Essays

All the Best Hurt to Me

Then, I didn’t know my own light So I could  Then, I saw the forest and thought forest I saw the sea and held the waves dear Free to hurt as much as could be So I could  For me there was a time I could believe all I could see  I’m taking a shower and a sentence comes to me. Nothing impressive or fancy, just an ordinary sentence. The sentence is, “Now my day has begun.” The moment that sentence starts, a voice arises within me. A speaker.  I get out of the shower and drink a glass of water as I think. Who does that voice belong to? What life are they living? What is “my day,” and why, now, how has it “begun”? I think it over slowly. I write the sentence on a Post-it note and stick it to my computer monitor. Every time I look at it, I let my imagination grow a little bigger.  I never rush into a poem. Sometimes I think about a single poem for a year or more. There are Post-it notes all over my monitor. They don’t all grow into poems, so sometimes I stop looking at one for a while. But someday, some of them might become poems. Because my poetry isn’t over yet. There isn’t any big reason why I can’t rush into a poem. This is where it starts to get too conceptual, but to put it a bit nebulously, I think of a sentence as something like a seed. You can’t pick it the moment you’ve planted it. It feels like you have to let the thought ripen and grow until it’s outside your control. Of course, it’s all about the feeling, so some thoughts quickly grow into poems, while others don’t work out at all, or take a long time. I’m kind of old-fashioned and stuck in my ways in that respect. But it’s not easy to fix, because I don’t know any other way. Not that I’ve thought much about fixing it. When poetry becomes a struggle, sometimes I think there’s something wrong with my craft, and I wonder how other poets do it. But you can’t just ask another poet how to write poetry. Even if you ask, all you get in response is a laugh.  Now my day has begun.  A single line, cleared away on either side. The time spent looking at a single line, firming up the ground for an idea as it grows thick and lush, is one of the most exhausting but also exciting parts of writing poetry. If I were a farmer, it would be the time spent waiting after scattering the seed. Can this thinking and waiting be considered part of the writer’s labor? Not in the case of the farmer, but the writer must always embody two separate aspects. I can’t just be the farmer; I also have to be the seed in the soil, pushing up a sprout. Even an unsprouted seed is a world within itself, an infinitely stirring window. The preheating of thought is an essential moment to poetry. Which is why I want to claim even the time I spend rolling around in bed doing nothing as my labor time.  The books, shows, movies, and music that I come into contact with in my everyday life have an outsized influence on the brainstorming process. At the idea stage, even happenstance encounters like these can have an effect. This is something I enjoy—watching the chemical reaction within me as the many books I’m reading blend together. There is a strange synergy in reading books from completely different fields at the same time. Drawn into those operations, my sentences and the ideas they catalyze come to a boil. Sometimes, though unfortunately not always, a spark flies, and I can leap to some point beyond myself. That’s the joy of writing poetry.  Some misunderstandings are so sweet I can’t bring myself to quit  I wish you would cry looking at me From behind bended knee Then I want to burst into laughter  I want to become a tangled mess  If you were standing on a cliff, I’d push you off. Once I start writing, I can write. I write, and I read, and I write again. I write until I finally think, that’s enough. But when is enough? Of course, it’s all about the feeling, so I could never say exactly, but I often think I want to go on forever, until I can’t write another word—to the ends of language. I want it to take me somewhere I could never go. Then maybe it would feel like I could go on living. In this tiresome world, what frees me from this body and sends me soaring is literature. Not always, but while I’m writing, for one second at a time, those moments come to me. Moments when everything falls into place so naturally and inevitably. I love that momentary compatibility.  When there are deadlines to meet, I can’t always work this way. While I put all the strength I have into one poem, I’m also writing other poems little by little, whenever I have a free second. Poems that rely on a particular scene, or poems that somehow fall into place at the most precarious moment—those are the ones that are good to write that way. Sometimes a poem just flows out of me without putting much time into it at all.  If I put an apple and a revolving door down on the page together, the tension between the two objects can make the poem poetic. What makes the poem into poetry isn’t the apple and revolving door, but the empty space between them. To adjust that empty space, to play at making it wider or narrower, is one of the most interesting parts of my job. No matter how much you do it, it’s always new. I’d almost dare to say that this is where poetry’s beauty comes from. It’s a kind of experiment—calculating the appropriate distance between words and observing the reaction that emerges between their magnetic fields.  There are no bad people and no good people Some are more bad and some are less bad Some are more good and some are less good  Some may be worse and better at once  The poet, on two endlessly diverging paths, Walks both at one time  Between flows a river It flows and flows  Could all its waters ever be told? How far does it stretch on? Now I write a draft. I keep on writing for as long as I can, until I’m completely drained. My drafts are usually long. Very long. It’s difficult to control a long poem. It’s hard to see it all at once. Once I have a draft, the first thing I do is erase. Thoughts can’t help but follow the tight weave of cause and effect. To create empty space requires adjustments after the fact. When I wrote A Possible World, I delved deeply into this, working with the precision of an entomologist preparing a specimen. I wanted everything to be spoken through the image, so I poured huge amounts of time into heightening image clarity. I was afraid that if the speaker gave expression to anything directly, the poem would move too much through affect. Before I debuted, I was often told that my poetry was too sentimental. That phrase was a chain around my ankle. I worried over how to become drier. It felt as if, when I was hurting, I should never say it hurt. If I cried, I shouldn’t mention tears. I kept hearing the voice of someone telling me that’s not poetry, that’s a diary. They were right, but also they were wrong.  Poetry is made in revision. This is not an exaggeration. Without revision, poetry is nothing more than gathered fragments of image and thought. After my first collection, when I was writing Feeling Helped, I wanted to try something different. I wanted to cough up the voice I’d been pressing down. I was sick of always speaking through the stopover of the image. It felt like the voice of the weak, like I was always hiding behind images. The idea that some things are ineffable felt like a worldview centered on the wound. As if we must hide our wounds and be ashamed of them. I wanted to lay it all bare. I wanted to throw off the cardigan always draped over the scars and reveal the bare skin to the sun. I suppose that’s why Feeling Helped became a collection so full of direct voices.  It’s also why that collection is so loud. I like it for being loud. Sometimes it feels good to put up with a little commotion.  If I say bird, I hope you’ll hear bird If I say red, I hope you’ll think of red,  Not pull from bird wings, glide, soar Not make from red blood, pathos, heat  In bird’s place, bird In red’s place, red Once I’ve erased everything I can erase, I rearrange. I arrange each word and sentence so that they may find their place, in the appropriate spot. Of course, this too I do by feeling. I’ll want to put the knife in the kitchen and the soap in the bathroom. Whenever that happens, I wander around, trying out this place or that—the knife in the vestibule, the soap on the railing. I’m not doing this any which way, but according to some rule or standard that’s personal to me. I’ve never tried to put it into language, but if I did, it might go something like this.  In the first place, it’s similar to installation art. It’s good to move according to some rule, but not one easily ascertainable or obvious to the eye. The standard for the whole flow is whether something feels natural or not. Even the unnatural is ultimately based on the natural. Anything wholly unnatural feels artificial. Some abruption must once in a while break in among the naturalnesses to appear fresh, to draw the eye. Each thing must be distant enough for its presence and form to shine. Each piece of language, too, needs its own space. Sometimes I intentionally set things to disarray by tacking on an overlapping piece of language. In that case, I’m putting forth not the individual word but the effect given by the intersection of these language bundles. Maybe this could be seen as part of my desperate fondness for repetition. The repeated word or phrase attains inevitability through its repetition, so there must be a reason for its selection, but more than the word itself, it’s the effect of the repetition that I’m after.  I like heavy metal. Sometimes I feel it’s colder and closer to silence than more peaceful, calming music. When I want to create an exceptionally quiet moment within a poem, it feels more like trying to make the poem so loud it might explode. In simple terms, a poem traverses three paths—what I meant to write, what I did write, and what others read. In the past, I think many of my poems were trying to bring what the reader read as close as possible to what I intended to write. Not anymore. I enjoy the gap between what I meant to write and what I actually wrote. The rift between the planned and the actual is captivating, and I feel lucky to watch the transformation. I also try hard not to think about what will be conveyed to someone else. If I start considering what others might expect of me, I feel like I should write to meet those expectations. That desire seems like poison to poetry, so it scares me. I always want to write like a total punk, any way I very well please. I tell myself people are going to read it however they want, and I practice letting go of my jitters.  Poets are always doubting the reader. We want everything to come through intact. We want to convey feelings uninjured. We worry the reader won’t understand the poem, and we find ourselves explaining. Like drunk people repeating ourselves ad nauseum. It’s because we’re desperate to be understood. But if you get like that, people don’t listen. They click their tongues and think, that’s the same thing they said last time they were drunk. That’s why it’s better to either put all your faith in the reader or imagine no one will read your poems at all.  I think the best way is to imagine someone very close to you reading the poem. If no one comes to mind, it’s better to be chill about it and think that anyone could read it, however they want, or not at all. But this isn’t really chill. It’s try-hard. It’s fake chill. Still, it’s better to try. If you let yourself get wrapped up in the outside, you lose yourself. You become empty, a mere reaction to the demands and expectations of others. That’s never a good look. People usually react in one of two ways when they read a poem they can’t understand. It’s either the difficult work of a genius, or just a bad poem. This is because they’re constantly looking for meaning. But what’s interesting is that some people locate the problem within, while others find it without. Sometimes, when I don’t get a poem, I start to worry. Am I too old? What if I just don’t get it anymore? Then I get angry. It feels like the poem is a mirror. This makes me think that poetry belongs to the realm of intuition, not understanding. That trying so hard to understand is the tragedy of being human. Or the blessing.  Since the day the tree sprouted from my head  Have I been soil?  Ten millennia passed stewing stone  Swallowing stone  Was it seed? In the mirror, sweet bell pepper  Infinite sweet bell pepper  After erasing and erasing, arranging and rearranging, I start to fill out the poem. I shore up anything that feels like it’s missing something. Sometimes, parts I erased make a comeback. It makes me wonder why I erased them in the first place, but there are light years of difference between a final product that’s been through the full process and one that hasn’t. At least, that’s how I think of it. Sometimes the result of all the time spent repetitively writing and erasing, writing and erasing, is no different from having done nothing at all—when you erase the poem in its entirety, or simply make your way back to the very first draft. But in the process, the poet experiences, feels, and wavers. You learn things you wouldn’t have otherwise. I think that’s why poetry is such a strange and bittersweet genre. And what do I do after I fill out the poem? I erase again, I rearrange, and I fill it out once more. I repeat the three tasks over and over until I feel satisfied. It’s all about the feeling. I can never be completely satisfied, but eventually I find myself thinking, this is enough. That momentary fulfillment is like nothing else I’ve ever felt. I’ve often been asked how I write long poems. I hope this essay offers an answer to that question. It has also helped me to realize once again how much I love poetry. Sincerely. To me, all the best hurt arises out of poetry.  All my light went out.  When we can illuminate nothing We grow harder.  It means I can Not know All that I don’t know Just as well as I know what I do. The revolving door turns inside the apple,  And now my day will begin.

by Baek Eunsun

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Toward the World’s Edge

Contemporary literature may appear far removed from localities, yet their traces never fully fade. Habits of language, sentence patterns, and directions of thought quietly and unfailingly track a writer’s physical and psychological terrain. Locality in literature rarely resides in setting or decorative details; it appears in long-nurtured sentiments and rhythms of a place that surface in sentences. Uniquely local sensibilities and textures—ecology, dialect, food, seasons, and the like—weave literary aesthetics at a level that precedes the writer’s awareness.  My longtime residence on Geojedo island, too, seems not unrelated to my writing. Perhaps, for my writing’s sake, I needed an island village far from the so-called center. Living here as a writer means more than residing in a quietly familiar place. It is a resolve, in harmony with the island’s nature, never to lose the strength of my soul. Though born in Busan, I crossed over to Geojedo just before elementary school, which, for all practical purposes, makes the island my hometown. Barring my time in university and a few years in my late twenties, I lived most of my life here. From time to time, I spent weeks in other cities and countries—traveling, lecturing, or giving readings—but at the end of those brief sojourns, I always returned. Like the ebb and flow of the ocean’s current, Geojedo exerts an invisible, gravitational pull that bolsters the center of my being.  Dwelling on Geojedo signifies more than simply staying in one place. It involves attuning to nature’s unique rhythms —pulsing slightly more slowly than the rest of the world— and drawing from that wellspring a writing style of my own. Mornings here begin at a gentler pace compared to the complex, accelerated tempo of the city. Elders at the seaside store often lead with comments on the ever-changing winds: “Strong northwestern gale today.” That single remark rings like a prophecy, predicting the shape and direction of the day’s waves. When I stop by the market for some fish and hear a vendor say, “Catch has been low for days, making fish scarce,” I am reminded that nature’s fluctuations sway daily routines and business, while, at the depths of unconsciousness, currents of being wash through my sentences. And yet, I remain acutely aware that my longtime residence paradoxically places me at the farthest distance from here.  A writer, wherever in the world, is bound to be an outsider. Perhaps I sustain that outsider’s sensibility through the distinct scenes and energies of Geojedo, pressed deeply upon my body and mind. The island allows me to endure solitude, alone amid nature’s quiet breath. It neither denies solitude nor drives me toward it. Solitude, that emotional plane necessary for writing, emerges gently as an intuitively visible natural order, a certain profound spirit. In that sense, the island is for me not a place of seclusion but a house of stillness, where language may quietly grow.  The sea always remains in place. Yet “remains in place” hardly suggests unchanging solidity or permanence. Rather, it emphasizes how the sea holds its place even in constant flux. Walking along the neighborhood shoreline, I readily notice sediments of rocks newly deposited or broken off since the previous day. The hues and cresting heights of the waves shift with each passing moment. So too with literature. Even seemingly repetitive sentences contain subtle fissures and fresh rhythms. To gaze long upon the currents and silences of the sea is to learn to discern these minute differences. The hills and sea of Geojedo serve as teachers, imparting to my body and mind the slow evolution of a sentence.  The locality of literature is often mistaken for a particular location’s images or landscapes. In literature, however, locality concerns how a writer’s lived environment sustains their life, and how that sustenance shapes and transforms temporality within sentences. My way of walking, observing, and breathing among the hills and the sea translates, almost imperceptibly, into the pace and texture of my lines. The slow, steady, ebbing and flowing breath of the sea creates a rhythm in my language, and upon that rhythm, I place my words, one by one. Locality matters in literature—but not to foreground the specificity of a place. If anything, it examines how local distinctiveness widens and deepens a writer’s world. Geojedo, at times, seems to distance me from a certain center, yet that distance allows me to delve deeply into the core of this world and of being. The island reveals the edges of the world, and from those edges, I proceed toward the heart of language.  To tune the rhythm of my writing, I take walks almost every day along the nearby shores or hills. During these strolls, between small gardens tended by villagers, I sometimes pass empty lots overgrown with wild grass. At times, as my eyes linger on a white butterfly darting through the grass in shimmering daylight, I muse that a sentence, too, might radiate its own light between heaven and earth, fluttering erratically until drawn to a path. On gusty days, an old fisherman mending his nets by the harbor might mutter—either to himself or to me—“Testy waves today.” I catch myself murmuring that his words could apply to temperamental sentences. As a longtime resident here, the local landscape can appear rather ordinary, with nothing especially remarkable. Yet I come to notice the delicate day-by-day, moment-by-moment changes—in hues of rocks, directions of the wind, and patterns of the waves. Even in a scene nearly identical to yesterday’s, I find that sentences start to branch out in slightly different directions. Just as nature reveals a subtly changing face each day, so my writing finds its way toward sentences that, through delicate variations, pulsate anew.   My daily walks on Geojedo include the discovery of new paths. By wandering along less-worn trails and coastal cliffs, I gradually develop routes of my own. Stepping off a habitual path resembles the act of pioneering a new sentence— breaking free from prevailing perceptions and familiar syntactic frameworks. At times, I take a wrong turn and meander through the woods, but this misdirection affords me sensations of uncharted sites and energies. Occasionally, I experience the small, quiet pleasure of discovering an unexpected shortcut that leads me home. Repeated walks on the island teach me the significance of walking without a destination, while reminding me that sentences do not strive toward a clear end; instead, they unfold through a process of seeking one’s deep calling, an inner emergence of a form of being. To live and write on Geojedo is, in a sense, to maintain both a measured distance from the world and a most profound gaze upon it. Without the hills, the sea, the sky, the wind, the silence, and the solitude of this place, my literature would have taken a somewhat different course.  In cities and provinces alike, our society and era move at an accelerated pace. The overdriven excess of information and motion within any given space-time can unsettle a writer’s style and mode of thought. Of course, urban rhythms, too, function as forms of locality in their own right, offering meaningful directions and methods by contributing to a writer’s distinctive linguistic breath. To those who write, time and place manifest as a magic both accidental and inevitable, surging through sentences as a literary current.  While some may regard locally situated writing as a limitation of sorts, I have come to realize that living here has fortified my syntactic roots. Cities broaden one’s vision, while provincial life provides a depth of insight no less profound. Here, I forget the notion of a universal center imposed by the world. Being removed from that center perhaps allows me to slow down and deepen my thoughts. Writing from a peripheral place may engender stories that are, in fact, more universal. The center is often a form of particularity masquerading as universality. Writing from here hardly reminds me of my non-central position; rather, it grants me boundless freedom. It lightens me. It empowers me to exist fully as myself. Life at the margins allows my writerly self to peer into the essence of the world, leaping beyond that faintly ambiguous dichotomy of center and periphery.  A writer’s dwelling place, the surrounding region itself, becomes a factor in sharpening one’s sense of the world’s estrangement. Even as I dwell on Geojedo, it frequently and paradoxically strikes me that I might be the person most removed from nature. Instead of inhabiting nature’s tangible particulars, I seem to sense solely its qualities as a word. As I walk amid nature’s untamed and unrestrained qualities, rather than its image, the sense of belonging nowhere grants me absolute freedom. Along precariously narrow, newly discovered paths, I learn that these sensations birth new sentences. Raw, immediate sensations arising where humans meet nature may well be the source of literature. Rawness intensifies their truth. Geojedo’s nature further solidifies my independent ground as a writer. Rather than rendering my solitude lonely, the island’s solitude turns it into a condition for thought. Here, nature ushers my body and mind into the profound depths of writing.  I never imagined that living and writing on Geojedo would leave distinct locational marks on my work. However, retracing sentences I have written thus far, I realize that my worldview has grown deeply reliant on the island’s seasons, its time, and nature’s silence. Existence accounts for only a small fraction of nature. Repeated and varied landscapes, along with the air and sunshine, alter the cadence of my sentences. Nature’s vast silence serves best to empty and replenish language.  To live as a local writer is not an exercise in romantic isolation, nor a sign of seclusion. It is a question of how a being breathes with and absorbs a particular place and time, and how, within that breath, one bears and sustains one’s own language. Here, I sense myself growing increasingly an outsider even as I walk toward the center of the world. Today, as always, I uncover a new trail and gaze freshly upon the currents of the sea—small rituals carried out for the sake of my writing. Amid these accumulating days, I come to understand that sentences are not artificially composed; they must, and do, resemble the rhythms of nature, each time emerging anew.  To write is to forever circle the edges of one’s life, in search of another center. To be a writer is to endure, in one’s own language, that sense of estrangement—the fact that no writer can truly live as a local. A writer is one who always sees the world differently, who peers into the interstices of language, and who touches and retouches the texture of life. In that sense, reading, writing, and living on Geojedo constitute a form of discipline that carries my writing beyond the distance and horizon of the world’s edge. A writer’s placeness is not a fixed coordinate. As a firm center, it remains in place even as it moves. Slightly removed from the world’s acceleration, amid rhythms taught by hills and sea, I find myself watching how far my writing will go. Anticipating the moment when all the rhythmic sensations impress upon my writing, I arrive early to see how they emerge. All the while embracing the fact that my language lies beyond a specific place, freely swaying, standing, and moving forward again as a literary home. 

by Lee Jenny

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Busan, from Near and Far

“Where do you live?” This question carries weight, reflecting the sense that people are connected to the place where they have arrived. As we know all too well, a place of one’s own forms the basis for claiming rights in the world. Human beings are, inevitably, people of a place. From that place, we practice literature. Although place and writing may appear unrelated, they often feel inseparable. A writer’s account of life in a particular place serves as a vital testament to its placeness, while the fellowship of local writers shapes that place into a universal macrocosm. We invite you to hear from two writers as they each share their stories: about living and writing in their own (local) place, and about the activities of their local literary community. by Sin Yong-Mok First comes life, then comes fiction. Seonsaeng-hujak (先生 後作). Most novels follow this pattern. A writer’s experiences, direct or indirect, are reborn over time as literary works. Yet every so often, a rare reversal occurs. Seonjak-husaeng (先作後生). First comes fiction, then comes life. This is the case for me, as I pen this essay in my study on a seaside hill, having serendipitously left Seoul to settle here in Busan. The eastern coast of Busan’s Haeundae Beach is dotted with three small ports: Mipo, Gudeokpo, and Cheongsapo. One autumn, I was invited as a writer to visit the nearby Dalmaji Hill, an area rich in cultural and artistic spaces. After the scheduled event, my host guided me on a tour of the seaside village below the hill, as well as the ports. At the foot of Dalmaji—or “moon-watching,” so named for being the first to greet the glowing moon—the shore was lined with lush clusters of cherry blossoms, pines, and camellia trees. Slender footpaths branched off in several directions. Along the ports, the Donghae Nambu Line railway ran parallel to the coast. At the far end of a breakwater stood a white lighthouse, its green light blinking in serene solitude. The time arrived for my return to Seoul. Darkness fell; waves splashed. I could hardly tell whether the sea was Namhae or Donghae—South or East Sea. It seemed both at once. Far off, a large vessel glided near the horizon, lights aglow. Small fishing boats huddled by the port. Beyond that horizon—is it the North Pacific? I wondered as we reached the port. “Cheongsapo,” said my host, almost in a whisper. Cheongsapo? When in unfamiliar places, I had a habit of searching for road signs. I glanced around. Nowhere did I see the name Cheongsapo. The peaceful port sat in stark contrast to the dazzling lights of Haeundae Beach. Night had yet to deepen, but the port was already hushed. Watching waves ripple in the dark, I repeated in my mind, Cheongsapo. I had never heard it before, despite knowing so many other ports. As a linguistically attuned writer, I often found my imagination stirred by the auditory resonance and texture of words. The moment Cheongsapo reached my ears, my thoughts began to whirl. Does Cheongsa mean “clear sand” (淸沙 淸沙)? “Blue sand” (靑沙 靑沙)? Or “blue snake” (靑蛇 靑蛇)? Reveries that began in Cheongsapo carried all the way back to Seoul. Perhaps the sea breeze of Haeundae and Cheongsapo still lingered in my mind. I penned a short story in three days, then sent it to my editor. The words Busan, Haeundae, and Cheongsapo had echoed in my ears like a melody sung in a round, eventually taking shape as the story “Blue Sand.” The seemingly impossible feat brought a rush of exhilaration. I had been facing a deadline, but since the Busan event had been scheduled in advance, I had no choice but to make the trip. Even if I had canceled, my chances of meeting the deadline were slim. And yet, like an unexpected lifeline, Cheongsapo became material for the story, gifting me “Blue Sand.” To my astonishment, I now live in the very scene of that story. Fortune must have played its part. I never imagined it while writing “Blue Sand,” nor when I first accepted the invitation to Busan and reluctantly boarded the train. It simply came to be, as if by magic. I was neither born nor raised in Busan. I became acquainted with the city as an author invited to literary events at universities, bookstores, and literary organizations. The year after publishing “Blue Sand,” I relocated to Busan upon being appointed to a professorship at Dong-A University. Work and childcare responsibilities prompted the move (for male writers, the family usually stays behind), but my writing career still required frequent travel between Seoul and Busan. Outside of writing, most of my time was devoted to teaching contemporary literature and fiction writing as a faculty member of the Korean literature department. I also collaborated with the local community to develop and implement projects that explored Busan’s narrative archetypes from multiple perspectives, shaping them into literary fiction. I worked with university departments, schools, education offices, and local district offices to identify notable aspects of Busan from an outsider’s perspective. The Humanities City Support Project followed, along with initiatives to uncover narrative archetypes and conduct fiction-writing workshops. Through these successive projects and practices, I immersed myself and discovered a connection with Busan, engaging with its language and sensations, even as a complete outsider. More than a mere setting for “Blue Sand,” Busan became, after Seoul, Gyeongju, and Paris, a city of deep personal significance.  In my new life in Busan, the axiom “First comes life, then comes fiction” largely held true. Arriving as an outsider, I absorbed daily rhythms, seasonal cycles, and oceanic tones, and from those sensations and stories, I wrote my fiction. Busan and the Haeundae area served as the backdrop for ten or so stories, including “Blue Sand,” “A Single Cloud,” “Hospitality,” “Archaeology of Memory” (winner of the 2012 Yi Sang Literary Award), “After Dinner” (winner of the 2013 Yi Sang Literary Award), “Origin of Shoes,” “White Night,” “Haeundae,” and “Yeongdo Island.” Busan’s literature has been shaped by writers born and raised in Busan who stayed to write about the city and its people. As for myself, I occupy a more ambiguous position.   Writers may relocate their home and writing environment in two ways. First, a writer who balances professional work with writing may move to their place of employment. Second, a writer may select and settle in the ideal location for writing. In the former case, the end of employment often prompts a return to one’s original home. In the latter, one may put down roots, move elsewhere, or eventually return. I fall into the former category. While I write fiction in Busan, my life extends beyond the city, with book launches and publications taking place in the Seoul metropolitan area, including Paju Book City. Writers falling into the latter category include Kim Sung-jong, the mystery writer best known for Eyes of Dawn, who relocated from Seoul to Busan. In 1992, he established the Library of Mystery Literature, Korea’s only library dedicated to the genre. Mediating between domestic and international mystery writers’ associations, he has overseen various programs in partnership with the local community, continuing this work to the present day.  As a novelist and educator, I explore fiction alongside young literary enthusiasts born and raised in Busan, sharing their joys and sorrows while helping them find their way as writers. In the creative writing workshops I have developed, participants explore Busan’s sea, harbors, ports, islands, and river mouths, crafting stories steeped in these places. Several hundred stories have been created in the process, launching the literary careers of new writers. I have endeavored to extend their creative reach beyond Busan—to the rest of Korea and to the wider world. Even here, two patterns emerge: some debut through new writer’s contests held by Busan-area newspapers and continue their literary activities based in Busan, while others debut through newspapers outside Busan and subsequently work between Busan and Seoul. Even in the first case, most writers aspire to publish their first story collections in Seoul rather than Busan, and, if circumstances allow, prefer to publish later collections there as well. Since these writers occupy the heart of locality and local literature, it is worth reflecting on both their ambitions and the significance they ascribe to publishing non-locally in Seoul.  At this point, I pause to reflect on Busan’s locality and the scenes and currents of its local literature as I have come to understand them. Led by the novelist Kim Jeonghan (1908–1996), pen name Yosan, Busan’s community of literary organizations has established deep, robust roots unrivaled by any other region. Busan launched its own quarterly Literary Criticism Today in 1991, ahead of other cities. Busan has also established and maintained distinctive literary awards, including the Yosan Literary Award (est. 1984), the Ko Sukgyu Critique Award (est. 1996), the Korea Ocean Foundation Literary Award (est. 2007), and the BUMA Democratic Uprising Literary Award (est. 2020). The city has sought to enrich and revive its literary map by retracing sites where writers from outside the city once sojourned and worked, recording and reanimating the meaning of those places. As a notable example, the Mildawon Literary Festival has been held annually since 2015, inspired by Kim Dong-ni’s short story “Mildawon Days,” a fictionalized portrayal of historic literary and artistic figures—including Hwang Sun-won, Kim Su-Young, Kim Whanki, and Lee Jungseop—who fled from Seoul to Busan during the Korean War. The festival allows contemporary readers to rediscover the significance of their gathering place, the Mildawon tearoom or dabang, in Busan’s Gwangbok-dong area. Whereas wartime Busan, as a locality, functioned as a temporary refuge rather than a voluntary destination, today’s writers actively seek out the city, often for extended stays or creative residencies. This reflects a broader phenomenon: short- and long-term residencies, both domestic and international, have become key platforms for writers’ creative work.  Despite Busan’s geographical advantages as a maritime capital and its historical heritage as a wartime refuge, writers based in Busan who have shaped the city’s local identity are rarely able to extend their literary activities to the national stage. The same holds true for other regional cities. Creative drive and passion do not necessarily result in published works or sustainable literary careers. Even for those who become writers and pursue creative practice, the question remains whether their efforts can be recognized as a form of economic production. Literary journals published by major national presses offer limited space, and payment for submissions has long stagnated. Local literary journals, funded by national and municipal cultural foundations, provide publication space to regional writers on a rotating basis, yet author compensation remains largely symbolic, merely enough to offset the costs of self-publication. Circumstances change little, even when writers publish with support for first-time publications or other creative grants. Busan writers may depict the city’s life and environment in their stories; whether Busan readers prefer these works is a separate matter. Readers, regardless of their own locality, select books in much the same way. The moment a work is labeled “local literature,” it encounters the dilemma of being narrowly confined. For this reason, I have refrained from assigning particular value or labels to locality or local literature, especially in our age of AI and digital nomadism, which has rendered both living and creative spaces increasingly fluid and mobile.  In my capacity as a professor of creative writing in Busan, a mentor to writers, and a reviewer of applications submitted by individuals and publishers for creative support and grants, I wish to comment briefly on the realities of local literature. First, for local literature to flourish, works written, presented, and published locally must reach broader national and international audiences, thereby cultivating and sustaining a stable readership. What, then, is the current reality? Consider the state of local literature and local publishing within today’s hyper-capitalist economy. Creative writing and publishing, as well as publishing houses themselves, rely on national support and municipal cultural foundations to remain active and viable. Writers who debut through local newspapers still face limited publication opportunities, while local publishers struggle to bring their works to print without public funding. Nevertheless, recent developments suggest ways for Busan’s local writers to find solidarity and empowerment while preserving their distinctive traits . The Busan Publication Culture and Industry Association (BPCIA) and Bibliotheca Busan have gained fresh momentum, alongside a vibrant ecosystem of independent bookstores engaging readers across generations. Comprising some thirty publishing houses in the Busan region, BPCIA seeks to decentralize Seoul-centric publishing structures and establish Busan as a publishing hub through the Busan Global Publishing Culture City initiative. Since the success and sustainability of this initiative depend on discovering local writers and investing in their publication, the interdependent growth of local literature and local publishing warrants particular attention. It is hoped that BPCIA’s dynamic and pragmatic expansion will help transform Busan, with its rich geographical, historical, and cultural-artistic heritage, into a vital center of literary publishing.  Several pressing problems must not be overlooked: the demographic cliff, regional decline, the steep drop in university-age population, and cutbacks in humanities departments that cultivate potential writers and literary publishing talent. These trends will only accelerate. So who will write, and who will read in the future? The writer-reader ecosystem continues to evolve. Imagined realities and realities of imagination are continuously and simultaneously renewed within an interconnected network. From here, one thinks of there; living there, one also lives here. Perhaps Seoul, Busan, Gwangju, and Jeju should all be termed moving, hetero-localities. What is local should not be condemned to remain so; localities should permeate, mingle with, and circulate among other localities; local writers should engage with writers from home and abroad. The writer from Busan, in this sense, writes from near and far.  KOREAN WORKS MENTIONED: Ham Jeungim, “Blue Sand,” in Blue Eyes of Your Soul (Munhakdongne, 2006) 함정임, 「푸른 모래」, 『네 마음의 푸른 눈』 (문학동네, 2006) Ham Jeungim, “Archaeology of Memory: My Mexican Uncle,” “After Dinner,” and “Origin of Shoes,” in After Dinner (Munhakdongne, 2015) 함정임, 「기억의 고고학-내 멕시코 삼촌」, 「저녁 식사가 끝난 뒤」, 「구두의 기원」, 『저녁 식사가 끝난 뒤』 (문학동네, 2015) Ham Jeungim, “Haeundae” and “Yeongdo Island,” in Loving Love (Munhakdongne, 2020) 함정임, 「해운대」, 「영도」, 『사랑을 사랑하는 것』 (문학동네, 2020) Ham Jeungim, “A Single Cloud,” “Hospitality,” and “White Night,” in Phantasm (Yolimwon, 2009) 함정임, 「구름 한 점」, 「환대」, 「백야」, 『곡두』 (열림원, 2009) Kim Sung-jong, Eyes of Dawn (Namdo, 2003) 김성종, 『여명의 눈동자』 (남도, 2003) Kim Dong-ni, “Mildawon Days” in Mildawon Days (Munidang, 2006) 김동리, 「밀다원 시대」, 『밀다원 시대』 (문이당, 2006) 

by Ham Jeungim

Translator's Desk

At a Tortoise’s Pace

It has been more than twenty years since I first set foot in Korea to study abroad. I still remember the sight of Haneda’s old international terminal on the day of my departure—a place I’ve since seen countless times traveling between Tokyo and Seoul. It was packed with fans hoping to catch a glimpse of certain Hallyu stars making a visit to Japan. This was before the Korean Wave started in earnest, and at the time I had no particular interest in Winter Sonata. Thinking back, it’s hard to believe that I now make a living as a translator of Korean literature.  I spent many years in Seoul as a student, and as my time to return home to Japan approached, I began wandering about, making visits to many places, anxious that there might have been something I’d left undone. One day, it struck me that I should visit the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. The staff were incredibly informative and told me that there was a list of books that qualified for translation funding. I was surprised to find on that list Hangeul in the World, the collected papers from a conference I had happened to attend at the invitation of a research assistant in my program. The preface was written by my graduate advisor. This was the moment I made the connection between my Korean language studies and the work of translation. My professor introduced me to the book’s contributors, who presented me with mountains of documents; I carried these home to Japan and began translating. It took considerable time, but this eventually became my first published translation. I still look back fondly on my time studying under the guidance of one of those contributors, the late Doctor Umeda Hiroyuki.  Then came a thin book, one I had picked up during a trip to Seoul some time after moving back to Japan. The Nation of the Blind is a collection of essays by novelists, poets, and social scientists. These meditations were written in the wake of the sinking of the Sewol ferry in April 2014, a tragedy that claimed so many lives. The words of Kim Ae-ran, Park Min-gyu, and Hwang Jungeun reached deep into my heart. The essays mourn the deaths of the teenagers lost in the incident and reflect on how we live, questioning which aspects of our way of life we should confront as problems. It was impossible for me to think of this all as something distant, merely an issue of a foreign land. I had thought literary translation would come a bit further down the road, but after reading this book, I knew I wanted to translate it right away. As I worked on it, I began searching for a publisher, and that proved to be a long hunt. At the time, publishing a work of Korean literature in Japan was no easy feat. When the book finally reached bookshelves in 2018, the passionate responses from readers warmed my heart. This book is a collection of gems and a work I still treasure.  Like the tortoise in Aesop’s fable, translations take their time. I do so much research, so much revision. I wish I could go just a bit faster, but I can’t change how I translate. I’ve shut myself up in the university library to dig through reference materials and even travelled all the way to Korea’s National Assembly Library in Seoul, just to check first prints from decades ago. If a song or film is mentioned in a work, I find it and watch or listen as I work. When I revise, I print out my drafts and read them aloud over and over, leaving my office a sea of used printer paper. I often laugh at myself— given the sheer time and effort, and lack of efficiency on top of that, my translation work must be putting me in the red.  After discovering the joys of literary translation, I took on my first full-length novel: Won-pyung Sohn’s Almond. In 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the book was awarded first place in the Japan Booksellers’ Award for Translated Fiction. It was the first time a work of Korean literature had won the prize and the response was overwhelmingly positive. My translation had conveyed the emotion of the original to many readers in Japan. There is no greater joy for a translator. I was deeply moved by this honor. In 2022, my translation of Sohn’s Counterattacks at Thirty was awarded the same prize. I promised myself then that I would continue to translate each work with the same level of care.  After Almond, I began working on more Young Adult fiction titles: Tangerine Green, I Will Cross Time for You, Girl Who Wants to Kill, and Biscuit. Somewhere far beyond the end of these stories, I see a light—faint, but clear. I fell in love with Korean YA fiction.  I’m always surprised by the number of Japanese books on display in the bookshops in Seoul. But what about here in Japan? While the number of shops with a dedicated section for Korean books has certainly increased in recent years, their selections remain limited. I hope that readers in Japan will be able to find works of Korean literature more easily in the future. There’s only so much that I can do, but I plan to continue translating, savoring each work as I go. Moving, as always, at my tortoise’s pace.

by Akiko Yajima

Book Shelf

Self-Portrait in Poetry: Poems Living Through Death

There is no door to Wit N Cynical, the independent poetry bookshop I run on the second floor of an old building in Jongno District, the historic heart of Seoul. Instead, there is a spiral staircase. On the first floor is Dongyang Seorim, a venerable bookshop that first opened in 1953, the year the Korean War ended. To reach Wit N Cynical, one must pass countless books and walk upward, turning the body about one and a half rotations as one climbs. If the spiral staircase is imagined as a large door and our bodies as its handles, then it makes for a rather grand entrance—a bookstore reached with one’s whole body.  What is the first thing visitors see when they arrive at a bookstore filled only with poetry? My fixation on this seemingly superficial detail, far removed from the business of poetry itself, began when I learned about Namman Seobang, a bookstore widely known among the literary circles of its day. It was run by the poet Oh Janghwan, who was active as a poet, literary critic, and translator during the Japanese colonial period of the 1930s. It is said that, placed directly at the entrance of the shop, was a self-portrait by Yi Sang, the prodigious poet of the Korean modernist avant-garde. Readers who opened the door must have been overwhelmed by the sight—Yi Sang’s face standing as the spirit, symbol, and index of literature in his time. His eyes would have pierced what stood before him and reached into what lay beyond. I admired this detail, even envied Oh Janghwan’s decision to place the portrait of another poet at the threshold of his bookshop. In the same way, I wished that anyone who might reach Wit N Cynical with their whole body might also encounter a symbol—an index—of the spirit of poetry in this very moment and place.   Today, placed at the front of Wit N Cynical is a copy of Kim Hyesoon: Death Trilogy (Moonji, 2025). The cover features a vivid red ground, foil-stamped in inky black with a drawing by the artist Fi Jae Lee. With its binding exposed and stitched across the spine in crimson thread, and at more than six hundred pages, the book has a bold, almost foreboding physical presence. It cannot help but inspire awe. More often than not, visitors find their gaze drawn first to its vermilion cover.  As the title indicates, the volume gathers the work of the poet Kim Hyesoon. Born in 1955 in Wonju and active in Seoul, Kim Hyesoon is, without question, one of the defining poets of the Korean language. She wields language as though pouring music onto a canvas, as though music has acquired color and form and begun to breathe and move. Her central preoccupation is death: death as an a priori experience, death as the consequence of time, death as social death, death as vicarious encounter. In Kim Hyesoon’s poetry, one encounters death beyond death. Kim Hyesoon: Death Trilogy brings together the three poetry collections known collectively as her “Death Trilogy”: Autobiography of Death (Munhak Silhumsil, 2016), Phantom Pain Wings (Moonji, 2019), and If the Earth Dies, Who Will the Moon Orbit? (Moonji, 2022). The volume contains the essence of Kim Hyesoon’s poetry.  Of the three collections of poems, her first has been translated to great acclaim. Autobiography of Death (New Directions, 2018), translated by Don Mee Choi, received the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2019, and Autobiographie des Todes, the German translation by Sool Park and Uljana Wolf (S. Fischer Verlag, 2025), earned the Prize for Contemporary Literatures in Translation in 2025. The collection contains forty-nine poems that move from the poet’s own close encounters with death toward the Sewol ferry disaster. In 2014, a passenger ferry sank off the coast of Jindo County in South Jeolla Province. Of the 476 passengers on board, 304 died or went missing. Most of the victims were high school students on a school trip to Jeju Island. Kim Hyesoon’s elegies speak to the unrest of the dead. A ritual requiem composed in poetic language—a shamanic rite of mourning— unfolds on the stage of literature. To witness such a desperate act of consolation is what it means to read Autobiography of Death. One autumn evening in 2019, Kim Hyesoon and six other poets held a poetry reading at the ARKO Arts Theater in Seoul’s Daehangno theater district. All the windows along the street rattled through the night as a typhoon moved northward. I was responsible for the stage direction that evening. For more than two hours, the seven poets took turns reading, sometimes gathering their voices as if in unison, without drinking a single drop of water. The vigil demanded the utmost effort not only from the readers but also from those in the audience bearing witness.  In complete darkness, when Kim Hyesoon’s voice reading the final poem reverberated through the space, I closed my eyes and was, for a moment, dead. I thought I heard the sound of water flowing somewhere, but perhaps it was not water— it may have been time. I was moving against the current. Like a bird. Come to think of it, perhaps it was not water at all, but the wind. An unfathomable stretch of time passed. Silence.  Even when the stage lights slowly rose, as planned, I did not open my eyes. I had the sense that I was not the only one. The stillness continued, and then applause broke out from within it. Being alive. Still alive, and alive despite everything. Life. This was the final page of Kim Hyesoon’s poetry-death.  Each morning, I go to work at Wit N Cynical. As if turning the golden handle of an ancient, secret door, I rotate my whole body one and a half times and push through. There, at the front of the bookstore, is Kim Hyesoon’s red poetry volume—vivid, blood-bright, and unbearably alive. Standing before it, I find myself recalling my own experience, my own distant encounter with death. And then, through the windows, the morning light angles in, astonishingly bright. As if here were there, so much so that it is hard to believe this is here at all.  At the very center of the front shelf, at the entrance to Wit N Cynical, stands Kim Hyesoon: Death Trilogy.

by Yoo Heekyung

Essays

The Waltz of Expectation and Disappointment

In a city located down south, high-rise apartments were shooting up one after another. I remembered seeing news reports of unsold apartment units piling up, but from the city center to the outskirts, construction was at its peak. I’d be giving lectures for two days in a row, so I’d booked a hotel that towered over a sea of low-rise buildings in the surrounding old downtown area. In this neighborhood, which had thrived during the Japanese occupation and modernization, memories of modernity lingered in low, solid-looking stone buildings, but the signs of decline were palpable. “For Rent” signs were taped to the windows of empty storefronts strewn with “Blowout Sale” flyers. The black marble-finished first floor of my lodging housed the hotel’s front desk, a chain coffee shop, and a sundubu restaurant. When I looked at the online map to make a reservation, none of this had stood out to me. Next door was a university hospital; a famous department store and the Catholic cathedral were just a short walk away.  My room was on the seventeenth floor. It was dark when I pushed the door open and stepped inside. I assumed there were thick curtains drawn across the windows, but there were only blackout roller blinds. No curtains. Only when I raised the blinds did the view become visible. Since the hotel stood tall among the low, modern-era buildings, I had an unobstructed view. The hotel itself wasn’t badly situated and it had a respectable star rating, yet there were signs of neglect. The lowered roller blinds were one such detail, as were the crumpled, unpressed bed sheets. The slippers wrapped in crinkly plastic were sticking halfway out of the bag as if someone had tried to tear it open and shoved the slippers back in, and when I turned on the TV, all I could see was the hotel’s promotional screen. Despite my best attempts I couldn’t figure out how to change the channel. The bathroom was fully visible from the bedroom through a glass wall with nothing to block the view. Staying alone meant there was no need to hide, but sitting in that wide-open bathroom somehow made me feel uneasy. It’s said that Soseki Natsume covered up all the windows in his house because he felt like someone might be watching him. I wasn’t quite at that point, but I understood him. The room was filled with a distinctive stench, seemingly seeping through the pipes, that was common to old buildings. I pushed opened the tilt window for ventilation, but as I was on one of the higher floors, it only opened about an inch. I could understand that much, but when I tried to close it, it stubbornly resisted and wouldn’t shut. In the end, a staff member had to come up to deal with the TV and the window. After finishing my talk and returning to the hotel, I found the tilt window that the staff member had closed for me had swung open again. I tried closing it again, but it wouldn’t budge, so I pulled it shut as best as I could and lowered the roller blinds. Fortunately, the roller blinds were made of blackout material, so I wouldn’t be bothered by light. After turning off the lights, I fell asleep but was woken up roughly every hour. Motorcycles delivering late-night food raced noisily along the ten-lane street; the sirens of ambulances entering and leaving the university hospital seeped through the poorly closed window and pierced my ears. In the city, it seemed like countless people were collapsing, getting hurt, and dying all night long. That night I had a dream. I was somewhere with my father. Looking at his face, I thought it was strange how smooth and unlined his skin was. He was not like my father at all. He looked more like a marble bust, rather than a real person. We didn’t talk, but I felt as if I had somehow disappointed him and he was punishing me with his silence. Another blaring ambulance siren jolted me awake. It was just a dream. That’s right, my father passed away ten years ago. That day, someone who came to the auditorium dressing room had asked me, “Have you ever visited our city before? Do you have any personal connections to it?” I said, “Well, if you call it a connection, my father attended a vocational high school here. It was famous for baseball, and he was proud of that.” That conversation probably led to the dream.  In medieval Christianity, people debated what form the body would take at the final resurrection. Would it appear as it did at the moment of death, or would it return to the most ideal form it had when it was still alive? If everyone rose looking as they did when they died, heaven would hardly be pleasant—it might not feel like heaven at all. But if everyone rose as their ideal selves, with faces looking perfect like photoshopped passport photos, that would also feel unnatural. Yet that night, my father appeared in my dream with precisely that ideal skin and face, and I felt unsettled rather than glad to see him that way. My father was born in Japan, like my uncle, in 1939.  My grandfather and grandmother first went to Manchuria, then crossed over to Japan, where they ran a restaurant somewhere near Kobe serving Koreans who had been forcibly taken there under Japan’s labor program. It’s estimated that around 1.4 million people returned to the Korean Peninsula from Japan immediately after liberation, and my grandfather was one of them. The entire population equivalent to that of present-day Daejeon returned almost empty-handed (the Japanese government allowed each repatriated person to take home no more than 1,000 yen). My grandparents returned to their hometown with their two sons and settled down. Farming couldn’t have been easy for those returning after running businesses in a foreign land. The household had little to spare, but children kept being born until there were seven siblings. Only the eldest son was sent to an agricultural high school; my father stopped studying after elementary school and helped on the farm. After watching from a hill as his friends returned home from school with their bookbags, my father ran away and went alone to the city. How did this runaway boy manage to enroll in a vocational high school? My young father worked at a kitchen that fed women soldiers and slept in a small room beside the stove. After the evening’s cooking was done, he attended night courses at the vocational school. After my father passed away, my aunt told me that women soldiers had once visited my father’s hometown. They seemed fond of my young father, as they had helped him to continue his studies.  In a hotel room in an unfamiliar town, I lay there staring blankly, thinking about my father and our mutual expectations and disappointments. When did my father first disappoint me? Even having this thought felt unnatural and heavy, as though I was defying gravity. I’d grown up constantly afraid of disappointing my parents, and never considered the possibility of them disappointing me.  I was a child who asked a lot of questions; adults didn’t like children like that. In hindsight, I think they were angry because they didn’t have all the answers. That was before I knew that not every grown-up has the answers. One day, long after I became a novelist, a friend asked one of my former teachers—someone I wasn’t particularly close to in high school—if he remembered Young-ha Kim. The teacher immediately retorted, “Wasn’t he that cheeky kid who asked too many questions?” But I hadn’t even asked one-tenth of what I wanted to.  My first disappointment in my father, too, had something to do with a question. As he crouched down to put on combat boots for work, I asked him, “Why do army boots have so many holes?”  Combat boots have long shafts and many eyelets. You have to thread the long laces through every hole and tie them tightly. To my younger self, it seemed incredibly uncomfortable and a waste of time. Of course, I now understand why combat boots are designed that way. They are, literally, functional footwear for combat. They have to support the soldier’s ankles in any situation, prevent water or dirt from entering the boot, and provide insulation to prevent frostbite. Even as a child, I didn’t expect my father to explain all this to me while he was rushing off to work. But I would have been content if he had explained even one of those many functions. Something like, “You need a long shaft so your ankle doesn’t break easily.” Instead, my father snapped, “Because they’re combat boots!” In one of Ephraim Kishon's short stories, a son asks his father, “How do we know the Earth revolves around the Sun?” The father thinks he can easily explain this seemingly obvious scientific fact, but soon realizes that it isn’t as simple as it sounds. As the explanation keeps getting tangled and repeatedly challenged, he grows increasingly angry. In fact, he didn’t understand the Earth’s revolution well enough to explain it simply.  Maybe my father, too, had never really thought about why combat boots have long shafts and so many eyelets. Or maybe that morning he was simply in no mood to answer. When I was in sixth grade, my father was still stationed on the western front line. In the late 1970s, the front was perpetually tense, making overnight passes or leave rare (it was right after what became known as the Panmunjom Axe Murder Incident, where North Korean guards attacked and killed American soldiers with axes, and tunnels dug by North Korea beneath the armistice line were being discovered). My father made only occasional visits home to Seoul, staying just a day or two before returning to his unit. When he came, he would take my brother and me to the bathhouse first. Dressed in civilian clothes, he looked a bit worn and awkward. But because we didn’t live together and rarely saw him, our bathhouse outings were something my brother and I eagerly anticipated. Around that time, my father, who was starting to get a paunch, would have us brothers soak in the hot bath until our skin had softened, then call us out one at a time to scrub dead skin off our backs. While he grabbed hold of one of us, the other played, going back and forth between the hot and cold baths. My brother and I competed for the privilege of scrubbing our father’s back. The incident happened as we were leaving the bathhouse for home. Someone had stolen the shoes our father had left on the shoe rack. At that time, clothes could be secured in lockers, but shoes had to be placed on the shoe rack at the entrance. Naturally, anyone could sneak out wearing someone else’s shoes. My father was furious.  He demanded the return of his shoes or proper compensation, but the bathhouse owner refused to take responsibility. Unable to go home, my brother and I had no choice but to watch the fight between them. While my father’s anger was understandable, even to my young eyes, the odds were stacked against him. Above the shoe rack, a sign in red letters clearly stated: “Please leave valuables at the counter. We are not responsible for lost items.” Above all, I felt ashamed and hated that the bathhouse’s naked patrons had gathered with rapt attention to watch the outcome of the fight. “Dad, let’s go home, please.” My younger brother looked like he was about to cry.  Still, our father refused to back down and argued fiercely with the owner. Before long, night fell and the crowd of onlookers dwindled. In the end, he didn’t win. The only thing he received from the owner was the last pair left in the shoe rack—old, dirty shoes that the thief had probably taken off and left behind. All the way home, wearing the thief’s shoes with the heels crushed down, he didn’t say a single word. He was forty then, fifteen years younger than I am now, and I fully understand my young father’s actions. It was a classic example of the side effects that come with a life spent as a career soldier. Something like that could never have happened on base. The lining of his boots bore his name written in felt-tip marker, and even if they didn’t, who would dare steal the battalion commander’s shoes? Out in civilian life, the only way he knew how to live was with military discipline. Yet he ruined an enjoyable bathing outing. The happiness stolen from my brother and me then was worth more than a pair of shoes. It wasn’t that I couldn’t forgive my father’s behavior (of course I can, I might have done the same). At some point, every parent disappoints their kids, even if it begins with something as small as a pair of stolen shoes. Some, like me, will remember for decades that minor episode—remember it while understanding it, and understand it while still feeling regret. But that doesn’t mean we hate or dismiss our parents. That one day we will disappoint someone is as self-evident as every object in the universe being pulled by gravity, and accepting that doesn’t mean the world will fall apart. One good thing about getting older is that I’ve learned to separate the good and the bad in what my parents (or anyone else) have done for me.  Living alongside another human being inevitably brings both expectation and disappointment, circling each other like dancers in a waltz. When expectation steps forward, disappointment steps back, and when disappointment turns right, expectation turns with it. When expectation’s movements grow large, disappointment’s movements grow large as well; when expectation takes small steps, disappointment’s steps stay small too. It might be safer to expect less to avoid great disappointment, but what kind of dance would that be to watch? After many years had passed, I asked my father about the bathhouse incident. He only said that he didn’t remember. Expectations, disappointments—it was just a dance I had danced alone. My father, weakened in his final years by stroke and cancer, suddenly told my brother and me one day that even if he died, there was no need to hold something like ancestral rites for him, and that we should just scatter his ashes in the mountains or by a river. Having completed a full career in the military, he had the right to be buried at the National Cemetery, but he didn’t want that either. After all, even the National Cemetery has a time limit, and then he’d have to be moved somewhere else. And who would be in charge of that? He wouldn’t have any descendants anyway . . . He spoke coolly, but suppressed disappointment and anger hung heavy in the air. “Our family never held ancestral rites before,” I retorted sharply. “Why bring them up now? We won’t be holding them.” The rites were performed by my older uncle in the countryside, and my father, unable to leave his post, had rarely attended, so other family members certainly hadn’t either. My mother had despised the idea of even going near ancestral rites her entire life.  This ritual, introduced from China by Joseon scholars and adapted by the local culture, didn’t disappear as the country modernized, and instead it spread widely, even to families that had never performed ancestral rites before. The Park Chung-hee regime, which revered military efficiency and treated modernization like a religion, disliked the custom of ancestral rites honoring spirits. It issued guidelines for household rites in an effort to simplify ancestral memorial rites and ritual ceremonies, but it failed. Ancestral rites are a play enacted solemnly by the living, with remembrance as their theme. We open doors and windows to signal a welcome to the spirits, and we write our ancestors’ names on ritual hanji tablets and burn them. I used to wonder why we had to write their names only to burn them, since the spirits would find their way home on their own. But there was a reason. In the spirit world, there are so many spirits whose names no one calls. Unless you write the name precisely on the ritual tablet and burn it, every kind of spirit—all sorts of stray spirits—will show up. Just as weeds signify plants without names, stray spirits are those whose names have been forgotten. Spirits who aren’t stray wanderers have someone to call out their name. The ritual begins by calling the name in a way they can understand, and inviting them in. As he sensed the end of his life approaching, my father seemed to begin worrying about who would remember him after his death. While I fully understood that this was likely the only form of remembrance he could rely on, I had no desire to accept his passive-aggressive guilt-tripping that suddenly insisted, “I don’t need a memorial service or a grave.” It was then that the waltz of expectation and disappointment that my father and I had danced finally came to an end. My father’s will that wasn’t a will was only half-realized. His remains were interred at the Daejeon National Cemetery against his wishes (in truth, due to my mother’s strong insistence), and the nation erected a headstone engraved with his name. We do not hold ancestral rites. Instead, I remember my father in my own way. I write. About the things my dead father has left me. Of course, he would not have liked that.

by Kim Young-ha