Shin Hyoung-cheol: “The Needle,” (2000) your debut work, is still talked about today and cited as your major work. Is it because of the intensity of the first encounter, or is it because it's your best work in reality?

Chun Woon-young: It could mean that “The Needle” really is a good piece of writing, or it could mean that in the 10 years since I wrote it, I haven’t been able to write anything that surpasses it. Either way, it’s like a fetter to me. What had built up inside me for 30 years came forth for the first time in the form of a story, so it must’ve had that much impact. And it naturally must have made a strong impression because it deals with a subject matter and theme rarely found in Korean literature. There has been enormous pressure from both inside and out to write something even more intense and original, but I’ve freed myself from that pressure. The intensity of the first encounter can never be relived. But you can show evolution and change over a period of time. My best work is nothing other than my best efforts to write what’s built up inside me.

Shin: Since the publication of “The Needle,” there have been imitations of your work, and critics have focused their attention on that. Perhaps “The Needle” has been able to meet the demands of the times. Did you write it with an awareness of what was lacking in Korean literature, or with an innate need to write?

Chun: I didn’t, of course, write it with a strategic decision regarding the current state of Korean literature. I’ve always thought that writing a novel means writing something my body has to do. It’s possible, though, that a thirst for what I didn’t see in Korean literature had built up inside my body.

Shin: Are there writers who had a decisive effect on you building up your “body as a writer?”

Chun: I liked Song Sok-ze and Kim So-jin, probably because they had completely different “bodies” from mine. Oh Jung-hee, the novelist, and Choi Seung-ja, the poet, were writers who entered my body and had a direct impact on me.

Shin: Your most recent work is the novel Ginger. It’s a novel that delves into the essence of evil, based on the true-life figure of Yi Geun-an, a notorious torturer during the 1980s when Korea was in the heat of the democratization movement. The subject matter must have provoked a great response.

Chun: A middle-aged man expressed violent repulsion towards this novel at a gathering with readers. His point was that a novel dealing with historical facts must assume responsibility, but this novel was irresponsible because it didn’t punish the wicked. I could only say to him that a novel isn’t a pamphlet. And then a girl raised her hand and said that she didn’t know very much about historical facts but cried while reading the book because she felt sorry for the daughter of the torturer. What she said was very encouraging for me. One of my aims in writing this novel was to see what kind of an effect the evils of an age has on the next generation, and I felt that my goal had been realized.

There was also a reader who contacted me after reading an interview with Yi Geun-an that was conducted after the novel was published. The reader didn’t know whether or not Yi had read the novel, but the logic with which Yi defended his act was very similar to the logic described in the novel. Writing the novel was a painful process for me; I felt as if I myself had become a torturer. But I believe that my efforts to analyze the mechanism of self-justification of evil haven’t been in vain.

Novelist Chun Woon-young and literary critic Shin Hyoung-cheol

Shin: If Ginger is a story about a father, the stories in your fourth collection of short stories, As You Know, Mother, are about mothers. Was “mother” a keyword you had in mind from the beginning, or did you notice it while putting the collection together?

Chun: Something I personally gained from writing Ginger was that I could put an end to my agony over my father. I could stop resenting him. I came to realize again that writing a novel helps the writer understand who she is. As You Know, Mother, is a collection of short stories I wrote while getting ready to write Ginger, and ones I wrote after writing it. It shows how my interest has moved on from father to mother. Watching those around me, I’ve come to the conclusion that someone with a bad father can overcome the condition, but someone with a bad mother will have difficulty doing so. I believe that a good mother is a source of strength that enables us to deal with the many problems we encounter in life. But I don’t want to call that source maternal instinct, since that term is tainted with too much ideology. I had bad mothers appear in this collection in order to allow reflection, paradoxically, on the power of a good mother.

Shin: They could be read as stories that inspire you to go beyond either romanticizing or dismantling the idea of maternal instinct and seek a third path. The collection has a lot more to say aside from the subject of mothers. There are a number of passages in the book that appear to be the fruit of a crisis the author herself experienced, physical or existential; a crisis a woman writer has felt, passing through the age of 40. As noted aptly by Cho Yeon-jung, the critic who wrote the commentary on this book, the author’s will to take a transparent look into herself can be felt in the stories.

Chun: You could see it in the same context as the pressure I felt to write a story that surpassed “The Needle,” and the sense of crisis I felt, thinking that I couldn’t. My body was no longer young, but I pretended it was, dreaming of a young body. I wanted to insist that my body was still fresh. There are too many walls a woman writer faces in Korean society, living alone at age 40. That’s how I came to a crisis point. Looking back on my stories, I found the root of my crisis. The author and her work always go together. They’re one, like Siamese twins. To write something good, I had to know my inner self. I looked at myself until I became transparent. I was ashamed but thought I shouldn’t hide anything. Standing naked without deceit, that’s what was required of me in order to obtain a new body.

Shin: I can’t prove it here in detail, but you seem to have started out by dissecting humans that seem to be agents of desire and impulse, then began to have an interest in others around you; now you seem to have taken on the literary challenge of becoming aware of yourself. The target has changed from humankind to others to self. What’s interesting is that this seems to go against the general flow. Don’t most people start out by being interested in themselves, then others, and then humans in general?

Chun: I’m not sure why. I can’t tell you the exact reason, but I myself have sensed such a process of change. If I must put my finger on a reason, I think it has something to do with how my attitude regarding novels, or in other words, what I believe novels can accomplish, has changed.

Shin: Let me put it in a different way, then. How has your attitude about novels changed in the 10 or so years that you’ve been writing? Do you have a different answer now to the question of what a novel is?

Chun: It could be that my attitude about life has changed. I used to think that I was distinct from the world surrounding me. I believed that the world was swarming with desire, that it was aggressive and dangerous and that’s why I was wounded, that my wounds would heal only if the world changed, that my novels could change the world. But gradually, my thoughts changed. I realized that I was in the world, and the world was in me. I came to think that I was a little cell making up the world, so if I knew myself, I’d know the world, and if I changed, the world, too, would change, and that in my novels “my thoughts changed” would make this happen. My earlier attitude was much more selfish, self-centered, full of self-love. If my earlier works were a means of self defense, my recent works are a means of embracing others. So the substance of my novels has moved from the outside to the inside, and my attitude about novels has moved from the inside to the outside.

Shin: Of all the gifts writing requires, what is it that you have, and what is it that you want to take from other writers?

Chun: I think my attitude regarding novels is somewhat rigid. You could say that I’m obsessed with cutting things down as much as possible to make a novel as exquisite as possible. So I envy those who are relaxed enough to play around with their novels. I write only what I know. I can’t write what I don’t know. So it takes me a long time to collect material in order to learn something. I think one of the gifts I do have is that I can open myself up to people when I’m writing or preparing to write. People often ask me how I’m so good at gathering materials, and I tell them I just do what I’ve always done. I’ve always had a strong desire to go up to those who are different from me and to understand and identify with them. I’ve always hung around working class men ever since I was little, so that may have helped me approach others without fear and mingle well, and draw out their stories.

by Shin Hyoung-cheol

1. As You Know, Mother

Chun Woon-young, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd.

2013, 278p, ISBN 9788932024158

2. The Needle

Chun Woon-young, Changbi Publishers, Inc.

2001, 258p, ISBN 9788936436612

3. Ginger

Chun Woon-young, Changbi Publishers, Inc.

2011, 282p, ISBN 9788936433819

Shin: To add to that, I think one of your strongest points is your ability to push ahead with artificial, unnatural situations in your novels, and make readers accept them in the end.

Chun: Paradoxically, reality is more artificial and unnatural than fiction. There’s a story in this collection about two little girls, sisters, who pull out the eyeball of the woman next door. It’s a true story. Novels reveal how certain things that happen in the world, which seem artificial and unnatural, move with a certain internal logic. I’m not saying that what has internal logic is necessarily logical. Some people say that my novels are grotesque, but grotesque doesn’t just mean strange or bizarre. The most grotesque is the most realistic. Let’s just say that I aim for the most realistic through the most grotesque, equipped with internal logic.

Shin: Who are some of the contemporary foreign authors you’re interested in? From your answer, readers abroad may be able to guess what kind of an author you are.

Chun: Can I answer that by talking about a recent film I saw? It was Jacques Audiard’s “Rust and Bone.” The question of the body has long been my interest. This film succeeded in talking about the question of the body through the body. It shows how a body in excess and a body in deficiency become aware of each other and adjust themselves to become complete. What results is a family. I think it’s a great film. Truman Capote and James Salter are among the authors I’m interested in.

Shin: You’ve published four collections of short stories. If you had to choose just five stories to be published abroad, which would they be?

Chun: First, “The Needle.” It’s my debut piece, and considered one of my most significant works. “The Corner” is something I wrote to meet the request for a biographical novel, so I think it can help readers understand me better as an author. “I’ll Take You,” “Myoungrang,” and “As You Know, Mother,” are stories that depict the maternal instinct in the most Korean sense, but at the same time, deal with universal human emotions, so I think readers abroad can also identify with them.