tag fiction

In Mango Square, We…

“I want to hear my real name, not called wrongly” The main character of this novel is a Kopino, or a child of a South Korean man and a local woman in the Philippines. However, unlike what often happens in reality, protagonist Harper’s birth father died of illness while running a pork belly shop with his Filipino wife in the Philippines instead of running away back to South Korea. The young man’s mother has since then married a Japanese man and lives in Fukuoka. Harper is unprotected by his parents, is exposed to poverty, and engages in all kinds of unlawful acts for his livelihood such as delivering drugs, pickpocketing, and uploading illegal videos in Mango Square, an entertainment district in Cebu City. However, none of this happens to him because of his mixed ethnicity. The life that he experiences is far too complicated and intense to be restricted to the word “Kopino,” and the volume realistically depicts the eventful process through which the 20-year-old learns to stand on his feet. An ordinary youth from Cebu City who wants to earn much money and to meet a “girl who’d win in a beauty contest,” Harper encounters Belen by chance. In the scene where the two figures choose Japan as the destination of their trip and only stop over in Seoul, the novel once again lightly disregards whatever preconceptions readers may have of a Kopino protagonist. A sophisticated sensibility that hurts no one Meeting one’s family for the first time on the boundary between boyhood and adulthood Estranged from his parents and living with his friends, Harper moves out once he turns twenty. Knowledgeable of high-grade tuna though he works as a pickpocket, the young man apparently does not care about physical and emotional distance from his parents. Signing a contract for a studio apartment under a false name and paying the rent with money earned by uploading illegal videos, he seems even to be nonchalantly balanced instead of wallowing in tragic sentimentalism. Harper and Belen travel to see his mother and her Japanese husband, who live in the countryside. In the process, the two young people are changed from solitary beings standing alone in Mango Square into family members. Belen shares memories of Cebu City with Harper’s mother, and Harper comes to accept his Japanese stepfather while taking walks together every day in a bamboo forest. On the other hand, the protagonist hears of his Korean father for the first time from his mother, which makes the birth father far more concrete and actual than ever before. The scope of the family centering on Harper gradually expands, finally encompassing even Belen’s family. Thanks to the refreshing and artless personality and way of life characteristic of the figures in In Mango Square, We…, the process through which unrelated and even dead people are all embraced as family members unfolds persuasively. The evaluation that the author, “through her sophisticated sensibility and astonishing grasp, concludes the story in a way that does not hurt anyone” (Gang Yeong-suk) is valid in this respect.

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The Wretched Light

In this collection of short stories, Baek Su-rin depicts with her unique sensitivity the misery of the world, which overlaps like background sounds under radiant light falling like heavy snow, through the fascinating contrast of “wretched light.” The solitary ethics of outsiders and the radiant beauty emanating from moments in the never-to-be-repeated prime of life that she juxtaposes in these tales are scenes made possible by the uniquely delicate shadow that she casts over searing wounds. The author states in a calm yet firm voice the fact that light can waver only in the darkness, that happiness likewise can be wholly ours only against the background of a certain kind of wretchedness. In “The Wretched Light,” two worlds coexist. A reporter for a film magazine, Jeong-ho meets Adele Monahan, a documentary film director who is visiting South Korea to participate in a movie festival, for an interview. During the interview, which has been arranged after much trouble, he hears of how she has come to suffer from tunnel phobia. As Adele hesitates and continues her speech with difficulty, Jeong-ho recalls his short-lived happiness and the unhappiness that suddenly turned its face toward him one day. Through his voice, the story recounts the changes in the relationship between him and his wife following the death of their 6-month-old fetus in the womb and the actions subsequently taken by Jeong-ho, who was unable to accept her pain. The decisive scene in this work will be the moment at which Adele’s phobia is transposed to Jeong-ho. Also pregnant with meaning is the one where these two characters can be seen overlapping each other through the medium of light. “Midday in Summer” begins with the narrator recalling in Paris Takahiro, a Japanese man ten years her senior whom she met over ten years before in the same city during her short stay as a 20-year-old. Like the scenes of their date in a cemetery, the image of death glimmered above the couple. Nevertheless, those days would have been like the midday of life for the protagonist. Though it thus depicts the prime of life, this tale also features, as if they were the backgrounds, historical events including the sarin gas attacks in Japan, September 11 attacks, and textile laborers’ deaths and the memorial rally. By placing such real-life scenes all over the characters’ paths, the author endlessly reminds readers that the pain suffered by these fictional personages is not unrelated to the wretchedness of the world. “First Love” recounts the one day in which the narrator works part-time at a department store to buy a new dress for her reunion with J, an upperclassman at the university for whom she had harbored unrequited love. The story proceeds by interspersing the protagonist’s work in the present with recounts of the past, in which she and J studied Russian literature at college. Although the narrator then briefly studied in Russia and went on to the graduate school after returning to South Korea, she lost contact with J and the university was on the verge of closing the department altogether due to restructuring. In addition, while working part-time at the department store, which is like the forefront of capitalism, she learns of how J ultimately came to be ruined. The author meticulously depicts in her unique way the ethics of solitary individuals who live like foreigners. Born in Germany, Lena in “The Northwestern Port” vividly remembers the first time that she visited her mother’s hometown during her childhood. As the girl forever awaited her mother, who had gone to visit someone, in a street corner in an unfamiliar port city, an elderly man suddenly started to kick a dog. Fearful and sorrowful, the young protagonist then pleaded with her mother that they return to Germany. To her, the latter said, “Have you ever thought about how it might have been for me in Germany?” (p. 238). Lena recounts the situation and scenery of that day in detail just as her mother remembers her own solitude in terms of the scenery of that unfamiliar port city.

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The Messengers of the Wind

In this volume, Bae Mi-ju reconstructs into three short stories figures and events from hundreds and thousands of years ago that are barely left in records. An artisan who created glass beads treasured by the king, Chinese soldiers of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) who found themselves as far west as Samarkand beyond the deserts, and an expedition that set out for the Western Regions (Serindia) at the orders of the Chinese emperor of the Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 AD). Personages who disappeared into the mists history are reborn at the fingertip of the author, thanks to her boundless imagination, as unique protagonists who stand against fate. Crossing time and space from the western end of Central Asia to the Korean Peninsula, these tales are deftly interconnected and develop swiftly, not allowing readers to stray even for a moment. By vividly portraying the atmosphere and landscapes of antiquity, Bae transports readers to grasslands, deserts, and seas of yore. The artless style harbors profound messages on the most universal and human values such as dreams, freedom, friendship, and love, which will reverberate for a long time in readers’ hearts.

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The Chinese Roulette

Each night, when fortune and misfortune intersect… It means things are getting better, right? The six short stories included in this collection concern objects that we always keep at hand and cannot separate from our lives such as alcoholic beverages, clothes, pocket diaries, shoes, bags, photographs, books, and music. These motifs may very well be the sole “substitutes” for warmth providing consolation to those who, with only objects and no people by their sides, “live within predictable categories” (“A Line of Discontinuity,” p. 137). Generally hiding their facial expressions and playing a “false ‘Truth of Dare?’” (“Chinese Roulette”), the characters in these works lead isolated and monotonous lives, where they either do not show their true hearts to others or “go along with reality and set their positions and limitations according to it” (“The Cave of Stars,” p. 143). However, the tales held by objects around these figures are not limited to specific individuals but reflect the reality of most people living in contemporary society in its entirety. What was the best day of your life? Questions posed by Eun Heekyung to unfulfilled destinies Named after Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film, “Chinese Roulette,” the title work, deals with a coincidental fate that, “to hide malice, reveals itself as if by chance” (p. 28). Chinese roulette is a kind of “Truth or Dare?” and the four men gathered at K’s bar play a game that relies on falsehood rather than on truth while sipping whisky from a bottle with its label covered up. “The aroma of whisky permeating the entire story” (Hwang Jung-a’s commentary) captivates us with an unexpected fate, and the characters pour out honest lies that jumble together half-lies and half-truths while lamenting their respective misfortunes. The questions that Eun Heekyung hurls at those who have lost the truth may very well be keywords prompting people to turn to unfulfilled truth. Chinese Roulette presents readers with the familiar yet unfamiliar realization that life consists of small coincidences. The author says with a lightened heart and in a warm voice that even unfulfilled and monotonous lives, too, can reach “empty completion” (p. 61), that the wish for others to recognize a face wet with prolonged weeping is by no means preposterous. When we fall into crises and trials small and large amidst a frustrating reality, we can allow ourselves to sink comfortably into the “small and white pool of light” that Eun has created. Then she will embrace all our being with “tender buoyancy” (“Author’s Note,” p. 211). The kinds of “unexpected fate” that the author’s works, which prompt us to respect everyday life, will lead our lives to are well worth anticipating. “The destination to which one inevitably will proceed”—that surely “means things are getting better” (“A Purified Night,” p. 197).

Changbi Books > Adults, Changbi Books > Adults > Fiction > Collection-short stories, Changbi Books > Adults > Fiction
The Battleship Island

The Battleship Island: Korea is nowhere, it’s our lost homeland During the period that imperial Japan is expediting the Pacific War (1941-45), it is Korean drafted laborers who, besides Chinese prisoners and Japanese miners, constitute the vast majority of the workforce in the Hashima coal mines operated by Mitsubishi, a munitions company. After migrating to Japan, the colonial metropolis, to make a living, like many other Koreans, Myeong-guk and Tae-bok are deceived by miner recruiters and taken to the island of Hashima. However, the number of incoming Korean miners rises by day due to labor conscription and organized, forced shipment involving Japanese government organs. Work that starts in the darkness before daybreak and finally ends in the darkness of the dead of night, wretched meals and rough bedding, insufficient safety facilities… Completely cut off from the outside world, these laborers barely manage to survive each day, fearing that they can be killed at any time. An island that one can leave only after death, a blind spot of human rights where ruthless violence is rampant. Miners come to call the entrances to undersea mine shafts “Hell Gates.” Dubbed the “Battleship Island” (Gunkanjima) because its shape supposedly resembles a battleship, Hashima is notorious for deadly labor even in Japan itself. Mitsubishi manufactures steel with coal excavated through such brutal labor exploitation, and imperialJapan produces artillery shells and torpedoes with that steel. It is no exaggeration to say that the entire city of Nagasaki, only some 20 km from Hashima, is Mitsubishi’s munitions industry complex. Exploitation, death, and love: That voice is moist with tears 15-hour labor that starts at 6 AM, coal quotas that do not allow any respite, an adverse working environment… Accidents are constant, and most of those killed are Korean miners who do not understand precautions in Japanese. Caked with sweat and coal dust, they have no choice but to watch in silence as their fellow workers are injured and killed endlessly by gas explosions, cave-in accidents due to collapsed mine pillars, and seizures brought about by continued surveillance and beatings. In a situation where even the rare news from hometowns in colonial Korea is not properly conveyed to the laborers, Ji-sang obtains news from Chuncheon with difficulty: his wife has given birth to a son. The monthly salary paid to the workers after deductions in the name of diverse expenses including lodging fees, boarding fees, and insurance fees is in the form of money tickets, not even real money. Having painstakingly saved these money tickets, which can be used only on the island, fellow laborers come forward and congratulate Ji-sang on the birth of his son. The men also console their sorrowful and bitter hearts, sharing wheat bread, dried squid, and cups of scarce alcohol and arousing mirth with a strain from “Ballad of the Market,” a folk song of Ji-sang’s native Gang’won Province—and speaking of hope at the news of the birth of a new life. Looking back at himself, helpless even with the birth of a son, Ji-sang resolves that he cannot go on living in this way, like a crawling worm, and dreams of once again attempting to escape along with U-seok. Meanwhile, U-seok encounters Geum-hwa, a Korean woman at a brothel on the island, while taking the air by the sea. Both of them have been forcibly brought here. Having undergone all manner of hardship amidst contempt and scorn, Geum-hwa recognizes U-seok’s unswerving mind and comes to love him, who respects her wholly as a dignified human being. Having braced himself so as not to be defeated by forced labor and exploitation all this time, U-seok shares with Geum-hwa his innermost thoughts about what living in a trulyhuman way is: “For someone to live as a human should, it’s something that can’t be done alone. From birth, a human shouldn’t live kneeling. That way, you can’t even live. So, you have to fight. But even when you fight, you have to fight together” (p. 192, vol. 1). Bombing, bombing, bombing: Koreans are discriminated against even as corpses At 11:02 AM on August 9, 1945, an atomic bomb falls on Nagasaki. It goes without saying that buildings and people on the ground level are destroyed without exception. Birds flying 2 km above ground zero fall dead, and fish in the water, too, float up dead. Granite boulders within 1 km from ground zero develop foams and bubbles on the surfaces because the quartz within them has boiled up. Unimaginable atrocities continue ceaselessly. Exposed to the bombing while at a shipyard, Ji-sang, too, is lifted up by the sheer shock and falls to the ground but is not seriously injured. The scene that he witnesses after going downtown is unspeakably horrendous. People with various burned and broken body parts wander among piles of corpses, rubbles of collapsed buildings, and heavy dust without even knowing where they are headed. Spread right before his eyes is Hell itself. The wounds of people who have gathered in search of shades quickly fester under the scorching August heat and begin to smell. Tremendous swarms of flies cling to those wounds. Those who do not have the strength even to brush the insects aside die in that state. Wounded Japanese who realize that Ji-sang is Korean try to chase him away with threats. Every moment that they are alive, even up to the very last moment, Koreans are discriminated against: “Discarded with injured bodies amidst discrimination and scorn by the Japanese, the Koreans died in the streets, under mounds of broken-down buildings, under the eaves of others’ houses, under bridges, and by rivers. It was also the remains of the Koreans’ corpses that stayed in that state to the end. Even in the middle of carrying the unrecognizably injured on stretchers to hospitals, the Japanese would dump these people in the streets once groans in Korean such as ‘Woe is me!’ ‘Mother!’ and ‘Water, please, water!’ slipped from the victims’ mouths” (p. 460, vol. 2).

Changbi Books > Adults, Changbi Books > Adults > Fiction
The Chandelier

‘The Chandelier’ is the first short-stories collection written by Kim Ryeo-ryeong, author of bestseller ‘Wandeuk’ and ‘Elegant Lies.’ The title of this volume, “The Chandelier,” reflects the meaning that, like a radially shaped chandelier where many bulbs together emit light, the variegated light of life gathers to form a single world. This collection includes seven stories that sparkle with disparate colors. While presenting adolescents as the central figures, these tales also star diverse supporting actors such as the youths’ families and friends, thus distinctly depicting the reality of our age. Added to all of this are Kim Ryeo-ryeong’s delightful verbal skill and ingenious narratives, which have established her as a unique storyteller and are even maturer than before. The first work in this collection, “Icicles” is a unique story consisting only of the characters’ dialogues. Through the depiction of teenage boys fooling around in an Internet café, it lightheartedly satirizes society’s skewed perspective and older generations’ prejudices toward these youths. While playing an online game together, the boys learn of a murder incident on the news and indulge in wild flights of fancy: “What if there’s a criminal but no criminal tool?” Thus bandying silly talk, the youths come to be accused as the culprits for these very jokes. There is total mayhem at the police station as the boys protest, their parents clamor, and even the youths’ teachers complain of the hardships of their jobs. Will they be able to leave the police station safely? Withholding explanations on the identities of the speakers and consisting solely of dialogues among numerous personages, this outstanding tale is noteworthy for its fast pace and formal experimentation. “Acquaintance” sharply depicting sexual violence toward female students leaves a weighty aftertaste. The protagonist’s unyielding will after facing up to what she has gone through has a resonance. Furthermore, the author’s capability of penetrating our daily lives with an eagle eye flourishes in ‘Dumplings’ that describes animatedly the livelihood of marketplace and ‘A Blue Kid’ that portrays a boy’s shining summer day.

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The Horizon School

The story of a boy’s dramatic adventures on a sea trip The Horizon School is a children’s novel that recounts the sea adventures that Jang Bog-o experiences after becoming a crew member on the Korina, a sailing ship. A 5th grader in primary school who lives in Wanjin, a port city on South Korea’s East Coast, the protagonist boards the Korina, thinking that he will sightsee the South Korean islands of Dokdo. Contrary to his expectations, however, the vessel comes to take part in a competition against Russian, Chinese, and Japanese ships in sailing around Dokdo and returning. In comparison with ships representing other countries, the Korina is small and old. Nevertheless, figures including the vessel’s captain Gang Cheol-seon, representative of the South Korean yachting team Gang Sak-gu, aged chief engineer, and Dutchman van Loom do their utmost to win the sailing contest. This is because of not only the pride of representing the nation but also the tremendous penalty that will be imposed on the defeated team. Dumbfounded at first, Bog-o, too, lends a hand in unfurling the heavy sails, scurries about running errands, and undergoes dangerous situations together, holding out against raging waves and rough winds in the pitch-dark night. The hero’s adventures come to a climax when he and the crew encounter a North Korean fishing boat distressed amidst a typhoon. The protagonist’s adventures at sea will be refreshing and moving to young readers who are trapped in their daily lives.

Changbi Books > Children > Fiction > Age 10-13, Changbi Books, Changbi Books > Children, Changbi Books > Children > Fiction
The Mouse Who Did a Great Thing

Plucky little mouse Sae-ang’s lovable adventures The youngest member of the mouse family, Sae-ang sets out after her elder sister and brother, only and inadvertently to leave a piece of dung in a stray cat’s food bowl. Faced with the feline, who seeks to teach the fearless rodent a lesson for having coveted his bowl of food, the protagonist boldly counters with wit instead so that the two creatures become buddies. Having thus befriended a cat and become the “Mouse Who Did a Great Thing,” the heroine humbles the brassy and boastful squirrel Da-ram and is presented with a spacious home by the mole Du-rung for having given her a splendid name. Equipped with natural wisdom and courage though neither beautiful nor strong, Sae-ang devises a new plan with her friends to help the cat, who has been driven out from the shelter because of a raccoon dog. Will their ploy succeed…?

Changbi Books > Children > Fiction > Age 8-10, Changbi Books, Changbi Books > Children, Changbi Books > Children > Fiction
Extremely Introverted

After we read works by Choi Jung-hwa, our tranquil daily life starts to shake slightly. Possessing sensitive sensibilities, the protagonists of her tales all are tormented because they are unable to govern their angst-ridden minds and to mitigate ruptured relationships. They are endlessly absorbed in a single idea that seems insignificant at times and go to extremes due to their inability to mend relational discord whose causes are mysterious at other times. The characters in this collection “are beings who slightly discomfort others due to their sense of inferiority, guilt, or persecution” (commentary by Gang Gyeong-seok): the mistress of a home who feels threatened by a woman who has arrived for an interview as a potential housekeeper (“Shoes”); a wife who, though she is ceaselessly anxious about her circumstances and so learns and indulges in new things, still has nightmares (“Organic Cotton Babe”); a woman who has come to disregard her husband who, perfection itself at one time, now wears dentures after losing six of his incisors in an accident (“False Teeth”); a man who is constantly worried that his contractual “marriage” to a woman will be uncovered by his friends and his “wife,” who seeks to avoid such situations with artful lies to deflect suspicions (“Hongro Apples”); a father who is deeply troubled by his pregnant teen daughter (“Tattoo”); a wife who struggles to read a book by Martin Heidegger originally purchased as an interior decoration (“The Blue Book”); and a timid man who, troubled by a neighbor living in cramped housing, devises all kinds of plans to change the latter’s home (“The House Is Getting Bigger”). Nevertheless, all such behavior provides glimpses of images that are somehow similar to us or aspects of ourselves that no one else knows. The author has an inherent gift for hearing and feeling what is sharp. The “sharp sounds of friction that echo as the heels of the shoes, all worn down, strike the tiles on the floor of the entryway” (“Shoes,” p. 9) arouse a sense of foreboding. The frustrations of the latter half of life and a lonely and wearisome future can be read from a former colleague who “choos[es] an outrageously overpriced gift set” (“Bald Head,” p. 189). Choi’s outstanding ability to capture with her acute senses the diverse stories behind a single object or incident and, going beyond them, even the angst of our times dominates her works and prompts us “not to sink into individual anxiety but to face the anxiety of the world” (reviewers’ commentary). The source of the title of this volume and an account of the relationship between a novelist who rents a country house and writes during the summer and Mi-ok, her landlord, “The Case of an Extremely Introverted Murder” is a work where timid and “introverted” figures’ psychology is maximized. In the process through

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The Guardian against the Blue Wolves

A work that will amply meet the high expectations for recipients of the Changbi Prize for Young Adult Fiction, which have begun to win hearts and minds beyond South Korea and around the globe, this volume addresses the historical fact of Japanese military sexual slavery (so-called “comfort women,” or girls and women from imperial Japan’s colonies and occupied areas who were mobilized, mostly through coercion and employment fraud, for sexual enslavement by the nation’s armed forces both before and during World War II) in depth yet also harbors literary tension and entertainment value that will engross teenagers. Presenting readers with the pleasure of looking into history through literature, the novel will be remembered as a refreshing achievement in South Korean literature for young adults. There are two settings to this work: Seoul today, in 2016, and Seoul in the 1940s, during the Japanese colonial era (1910-45). With its tight structure that travels between the present and the past, the novel will present readers with a gripping tension. A 16-year-old boy who lives with his mother, O Haet-gwi visits the home of a solitary senior citizen. Named Hyeon Su-in, the elderly lady at one time made her friends happy with her clear singing voice and dreamed of becoming the foremost singer in Korea but is now bedridden all the time, ill and weary. What might she have gone through? Seeing Miss Hyeon moan in pain whenever she recalls her past, Haet-gwi becomes curious about her secret. The boy subsequently discovers by chance a clock that winds backwards, only to be sucked into it and to find himself in Seoul of the 1940s. There, he encounters the teenaged Su-in and Haruko, the daughter of the Japanese family for whom the former works as a kitchen maid. The protagonist then is squarely faced with the issue of Japanese military sexual slavery, an indelible scar in Korean history: the nightmarish fate will soon befall Su-in herself. Will Haet-gwi’s desperate wish to save the girl across the boundary of time indeed come true?

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