While apocalyptic literature has inspired the imaginations of writers since antiquity, there has perhaps never been a time more urgent than now to examine humanity’s ethical and moral response when faced with disaster. Korean writers too are exploring the prospect of hope and resistance when the world seems to be falling apart.

In recent years as natural and social disasters have become more frequent and more severe, people are increasingly faced with moments where they must deal with and overcome catastrophe. The word “disaster” usually refers to unfortunate accidents or tragic incidents caused by the forces of nature. Here we can see that disasters are something beyond human capacity, unstoppable and uncontrollable. Over the years Korean literature has sharply addressed the meaning of such disasters from a myriad of different angles. While in poetry disaster has tended to be something symbolic, something that implies a certain network of meaning, in prose fiction it has been much more specific.

One of earliest and best-known examples of apocalyptic literature is Albert Camus’ The Plague, which portrays the tenacious volition of humans, refusing to give up hope even in the most desperate times. Camus stresses that when faced with brutal reality, not losing hope is a genuine form of resistance for those who must deal with the irrationality of the world. Rather than a depiction of the process of eradicating an infectious disease, the true meaning of this literary work comes from the dignity and companionship among people working as a group, found in the process of fighting against the symbolic evil of the “plague.” This compassion between people and their resistance to evil can be seen as the very essence of what Camus pursued in his literature. However, in Korean literature there is an unusual and interesting tendency to look for the causes of disaster—not because of an event or a calamity—but rather, because of the inner desires of humans. In this respect the imagination of disaster shown in Korean literature is completely different from novels that merely seek to overcome a catastrophe. Korean writers are creating narratives that chart the process of desire as it destroys any sense of humanity.

First let’s take a closer look at poetry. As a poem composed during the Japanese colonial period, Yi Sang’s “Crow’s-Eye View” records this era of terror in the movement of children running through the streets. The running and terror are themselves emblematic of the disaster of this era. Choi Seung-Ho’s “A Village” creates the situation whereby a landslide destroys the houses in a valley and a forest fire spreads towards the village below. The poem presents the process by which, in the face of unexpected disaster, the people of a village, caught up in anxiety and fear, cover their bodies with thorns like hedgehogs and reject all communication. Ko Un’s “ChaRyeong Mountain Range” expresses the will to stand up to the catastrophes of history with the strength of truth; in this instance, however, the disaster that we need to prevent is not something brought about by nature but rather the recurring violence that repeats throughout history.

In Moon Chung-hee’s “Love Song for Hangyeryeong Ridge” we hear the voice of a poet who in the imaginary circumstances of disaster dreams of romance. She expresses paradoxically how, in the midst of “dazzling isolation” she longs to be with her love. In Kim Yideum’s “Curtain” we find the voice of a speaker appealing to love and resolving to love in the midst of the limits of existence. The words of the last line “I love you and I love this amazing disaster,” tell of how, rather than being something caused by the forces of nature, disaster is the stuff of existential suffering, of that which surrounds us all. Within such poetic imagination disaster is at times expressed as unrest and terror, but also shifts to be something characterized by intense love.

Next let’s move our focus to fiction. Kim Junghyuk’s Zombies and Kang Young-sook’s Rina are examples that vividly depict urban apocalypse, showing the reader that urban life itself is a disaster. Zombies is a novel that presents an ontological portrait of the powerlessness and sorrow of humanity in the midst of a series of disasters which befall the highly individual characters one after another like dominoes. With people who take joy in killing zombies, and others who oppose them and try to save the zombies, the novel reveals how bizarre and twisted human life really is. In this novel such pathological levels of desire are expressed through the unfamiliar subject matter of the zombie. Another example is Rina, the story of a young woman who crosses the border at age sixteen and wanders in an unfamiliar country. Portraying the “Rinas” of this world, those who cross borders to escape, the novel creates a record, realistic in its abstraction, of the lives of refugees. Due to war, famine, and poverty, refugees risk their lives to cross borders. They subsist by toiling at the most lowly labor and are banished and confined. Taking as the main character a human who has fled their homeland and become in a way anti-national, Kang reveals that the concepts of family and nation can actually become the epicenter of catastrophe. This work then, is a record of the disasters and struggles surrounding nations and borders that are occurring across the globe right now.

Pyun Hye Young’s Ashes and Red is the story of a man who, as a respected employee of a pharmaceutical company, is sent on a work assignment overseas and while there is suspected of killing his wife. After being pursued by the authorities he ends up working as a temporary quarantine warden whose job is to catch rats. In the midst of a grotesque imagination, with tightly packed sentences, Pyun relentlessly shows us how humans lose any sense of sanctity in the face of apocalypse, and also how they fall into the most severe loneliness. In imaginary circumstances, Ashes and Red delves into the pathology of contemporary society.

Jeong You Jeong’s novel 28 tells the story of twenty-eight days in a city called “Hwayang.” Through a drama of extremes about the desires of all living things, Jeong creates a frighteningly vivid and realistic fantasy. While skillfully weaving between the five protagonists, she conjures up the same scale and sense of speed as José Saramago’s Blindness.

Disaster in the imagination becomes a place in which we now live, a kind of hell, as found in Ha Seong-nan’s novel A, and Steel by Kim Soom. Further examples include Kim Ae-ran’s short story “Submerged Goliath” in which an entire city lies underwater due to a flood and Kim Kyung-uk’s short story “Boys Don’t Grow Old,” where a city covered with snow turns to ruins. Ha Seongnan’s A tells the story of how—because of the means chosen for a mass suicide undertaken by a group of cult followers—the people of a nearby village become unable to breathe. And Kim Soom’s Steel shows a state of grotesque desire gone mad when a steelworks opens in a village, and the residents, in order to express their worship of the metal, replace their teeth with steel dentures. Rather than focusing strictly on natural disasters, this kind of imagination deliberately throws into relief the kinds of calamity that ferment out of human desire. In the end, it is that unchecked desire that creates disaster.

We live in a world where some kind of disaster or catastrophe is occurring at all times. From natural disasters to man-made catastrophes, when it comes to the various dangers that surround us, Korean literature shows how humanity can react and respond. And in Korean literature we can also glimpse the ethical causes for collapse and degradation in the midst of catastrophe. Therefore, as the era of disaster approaches on every front, it is time to pay close attention to the universality shown in Korean literature. 

by Yoo Sungho
Literary Critic
Professor of Korean Literature, Hanyang University