Short stories that are like an umbrella handed over in the rain called the world
The true colors of Hwang Jeong-eun’s prose fiction, which charges at maximum speed
Hwang Jeong-eun has established herself as one of the writers representative of South Korean literature in both name and deed by simultaneously forming a broad and solid readership and receiving firm support from critics with her works including novels I’ll Keep Trying and The Shadows of a Hundred and short story collections Pa’s Initiation and A Nobody. Her latest work, dd’s Umbrella has been published. The volume gathers two novellas constituting a novel cycle that resonate with each other and share the same temporal background and thematics even though they present disparate characters and narratives: Kim Yujong Literary Award winner “d” (titled “Laughing Man” at the time of its original publication); and “No Need to Say Anything” (extensively revised later), which received considerable attention during its serialization on Changbi’s online platform Literature 3. Against the backdrop of the social cataclysms of the avoidable and therefore all the more tragic sinking of the MV Sewol, a passenger ferry, in 2014 and the “Candlelight Revolution,” or ordinary citizens’ candlelight demonstrations against the corruption of the incumbent administration, during 2016-17, these works explore the new meanings of “revolution” in individuals’ daily lives. They are welcome new additions that will move readers overwhelmingly through the combination of profound reflections on life and death, love and humans and beautiful sentences deeply affecting readers’ emotions.
“Why didn’t my beloved come with me?”
The end, or a new beginning, of an old story
The tale starts in “dd’s Umbrella,” a short story that writer Hwang Jeong-eun first published in 2010 (also included in Pa’s Initiation, published by Changbi, 2012). Reunited with “dodo,” “dd” becomes close to her childhood friend based on a memory of the fact that, in the past, she failed to return an umbrella borrowed from “dodo.” Despite the difficulty of making a livelihood, the two figures are happy because of their shared life. In the 2014 short story “Laughing Man” (included in A Nobody, published by Munhak Dongne, 2016), however, “dd” meets with unexpected death.
The work in the latest collection dd’s Umbrella directly to continue these characters’ story is “d.” “d” (“dodo” from the earlier tale), who likewise has lead deathlike days since the death of “‘dd,” immerses himself in days spent in the arduous labor of handling packages at Sewoon Arcade in the Cheonggyecheon district in Seoul. Through an encounter one day with Yeo So-nyeo, who has repaired acoustic equipments at Sewoon Arcade for decades, he slowly begins to step back into the world. Likewise, So-nyeo looks back on the lives of both herself and those around her in the landscape of the shopping arcade, which reflects the glory and shame of South Korea’s modernization.
The theme of “revolution” triggered by the existence of “dd” and the voices encountered through it thus continue naturally in “No Need to Say Anything.” The first-person narrator of “No Need to Say Anything” is both an employee of a shoe manufacturing company and a writer with twelve incomplete manuscripts. She has lived together for 20 years with Seo Su-gyeong, a woman of the same age who left a strong impression on an athletic events day during high school. The two characters have reencountered each other after graduation from high school and forged a relationship through an incident on the premises of Yonsei University, the site of the so-called “Yonsei University Incident” in 1996. Since that day, when the “separation of activism and daily life” (p. 188) was established due to isolation and violence, they have faced the sentiment of “Let’s just sweep my front yard or something” (p. 186) yet continued to ponder on living as a citizen, on becoming an “adult.” What is noteworthy is the fact that one of the foundations of the narrator’s maturity in reflections on people and society consists of ideas obtained from a variety of actual books and animation films. These sources are presented in both the main body and footnotes. Along with articles likewise provided in footnotes, such elements, whose slight unfamiliarity will catch readers’ attention instead, are characteristic of this novel in form and content alike.
After witnessing the tragedy of the MV Sewol on April 16, 2014, when they had planned to hold a little party for Su-gyeong’s birthday, the two figures continuously take to the street in order to participate in citizens’ protests against the South Korea government’s corruption and concealment of the causes of the incident. At one of the special moments in reading this novel cycle, we discover a scene where the trajectories of “I” and Su-gyeong intersect with that of “d.” For example, the two parties face a situation where, on April 16, 2015, the first anniversary of the sinking of the passenger ferry, the Sejong-ro intersection in the heart of Seoul turns into a “space between two long walls” (pp. 132, 290) and encounter crowds shouting the same slogans (pp. 128, 289).