside to the lobby and check. I thought that
the bus company, if they had a scrap of conscience, might add a few more
buses to the Seoul-bound line, given that it was Saturday afternoon. It even
seemed possible that a few people like me could put our voices together and
pressure the company into doing so.
With a sudden surge of energy, I charged into the lobby, my silk skirt flut-
tering like a flag, and right there, incredible good fortune was awaiting me.
From the opposite entrance, an old man leapt inside, holding two tickets up
KimQuest.indd 193 9/22/09 1:57:02 PM

high like in a dream, and I realized on the spot that he had come to return
his tickets. I quickly blocked his path to the ticket window and asked the
destination of the tickets. They were for a Seoul-bound bus leaving in thirty
minutes.
“Sir, please sell me the tickets. How much would you like?”
“I heard I can get a full return if I take them to the ticket office.”
The old man held on to his tickets lest they be taken away from him for
less than their full price, although I meant to offer him more than what he had
paid. Probably my facial expression appeared sly when I first approached him
and opened my purse. When I offered to pay full price, he then insisted that
he had to sell both tickets. Apparently it was a hassle for him to sell only one
ticket to me and return the other to the ticket office. I didn’t mind buying both
tickets, because I could return the one I didn’t need myself.
Before I had a chance to explain what I had in mind, however, a hand
appeared asking to share the tickets. It was the hand sporting an aquamarine
ring! I had yet to see its owner’s face, but I had neither the leisure nor curi-
osity. I clutched the express-bus ticket firmly in my hand, my heart full and
beating fast as if I had snatched a lucky lottery ticket.
In order to savor this mood at more leisure, I treated myself to a cup of
coffee from the vending machine. The remaining thirty minutes were just
enough time for such an indulgence. It was impossible to find a seat in the
lobby, but I was absolutely content to drink my cup of hot coffee leaning
against the wall. It hardly bothered me that my attire was totally inappropriate
for both my pose and location. The coffee tasted exceptionally good. Maybe I
was relishing not the coffee but the memory of aquamarine that had slipped
unnoticed into my mind.
I boarded the bus five minutes before departure and took a window seat.
He got on just before the bus left, but I didn’t look at him. When he took off
his khaki trench coat and put it on the overhead luggage rack, the lining of the
coat flipped over slightly, revealing a London Fog label. I was rather pleased
by his refinement. The most annoying thing when one is traveling alone by
train or express bus is to sit next to a passenger who never stops eating milk,
bread, oranges, and the like and insists on sharing it all with you. At least I
wouldn’t have to worry about that on this trip. Even then the aquamarine
ring and the London Fog coat were two separate entities in my consciousness.
Outside the bus window, the darkness changed from misty gray to a light inky
black. Finally the bus left the mist of Taegu behind and entered the freeway.
Unfolding his newspaper, he lightly brushed my shoulder. “Pardon me.”
The voice was dignified and courteous. I simply nodded as if to say, “It’s all
right,” without looking at him directly. Again I caught sight of his ring on the
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Pak Wan-sŏ 195
hand holding the newspaper. I liked its simple, sturdy setting, which matched
nicely his firm, thick-boned, masculine hand. Surprised by my own interest
in a stranger’s clothing and personal effects, and by a peculiar stirring in my
heart, I decided I had better put a stop to such wandering thoughts. I pushed
my seat back and closed my eyes. A light, sweet drowsiness came over me. In
spite of considerable fatigue from the long-distance round-trip I had made
that day, part of my consciousness was kept awake by my curiosity about the
man.
I jerked up as if I had just woken from a deep sleep, and tried to look out of
the window, but the steamed-up glass pane was as hazy as frosted glass. When
I tried to wipe the window with the curtain, he handed me a bunch of tissue
paper. Instead of saying “Thank you,” I again nodded, took the tissue from
him, and wiped the window. The bus was traveling through a vast stretch
of fields. Although the road signs that appeared every quarter mile told the
distance to Seoul, what I really wanted to know was how many hours were
left to our destination. But with the usual Saturday afternoon traffic conges-
tion, I thought, it would be meaningless to compute our arrival time based on
distance.
“We’ll soon arrive at the Kŭmgang rest area,” he said to me.
“Ah, I see,” I said briefly to show that I understood.
At the rest area, we were told that the bus would stop for twenty min-
utes. After he got off the bus, I lingered a little, and then got out. The public
restroom, though not dirty, was wet. While I took care of my needs in the
toilet, I heard someone dousing water outside. Cleaning in name only, they
were practically flooding the tile floors. I was irritated at the hassle my bulky
Korean skirt caused. When I came outside the restroom and looked for the
bus, he flashed me a smile from under a streetlamp where he was having his
coffee. I quickly looked away because his smile was so irresistible. On the
whole, the way he was standing there impressed me like the last scene of a
good movie. His outfit—a wine-colored V-neck sweater over a blue shirt and
a pea-green wool muffler thrown casually around his chest—was as showy as
that of a new-generation pop singer, but it went well with his silvery hair. I
hastily let go of the skirt that I had hitched up to my knees, baring my under-
clothes, and quickened my steps toward the bus with a peevish look. I felt both
embarrassed and angry, because even on the dry ground, I looked like I was
wading through a pool of water.
When I took my seat on the bus, I continued watching him outside. It
seemed to me that he not only dressed stylishly but also kept his weight under
control very well. He had long legs and no potbelly, and his gait was leisurely
and dignified. I looked up at his neatly folded trench coat on the rack. I, too,
KimQuest.indd 195 9/22/09 1:57:02 PM

owned a fine raincoat, though not of the same brand. Had it not been for that
stupid p’yebaek ceremony, I would have brought that coat. Had I worn it, I’d
look at least ten years younger than I did now.
Without even realizing it, I began imagining myself, the cold wind on my
raincoat, drinking a glass of imported wine with him in a nice bar. It must be
the aquamarine that was making me so strange. Or perhaps it was because
I knew what I really wanted. I had of course been much younger in those
days when I had frequented my friend’s gemstone shop with no particular
business on hand. But in fact, I hadn’t exactly been young even then. I must
have been way over forty, because at the time I had been looking back—with
a mixture of pride and emptiness—at my younger days that had been spent
in joyless struggle rearing my children and supporting my husband. When
such empty feelings set in, I had felt a strange and inexplicable dissatisfaction
with both my children (though they had turned out fairly decently) and my
husband, who had become a respected, high-ranking company official. My
discontent had in turn drained my strength, like a numbness spreading to
every corner of my body. Such a feeling of emptiness must have been what
made my loaded friend suddenly open a gemstone shop, just the way it had
provoked me, barely able to make ends meet, to frequent her shop without
buying anything. At the time, she and I were dreading old age—even more
than we feared death itself.
In those days, there was a bar called Casanova at the corner between the
gemstone shop streets and the restaurant section in the underground shop-
ping mall beneath the hotel. Once in a while we enjoyed drinking wine or
cocktails there, not because we liked the drinks but because we were impressed
by the bar’s ambience. At first we felt shy and guilty for being there, especially
without our husbands, so we decided to invite them to join us. They were also
old classmates. We behaved like spoiled children, teasing our husbands, “I’m
so lonely tonight—won’t you buy me a glass of wine?” but neither of them
was persuaded. If they had scolded us, we might have retreated home meekly.
Instead, they were generous, telling us to enjoy ourselves drinking, as both of
them had previous engagements. Our loneliness seemingly doubled, because
middle-aged men appeared far less lonely than we were. That our husbands
cared little for us worsened the insecurities about our age. Under such cir-
cumstances, I found an irresistible comfort—and some sadness—in imported
wines and the atmosphere of a classy bar, all thanks to my moneyed friend. It
felt not unlike going to a fancy party decked in borrowed jewels.
We were more attracted to the atmosphere of the bar than to wines or
whiskeys, and an indispensable part of the atmosphere was an old couple—
regular customers of the bar. Dignified, refined, and leisurely, the old man
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Pak Wan-sŏ 197
and woman always sat at the bar, facing the bartender. The long-legged stools
matched them well, like expensive accessories. There were numerous dimly
lit, secluded seats reserved for lovers, but the couple chose as their favorite the
well-lit and highly visible seats at the bar, and this in turn made the area rather
secretive. If the couple took those seats first, other customers who regularly
sat there would avoid the area. A peaceful aura hovered around their secre-
tiveness, which we felt that we should respect. Nevertheless, we wanted to
see them as old lovers rather than as an old married couple. This was purely
our own wishful thinking, and we never found out the true nature of their
relationship.
From our dark corner we enjoyed watching their every movement. The
good-looking bartender served them simple side dishes, such as cheese or
pickles, and put ice into their crystal glasses of amber-colored whiskey. These
scenes enthralled us like those of a movie. We were unsure of what the couple
said or of their facial expressions, but we were both envious and comforted
that even aged people could be so attractive. They sipped at their drinks very
slowly—almost licking them—and they often clinked their glasses. And as I
watched them lightly clink their glasses, I felt as if at that age a genuine har-
mony between human beings was finally possible—something I had never
thought before.
Those days I was feeling miserable—as if stricken by an abrupt and prema-
ture rheumatism—due to conflicts with my husband, relatives, and children,
although the financial situation of my family had by then become fairly stable.
At the time, the situation was quite serious to me, although eventually I dis-
covered just how baseless my misery had been. My friend also complained
about the meaninglessness of life. Sighing deeply, I commiserated with her.
Our extreme glamorization of the old couple was perhaps one attempt to ease
our emptiness and fear of ugly old age.
Those days ended abruptly with the bankruptcy of my friend’s gemstone
business. A drama usually ends with a slow, tantalizing lowering of the cur-
tain, but the downfall of the rich is often incredibly instantaneous. My friend’s
husband fled abroad after issuing bad checks, and my friend, left alone, was
robbed of her shop as payment for their debts. She lived as poorly as a church
mouse, and one day she disappeared without warning to emigrate and join
her husband. At once I returned to the real world and again became a good
old housewife, tearfully grateful that my family had remained intact while I
had been so foolishly distracted.
I wondered how many years had passed since my last visit to that hotel. It
seemed both long ago and yet like the day before yesterday. Was the Casanova
still there? Although the bar might have disappeared with the old lovers and
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the passage of time, my memories of them lingered, and I now dreamt of

clinking beautiful crystal glasses with “him” in some classy, exotic bar. I felt as
if I had been cherishing this dream and these memories a long time but had
had no partner to help me realize them.
He handed me a paper cup. It was a tea made of grains of Job’s tears.4 I
said, “Thank you,” and looked directly at him for the first time. His lean,
handsome face gave me an impression he was an honest man, and his eyes
were warm. My heart pounded. Who would believe I could still have such
feelings at my age?
The traffic became more congested after passing the Kŭmgang rest area.
Nowhere could I see road signs telling the distance to Seoul, because the bus
driver had willfully exited the express freeway without bothering to seek his
passengers’ consent. The bus ran through the darkness along old highways
and by shortcuts known only to the driver. Occasionally we passed small
villages and township office areas dotted with lighted shops. At every such
chance, I tried to peek out of the window for clues as to our whereabouts, and
he handed me pieces of tissue to wipe the window. Still, I had no idea where
we were because even the country shops had signboards like “Seoul Beauty
Parlor,” “Myŏngdong Fashions,” “German Bakery,” “Ŭijŏngbu Casserole,”
“Yŏngjae Reading Room,” and so on. These shopping areas, which appeared
once in a while between long drives through open fields or on secluded moun-
tain roads, were more unreal than reassuring.
Long after I had begun to wonder if we were just wandering around with-
out moving forward at all, the bus finally entered a bustling city, giving me the
illusion that we had already reached Seoul. The car plates, however, told me
that it was Taejŏn, and it was almost ten o’clock.
This time I spoke first. “Here we are in Taejŏn! At least we know this bus
is heading toward Seoul.”
“You mean you thought we were going somewhere else?”
“I’ve been nervous ever since we got off the express highway. I thought the
bus might run all night without getting anywhere.”
“A bus that gets nowhere . . . how interesting! It’s more poetic than what
I’ve been thinking.”
“May I ask what you’ve been thinking?”
“I’ve been wondering whether innocent passengers were being kidnapped
and taken to some unknown place because someone who is on the bus is on a
very important mission or carrying a huge sum of money.”
“If the bus driver could hear our talk, I suppose he’d think we were pretty
obnoxious passengers, because he’s actually been taking all these unfamiliar
roads in order to get us to Seoul a bit faster.”
“What’s bad is that we have been awake. Look around—everyone’s fast
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Pak Wan-sŏ 199
asleep! We never would have had such silly thoughts if we’d just trusted the
driver and gone to sleep like the others.”
Just as he said, everyone was fast asleep except the two of us. I felt a tin-
gling pleasure without quite knowing why.
“Are you from Seoul or Taegu?” he asked.
“I’m on my way home after attending my nephew’s wedding in Taegu.”
“So that’s why you’re so nicely dressed.”
“I thought that in every aspect a Korean dress would be easy for p’yebaek
and also for properly carrying out my duties as a senior member of the fam-
ily.” I deliberately omitted that I hadn’t even been treated to p’yebaek. Still, I
was glad for the chance to explain my Korean dress, which must have looked
idiotic on the bus.
Our bus was caught in a heavy traffic jam after passing Taejŏn, and we
didn’t reach Seoul until way past midnight. While the other passengers slept
soundly, we remained awake and carried on like young people the whole time.
We chatted about old movies, favorite actors and music, restaurants with tasty
food and good atmosphere, the state of the world, and so on. We completely
left out such dreary stories as how old we were during the Korean War, how
much we had suffered, or where we had taken refuge. As I rambled on, I dis-
covered for the first time—to my great satisfaction—how talkative, cheerful,
well-informed, and witty I was. That didn’t mean that we agreed on every-
thing. Although we passionately agreed on how demeaning it had been to live
through the yusin age and under the military regimes, I strongly disapproved
of his love for his Chindo dog, as if mere talk about dogs gave me an allergic
reaction.5 We had so much fun that I could hardly believe it when we reached
Seoul, despite its being so late.
Every once in a while city buses passed, but the subway was already closed.
Almost all the express-bus passengers lined up at the taxi stand. The night air
was cold. He removed his coat and put it over my shoulders. Accepting the
coat quietly, I nestled within it. I had long forgotten my concern over age.
“Where do you live?” he asked.
“In the Kodŏk area,” I replied.
I couldn’t believe we lived in the same neighborhood! It was a rather ordi-
nary area. But how could it be ordinary if he lived there? My heart throbbed
like that of a teenage girl. Reflexively, the large, beautiful woods that remained
outside my neighborhood and the pleasant walking paths there floated
through my mind. We got in the same taxi without hesitating. Quite a distance
separated his apartment from the residential area where I lived, although they
were in the same neighborhood. He took me home first, and when I got out of
the taxi, he handed me his name card.
I was glad the light was on in the room of the high school student on the
KimQuest.indd 199 9/22/09 1:57:03 PM

second floor, though I hardly knew him. I had only heard his mother, who
rented the second floor of my house, grumbling on several occasions that
her electricity bills were higher than mine because of her son, a high school
senior. The woman had a sweet and gentle manner, and I didn’t hesitate ask-
ing her to run errands for me—to pay my taxes, for example, or other official
bills at the bank.
My three-story house had definitely been built with the idea of renting out
parts of it. As the owner of the house, I lived on the third floor. The other two
floors had two separate units each—all meant to be rented out—but the third
floor was constructed as a single-family unit, and at more than thirty p’yŏng
was quite spacious.6 As such, it was rather large for a single person, but now
I felt it sweet—not at all dreary—to unlock the door in the dead of night and
enter the empty house.
Though I lived alone, I had a picture of my large family of fourteen hang-
ing on the living room wall. The commemorative photo, half the size of a
door, had been taken before my oldest son’s departure for his company’s
branch office in the United States. The photo showed my husband and me
surrounded by the families of our two sons and one daughter, each consisting
of four members. Of these fourteen, my husband had passed on, but around
the same time, another grandson had been born; so in my mind the size of
my family remained the same. I had yet to see the new grandson, as he had
been born in the United States. My oldest son called me once a week without
fail—never minding the cost—and sometimes dragged out his phone call in
order for me to hear his baby cooing. Both my daughter, who lived close by,
and my other son, who lived in Pundang, never missed their daily routine
of calling me.7 My home was thus connected closely and regularly with my
blood relations by means of the phone line, which truly gave me the strength
to live.
My hallway light was designed to turn on automatically when the entrance
door was opened. Before the light went back off by itself, I quickly reached
for the hallway light, and, as usual, my eyes greeted my family portrait. As I
breathed in the smell of my house, familiar and damp like the clothes I had
taken off, I examined his name card. It was a simple one, showing only his
name—without an official title—and phone numbers for house and office. The
card seemed to reflect his character and made a good impression, although
I knew little about him. I wasn’t particularly curious about the nature of the
work going on in his office.
As the autumn deepened over the next few days, I could see the tinted
foliage of the woods reaching the peak of its brilliance. It was said that the
autumn colors at Mount Sŏrak had already passed their season.8 I wondered
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Pak Wan-sŏ 201
at what time of day he would take a walk with his handsome Chindo dog. He
had told me that he—an apartment resident—and his second son, who lived
in a separate house, took turns taking care of the dog because it had grown too
big to be raised secretly in the apartment. He also said he had never violated
any law, good or bad, in his entire life, but now in his old age he was breaking
regulations because of the dog, which made him cower before the neighbor-
hood women. I thought that he was living rather comfortably and was also
a good person. This meant I knew almost everything I needed to know
about him.
His name card had been sitting nicely next to my phone. I answered many
a call wondering if it was from him, even though I hadn’t given him my phone
number. Everybody knows that the party with the other’s number is supposed
to make the call, but I couldn’t do it. In fact, I hadn’t even debated whether or
not I should call him. Though he knew where I lived, it would be totally out
of line with his gentlemanly character to call on me unannounced, so I knew
I would get nowhere by vague hopes of seeing him again. The most natural
thing was for me to make the first move. Unexpectedly, before long I had a
chance to do just that.
There was a death in my in-laws’ family. My second daughter-in-law’s
mother, who had been living alone in the countryside, passed on. When my
son’s entire family, including the children, left for the country, they dumped
their pint-size dog in my care. It was a poodle or some such thing, and it was
so tiny that it felt like a hand-sewn toy that fits snugly in the palm. Whenever
it squirmed, it seemed as if a spring hidden inside its fur was moving it, rather
than its own living strength. I was forced to take care of the dog despite my
aversion. It didn’t even look like an animal to me. Its owners placed the dog
in my care without any instructions whatsoever about its food, where it went
to the bathroom, or how to care for it. They probably had had no time to
do so, for the sudden news had thrown them into such confusion. I left the
bathroom open in hopes that the dog might use it, and to my wonder and
surprise, it took care of its business there. However, it just kept relieving itself
while refusing to take food. It would run away from milk, rice gruel, and cakes
without so much as smelling them. If the dog were left to its own devices, I
thought, I would be blamed for having starved it to death. After all my tricks
failed, I discussed the matter with the mother of the high school senior on the
second floor, who said there must be some special foods the dog was used to.
She promised that, as she was going downtown the next day, she would drop
by some specialty shops and buy a couple of things for the dog.
That evening, I added some soup to my hodgepodge of leftovers and held
it out to the dog. Contrary to my expectations, instead of twisting its neck to
KimQuest.indd 201 9/22/09 1:57:04 PM

avoid the food, the dog immediately began to lick up the soup, its red tongue
darting in and out. “You learned a lesson, didn’t you, you rascal! How could
the likes of you be so picky about food, when even human beings, the lords of
all creation, give in when they’re hungry?”
Scarcely had I the chance to smile over my victory when the dog suddenly
began to yelp, letting out piercing cries and writhing as if it were about to die. I
was suddenly gripped by a fear that the dog might breathe its last. The embar-
rassment of facing my son and his wife would be nothing compared to the
reaction of my granddaughter, who was devoted to the puppy and cared for it
like its mother. I felt I was going crazy. At that moment, the first source of help
I could think of was “him.” My hands shaking, I dialed his number, and when
I heard his voice, I couldn’t speak properly because of my uncontrollable sob-
bing. Yet he managed to understand me, and as he even took the trouble to
drive his car to my house, we were able to get to a nearby veterinary office in
no time.
I burst into another round of tears when I saw him hurrying to my rescue.
It was beyond me how I could cry so easily. He held the steering wheel with
one hand and with the other patted my shoulder comfortingly. The puppy let
out more pitiful whimpers during the vet’s treatment, and I covered my ears
with my hands and sobbed, collapsing completely into his arms. I couldn’t
stop my delicious crying, though I realized full well that it was purely an act
of coquetry. The vet showed me a fish bone he had pulled from the puppy’s
throat and said he had never seen a grandmother cry at the pain of a dog,
though he had witnessed any number of children do so.
The puppy turned out to be all right and returned to its home a few days
later. Of course, I never missed it at all, because I had never really liked it.
Our phone calls, originally to exchange news about the puppy’s health dur-
ing its stay at my house, eventually led to our meeting over a cup of tea after
the puppy’s return home. I went out for morning walks in order to meet him,
and on the first day it snowed, we finally drank whiskey together, toasting
for no reason at all in a classy bar whose atmosphere was very much like that
of the Casanova. On that particular occasion, I paid for our drinks, and he
returned the favor by treating me to some coarse rice wine in a folksy bar, a
very nice establishment no different from Western-style bars. If I treated him
to Korean cuisine, he would buy me Western-style fare, and in return for my
cheap treats, he entertained me with more expensive foods. This didn’t mean
we set rules to free us from a sense of burden; nothing was fixed between us.
We acted on the spur of the moment.
I grew accustomed to his good-looking Chindo dog too, and we even took
it with us on our drives in his car. I learned for the first time how many good
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Pak Wan-sŏ 203
places there were in the outskirts of Seoul. All this happened because I had
been crafty enough to cry under the pretext of sympathy for the poor puppy.
Now I freely let out shouts of joy at the novelty of the places we visited and
didn’t hesitate to hop around like a sixteen-year-old girl. I recognized within
me a sort of frivolous, spirited elasticity like a bouncing Ping-Pong ball—like
the glitzy performances of new-generation show business entertainers these
days, so to speak. In fact, I could have been suspected of putting on a show,
because the giddy pleasure I felt was like the joy of playing a game. From the
outset, our affair was unreal, because a dream come true is only possible in the
world of dreams.
I even went this far. One day the phone rang while I was taking a bath.
I had two phones—one in the hallway and one in my bedroom—but I had
yet to get a cordless. Whenever the phone rang, I walked boldly out of the
bathroom naked to answer the phone—one of the advantages of living alone.
My bathroom was adjacent to my bedroom, and the phone was on top of a
low wooden bureau next to my mirrored dressing table. While talking on the
phone, impudently standing on a towel to catch the water dripping from my
body, I suddenly wanted to scream, “Look, who is that old hag?” The lower
half of my naked body was reflected in the dressing-table mirror—the one
I had brought with me at my marriage—which was not that big, as it was
old-fashioned.
I had gone through three pregnancies and had had three children. More
accurately, I had given birth to four children but reared only three, because
the third time, I had been pregnant with twins but lost the younger one before
his first birthday. The area below my navel looked grotesque. My protrud-
ing lower belly sloped steeply down toward the pubic bone with drooping
layers of creases that made it look like silk wash squeezed dry. Of course my
body hadn’t become this way overnight. Nevertheless, its ugliness shocked
me because I was accustomed to my steam-covered bathroom mirror, which
revealed only the fairly presentable upper half of the body. I also usually chose
only those body parts that I wanted to see and enjoy, either while soaking
myself in the bathtub or standing outside it. I quickly picked up my towel
from the floor and covered the unseemly sight, vowing, “I’ll never again reveal
those parts—even to you, mirror—as long as I live!”
For Christmas I bought him a muffler, and he gave me a scarf. Both were
showy. We were concerned less with the practicality of our gifts than with the
surprise and pleasure we gave to each other. We were very much alike in that
respect, but on the whole there may have been more differences than similari-
ties between us. He said it had been a long time since he’d last given a woman
a gift. Although I didn’t ask him, he divulged that this was the first time in
KimQuest.indd 203 9/22/09 1:57:04 PM

three years, hinting in passing at the death of his wife three years before. Over
the course of our relationship, we often alluded to the fact that both of us had
lost our respective spouses, but this was the first time either of us formally
mentioned the time of our loss. I changed the subject as if I weren’t interested
in what he was saying. I figured that, though we might exchange mufflers and
scarves, we had no business trading the details of our personal lives.
The new year came around, and I was turning sixty. I wondered why the
sixtieth birthday and return of one’s year cycle (yukkap) had to be so signifi-
cant.9 In fact, the phrase “performing yukkap” is never used to compliment
anyone, but everyone tried to perform yukkap in front of me, that is, to make a
big deal out of my forthcoming sixtieth birthday.10 In fact, it was the first topic
my oldest son brought up when he telephoned me from the United States the
morning of New Year’s Day, saying that his call would do for his new year’s
bow to me. He suggested that instead of having a sixtieth birthday party, I
should take a sightseeing trip to the United States. Apparently my three chil-
dren had already agreed to this plan, and they had decided to put off the party
until my seventieth birthday, if it was okay with me.
“I really don’t know. But you children shouldn’t worry about it. Listen, I
don’t mind if you don’t throw me a party. And that doesn’t mean you have to
do something else instead, either. It’s unsettling to think that I’m already sixty.”
I spoke halfheartedly, but I meant what I said—it wasn’t an empty gesture.
“You see, mom? That’s why we want you to take a trip instead of feeling
like that. I’ll take enough vacation time, and then we can easily take a trip,
even as far as Europe. We have only a year left in the United States, so if you
miss this chance, you’ll regret it the rest of your life.”
My son was practically threatening me. He had every reason to do so; he
had pressed me to come visit ever since his first year at his company’s branch
office in the States. But worse than the idea of a sixtieth birthday party was
the thought of oldsters taking airplanes to visit their children abroad, travel-
ing in packs—one made up of members of the wife’s family, the other of the
husband’s—as if they owned the world. I hung up the phone, neither accept-
ing nor declining his invitation. When it came to international calls, I always
hung up first, worried about the cost.
The sixtieth birthday seemed like such a hassle for the person in question,
and even more so for the children. When my children learned I was unwilling
to travel abroad, they wanted to know if I preferred a party instead, and when
they found out I wanted neither, they became very anxious to fathom exactly
my innermost thoughts. I knew they would never find out, because even I
was unable to figure out what I really wanted. Nevertheless, I was amused
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Pak Wan-sŏ 205
and even gratified by their concern. After all, isn’t it natural for parents to
be proud of children who do their best for them according to custom? My
daughter played the usual role of antenna to feel me out. Since she was the
oldest, she was closest to me in age, and she was also easiest to talk to, as we
were both women. Since she was born thoughtful, I had treated her like a
friend since she was young, and her younger brothers, though politely def-
erential, usually discussed everything with her. Thus she was accustomed to
knowing everything that went on in our family.
That was probably why she poked her nose into my affairs. She had only
the vaguest knowledge of her mom’s boyfriend, and she was very wary of him.
In Korean society, unless a person is from outer space, he or she is inescapably
caught in the human network of school and regional connections and family
ties. So once my daughter took upon herself the mission of information gath-
ering, it was inevitable that not only what I already knew but also additional,
previously hidden details about him would come to light. I was at least aware
that he had retired a year ago from teaching at a regional university, that he
was running a small research institute together with some retired professors
of Korean history, and that he had lost his wife three years earlier.
Now, thanks to my daughter, I learned for the first time that he and his
wife had been an especially close couple, that he owned another house besides
the one he had given to his son, that he also had some land in the countryside,
and that his oldest daughter-in-law, who took care of him, was pretty, bright,
and from a wealthy family as well. My daughter’s interest in the daughter-in-
law was natural, given their closeness in age. Seoul seemed large, but in fact it
was small enough that there were all sorts of connections among those who
dwelled there from primary school all the way through college—even among
those who had never attended the same school.
Equipped with her new information, my daughter inquired, with a serious
look, about what I was planning to do with that old man anyway. Her bearing
was no different from that of a mother disciplining a wanton daughter.
“What do you mean by ‘that old man’?”
“How can you expect me to call him nice when I know he’s led you on?”
When I saw tears welling up in my daughter’s eyes, I began to regret my
initial eagerness to defend him. But I knew there was nothing of consequence
between him and me that should call for change simply because my children
had found out about us.
“Led on? Who led on whom? Girl, watch what you say! It sounds
obscene.”
“Hyŏngguk and Hyŏngsŏk don’t know about it yet.”
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“So what if they did know?”

“Mom, what good is it for them to know? It’ll only give them excuses to
mistreat and disrespect you when you get older.”
“How will they know if you keep your mouth shut?”
“Okay! I’ll keep mum about it, but you should be careful, mom. Children
also have faces to save, you know.” My daughter went on cheekily acting like
a mother tightening the screws on her licentious daughter, assuring her in
hushed tones that she wouldn’t inform her father about her misconduct.
My daughter’s meddling didn’t stop there, though. This was probably in
part because he and I made no special effort to act any differently from before,
since there had been nothing to be careful about in the first place. The real
cause for my daughter’s concern, however, seemed to be information leaked
directly to her from his family. His daughter-in-law turned out to be a col-
lege classmate of my daughter’s closest high school friend. On top of that,
his daughter-in-law and my daughter lived in the same apartment complex.
Once these connections were established among the girls, our personal secrets
became open to anyone’s prying, as defenseless as individuals doubly related
by marriage.11 Although my daughter considered that her friend, who played
the role of intermediary as she knew both sides, might have twisted or exag-
gerated some of her information, every detail of the conditions of the “other
side” thus disclosed seemed to suit the palate of my daughter, who was until
then so full of hostility towards him. She even cracked an impudent joke, gig-
gling that she should give me some credit for my good taste. Then one day she
asked me quite seriously, “Mom, are you in love with Dr. Cho?”
I choked on my uncontrollable burst of laughter and spilled the coffee I
was drinking, almost burning myself. It was funny because “that old man”
was now transformed into “Dr. Cho,” but also because I knew he didn’t par-
ticularly like to be called by that title. Some time ago, after he had had a nice
chat with a middle-aged student he’d run into, he told me that he liked his old
students to greet him as “teacher” and didn’t feel at all close to students these
days who called him “professor” or “doctor.” That was one of his quirks.
“Mom, what’s so funny?”
“Isn’t it funny that ‘that old man’ has turned into ‘doctor’?”
“From the way you’re amused, I can tell you are in love with him—aren’t
you?”
My daughter pouted a little, but without any hint of dislike. Still, I sensed a
sadness about her, and I knew I had to make my attitude clear sooner or later.
To stop enjoying my current relationship would make me feel lonely, perhaps
several times worse than my daughter’s sadness, but there was no sense in
avoiding it indefinitely.
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Pak Wan-sŏ 207
Sometime after “that old man” was transformed into “Dr. Cho,” my daugh-
ter told me that she had been introduced to his daughter-in-law and had got-
ten to know her. The meeting had been arranged by their mutual friend, but
my daughter recognized the woman’s face because my daughter often saw her
in the supermarket and other places. I could sense that, with the third-party
mediation gone, my daughter’s attitude toward his family was growing more
favorable. I also felt profoundly sad as I watched her day by day leaning far-
ther toward their side.
“Mom, if it’s because of Hyŏngguk and Hyŏngsŏk that you can’t make up
your mind, you shouldn’t worry about them. I will do my best to make them
understand and keep your dignity intact.”
I wondered what kind of secret scheme my children had devised to make
my daughter bold enough to talk to me so openly and explicitly. As it was
obvious to me that his daughter-in-law was pressing the matter, I began to feel
concerned about him.
“In short, are you saying you’re going to marry your mother off?”
“You are in love with him, aren’t you? How splendid it is to remarry for
love! A remarriage not for lack of means nor for lack of children to depend
on! I will stand behind you and be proud of you, Mom, no matter what others
might say.”
I looked over at my daughter absently, so caught up in her ramblings about
love, and thought, “What do you know about love, anyway? What’s so special
about love? Do you know it’s nothing but life itself?” The more I tried to make
light of my situation, the more I felt weighed down.
Without our intending it, his daughter-in-law naturally became the topic of
conversation between him and me. If I commented, “Wow, that windbreaker
looks new! But it’s too chic.” He would reply, “My daughter-in-law bought it
for me, but I don’t know why she’s so eager to make me look younger these
days,” scratching his head bashfully. The weight on my mind grew heavier
as his daughter-in-law, whom I hadn’t even met, loomed more and more in
the foreground of our situation. Later, when he told me that his daughter-in-
law wanted to invite me to her house and instructed him to have me set the
date, I could hardly keep from exploding at him for speaking of her so often.
Although he didn’t press for an immediate response when I dodged the invita-
tion, he looked pitiful despite the fresh fragrance of lotion that wafted from
him.
Then his daughter-in-law had my daughter relay the same message to
me. My daughter ignored everything I tried to say and instead just worried
about how she should dress me so I wouldn’t feel shabby facing his stylish
daughter-in-law.
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“She must be a filial daughter-in-law, rare in this day and age,” I said.
“No doubt about that, Mom. She is so good to him. Can you imagine how
difficult it is to take care of a single father-in-law? She said that when the
going gets tough, she thinks of it as volunteer social work.”
I felt a lump in my throat. I couldn’t decide this important matter on the
spur of the moment, out of anger or pity, but I said firmly to my daughter,
“Look, Hyŏngsuk, dear. Listen carefully. I, your mother, want to be buried
next to your father.”
Embarrassed at my words, my daughter didn’t push the topic further.
Although our family didn’t have an ancestral burial ground on a rural
mountain, my husband’s gravesite in the communal graveyard park had a
temporary tomb next to it so I could one day be buried beside him. My name
had already been engraved beside his on the tombstone. Thus I already had
my own gravesite and tombstone. Only the date of my death was left blank
below the date of my birth.
I liked visiting the gravesite. I never felt guilty toward my husband while
I was seeing Dr. Cho. My desire to visit the gravesite was the closest thing
to absolute free will that I had in my daily routine. Compared with the deep
peace I felt at the gravesite, the joys and sorrows of everyday life, no matter
how great they seemed, were reduced to nothing more than small ripples on
a placid surface. The peace I found there was never a dead peace. I found the
grasses there lovely—even the ants, grasshoppers, and grubs living in them.
When I thought of his body nurturing them and of me someday joining him,
my fear of death disappeared—even without any firm belief in the soul—and
I felt tenderness toward even the smallest things in nature. I was going to ask
my children to cremate my body after it exhausted its usefulness in feeding
the grasses and insects, so that it could wander freely about the mountains
and rivers. No temptation could draw me away from that guarantee of peace
and freedom.
My daughter retreated after that conversation, but later she approached
me again, giving me the impression that she had heard something more from
his side.
“Mom, please don’t worry. Even if you remarry, we’ll bury you next to dad
when you pass on. Come to think of it, wouldn’t the other party be buried
next to his wife too?”
I didn’t know how to explain to her that the peace I desired was far beyond
that sort of triviality. I didn’t even feel like explaining.
“That’s enough. It sounds disgusting. How could you say something like
that to your own mother?”
“What’s so disgusting? Jacquelyn was buried beside John Kennedy, wasn’t
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Pak Wan-sŏ 209
she? I guarantee you everything will turn out fine if I hold my ground, even if
our relatives or my brothers raise objections. No one has the right to leave dad
lonely.”
“Enough is enough! What’s gotten into you, really?”
“What’s gotten into you, Mom? Everyone knows you are a passionate
woman. With that old passion revived, it will be easy for you to overcome
such trivial matters.”
I couldn’t believe that I’d let my daughter go on with this endless non-
sense. Yet her concern was something I could understand. Her straightfor-
ward remarks forced me to consider the course of my emotional life up to
that point. As the oldest child, my daughter had heard a lot about my younger
days. Born to a large family without even a house of its own, she had known
all too well my family’s pinched financial state, which had continued well
into her high school years and made it a continual struggle for her to pay
her tuition on time. My daughter had also been the most frequent audience
of my own mother’s grumbling about the causes of my unending hardships.
Although my mother had felt sorry for me, she had made it very clear that
I had only myself to blame. At that time, my husband’s family had been not
only poor (though now the financial situation of my parents’ side and that
of my husband’s had almost evened out) but also rough and crude, probably
because few of them besides my husband had had regular schooling, and this
contrasted sharply with my own parents’ urbane, middle-class background.
My daughter, at the peak of teenage sensitivity, had naturally felt uncomfort-
able, and her grandmother’s grievances had probably done little to reconcile
her to the circumstances.
When I had fallen passionately in love with my husband, my mother had
actually found him agreeable as a potential son-in-law, so much so that she
even characterized him favorably as “a dragon soared from a ditch.”12 Nev-
ertheless, she had been firmly against my marrying that dragon. In her view,
marrying a dragon from a ditch was not marrying a dragon but getting mired
in a ditch. No matter how much my mother opposed my marriage with her
endless wailing, all I could see was the dragon, not the ditch. My mother’s
predictions had come true, and my desperate struggle against the ditch had
continued until I sent off the last of my husband’s sisters in marriage. What
appeared to others as a ditch was the reward of my life and the source of my
strength. It seemed the blind energy that had veiled my eyes and made me
see only one man was now called “passion” by my daughter. It could be called
passion or even sexual desire.
That very passion was missing from my feelings for Dr. Cho. My feeling
of being in love was no different from my younger days, but sexual desire
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was now conspicuously absent. I felt love that was satisfied by emotion alone
was nothing but superficial attraction. It seemed my relationship with him
was about making a splash. Now that I was no longer blinded by sexual
desire, everything became glaringly clear to me. No matter how stylishly he
dressed himself, signs of impending old age were all too obvious to me. I
could see everything: the dried-up, drooping skin that was revealed whenever
he changed his underwear and the flakes of dead skin that showered down
from his body; his laborious snoring like the gasps of an exhausted mountain
climber; cigarette ashes dropped carelessly everywhere; thick phlegm coughed
up as he craned his head desperately; successive farts let out by deliberately
raising his buttocks; the stench of stomach acid when he burped, no matter
how much he tried to pass for a gentleman; voracious, egotistic appetites; end-
less nagging mixed with a loss of memory and morbid suspicions of his wife’s
morals; stinginess as if he planned to live another hundred years.
I knew that love alone wasn’t enough to make one endure all these things
without complaint. I believed that in order to overcome them, a couple at least
should have shared those beastly periods of procreating and rearing children
together. Now I finally came to recognize the beauty of sexual desire, which
far surpassed superficial attraction. There was no room for me to reconsider
our affair. Moreover, I was way past the age to dream of the impossible.
My daughter made an unnecessary remark: “Poor Dr. Cho! What if my
mom won’t accept your proposal! His daughter-in-law says she won’t be able
to take care of him anymore. If at all possible, she would like him to marry a
woman he likes, but if not, she seems ready to marry him off to anyone. I was
told that there are plenty of women who want to marry him for the sake of
economic security in their old age. Still, his daughter-in-law doesn’t seem to
care for women too young for him. I guess it’s not only because of the awk-
wardness of having a young mother-in-law but also because of the prospect
of a prolonged period of responsibility for the woman later. She seems to be
thinking of taking in some poverty-ridden old woman. Mom, would you feel
okay if someone you loved became pitiful like that?”
My daughter insolently prattled on as if she were cracking jokes with her
friends. I flared up, “What’s wrong with being poor? You shouldn’t look down
on people, you hear? Poverty is far more honorable than doing volunteer work,
you know.” Poverty was indeed far more honorable than superficial glamour, I
thought. I spat out those words with profound relief, mentally superimposing
the face of the daughter-in-law I had never met upon that of my daughter.
I no longer wanted to allow either of them to come between us. On our last
date, I told him that I was taking official steps to leave for a visit to the United
States and that, if possible, I planned to stay there for a long time. Then, care-
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Pak Wan-sŏ 211
fully placing my hand on top of his ringed hand, I told him that I didn’t want
to risk widowhood a second time, for I had already tasted its unfairness once.
I tried to read him, fearing that my words, though put in such a roundabout
way, might have hit him too hard, but I could decipher nothing.
[First published in Munhak sasang (Literary thought), January 1995]
Analysis of “Dried Flowers”
A first-person narrative, “Dried Flowers” (Marŭn kkot; 1995) pres-

ents Pak Wan-sŏ’s astute examination of troubling issues of today’s Korea in a
state of flux. Crafted with her characteristic acumen and acerbic humor, the
story dissects the increasing gap between younger and older generations, the
breakdown of traditional extended family systems, and the resulting quan-
dary of the elderly. These concerns are played up with the narrative’s focus on
the romantic adventure of “I,” an upper-middle-class, sixty-year-old widow
and mother of three grown children, and her relationships with her children
and relatives. As the story ends with the protagonist’s final decision to termi-
nate her involvement with Dr. Cho, readers—especially older audiences—are
asked to reevaluate their own notions about marriage, parent-children rela-
tionships, traditional family values, and old age. Ultimately, the story, a rep-
resentative example of Pak’s knack for reading the signs of the times, raises
questions as to what needs to remain unchanged when traditions are at odds
with modernity and create confusion and uncertainty among Koreans.
The first part of “Dried Flowers” presents an undisguised disapproval of
a young generation’s brashness, egotism, and willful disregard of tradition-
ally sanctioned rituals, manners, and intergenerational protocols within the
extended family. The wives of the heroine’s nephews are personifications of
such trends in contemporary Korea, and their language, decisions, and con-
duct represent the shallowness and self-absorbed orientation of nuclear fam-
ily systems in the absence of older people. Personal convenience, practicality,
and expediency instead become their guiding principles.
Dr. Cho’s daughter-in-law is no exception. Her case may be more prob-
lematic, given her good education and high social and economic status. Her
interest in her father-in-law’s remarriage is solely motivated by her desire to
shuffle her responsibility off to someone else, since she sees him as a bur-
den. Her sophisticated manner of dressing him up and pushing his relation-
ship with “I,” therefore, turns out to be all the more calculated, ego-centered,
materialistic, and hollow. She exemplifies the rejection of Korean traditional
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expectations of daughters-in-law and the disintegration of the family solidar-

ity they are supposed maintain.
The implied contrast brought out by the juxtaposition of these characters
and the children of “I” suggests the importance of sustaining multigenera-
tional family systems as a safety net for the elderly. The firstborn son’s concern
for “I” is exemplary and even exceptional, making “I” feel valued and secure.
Although her daughter’s busybody role backfires, her intention is genuine and
her relationship with “I” is basically one of mutual trust and camaraderie.
The children of “I,” therefore, speak for the author’s espousal of the value of
traditional family organization and arrangement in light of growing fragmen-
tation of Korean society caught in the process of rapid industrialization and
globalization.
Another key concern in “Dried Flowers” is the mounting problems of the
elderly in Korea, which coincided with the lengthening of life spans and the
lack of proper care for older people in their later years. As the title indicates,
however, Pak flavors the story with a good dose of humor. The narrative, with
its vibrant portrayals of the latest trends in lifestyles, social mores, and dating
customs of the elderly, provides an entertaining and informative commentary
on the ways Koreans are handling this conundrum.
A large part of “Dried Flowers” is devoted to detailing the modish and
carefree activities of companionship between the sexes in old age, as captured
in the rendezvous scenes of the heroine and her male companion, Dr. Cho—a
trend that has apparently caught the fancy of the Korean upper-middle class.
At first “I” pursues dates with her companion, in hopes of realizing her unful-
filled daydreams of a romantic relationship in exotic and sophisticated set-
tings reminiscent of Western movies. She carries on her affair—albeit a purely
platonic one—flirting in an exaggerated manner, often fully aware of her own
frivolity and affectation. Their dates sweep them into the realm of dreamy
romance with no strings attached. In the end, however, “I” realizes that her
relationship with Dr. Cho has been nothing but a glamorized fantasy and that
it is doomed to eventually run up against the hard rock of reality.
The heroine, too judicious and levelheaded to knowingly indulge in such
self-deceiving games, sees that her affair is nothing more than a mimicking
of a postmodern fad, which the progressive younger generation approves of
and even encourages but which, she finds, is sophomoric at best and hurtful
at worst. She resolves to meet the challenge of her old age, even death, on
her own terms and within the framework of the traditional Confucian rule
that widows stay single for the rest of their lives—the only option she finds
both comfortable and consistent with her real need to be independent. In this
sense, the narrative pokes fun at the unrealistic expectations of such romance
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Pak Wan-sŏ 213
in old age, viewing them through the eyes of the affluent and self-possessed
heroine.
“Dried Flowers” sends a skeptical message that concepts such as romance
and remarriage of the elderly are too alien and affected to be accepted as
authentic means of coping with old age in today’s Korea. And “I” refuses to be
pushed around by such ideas. Sadly, however, some individuals like Dr. Cho
may be forced to follow this new trend. Unlike “I,” Dr. Cho has lost the sup-
port network of old family systems and has also been deprived of the power
of self-determination—symptomatic of the weakening of the long-standing
patriarchal foundation of Korean society as it is affected by new ideas about
family and marriage from the West.
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KimQuest.indd 214 9/22/09 1:57:06 PM
Notes
Preface
1. My previously published translations that have been revised for this anthol-
ogy are Na Hye-sŏk’s “Kyŏnghŭi,” in Korean Studies 26, no. 1 (2002): 61–
86; Kim Wŏn-ju’s “Awakening,” in Korean Studies 21 (1997): 22–30; and
Pak Wan-sŏ’s “Dried Flowers,” in Korean Literature Today 4 (Winter 1999):
66–93.
Introduction
1. The “Three Rules of Obedience” (samjong chido) prescribed that a woman,

before marriage, should obey her father; after marriage, her husband; and
after her husband’s death, her son(s). This effectively defined a woman’s
identity by her subordinate relationships to men in her life cycle and within
immediate familial boundaries. The “Seven Vices” (ch’ilgŏ chiak), on the
other hand, encapsulated conditions for divorcing women: disobedience to
in-laws, childlessness, adultery, jealousy, larceny, talkativeness, and heredi-
tary illness. Here, the injunction against “jealousy” meant that a woman had
to accept her husband’s philandering or maintenance of concubines with-
out complaint, while the ban on “talkativeness” signified the literal as well as
figurative silencing of women. For details about principles, codes, and rituals
that regulated the lives of traditional Korean women, see Martina Deuchler,
“Confucian Legislation: The Consequences for Women,” in her Confucian
Transformation of Korea: A Study of Society and Ideology (Cambridge, Mass.,
and London: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1992),
231–281.
215
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216 Notes to Pages 1–24
2. The famous phrase coined by Virginia Woolf in her essay “Professions for
Women.” See Woolf, Women and Writing, edited and with an introduction
by Michèle Barrett (New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1979), 58.
3. See Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (New York and London: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, c. 1929; reprint, 1957), 54.
4. The Hyŏndae Literature Award was established in 1955 by the publisher of
the monthly literary magazine Hyŏndae munhak (Modern literature), with
the objective of discovering new young authors. The annual prize was first
awarded in 1956. Later its policy was revised to include established writers.
Sharing the same purpose, the Tong-in Literature Award was initiated in
1955 to commemorate Kim Tong-in (1900–1951), a pioneer of the Korean
short story genre, and became an annual award in 1956. Likewise, the Yi Sang
Literature Award was established in 1977 in memory of Yi Sang (1910–1934),
an innovative and gifted writer whose career ended with his early death. It is
also conferred annually.
5. Most representative of the court women’s prose writing is Hanjungnok
(Record of sorrows; 1795–1805), by Princess Hyegyŏnggung (or Lady Hong;
1735–1815), the wife of Prince Changhŏn (or Prince Sado; 1735–1762) and
the mother of King Chŏngjo (r. 1776–1800). Hanjungnok, Lady Hong’s mem-
oirs, was produced late in her life and was written to reveal the details of the
tangled court politics that led to the horrendous death of her husband, who
suffocated inside a rice chest in which he had been locked by his father, King
Yŏngjo (r. 1724–1776).
6. See Sharon L. Sievers, Flowers in Salt: The Beginnings of Feminist Conscious-
ness in Modern Japan (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1983),
163–188.
7. For more information on this topic, see Yung-Hee Kim, “From Subservience
to Autonomy: Kim Wŏnju’s ‘Awakening,’” Korean Studies 21 (1997): 5–7.
1. A Girl of Mystery
1. The places cited in this story are the best-known scenic sites in and around
P’yŏngyang.
2. “Songs of Melancholy” is a famous folk song expressing longing for one’s
lover, with the scenic Taedong River as its backdrop.
3. “Kahŭi” means “a beautiful girl,” whereas “Pŏmnye” means “a plain maiden.”
2. Kyŏnghŭi
1. The Japanese name of the school is Shiritsu Joshi Bijutsu Gakkō. Founded
in 1901 at Yumichō in Honkō Ward in Tokyo, it was the first Japanese fine
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Notes to Pages 24–32 217
arts college for women. Burned down in 1908, the school was rebuilt at
Kikusakachō in Honkō Ward.
2. The magazine Hakchigwang (Light of learning), was published by the Korean
Student Association in Japan in 1914.
3. Na was married on April 10, 1920, to Kim U-yŏng (1886–1958), a Kyoto
University graduate and friend of her elder brother.
4. As a result of this unprecedented event, Na was lionized in Seoul society.
The exhibition hall was crowded with thousands of visitors, and some of her
works were sold at high prices. One month after this show, she gave birth to
her first child, a daughter, Nayŏl.
5. Lasting from June 1927 to March 1929, the trip began in China and included
Russia, Switzerland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Eng-
land, and the United States. The tour was arranged by the Japanese govern-
ment as a reward for its officials who served in such remote outposts as
Manchuria.
6. During her visit to England, Na Hye-sŏk had a personal interview with a
former member of the suffrage campaign group led by Emmeline Pankhurst
(1858–1928), to learn about the British women’s movement.
7. Na Hye-sŏk had an extramarital affair with Ch’oe Rin (1878–?), a prominent
Korean leader and friend of Na’s husband. One of the thirty-three signers
of the March 1919 Declaration of Independence, he stopped in Paris dur-
ing his travel to Europe in 1927 to attend international political conferences.
Later, Ch’oe became a pro-Japanese collaborator, for which he was tried and
imprisoned after liberation along with Na’s husband, Kim U-yŏng, on simi-
lar charges. During the Korean War, Ch’oe was kidnapped to the North, and
thereafter little is known about him.
8. For a study in English of Na Hye-sŏk’s biography and “Kyŏnghŭi,” see Yung-
Hee Kim, “Creating New Paradigms of Womanhood in Modern Korean Lit-
erature: Na Hye-sŏk’s ‘Kyŏnghŭi,’” Korean Studies 26, no. 1 (2002): 1–86.
9. Its author was an art critic, Yi Ku-yŏl, and it was published in Seoul by the
Tonghwa Ch’ulp’angongsa.
10. The first international symposium on Na Hye-sŏk was held by Chŏngwŏl Na
Hye-sŏk Kinyŏm Saŏphoe (the Memorial Foundation for Chŏngwŏl Na Hye-
sŏk) on April 27, 1999, in Suwŏn. In addition, two separate collections of
Na Hye-sŏk’s works and a biography have been published; see Sŏ Chŏng-ja,
comp., Chŏngwŏl Ra Hye-sŏk chŏnjip (Collected works of Chŏngwŏl Na Hye-
sŏk) (Seoul: T’aehaksa, 2000); Yi Sang-gyŏng, ed., Na Hye-sŏk chŏnjip (Col-
lected works of Na Hye-sŏk) (Seoul: T’aehaksa, 2000); and Yi Sang-gyŏng,
Ingan ŭro salgo sipta: Yŏngwŏnhan sinyŏsŏng Na Hye-sŏk (I want to live as a
human being: The eternal modern woman, Na Hye-sŏk) (Seoul: Hangilsa,
2000).
11. The nyang was one of three principal monetary units used in Korea during
the Japanese occupation period. The highest unit was the wŏn, equivalent to
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ten nyang; one nyang was equal to ten chŏn. Around 1927 a teacher’s monthly
salary was approximately seventy wŏn.
12. Judging from the context of this reference, Madame “Sŭraaru” may be a
mistaken transcription referring to Anne-Louise-Germaine de Staël (1766–
1817), popularly known as Madame de Staël. At the center of intellectual
high society during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era, she was
interested in the intellectual emancipation of women and penned novellas on
feminist issues.
13. As in the previous note, Mrs. “Wŏttŭ” may be another incorrect Korean tran-
scription, in this case for Beatrice Webb (1858–1943), a British socialist and
one of the leading intellectuals of her day. She collaborated with her hus-
band, Sidney Webb, to author books on trade unionism (1894) and indus-
trial democracy (1897), as well as a nine-volume history of English local
government (1906–1929). She also wrote a pamphlet, The Wages of Men and
Women: Should They Be Equal? (1919). The Webbs were instrumental in the
founding of the London School of Economics. See Janet Todd, ed., British
Women Writers (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1989), 697–698.
14. Yen Hui (Anja or Anyŏn in Korean) was Confucius’ best disciple, known for
his wisdom and quick understanding of his master’s teaching.
15. In terms of translation, this literary technique makes it extremely difficult to
convey the intention and flavor of the original, because such a convention
does not work well in English. For my translation, therefore, I changed the
text to the past tense wherever it was appropriate.
3. Awakening
1. Reportedly Yi Kwang-su suggested Kim Wŏn-ju’s pen name, “Iryŏp,” to

encourage her to become the Korean counterpart of Higuchi Ichiyō (1872–
1896), the acclaimed Japanese woman writer of the Meiji period.
2. Tōyō Eiwa Girls’ School (Tōyō Eiwa Jogakuin) was founded in 1884 in Tokyo
by Martha J. Cartmell, a Canadian Methodist missionary, and started with
two students. Now it is a women’s university with an enrollment of nearly
2,600 students.
3. The word ch’ŏngt’ap is the Korean pronunciation of the Japanese seitō. Obvi-
ously, during her sojourn in Tokyo in 1919, Kim had been exposed to, and no
doubt strongly affected by, Japanese feminist activism, still vigorously led by
Hiratsuka Raichō and her colleagues.
4. Kim Wŏn-ju’s son was named Ōta Masao and was first reared in the home of
his father’s friends in Tokyo but later grew up in Korea, adopted by his father’s
Korean friend. He studied painting at Tokyo Imperial University, financed by
his father, who never married. With his name changed to Kim T’ae-sin, Kim
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Wŏn-ju’s son is a painter and is a resident priest (with the Buddhist name
“Iltang”) in Chikchisa Temple in South Kyŏngsang Province, Korea. For
details of Kim Wŏn-ju’s relationship with her son, see Kim T’ae-sin, Lahula
ŭi samogok (Rahula’s songs of yearning for mother), 2 vols. (Seoul: Han’gilsa,
1991).
5. For a more detailed analysis of “Awakenings,” see Yung-Hee Kim, “From Sub-
servience to Autonomy,” 1–21.
4. Hydrangeas
1. The contest was sponsored by the magazine Sinsidae (New age).

2. The newspaper Kukche sinbo (International news) was the sponsor.
3. For more information about Han Mu-suk’s life and works, see Yung-Hee
Kim, “Dialectics of Life: Hahn Moo Sook and Her Literary World,” in Creative
Women of Korea: The Fifteenth through the Twentieth Century, ed. Young-Key
Kim-Renaud (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2003), 192–215.
4. “Ch’usa” is the pen name of Kim Chŏng-hŭi (1786–1856), a master calligra-
pher of the Chosŏn dynasty.
6. When Autumn Leaves Fall
1. Noryangjin is an area of Seoul near the Han River.

2. On January 14, 1951, during the Korean War, the South Korean and the
United Nations forces were compelled to retreat from North Korea in the
face of a massive offensive by the Chinese army. This resulted in a large-scale
exodus of Koreans from the North to the South.
3. Juliette Gréco (b. 1927), French popular singer and actress of the beat genera-
tion, began as a Parisian café singer associated with the left-bank existential-
ists. She is known for her haunting songs, many of which were adapted from
the well-known French poets.
4. Solveig is the hero of the tragic love story Peer Gynt (1867), a play written in
verse by Henrik Ibsen. By Ibsen’s request, Edvard Grieg composed incidental
music for the play, most famously “Solveig’s Song,” an all-time classic.
5. The Sibal was the first Korean-made automobile, appearing on the market
in 1955, just after the Korean War. It was usually used as a commercial
taxi.
6. Straight Is the Gate (La porte etroite; 1909) is one of the major works of the
French novelist André Gide (1869–1951). The novel concerns the doomed
love between Jerome Palissier, a sensitive boy who grew up in Paris, and his
cousin Alissa, from the Normandy countryside.
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7. A Dish of Sliced Raw Fish
1. I obtained this information about Yi Sun through my interviews with her

family in Seoul in summer 2008.
2. Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) was a Welsh poet and prose writer whose works
are known for their musical quality, comic or visionary scenes, and sensual
images. Quite Early One Morning, a collection of his prose works, was first
published in 1954.
3. Hwagye Temple is located at Mount Samgak, in the northern part of Seoul.
4. A series of Five-Year Economic Plans (the first implemented in 1962) were
pushed by then President Park Chung Hee (1917–1979), which resulted in
rapid economic growth in Korea.
5. The Ch’anggyŏng Garden, at the royal palace in the heart of Seoul, used to
have a zoo, established in 1909 during the Japanese protectorate in Korea.
The zoo was moved to Seoul Grand Park in 1983.
6. A major seaport in South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province.
7. Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) was a French poet who took part in
avant-garde movements in French literature. Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890)
was a Dutch postimpressionist painter. Edvard Munch (1863–1944), a Nor-
wegian genre, landscape, and portrait painter and etcher, was a leading artist
of his day. Max Bruch (1838–1920), a German composer who conducted the
Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (1880–1883), is best known for his Violin
Concerto in G Minor.
8 . Kye is a small mutual savings club usually made up of women.
9. The South Gate market, located near the South Gate in downtown Seoul, is
known for its merchandise for mass consumption usually by the lower classes.
10. Located on an island in the Han River, Yŏŭido is a district known for its con-
centration of political and financial centers such as the National Assembly
Building, headquarters for political parties, leading TV and radio stations,
and the Korean stock exchange building.
11. “Andante Cantabile” is from Op. 11 for Violin and Piano by Tchaikovsky
(1840–1893).
12. Inch’ŏn is one of the largest seaports on the west coast of Korea, about fifty
miles south of Seoul.
13. The phrase “a historic mission for the national restoration” is part of the Char-
ter of National Education that Korean students were required to memorize and
chant at school during the 1970s.
9. Stone in Your Heart
1. A French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and film director, Marguerite

Duras (1914–1996) received degrees in law and political science at the Sor-
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bonne in 1935. A number of her novels are semiautobiographical, such as

L’Amant (The lover; 1984), which won the Prix Goncourt in 1984.
2. Kangnŭng is a major seaport in Kangwŏn Province, in the central eastern
part of the Korean peninsula.
3. A city in a rugged mountainous region, Kap’yŏng is located near the border
of Kyŏnggi and Kangwŏn provinces. From ancient times, the city, with the
North Han River flowing to its south, has been known as an important trans-
portation point between Seoul and Ch’unch’ŏn, in Kangwŏn Province.
4. Located in Yangyang County in Kangwŏn Province, Hajodae is a sea resort
area renowned for its long stretches of sand beaches with pine forests as their
backdrop.
10. Dried Flowers
1. Taegu is the provincial capital of North Kyŏngsang Province, in the southeast

region of the Korean peninsula.
2. P’yebaek is a traditional ceremony immediately following the wedding, in which
the bride makes bows to the elderly members of the bridegroom’s family.
3. Ulsan, located in South Kyŏngsang Province, is a port facing the Eastern Sea
and has been known as the center for heavy industries.
4. Called yulmu in Korean, its grains are used for tea and also in Chinese herbal
medicine.
5. Yusin refers to political measures implemented in 1972 to reinforce the mili-
tary dictatorship by President Park Chung Hee, a former military general who
rose to power by coup d’état in 1961. Chindo is an island off the coast of South
Chŏlla Province best known for its breed of dogs indigenous to Korea.
6. P’yŏng is a unit of measure for land and the size of houses, approximately
equivalent to thirty square feet. The thirty-p’yŏng apartment would be about
1,100 square feet.
7. Pundang is a satellite city south of Seoul, a newly developed region for the
wealthy.
8. Mount Sŏrak, in Kangwŏn Province, is famous for its colorful autumn leaves
and scenery.
9. Yukkap refers to the year when the zodiac sign of one’s birth year completes
its sixty-year cycle.
10. Derived from yukkap, yukkap handa (performing yukkap) originally meant
figuring out one’s fortune. Later the phrase became a derogatory expression
for improper or unacceptable behavior and action.
11. “Double marriage” refers to a situation in which two members of one family
marry two siblings of another family.
12. The expression comes from a Korean proverb, usually used to describe a self-
made man of humble origins.
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KimQuest.indd 222 9/22/09 1:57:07 PM
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Index
aging, ix, 116, 187, 211–213 “Chagak.” See “Awakening”

allegory, 165 Ch’a Hyŏn-suk (b. 1963), 11
An Chung-gŭn (1879–1910), 101 Ch’angjo (Creation) group, 15, 16
“Angae.” See “Mist, The” Ch’angjo (Creation; magazine), 16
“Angel in the House,” 1 Chang Tŏk-cho (1914–2003), 5
Apollinaire, Guillaume (1880–1918), Charter of National Education, 220n13
125, 220n7 Ch’oe Chŏng-hŭi (1912–1996), 5–6
art and artists, 24–26, 68, 69, 82, Ch’oe Hyŏn-mu. See Ch’oe Yun
115–117, 217n9 Ch’oe Nam-sŏn (1890–1957), 4, 6, 15, 55
“Art for life’s sake,” 4 Ch’oe Yun (b. 1953), 9–10, 164–165
Association of Korean Writers, 84, 101 Ch’ŏngt’aphoe. See Bluestockings—Korea
autobiography, 11, 16, 51, 146, 188 Chŏngwŏl. See Na Hye-sŏk
“Awakening” (Kim Wŏn-ju; 1926), 3–4, Chŏngwŏl Na Hye-sŏk Memorial
56; text, 57–65; text analysis, Foundation, 217n10
65–67 Chŏng Yag-yong (1762–1836; pen name
awards, literary: 2, 8, 10, 11, 15, 69, 83, Tasan), 69
84, 101, 102, 119, 120, 151, 165, Chŏng Yŏn-hŭi (b. 1936), 7
187, 188, 217n10 Chŏn Kyŏng-nin (b. 1962), 11
Chŏn Pyŏng-sun (1927–2005), 8
Bakhtin, Mikhail (1895–1975), 165 Chosŏn dynasty. See Korea—Chosŏn
Bluestockings: Japan, 4, 24, 55; Korea, 55 dynasty
Bruch, Max (1838–1920), 125, 220n7 Chosŏn ilbo (newspaper), 3, 4, 6, 16, 25, 56
Buddhists, 26, 56, 56–57, 218n4 Chosŏn mundan (Korean literary world;
magazine), 25, 56
Catholics, 151 Chung’ang Cultural Grand Prix, 84,
censorship, 1, 56 188
229
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230 Index
Chung’ang ilbo (newspaper), 120 ix, 5; ideologies, x, 3, 52, 67;

Ch’usa. See Kim Chŏng-hŭi issues, 11, 187; politics, ix, 146;
clothing, 56, 82 relations, ix, 146; roles, x, 1–2,
cold war, 165, 184–185 5–6, 25–26, 52, 53, 56, 163. See
“comfort women” (sex slaves for also feminism; women fiction
Japanese troops), 6 writers; women’s studies in
concubines, 3, 15, 23, 56, 215n1 academe
Confucianism, ix, x, 1, 2, 53, 68, 218n14 generation gap, 186, 187, 211
court women, 3, 216n5 Gide, André (1869–1951), 219n6
“Girl of Mystery, A” (Kim Myŏng-sun;
Daesan Literature Award, 188 1917), 3, 15; text, 17–22; text
“Dish of Sliced Raw Fish, A” (Yi Sun; analysis, 22–23
1979), 121; text, 121–146; text Gogh, Vincent van (1853–1890), 125,
analysis, 146–149 220n7
division literature, 11 Grand Prix of the Republic of Korea
Doll’s House, A (Henrik Ibsen; 1879), 4 Literature Award, 69
“Dried Flowers” (Pak Wan-sŏ; 1995): Gréco, Juliette (b. 1927), 110, 219n3
text, 188–211; text analysis,
211–213 Hahn Moo-suk. See Han Mu-suk
Duras, Marguerite (1914–1996), 164, Hahn Moo-Suk Literature Award, 188
165, 220n1 Hakchigwang (Light of learning;
magazine), 24, 217n2
education, x, 4, 66, 68, 83, 100, 146, Han’guk Literature Award, 101
147, 165, 220n13. See also author Han Mal-suk (b. 1931), 7
biographies Han Mu-suk (1918–1993), 6, 7, 68–69,
elderly. See aging 188
epistolary narrative, 65, 67 Ha Sŏng-nan (b. 1967), 11
essays, 57, 69 Higuchi Ichiyō (1872–1896), 218n1
existentialists, 101 Hiratsuka Raichō (1886–1971), 4
humor, 146, 212
“Father’s Law,” 52 “Hydrangeas” (Han Mu-suk; 1949): text,
feminine mystique, 82 70–81; text analysis, 81–82
feminism: England, 217n6; in fiction, Hyŏndae Literature Award, 2, 188,
65–66; Japan, 4, 24; Korea, x, 5, 9, 216n4
10, 11, 51–52, 56, 165; Western, Hyŏndae munhak (Modern literature;
4, 52, 53. See also gender; women magazine), 216n4
fiction writers; women’s studies in
academe Ibsen, Henrik (1828–1906), 4, 111,
fiction by women. See women fiction 219n4
writers Im Ok-in (1915–1995), 5
Imunhoe (literary club), 55
gender: discrimination, 186, 187; International Interdisciplinary Congress
equality, 3–4, 9, 101; identity, on Women, 165
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Index 231
Iryŏp. See Kim Wŏn-ju movements, 9–10; March 1919

Isan Literature Award, 188 Independence Movement, 3, 24,
55, 217n7; military government
journalists, 16 (1961–1993), 1, 7–8, 164, 165,
199, 221n5; nationalism, 100;
Kaebyŏk (Creation; magazine), 3, 4, 16, student revolution (1960), 7;
25 Yusin (political measures; 1972),
Kang Kyŏng-ae (1907–1943), 5 199, 221n5. See also Korean War;
Kang Sin-jae (1924–2001), 7, 83–84 modernity
Kang Sŏk-kyŏng (b. 1951), 8 Korean Academy of Arts Prize for
Key, Ellen Karolina Sofia (1849–1926), 4 Literature, 69
Kim Ch’ae-wŏn (b. 1946), 8 Korean Artists Proletariat Federation
Kim Chi-wŏn (b. 1943), 8 (KAPF), 4
Kim Chŏng-hŭi (1786–1856), 219n4 Korean Association of Women Writers,
Kim Hyang-suk (b. 1951), 9, 10 69, 84, 101
Kim Hyŏng-gyŏng (b. 1960), 9 Korean Novel Award, 151
Kim In-suk (b. 1963), 9, 10 Korean Novelists’ Association, 102
Kim Mal-bong (1901–1962), 5, 68 Korean PEN Club, 69, 102
Kim Myŏng-sun (1896–ca. 1951), 3, 4, Korean PEN Literature Award, 151
15–17 Korean Republic Academy of Arts, 84
Kim Tong-in (1900–1951), 15, 216n4 Korean Republic Academy of Arts
Kim Wŏn-ju (1896–1971), 3–4, 25, Award, 84
55–57, 218nn1, 4 Korean War (1950–1953): x, 1, 6–7, 8,
Kong Chi-yŏng (b. 1963), 9–10 11, 84, 100, 101, 106, 117, 165,
Kong Sŏn-ok (b. 1963), 11 183, 184–185, 186–187, 217n7,
Korea: Catholic persecution of 219n2
intellectuals (19th century), Korean Women Students’ Association,
69; Chosŏn (Yi) Dynasty 24
(1392–1910), 1, 3, 7, 69, 101; Kristeva, Julia (b. 1941), 165
civilian government (1993–), Kukche sinbo (newspaper), 219n2
1, 10; coup d’etat (1961), 7; kuyŏsŏng (tradition-bound woman), 66
division into South Korea and “Kyŏnghŭi” (Na Hye-sŏk; 1918), 3, 24,
North Korea (1948), 1, 6, 11, 66; text, 27–51; text analysis,
101, 116, 165, 219n2; Five- 51–54
Year Economic Plans (first
implemented in 1962), 124, life, mystery of, 183–184
220n4; industrialization, 8, “Light at Dawn, The” (Yi Sŏk-pong;
10, 187; Japanese colonial rule 1985), 151; text, 152–161; text
(1910–1945), x, 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, analysis, 161–163
68, 83, 100, 101, 116, 117, 119, linked short stories, 10, 120
217n11; Korean Protectorate literary circles, clubs, 3, 55, 56
Treaty (1905), 101; Kwangju literary critics, 164
Revolt (1980), 9, 10, 165; labor literary elements, xi, 2, 4, 53, 54
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232 Index
long-river novel, 7 patriarchy, ix, x, 1–2, 23, 26, 52, 56, 98,
lost generation, 118 100, 186, 187
periodicals. See magazines
Maeil sinbo (newspaper), 16 Poe, Edgar Allen, 16
magazines, 3, 4, 10, 15, 16, 24, 25–26, poetry and poets, 15, 16, 56, 57, 87, 150
55–56, 164, 187, 217n2, 219n1 political literary themes, 9–11
Mangong (1871–1946), 56, 57 postmodernism, 165
Mangyangch’o. See Kim Myŏng-sun poverty literature, 4–5
“Marŭn kkot.” See “Dried Flowers” prizes. See awards, literary
men fiction writers, 4 psychological realism, 6
middle class women, x, 81, 116, 120, 148, Pulgyŏ (Buddhism; magazine), 56
186, 187 “Pyŏng’ŏ hoe.” See “Dish of Sliced Raw
“Mist, The” (Kang Sin-jae; 1950): text, Fish, A”
85–97; text analysis, 98–99
modernity, x, 5, 211. See also Korea— religion: Buddhists, 26, 56, 56–57,
industrialization 218n4; Catholics, 151
movies, 16, 84 Republic of Korea Literature Award,
Munch, Edvard (1863–1944), 125, 220n7 188
Munhak sasang (Literary thought; roman-fleuve. See long-river novel
magazine), 164
“Saebyŏk pit.” See “Light at Dawn, The”
“Nagyŏpki.” See “When Autumn Leaves Samchŏlli (All Korea; magazine), 26
Fall” Samil Culture Award, 69, 84
Na Hye-sŏk (1896–1948), 3, 4, 11, Seitō. See Bluestockings—Japan
24–26, 55, 56, 217n10 semiotics, 165
narrative structure, xi, 2, 10, 53, 54, 65, Seoul sinmun (newspaper), 120
67, 82, 84, 120, 165, 183 “Seven Vices,” 1, 215n1
newspapers, 3, 4, 6, 16, 25, 56, 68, 119, sex slaves for Japanese troops (“comfort
120, 151, 219n2 women”), 6
North Korea. See Korea Sin Kyŏng-suk (b. 1963), 11
Sinsidae (New age; magazine), 219n1
O Chŏng-hŭi (b. 1947), 8 Sinyŏja (New woman; magazine), 3,
55–56
Paek Sin-ae (1908–1939), 5 sinyŏsŏng (new/modern woman), 4, 26,
Pae Su-a (b. 1965), 11 52, 53, 54, 56, 66
Pak Hwa-sŏng (1904–1988), 4, 5 Sinyŏsŏng (New women; magazine), 25
Pak Kyŏng-ni (1927–2008), 2, 7 socioeconomic themes, x, 9, 146, 148
Pak Sun-nyŏ (b. 1928), 8 sociopolitical themes, x, 9
Pak Wan-sŏ (b. 1931), 2, 8–9, 186–188 Sŏ Ha-jin (b. 1960), 11
Pankhurst, Emmeline (1858–1928), Son Chang-sun (b. 1935), 7
217n6 Song Wŏn-hŭi (b. 1927), 8, 100–102
Park Chung Hee (1917–1979), 220n4, Sōno Ayako (b. 1931), 151
221n5 Son So-hŭi (1917–1987), 6, 7
KimQuest.indd 232 9/22/09 1:57:08 PM

Index 233
South Korea. See Korea “When Autumn Leaves Fall” (Song

Sŏ Yŏng-ŭn (b. 1943), 8 Wŏn-hŭi; 1961), 101; text,
Staël, Madame de (Anne-Louise- 102–115; text analysis, 115–118
Germaine; 1766–1817), 218n12 women fiction writers: autobiography,
“Stone in Your Heart” (Ch’oe Yun; 11, 16; awards, 2, 8, 10, 11, 15, 69,
1992), 165; text, 166–182; text 83, 84, 101, 102; career length,
analysis, 182–185 2, 4, 8; historical overview, 2–11;
structuralism, 165 internationalism, 4; modern vs.
Sudŏk Temple, 26, 57 traditional, 1, 26, 69; national
“Suguk.” See “Hydrangeas” division literature, 11; obstacles,
Sungmyŏng Literature Award, 151 1–2, 4; politicization, 9–10,
23, 100, 164; short story as
Taehan ilbo (newspaper), 119 opportunity, xii; success, 2,
taeha sosŏl. See long-river novel 7, 10, 11. See also feminism;
“Tangsin ŭi mulchelbi.” See “Stone in gender; women’s studies in
Your Heart” academe
T’ansil. See Kim Myŏng-sun Women’s Literature Award (Korea), 84
Tasan. See Chŏng Yag-yong women’s studies in academe, ix, 10, 11,
Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilich (1840–1893), 26. See also feminism; gender;
220n11 women fiction writers
Thomas, Dylan (1914–1953), 121, 128, Woolf, Virginia, 1, 2, 216nn2, 3
220n2 World War II, 6
“Three Rules of Obedience” (samjong
chido), 1, 215n1 Yang Kwi-ja (b. 1955), 9, 10
Tonga ilbo (newspaper), 3, 4, 6, 16, 25, Yi Hye-gyŏng (b. 1960), 11
56, 68, 120, 151 Yi Kwang-su (1892–1950), 4, 6, 15, 55
Tongguk University special literary Yi Kyu-hŭi (b. 1937), 8
award, 102 Yi Sang (1910–1934), 216n4
Tong-in Literature Award, 2, 165, 188, Yi Sang Literature Award, 2, 165, 188,
216n4 216n4
Yi Sŏk-pong (1928–1999), 8, 150–151
“Ŭisim ŭi sonyŏ.” See “Girl of Mystery, A” Yi Sŏn-hŭi (1911–?), 5
Ŭn Hŭi-gyŏng (b. 1959), 11 Yi Sun (b. 1949), 8, 119–121
urbanization. See Korea— Yŏjagye (Women’s world; magazine),
industrialization 16, 24
yŏnjak sosŏl. See linked short stories
Van Gogh, Vincent. See Gogh, Vincent yŏryu chakka (lady writers), 2
van Yosano Akiko (1878–1942), 4
Yŏsŏng tonga (East Asian women;
Webb, Beatrice (1858–1943), 218n13 magazine), 187
Western culture, 68, 146, 212 Yun Chŏng-mo (b. 1946), 8
KimQuest.indd 233 9/22/09 1:57:09 PM

About the Translator
Yung-Hee Kim is a professor of Korean literature in the Department of

East Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.
She received her doctorate in Asian studies from Cornell University,
taught at the Ohio State University, and was a visiting scholar at the
Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Stanford University. She
is the recipient of numerous grants, including those from the Fulbright
Program, the Korea Foundation, and the Daesan Foundation. The fo-
cus of her research has been on modern Korean writers’ fiction in the
context of early Korean feminist movements. Her publications have
appeared in Korean Studies, Journal of Women’s History, Who’s Who in
Contemporary Women’s Writing, and the Review of Korean Studies. She
is the author of Songs to Make the Dust Dance: The “Ryōjin hishō” of
Twelfth-Century Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994)
and a coauthor of Readings in Modern Korean Literature (Honolulu:
University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004).
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Korean literature
HAWAI‘I STUDIES ON KOREA
AVA IL A BLE FOR THE FIR ST TI M E in English, the ten short stories by mod-
ern Korean women collected here touch in one way or another on issues relat-
K IM
ed to gender and kinship politics. All of the protagonists are women who face
Questioning Minds
personal crises or defining moments in their lives as gender-marked beings in
a Confucian, patriarchal Korean society.
Their personal dreams and values have been compromised by gender
expectations or their own illusions about female existence. They are com-
pelled to ask themselves “Who am I?” “Where am I going?” “What are my
choices?” Each story bears colorful and compelling testimony to the life of
the heroine. Some of the stories celebrate the central character’s breakaway
from the patriarchal order; others expose sexual inequality and highlight the
Questioning Minds
struggle for personal autonomy and dignity. Still others reveal the abrupt
awakening to mid-life crises and the seasoned wisdom that comes with
accepting the limits of old age.
The stories are arranged in chronological order, from the earliest work
by Korea’s first modern woman writer in 1917 to stories that appeared in
1995—approximately one from each decade. Most of the writers presented
are recognized literary figures, but some are lesser-known voices. The intro-
duction presents a historical overview of traditions of modern Korean wom- SHORT STORIES BY
en’s fiction, situating the selected writers and their stories in the larger context
of Korean literature. Each story is accompanied by a biographical note on the
MODERN KOREAN
author and a brief, critical analysis. A selected bibliography is provided for
further reading and research.
Questioning Minds marks a departure from existing translations of Korean WOMEN WRITERS
literature in terms of its objectives, content, and format. As such it will con-
tribute to the growth of Korean studies, increasing the availability of material
for teaching Korean literature in English, and stimulate readership of its writ-
ers beyond the confines of the peninsula.
translated and with an introduction by
Yung-Hee Kim is professor of Korean literature in the Department of East
Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Yung-Hee Kim
COVER A RT: Kim Whanki, Moonlight (Wŏlgwang), 1959. Oil painting on canvas, 92 cm x
60 cm. Courtesy of the Whanki Foundation, housed in the collection of the Museum, Korea
University, Seoul, Korea.
COVER DE SIGN: Julie Matsuo-Chun
ISBN 978-0-8248-3409-8
90000
UNIVERSITY of
HAWAI‘I PRESS 9 780824 834098
Honolulu, Hawai‘i 96822-1888 www.uhpress.hawaii.edu

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Korean literature

HAWAI‘I STUDIES ON KOREA

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Timothy R. Tangherlini and Sallie Yea, eds.

Yung-Hee Kim, translator

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translated and with an introduction

University of Hawai‘i Press, Honolulu

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15 14 13 12 11 10 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Center for Korean Studies was established in 1972 to

University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free

Designed by University of Hawai‘i Press production staff

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1 Kim Myŏng-sun: A Girl of Mystery (1917) 15

2 Na Hye-sŏk: Kyŏnghŭi (1918) 24

3 Kim Wŏn-ju: Awakening (1926) 55

4 Han Mu-suk: Hydrangeas (1949) 68

5 Kang Sin-jae: The Mist (1950) 83

6 Song Wŏn-hŭi: When Autumn Leaves Fall (1961) 100

7 Yi Sun: A Dish of Sliced Raw Fish (1979) 119

8 Yi Sŏk-pong: The Light at Dawn (1985) 150

9 Ch’oe Yun: Stone in Your Heart (1992) 164

10 Pak Wan-sŏ: Dried Flowers (1995) 186

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Questioning Minds is designed to reflect the living tra-

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aspirations, values, and dignity compromised, threatened, or even violated by

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intricately woven intertextuality of fiction with history, culture, and women’s

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A number of individuals and institutions lent their

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patience, thoughtfulness, and meticulous copyediting contributed to the final

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Modern Korean women’s engagement with fiction

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women’s thought, speech, and behavior contributed to curtailing their dreams

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of presenting essential information. Yet this chronological sketch provides a

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Kang Kyŏng-ae (1907–1943) and Paek Sin-ae (1908–1939) became specialists

Diversified Voices: The 1930s

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Closing Days of the Colonial Period

New Beginnings: Postliberation and Korean War Periods

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On Firm Ground: The 1960s–1970s

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as their primary mission the critique of the dictatorial military government.

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Sociopolitical Challenges of the 1980s: Expansion and Enrichment

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Wider Horizons: The 1990s and Beyond

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A Girl of Mystery (1917)

A native of Yungdŏk village in the P’yŏngyang district