Modern Korean Literature

Chung Chong-Wha

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136160721
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

The sixth book in Kegan Paul International's "Korean Culture Series", this volume contains thirty stories that have been selected on the basis of historical interest and literary worth, each representing a monumental moment in the history of Korean Literature. The ten stories in the first part share the common theme of the Korean experience of the confrontation between man and woman; in some stories the relationship is portrayed as innocent and pure, in others the relationship becomes more sophisticated and complex. The ten stories in the second part all deal with old Korean or the old Korean way of life - the Korea of byegone days, which is gradually disappearing in the face of industrialization and internationalization. The third group of stories reveals modern Korea in the process of change during the period of the Japanese Occupation, the liberation from the Occupation, and the Korean War. All thirty stories may serve as social documents. From the time of ideological chaos following the independence of Korea in 1945 up to the fall of the USSR in the 1980s, modern Korean literature has been powerfully swayed by Marxist ideology one way or another. Literature has an important role to play in its portrayal of the relations between society and individual people, and it has a particularly vital social function in developing or undeveloped countries. However, the stories in this anthology are not just historical documents. They represent the peak of literary achievements by great and gifted writers in the first half of this century. It is remarkable to find so many talented writers producing so many powerful works of art in a short span of just over 50 years between 1908 and 1965. This anthology is an invitation to readers to grasp how much Korea has attained in the process of its modernization. The authors whose works appear in this volume are: Yi Kwang-su, Kim Dong-in, Hyun Chin-kon, Yi Hyo-suk, Kim Yu-jong, Yi Sang, Kim Dong-ni, O Yung-su, Hwang Sun-won, Sohn, So-hi, Hahn Mu-suk, Sunwu Hwi, Kang Shin-jae, Oh Sang-won, Suh Ki-won, Han Mal-suk, Choi In-hun, Kim sung-ok, Yi Mun-ku.

Part 1

‘Meetings and Farewells’ and other Stories

The Camellias

Kim Yujong
Translated by Chung Chong-wha

Once again our rooster was being mauled. It was after lunch when I was about to go out to gather wood that I heard the violent fluttering sound of roosters from behind the house. Startled, I went round to the foot of the hill and found the two roosters, as I feared, in a bloody fight again. Jomsun’s rooster, as sturdy as a badger with a big strong head, was pecking at our small rooster; the big one jumped into the air, bit the head of our little one mercilessly, moved back a little bit and then rapped its neck, fluttering its wing as if it were aware of the elegance of its fighting style. The little one, whenever it was attacked, put its beak onto the ground and shrieked wildly. There were streams of blood running from old wounds that had been cut open again. Watching this, I felt the blood rush to my head. I wanted to run over and hit the big rooster with my stick, but I changed my mind; instead I thrashed the air with the stick.

Jomsun must have done it to get at me. I couldn’t understand why the girl wanted to bully me so badly. I had done nothing wrong in refusing the potatoes she offered me four days ago. Why the hell did the girl interfere with my fence-building instead of going to pick her greens? She came tiptoeing up to me from behind and said, ‘Hello! Are you alone?’ Until the day before we had not been on speaking terms, pretending to ignore each other. Why this sudden change of heart? Anyway, how dare she talk to a man while he was at work? We were not small children; she was as big as a pony herself.

‘Of course I’m alone. I don’t work in groups,’ I answered curtly.

‘Do you enjoy your work?’ she asked. ‘Why not make the fence when the summer starts?’ She giggled, trying to hide it with both her hands. I didn’t see anything funny there. I wondered if the warm weather was beginning to addle her brains. As if to confirm my suspicion she fished her hand from beneath her apron, keeping an eye on the house, and opened her palm right under my nose. There were three potatoes, still warm.

‘You don’t have these at home, do you?’ As if she was doing me a great favour, she told me to gobble them right there, saying if someone saw us she would be in trouble. ‘Potatoes are really nice in spring, you know,’ she said.

‘I don’t eat potatoes. You can have them,’ I said, not even turning to look at her, and reached over my shoulder to push the potatoes away. She didn’t move. I heard a panting sound from behind me and then turned my head. I had never seen her darkish face go so red in my three years in the same village. There was anger in her eyes and then tears, while she stared at me. She picked up her basket, her mouth tightly shut, and ran off towards the bank of a paddy field.

Village elders used to tease her, saying, ‘They should marry you off?’ And she would retort without a tinge of embarrassment, ‘Don’t you worry, sir. When the time comes I will marry someone.’ She never seemed to be bashful in situations which might have made someone her age feel timid. She was the last person to show tears because she felt frustrated or angry. It would have been more her style to hit me across the back with her basket.

Since that incident she had used all her wits to torment me. Granted, I was not polite refusing her potatoes – but what right did she have to say, ‘You don’t have these at home, do you?’ Why couldn’t she give me them nicely? Because her father was the bailiff and we were only tenant farmers under his supervision, we always had to be humbly polite and attentive to him and his family. When we first came to the village and we had no house, it was due to her father’s favour that we got a bit of land and built our present house on it. When we were short of rice or barley, my parents went to Jomsun’s for help. Father and Mother would praise her parents for their kindness; and yet Mother would warn me not to get involved with Jomsun, saying that if a boy and girl of sixteen were seen together by a villager ‘it wouldn’t be nice’. She had a point there; if I really did get involved with Jomsun, her parents wouldn’t like it, and we’d end up with no land to farm and no house to live in. So why the hell did this girl try to bully me to death?

The evening of the day she had run off in tears, I was coming home after gathering wood when I heard the shrieking sound of a hen. At first I thought that somebody was killing a chicken for the pot, so I paid no attention and carried on past Jomsun’s house. I looked over the fence and was shocked to see Jomsun, sitting on the earthen floor of the inner quarters, holding our hen tightly in her apron and hitting it as hard as she could, yelling, ‘Bloody animal, drop dead! Drop dead!’ She wasn’t just hitting it on the head, but punching it in the guts as if she wanted to damage the ovaries. I shook with rage. I looked round to make sure that there was no one in the house, then hit the fence with my stick as hard as I could and shouted, ‘What the hell are you doing, trying to make our hen stop laying?’

But she didn’t look surprised at getting caught. She just kept on beating the hen and yelling, ‘Drop dead! Drop dead!’ As she wasn’t scared, I could tell that she had waited for my return from the hill before she began to beat up our hen. I realized that I was in a bad spot; I couldn’t go into the house and fight a girl. All I could do was to whack her fence each time she hit our hen, as I knew that the more I beat the fence the shakier it would become. And yet I knew I couldn’t win.

‘You bitch! Do you really want to kill our hen?’ Staring at her as viciously as I could, I shouted at the top of my voice. Only then she came towards the fence and threw the hen at my head. ‘Filthy! Filthy!’ she spat out. To show her I was really disgusted and angry I strode off along the fence. But the fluttering hen landed on me, dropping some muck on my forehead; and I could tell immediately that not only were the ovaries damaged, but all its insides were out of order. I heard the girl curse at my back, ‘You fool! You idiot!’ That was quite enough, but she went further: ‘Your father’s a eunuch, isn’t he?’

‘What? My father’s a eunuch?’ I was going to shout at her, but when I turned round I couldn’t see Jomsun’s head over the fence. As soon as I turned back again, I heard her swear at me. I was so angry I didn’t even feel the pain in my toe when I stubbed it on a stone and it began to bleed. In the end tears shot up in my eyes.

But Jomsun’s bullying didn’t end there. When there was no one around she would bring her cock to our house and start a cock-fight. She knew that their big, aggressive cock would win the fight. Our little one’s head would get badly pecked, with blood running around both eyes. When our cock wouldn’t come out to fight, she would use bird seed to coax it out.

I just couldn’t let things go on like this. I had to think of a way to retaliate. One day I took our cock to the pot where chilli paste was preserved. I was told once that when you give chilli paste to a cock, it works as wonderfully as feeding an adder to a sick bull. I scooped out a dishful of chilli paste and pushed it to the cock. It seemed to like the paste and gobbled up nearly half the dish. As I thought it would take a while for the chilli to work on the cock, I left it in the coop.

During a short break after I had carried two piles of manure to the field, I took the cock out of the coop. Everybody seemed to be in the fields except Jomsun, who was crouching down doing something – either sorting rags or rearranging old cotton wool. I went to the field where Jomsun’s cock was roaming about, and I let our cock loose, waiting for what would happen. The two cocks lost no time getting into a fight. The big cock managed first to pounce on our little one, which fluttered its wings and jumped into the air, rising and falling a few times. But finally our cock made a big soaring jump, and while it was coming down it scratched its opponent’s eyes with its claws and pecked at its head. The big one seemed surprised and retreated a few steps. Our cock didn’t miss the opportunity; it swiftly charged at the cringing enemy and pecked again at the head. Blood started running from the wounds.

What a thought! All you needed for a cock fight was a chilli paste! I became quite elated. I saw Jomsun watching, with a frowning face, from the other side of the fence. I began to slap my backside with both my hands, feeling great, and shouting, ‘Well done! Bravo!’

But soon the situation was reversed and I became disconcerted. The big cock suddenly rebounded as if it wanted to even the score, and struck back, pecking violently. This time Jomsun was triumphant and began to laugh as loud as she could. I couldn’t stomach it any longer. I picked up our cock and returned home. I regretted not having fed it more chilli. I went to the chilli pot and gave more paste to our defeated champion Perhaps due to excitement the cock refused to take any more of the stuff. I had no choice but to force it to lie back while I pushed a cigarette holder into its beak. I mixed the paste with water and then poured the hot liquid through the holder. The cock seemed to find it too hot and began to sneeze, but I decided that was better than having its old wounds re-opened.

However, after two dishfuls of the chilli water, the sprightly cock became still and dropped its head on the ground. This was awful. I was afraid of my father catching me at this. I took the fowl back to the coop and left it there until this morning.

And the cock was taken to a fight yet again. That girl Jomsun must have sneaked into our house while there was no one about and taken the ailing cock out. I was worried about the effects of the chilli water, and yet I couldn’t afford to skip the wood gathering. While I was cutting dead pine branches, I kept wanting to choke Jomsun to death. I decided I’d hit her on the back with my stick as hard as I could, and hurried down to the village.

While I was nearing our house I was surprised to hear the sound of a reed pipe, and stopped short. I saw yellow camellias on a rock at the foot of the hill, and Jomsun playing the reed pipe among the flowers. What was more surprising was the fluttering sound of the cocks coming from where she sat. The girl must have brought out the cocks to the path where I was bound to pass by, in the hope that she would catch my eye and get me going again.

There she was playing the reed pipe nonchalantly, as if nothing was happening. I was so infuriated that I felt tears gushing up in my eyes. I didn’t have time to put down the wood I was carrying on my back; I just threw it down and dashed to the scene of the cock fight with my stick.

When I came nearer I saw, as I had half expected, our little cock almost bitten to death, while Jomsun was playing the pipe undisturbed. That really make me fly into a rage. At one time I had thought, like other people in the village, that Jomsun was a pretty girl who worked hard to help her mother round the house, but now looking at her I found she had the eye of a little fox.

Without hesitation I ran to the big cock and hit it hard with my stick. The thing dropped dead on the spot. By the time I realized what I’d done, Jomsun came at me with the nastiest eyes she could make and I fell over backwards.

‘You bastard! What right do you have to kill someone else’s cock?’

‘So what?’ I said, standing up.

‘Do you realize whose fowl it is?’ She gave me a shove and I fell over again. I felt ashamed of my rash behaviour and yet I was angry. But I was also afraid; the result of this incident would be losing our land and our house. I sat up weakly and burst into tears, hiding my eyes with my sleeve.

‘You won’t do it again, will you?’ Jomsun came to me and whispered. It was like hearing the voice of a saviour.

‘No, I won’t do it again,’ I readily answered, wiping away tears, though I didn’t know what she meant by ‘do it again’.

‘If you do it again, I’ll bully you to death.’

‘No I won’t do it again, I promise.’

‘Don’t worry about the cock, I won’t tell my father.’

As if she was pushed by something from behind, she fell on me, and both of us tumbled into the camellias. I felt dizzy with the fragrant smell of the flowers.

‘Be quiet!’

‘Don’t worry.’

A few minutes later I heard Jomsun’s mother calling her, irritated, Jomsun! Jomsun! Where has that girl gone in the middle of her sewing?’

Scared, Jomsun stole out from the flowers and ran down towards the village, and I crawled along the rock towards the peak of the hill.

Shower

Hwang Sun-Won
Translated by Chang Wang-Rok

The boy knew who the girl was when he saw her by the brook. She was playing with the running water, dipping her hand into and splashing it. She was a great-grandchild of the old scholar Mr Yun of Sodang village. It seemed as if she had never seen such a brook in the big city of Seoul where she had come from.

She had played with the water there for some days on her way home from school. Until the previous day she had always squatted at the edge of the brook, but today she was squatting on one of the stepping stones, near the edge, that crossed the brook.

The boy sat on the bank waiting for her to step back to the edge of the brook so that he could walk across the stones to the other side. By chance a man approached, and when the girl stepped back to make way for him the boy followed him across.

The following day the boy showed up at the bank a little later than usual. But again she was squatting on the stepping stone in the middle of the...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Notes on the Authors
• Notes on the Editor and the Translators
• Introduction: Modem Korean Literature 1908-65
• Part 1: ‘Meetings and Farewells’ and other Stories
• Part 2 The Crag’ and other Stories
• Part 3 ‘Winter, 1964, Seoul’ and Other Stories