A writer who likens writing to a boxing match, Park Min-gyu leaves behind his slacker past for his improved writing self.

Park Min-gyu debuted in 2003 and was the recipient of The Hankyoreh Literature Award and the Munhakdongne New Writer Award. His powerful imagination, understanding of the minority, and original narratives led him to become an iconic figure in 21st century Korean literature.

He was recently chosen as the face of Korean literature in the 21st century in a poll of literary critics, and hailed as “spokesman for the trends of the 21st century,” and “challenging the lethargy of the young generation while seeking a new form for the novel.”

Kim: I’m pleased to meet you. You went to last November’s Guadalajara Book Fair in Mexico, didn’t you? Did you buy a lot of Mexican wrestling masks? I recall that you were photographed with a wrestler mask for the cover of your short story collection Double. I’m asking because that image made such an impression on me.

Park: I didn’t buy many because before that, I’d already purchased a lot through the Internet. Normally, I watch Mexican wrestling through UCC channels, but since I was able to watch Lucha Libre in real life, it was great. The photograph for Double was taken with me wearing the wrestling masks of El Santo and Blue Demon, two wrestlers I like a lot. I thought it would be fun.

Kim: When I read your books, I think of Paul Lafargue’s book The Right to be Lazy. Of course I’m not saying that you’re lazy; since 2003 when you debuted, you’ve diligently published four novels and two story collections. I feel your works contain unusual reflections on laziness and acts as a safeguard for it.

Park: I was born in 1969 and spent my childhood in Korea while the country was a developing nation racing towards economic growth. I grew up in an environment that pressured you to be industrious and move with incredible speed. Maybe our generation wasn’t able to appear lazy, or just couldn’t be lazy. But within that environment, I managed to grow up lazily. I was constantly lagging behind. I was incredibly happy…because I was lazy. (laughs)

Kim: Perhaps your reflections on laziness is in consideration of and connected to those who haven’t been able to keep up with the pace that society demands. But if you’ve been lazy since childhood, you must have struggled fiercely at school.

Park: School… It was difficult. School is where extreme competition is encouraged, the mediocre life is emphasized, and a place where you are warned by being told a straggler’s life means to be defeated. There’s been many times when I hated it so much I just wanted to disappear. If there’s an empty seat in the classroom the teacher would know, so I would move a desk and chair into the storage room and leave. Since I wasn’t studying, I hung out all day long.

Kim: I’m guessing you listened to a lot of rock music at the time. Didn’t you once form a band and even have a concert?

Park: The band was just a hobby. I like the bands that were playing around the time of the Woodstock Festival in 1969. These days I’m listening to a lot of classic blues music, like Blind Willie Johnson.

Critic Kim Dongshik and novelist Park Min-gyu

Kim: I remember that a guitarist was an important character in the short story “The Yogurt-Selling Woman.” When did you start becoming interested in writing?

Park: In high school I was really interested in the arts. I didn’t need formal lessons like music or art classes, but since I was focused on the actual practice of art more than grades I ended up entering a creative writing program.

Kim: So the appetite for the arts became an entrance into writing.

Park: That’s right. At college I rarely showed up for classes. I majored in poetry so I rarely took classes on the novel. There wasn’t any actual reason I had to major in poetry. Watching the upperclassmen at college, I noticed that poetry classes had less homework compared to the fiction ones. I thought it’d be easy, so I did poetry. Even then my main focus was having a good time.

Kim: That sounds like you. (laughs) It seems to me that feeling pleasure and freedom while amusing yourself is an important aspect of art. Throughout you’ve produced a distinctive body of work. In much of your work, the paragraph suddenly shifts mid-sentence into another paragraph, and in Ping-pong the woman’s dialogue was printed in pink and the man’s, blue. In Pavane for a Dead Princess you included the CD meant to be its background music. Your sense of the role of media seems inimical.

Park: Personally, I like the old-fashioned thick book. I wanted to make Double thicker but I was told that if it was too thick people wouldn’t read it, so it was published in its present skinnier form. And how I change the line or paragraph in the middle of a sentence, and that kind of thing, I do it just because I like it that way. At first I actually thought that was the way it was done. Since I had majored in poetry, I figured that prose also had spaces between the lines. I didn’t know the grammar of the novel, I wasn’t educated about it. So there are reasons like that too.

Kim: It sounds like you were able to be free because you didn’t know the conventions of the novel.

Park: Until I published Castella I didn’t know about the third person point of view. I just wrote everything in first person. If you don’t know something you’re supposed to be ashamed about it, but even when I don’t know something I don’t have a complex about it.

1. Sammi Superstars’ Last Fan Club

Park Min-gyu, Hankyoreh Publishing Co.

2003, 304p, ISBN 9788984311046

2. Castella

Park Min-gyu, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp.

2005, 336p, ISBN 9788982819926

3. Legends of the World’s Heroes

Park Min-gyu, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp.

2003, 187p, ISBN 9788982816796

Kim: The early work such as Legends of the World’s Heroes or Sammi Superstars’ Last Fan Club reveals a cynical, critical attitude toward heroic characters. In contrast, short stories such as “Nearby” and “Napping,” there’s a focus on the lives of the powerless and sick elderly. I’m wondering now if words like ‘hero’ and ‘the elderly’ are key to understanding your work.

Park: I focused on heroic characters because I think Korea’s complex about being on the margins has extended to a collective envy of the hero. Korea has always been a peripheral, weakercountry since it’s never really had true power. Basically, I think power is evil. Even today the laws of the jungle still dominate the world. When I look back, I can see that at times when I had power I also caused harm to others around me. My life’s goal—can I call it that? is to grow into an old, powerless man. I want to grow old like a plant, not harming anyone. When you write you discover the original (reality) you and the other you. The ‘I’ in reality enjoys eating meat and playing survival games as a hobby. That person is the ‘I’ who hits someone while playing paintball and feels pleasure.

But while writing, I discover a totally different person from the one above. That’s why I learn so much while writing. During the writing process I come to understand this other better person, and I think the person I am in reality improves because of it. I just wanted to write back then so I started writing novels, and I didn’t believe a person could become better by reading at all. But as I kept writing I realized that even a guy like me could change. These days I humbly accept the ‘writing me.’

Kim: As you see yourself change through the process of writing, you must also sense that the world we live in is also able to change a little.

Park: It’s amazing. I feel letters aren’t something that people made but something that’s always been there. People just used the letters that were already there. It’s like there’s something to that script that cause good stories to emerge. And in the letters there’s something in them that causes the writing to endlessly continue.

Kim: An introspective relationship seems to form between the writing of novels and violence in your work.

Park: Since I was young I went to boxing matches with my father. I liked the attacks and the destruction, and enjoyed the display of power. But as I began writing fiction, the ratio between violence and the elderly (plant-like) stuff of life changed to 49:51. A change occurred. In that moment the people without power who’d get hit, robbed, and pushed down seemed so pitiful and their situation, touching. I got to understanding compassion for the powerless.

Kim: Then it seems wrong to view wrestling or the martial arts merely as a cultural interest or hobby. There seems to be a connection to your self-image in the writing of your novels.

Park: As I mentioned earlier, I don’t know much about novel writing techniques. Actually the inspiration I get from matches I’ve watched have given me many hints. At first you rush wildly at the other, but as time passes you learn how to step and even rest while you clinch the opponent. I think writing a novel resembles this aspect of martial arts, which is why I glean a lot from watching boxing and martial arts matches. The important point is I don’t have much knowledge about the martial arts, but the person standing and fighting in the ring is me. Can I say the feeling of running in a ring is like writing? I’m the kind who writes instinctually, with energy.

4. Double

Park Min-gyu, Changbi Publishing Co.

2010, 620p, ISBN 9788936435882

5. Pavane for a Dead Princess

Park Min-gyu, Wisdom House

2009, 420p, ISBN 9788959133918

6. Ping Pong

Park Min-gyu, Changbi Publishing Co.

2006, 258p, ISBN 9788936433550

Kim: So it’s not from theory or books that have been given the stamp of literature, but through the intense flow of martial arts or wrestling matches that you instinctually feel the literary, and read it, and capture it.

Park: Since I don’t know anything about literature that’s possible. But in the martial arts or wrestling there’s also an introduction, turn, and conclusion. For example, Mexican wrestling resembles a circus or a festival. American-style wrestling is a world away from a well-constructed narrative. The Mexican style of wrestling might be slack and poorly composed, but there are some very subtle aspects to it. That’s why UNESCO should designate it as part of the World Heritage tradition and protect it. (laughs)

Kim: The issue of living in a capitalistic world is embedded in many of your works. It’s one of the most important traits of your novels.

Park: You could say that the issue of living in a capitalistic world is my subject. I should think harder and seek an answer. It’s the basic question that people of my generation can ask. Looking back, South Korea wasn’t truly a capitalist society during the period of 1970-80. Though of course, soon after, it raced into becoming a capitalist society. My generation and I were the ones who lived in a fully developed capitalist society and will be the last generation to have complete memories of this.

Kim: There must be some moments when you felt that you were imprisoned by a life of capitalism. When was this?

Park: It was before I’d debuted, when I was in my early 30s. But one of those days I’d had the thought that ‘Money’s king.’ Before then, I’d lived a life that had nothing to do with making and saving money. I’d been infected with the capitalist virus, much like getting a cold, and this shocked me. I thought hard on this and ultimately handed in my resignation at work. This was when I’d already gotten married and just had a kid. This shock also played a large role in my sudden decision to begin writing.

Kim: Your novel Pavane for a Dead Princess takes issue with lookism in society. Lookism is the face of popular culture for capitalism. But why does lookism continue to persist? According to your novel, the envy and shame that the people discriminated against feel is what gives lookism its power. In order to destroy lookism, the novel suggests that instead of opposing it, one should point out how silly it is. You can call this Janus-like life’s strategy toward capitalism; I feel that this is a point of true reflection.

Park: That’s where self-introspection lies buried. I used to think that you could change the world but the world didn’t change at all. Now I see that those who wanted to change the world or those who didn’t had the same ambitions. The failure of the generation I belong to is that they knew determination, but they didn’t know how to be enlightened.

We were always determined. With our fists clenched, we were resolved. Let’s live a better life, let’s change the world, let’s battle, let’s win, and so on. There was no true awakening. Isn’t it the same structure that governs the conglomerate passing on stocks to the descendents and the middle-class parents that send their kids to after school cram schools all day long? (laughs)

Kim: It isn’t a lagging behind caused by external forces but a lagging behind that one voluntarily chooses that often appears in your work. It’s an asymmetrical life’s strategy to coping with a capitalist system.

Park: The form has changed, but choosing to lag behind was around long ago. Personally, I think voluntarily choosing to straggle is a happy road. Suicide is the opposite. I don’t think falling behind is anything to be afraid of, or something to feel defeated by, and most of all, falling behind is definitely no reason to kill yourself.

Above all, because the work force is important to a capitalist society, the system isn’t going to just leave the slackers alone. The exploited might feel fear, but the ones exploiting feel fear too, so there’s no reason to be afraid.

Kim: Personally, I liked “Nearby” from the collection Double best. We live to reach some goal, but the story ultimately implies that we can only get near it. The word ‘nearby’ makes me rethink the meaning of the blank space inherent in it. How are you spending your time these days?

Park: I’m in the middle of writing another novel so I basically just write. When I go to my writing studio I read and write, and when I return home I spend time with the family. My studio’s in Chuncheon, where I’ll spend two to three weeks out of a month. I usually write at night. I like looking up at the sky. If I drive out a little bit, I can see the stars well.

Kim: It sounds like we’ll be getting a new novel from you soon. Thank you for your time and your thoughtful responses.

By Kim Dongshik