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Weather the Daily Squalor: River No Return by Kim Hoon scrap

by Lee Kyungjaego link October 20, 2014

Author Bio 작가 소개

김훈

Kim Hoon

Kim Hoon was born in 1948. His extensive journalism career started in 1973 at The Hankook Ilbo and stretched through the years at The Sisa Press, The Kookmin Ilbo, and The Hankyoreh. He made his literary debut well past the age of 40, but has received numerous awards since: the Dongin Literary Award in 2001 for his novel Song of the Sword; the Yi Sang Literary Award in 2004 for his short story “Cremation”; the Hwang Sun-won Literary Award in 2005 for his short story “My Sister’s Menopause”; and the Daesan Literary Award in 2007 for his novel Fortress on Mt. Namhan.

Kim Hoon is the bestselling author of the historical trilogy Song of the Sword, Song of Strings, and Fortress on Mt. Namhan. His latest novel, River No Return, paints a candid portrait of the human world in all its squalor, here and now. As the title River No Return (Don’t Cross the River, My Love) indicates, Kim Hoon’s message is to stick it out in the bad old world, and not try to leave it. Jang Cheol-su is a character who does just that. Jang lives in a world of news articles and endless facts.At the same time Hue’s world is made up entirely of brief adverbs after she comes to the shores of Hae-mang as a bride from Vietnam. Jang’s sense of morality is so strong he sells one of his kidneys for Hue. Moon Jeong-su, obsessed with facts, No Mok-hee, who listens to the pillow talk of the world of facts that will never be written into articles, and the orthodox humanist Taiwei, who seems to be the author’s alter ego, are the characters placed alongside Jang Cheol-su.

The tools Kim Hoon uses to examine humanity are not glasses or a telescope, but rather a magnifying glass or a microscope. To the author, humanity and society can be broken down into an infinite number of factors. Just as looking at a human being through a magnifying glass or a microscope will only yield dead skin cells or a fuzz of hair, the author regards anything else in life besides raw instinct to be false. The consistent comparison of the Vietnamese Hue to an animal is also an example of naturalization, the struggle for survival being divorced from its social context. In the same vein, language may also be a mere ritual far removed from the truth, and just another form of falsehood. In the same way, Moon Jeong-su can never write up any of the stories he goes to cover in Hae-mang. With River No Return, Kim Hoon is saying that it is our lives here and now that are our hope, and not some concept, ideology, or historical saga. 

Writer 필자 소개

Lee Kyungjae

Lee Kyungjae

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