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

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

Cover Features

[Essay] 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

Cover Features

[Essay] 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

Interviews

[Interview] Perspectives from the Border: Personal and Social Horizons

Hello. Thank you for meeting with me today. I understand that you have returned to Suncheon where you spent your student years, and that you have been teaching at a university there for several years now. Place and region have been enduring concerns in your work, from your debut to the present. If the hometown depicted in your earlier fiction was often read as a place you had left behind, then in your most recent collection, We’re Okay Here, stories centered on the “here” where you are now situated stand out in particular.  Just as one’s positionality can shape one’s perspective and attitude, the hometown written from the city and the hometown written from “here” give rise to different impressions. I would love to hear how returning to your home region, teaching students at the local university, and writing fiction from this place have changed you as a writer.  For the past five years, I’ve been living in Suncheon, where I also attended high school. My hometown is about an hour away. Rather than feeling that I’ve come home, I think of myself as being on the outskirts of home. I like this sense of distance.  Since moving back here, my breathing has certainly grown easier, as if I’ve returned to the world of my mother tongue. And yet, there are times when this place feels suddenly unfamiliar to me. I find myself discovering things I hadn’t known before, and this sense of time-walking through the gaps that have opened over the past thirty years also feels new. For writers, I think our hometowns pull at us as much as they push us away. Because I don’t know my hometown anymore, you could say that I haven’t so much returned home as that I’ve arrived here from some other world.  As I reread your fiction to prepare for this interview, I was struck once again by the expansiveness of your fictional territory. Beginning with the vernacular of your hometown, your work extends outward to the Cambodian border, Mongolia, and even to the Rohingya people of Myanmar. I’d like to ask about your hometown and rural society, which served as a point of departure for your literary work. “Chasing Chickens,” your first short story published in 1994, is celebrated for vividly portraying rural life with its rich dialect and strong vernacular texture. Your first collection, Burying Incense, is similarly oriented. Considering that the mainstream of 1990s literature leaned toward erasing regional differences, this must have given you much to wrestle with. At the same time, it seems to me that your decision not to follow prevailing literary trends helped secure the distinctiveness of your work as a writer. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. I began my career by writing stories rooted in my hometown. That was simply who I was at the time. It wasn’t so much that I believed I knew rural society well; I just felt I was lacking in the knowledge of city life. What troubled me most, however, was that I had not yet discovered what I truly wanted to write. Though I was physically immersed in a big city, my heart leaned toward home. I guess I struggled with my identity.  As a writer, I believed there existed an original core to who I was, and that it had been distorted or contaminated. I began writing in search of that original form. Through fiction, I tried to separate what was truly mine from what was not, believing that once I found myself, I would finally be able to write the kind of literature I genuinely wanted to pursue. In that sense, writing about my hometown became a means of searching for my origins.  But of course, there is no such thing as an original form for a human being. I eventually came to see myself as someone who had lost their home, with no choice but to set out on the road and wander outward. Only later did I realize that this journey had become my literary world. From the outside, leaving home and returning home may appear to be a smooth trajectory, but inwardly, it feels more like the scattered tracks of a traveler drifting from place to place, unable to settle anywhere.  Mongolia is an important source of inspiration for you. In 2005, you spent six months there, and that experience seems to have become fertile ground for several stories, including the title piece of your third story collection, Wolves. Could you talk about how your time there influenced your writing? I’m also curious about how you view Mongolia now. You’ve returned several times since then, and this year marks twenty years since you first connected with the country. Mongolia itself must have undergone significant changes amid the currents of globalization. I haven’t been able to return since the pandemic began. Before that, though, I first stayed there for six months thanks to a residency program, and then went back about eight more times on shorter visits. From what I hear from friends who continue to travel there, Mongolia has changed a great deal in recent years. If I were to go now, Ulaanbaatar would probably feel unfamiliar. Given the pace of change, I’m guessing it has become like every other big city around the world.  I was in my early thirties when I spent those six months there. Back then, international exchange in the Korean literary world was just beginning to take shape. New partnerships were forming with writers’ organizations in places like Vietnam and Mongolia, and the first overseas residency programs were only just emerging. At the time, I felt a strong urge to go somewhere unfamiliar, to stop writing for a while, and simply live. Mongolia offered the shock of an entirely different world: a nomadic culture set against an agrarian one, a society in transition from socialism to a market economy, and at the same time a place where layers of Korea’s own path to modernization seemed visibly sedimented. It also felt like a kind of third space, where North and South Korea coexisted . . . Writing came naturally there. These were issues I had already been thinking about during my student days as an activist. Luckily for me, I was already searching for a way to write from the perspective of someone standing at the border, someone attuned to the social discourses people sense in everyday life, and to the meeting point between personal and political horizons.  My time in Mongolia was, psychologically, the most intense period of struggle I have known. It offered a loneliness so deep that I wondered if I would ever encounter it again. And as a human being, I felt that I had become freer and more mature. When I returned to Korea, I had the sense, for the first time since becoming an adult, that I was coming home.  The story “Empty Cans,” published in this issue of KLN, reads as an extension of the Mongolian narrative from Wolves. Broadly speaking, it follows Nergüi, who spent his early childhood on the steppe, as he parts from the landscape that shaped him and sets off for Ulanbaatar. Compared to the story “Wolves,” which is charged with grief and fierce intensity over the destruction of Mongolian nomadic life under capitalism, “Empty Cans” unfolds in a more restrained register, telling the story of nine-year-old Nergüi as he yields to this historical current and learns to live within it. What were you hoping to express through this work?  The Mongolia I encountered in 2005 was a place where traditional nomadic life and modern urban life coexisted and collided. I have often described it through the image of a herder on horseback passing in front of a Motorola billboard erected on the steppe. On Mongolian soil, the world of myth and neoliberalism stood side by side, and I wanted to capture that image.The figure of the wolf became a medium to grasp this tension. The wolf is both the greatest threat to livestock and, at the same time, a being imbued with spirit-like mythic presence. In that sense, “Wolves” can be described as a work of image-hunting, a pursuit of an archetypal figure that gathers these contradictions.  What fascinated me about Mongolia, however, was its nomadic imagination: a sensibility shaped by a land that is not owned, and an attitude toward life that, to my eyes, appeared cold and unsentimental. “Empty Cans” captures just a single shard of Mongolian nomadic life.   When you write about migration and diaspora, you seem especially attentive to borders. What led you to this choice? When writing about others beyond the self, or about unfamiliar places, what do you keep foremost in mind as you work? I think I’ve already touched on why I try to adopt the perspective of someone at the border. It is to stand at the edge where crossings occur. I think maybe all that literature can truly capture is the gesture, the attempt, to understand the unknowable world of the other. A sense of that unknowability has to come first.  When I can only write from myself, I try to position that self honestly, and to show the conditions in which it is ruptured from within by another world. I’m interested in capturing the moment when the self begins to waver. When writing from the position of an insider, I place the character as close to the edge as possible. Only someone who is shaken to the core, and capable of reflection, can come close to the truth.   I see your sustained engagement with inter- Korean relations as a crucial aspect of your work. Stories such as “The Magnolia” and “River Crossers” remain vivid in my memory even now. In the afterword to The Second Self-Portrait, you describe “Rodong Sinmun,” “Visiting Graves,” and “The House of Longing for Home” as “stories conceived while traveling along the armistice line.” In the more recent “Reunion,” you address the issue of separated families. Questions surrounding North-South relations once formed a major lineage often referred to as “division literature.” Since around 2010, however, it seems that this tradition has waned among younger writers.  What strikes me about your treatment of division is that, rather than exposing wounds head-on, it conveys a history that remains unresolved and draws attention to those who continue to carry its pain. Were you consciously trying to depict division differently from earlier generations of writers? As a writer living on the divided Korean peninsula, what would you like to say about this condition now? I came to understand, during my college years, that many of the contradictions of Korean society originate in its division. Most of us go about our lives without giving it much thought, yet division shapes the structural foundations of our society and manifests in a wide range of social problems. Individuals are not free from its effects. Division has been so deeply internalized that we have grown numb to it, yet we continue to live as citizens peculiary caught within its contradictions.  My generation does not carry direct experiences of war or family separation in the way earlier writers did, but I wanted to write fiction that traces how division continues to operate in everyday life. I also wanted to avoid treating division as mere subject matter. Instead, I tried to inscribe it as part of my own lived experience. My military service near the armistice line, along with three encounters with people from the North, became formative experiences for me. At present, inter-Korean relations are stalled, offering few immediate points of stimulus for Korean writers. However, if things were to shift suddenly and exchanges were to become more active, I believe we would see an increase in literary works engaging with the question of division. On the level of lived experiences, I intend to keep grappling with this issue and carrying it into my fiction.  You entered university in the late 1980s and took part in the student movement of the 1990s. You made your literary debut in your third year at university and, through your involvement with the Writers’ Association of Korea, you did not hesitate to step forward as a writer engaged with social issues. In a past interview, you spoke of beginning to write with the conviction of committing yourself to a lifelong movement. How have these experiences of activism shaped your literature? And in our present moment, what role do you think writers can play in working toward a better society? For my generation, participating in social movements was not especially dangerous. Our creative environment was very different from that of earlier generations who wrote under military dictatorship. I became a writer in a context where alternative ways of living, and multiple forms of literary practice, were genuinely possible. Around the time I began writing, there was a persistent question: Why become a professional writer at all? When I was a student, there was even a sense of resistance to the institutional debut system that produced established writers, because there was always the alternative path of becoming a full-time social activist.  I was involved in a literary movement grounded in collective creation, and when I committed myself to writing, I believed it was possible to do so as part of a lifelong practice of resistance. Writers from earlier generations had lived this way. That said, I wasn’t envisioning organized activism. Rather, I believed that a writer’s life could be a way of continuing to grow and mature over a lifetime. And I believed that society surrounding us should flow onto the writer’s desk.  You can see this in the way younger writers came together around the June 9 Writers’ Declaration* following the Yongsan tragedy and President Roh Moo-hyun’s death, and in how writers later responded, through solidarity and literary practice, to the Sewol ferry disaster, the MeToo movement and the reboot of feminism, and the impeachment process. A writer’s desk cannot be otherwise. * Translator’s Note: The June 9 Writers’ Declaration (6·9 작가선언) was issued in 2009 by 188 Korean writers. Framing writing as an act of resistance rather than ideology, the declaration affirmed literature’s obligation to human dignity and collective responsibility.  Reading your essay on the martial law declaration, “Why Did I Get Off the Train,” I had the sense of catching a glimpse of the lives and ways of thinking of your generation, as well as those of the earlier “386 Generation.” The same student activists who once worked fervently to uncover the suspicious death of Student Council President Lee Nae-chang, and who are now part of the older generation, still head to Yeouido or Gwanghwamun to protest during national crises.  I found myself lingering over your phrase “civic health.” I imagine you were in Suncheon at the time of the martial law declaration, and I would like to hear about your experience of martial law and the public square. It would be especially meaningful if you could reflect on how the public squares or demonstrations you encountered in your youth compare with those of today. I belong to a community formed to commemorate a colleague who died under suspicious circumstances at the hands of state authority during our student years. The cause of that death has yet to be uncovered, and for more than thirty years we have continued our work demanding truth and accountability. Of course, those three decades encompass much more than that. These are people who lived their lives as working adults while pursuing this cause, and because their colleague’s death resulted from an abuse of power, they have remained committed to fighting social injustice.  They have lived as better citizens, as thoughtful voters, and as everyday people devoted to solidarity. I hold deep respect for this kind of civic health. Their children have now grown into university students, and they, too, come out into the streets during moments like the impeachment period. When I stand in the square, I don’t look toward the front lines but toward the young people all around me. Sometimes I go out simply because I want to see them.  I am struck by the way this younger generation knows how to take pleasure even in protest culture, and by the diverse connections and solidarities they form. The desire for a better society feels unchanged, whether thirty years ago or today. I believe that this civic health alone is enough to connect me to the younger generation.   Your most recent short story collection, We’re Okay Here, marks your first collection in a long while, so I imagine it carries particular weight for you. Compared with your earlier, more primal works, these stories feel more contemplative, with a more leisurely gaze directed toward the younger generation. In that sense, the book seems to mark a shift in your literary landscape. Stories such as “Into the Forest” and “Family Bus” can be read as narratives about your generation witnessing the passing of an earlier generation and its elders. After more than thirty years of writing, as you enter your middle age, I imagine you’ve thought about growing older. As someone positioned between the younger and older generations, could you share how these reflections have found their way into your writing?  Perhaps because I began writing fiction as a journey to find myself in my youth, I feel that I can only write as much as I have lived. The experience of losing one’s parents is part of that. There comes a time when you have to let them go. Senior writers I deeply respected are also leaving this world. On my phone now, wedding invitations and obituaries arrive in almost equal measure.  I think I’ve carried the question of when one becomes an adult for a long time. These days, I wonder if the question itself is misguided. I don’t think I’ll ever arrive at a clear sense of having grown up. Kenzaburō Ōe once said that an artist’s aging runs counter to ideas of maturity or harmony with society, and instead remains bound up with the contradictions one carries as an individual, along with a sense of catastrophe. I find this convincing. To me, it doesn’t sound like an inability to escape contradiction and ruin, but rather a choice not to escape them. In any case, I continue to practice a kind of self-guidance, reminding myself that I need to keep walking my own path as a writer. I want to see how far my literary journey can go.   Is there a work you would like to introduce to readers outside Korea?  I would like to share my fourth short story collection, The Second Self-Portrait. It offers a glimpse of how Koreans live their everyday lives today, and what the lives of middle-aged Koreans look like.   In the afterword to We’re Okay Here, you regretted writing only as much as you breathed. This felt deeply characteristic of you. I read it as an honest confession that a writer can only write as much as they have lived and breathed. I hope you will continue to write and breathe for a long, long time. I would love to hear about stories you haven’t yet finished, stories you feel compelled to write, and your thoughts on your next work.  I keep finding more things I want to write about. I want to write about my father’s generation, about the later years of parents who’ve lost children to suspicious deaths, and about the Yeosu-Suncheon Incident that began on October 19, a tragedy tied to the region where I live, which perhaps I’ll do in the form of a novel. I also want to continue writing short stories that capture everyday life.  I feel embarrassed whenever I am asked about my next work because I’m such a lazy writer. These questions were difficult, but they pushed me to think more deeply. I wish you, Kim Yudam, continued strength in your own writing as well. Thank you.   KOREAN WORKS MENTIONED: Jeon Sungtae, “Chasing Chickens,” in Burying Incense (Silcheon Munhak, 1999) 전성태, 「닭몰이」, 『매향』 (실천문학, 1999) Jeon Sungtae, Crossing Borders (Changbi, 2005) 전성태, 『국경을 넘는 일』 (창비, 2005) Jeon Sungtae, “Wolves,” “The Magnolia,” and “River Crossers,” in Wolves (tr. Sora Kim-Russell, White Pine Press, 2017) 전성태, 「늑대」, 「목란식당」, 「강을 건너는 사람들」, 『늑대』 (창비, 2009) Jeon Sungtae, “Rodong Sinmun,” “Visiting Graves,” and “The House of Longing for Home,” in The Second Self-Portrait (Changbi, 2015) 전성태, 「로동신문」, 「성묘」, 「망향의 집」, 『두 번의 자화상』 (창비, 2015) Jeon Sungtae, “Reunion,” “Into the Forest,” and “Family Bus,” in We’re Okay Here (Changbi, 2024) 전성태, 「상봉」, 「숲으로」, 「가족 버스」, 『여기는 괜찮아요』 (창비, 2024) Jeon Sungtae, “Why Did I Get Off the Train,” The Journal of Literary Creative Writing 24, no. 2 (2025) 전성태, 「나는 중간역에서 내린다」, 『한국문예창작』 24권 2호 (한국문예창작학회, 2025) 

by Kim Yudam

Fiction

[Fiction] Empty Cans

There in the distance you walk my horizon, just as I walk yours. —Kim Jungil, “Horizon”  They were up to tae now. They’d already discussed taedo, taedong, taeran, and taeman, and next was taemyeong. The Korean researchers immediately ruled out as obsolete the first definition for taemyeong (台命), meaning “orders given by high-ranking officials,” and had begun talking about the second taemyeong (胎名), or “nicknames given to fetuses.” Nergüi flipped back and forth between two different Mongolian dictionaries.  “We do not name babies in the womb,” he declared, adding that there was no equivalent noun in the Mongolian language for taemyeong. Nergüi was a visiting researcher at the university, sent there to help compile a Korean-Mongolian dictionary. He and the three Korean researchers had spent the last six months choosing which words would go into the dictionary, and now they were nearly at the end. They’d chosen forty-thousand entries already and were planning to add about five thousand more from among words beginning with ㅌ, ㅍ, and ㅎ.  It was nearly lunchtime, their debate over taemyeong dragging on into that ambiguous hour of the day when it would become harder and harder for them to tell whether they were actually debating anything or merely devolving into idle chit-chat. Most of the Korean researchers were young and had had fetal nicknames like Puppy Poo, Lucky Duck, and Dorothy. Professor Park, the most senior among them and heavily pregnant, had named her fetus Janggeumi. She said she’d taken the name from the TV show Jewel in the Palace because her pregnancy had her craving all kinds of old-fashioned royal cuisine, like tarakjuk milk porridge or bamboo shoots with persimmon dressing. All Nergüi ever thought of when he heard the name Dae Jang Geum was a Korean restaurant in downtown Ulaanbaatar.  “Naming a fetus is frowned upon in Mongolia,” he said.  The bemused looks on the Koreans’ faces said, ‘Another taboo?’ It wasn’t too far-fetched to call Mongolia the Land of Taboos. Nergüi had explained that the countless do’s and don’ts were the nomads’ way of living in harmony with nature. He still observed the Mongolian superstition about not passing in front of a pregnant person by making sure to get behind Professor Park whenever they were in an elevator or a similar space together. Not that Nergüi was hung up on superstition. He’d gone a long way toward adapting his thoughts and behavior to Korean culture, but it didn’t change the fact that he’d grown up a nomad in the Gobi Desert. Some habits were too deeply ingrained.  Take migratory birds, for instance. Nergüi told the others that it was taboo on the steppes to count migratory birds.  “Counting kills birds,” he said.  Professor Kim, who’d disappointed his parents by being born a boy despite being nicknamed Dorothy in the womb, said, “Uh oh. I used to fall asleep counting wild geese all the time when I was in the Gobi.”  “But isn’t that only natural?” Professor Park said. “Nergüi, isn’t there a way to release Professor Kim from his curse? From what I remember, taboos are like safes: they can both be unlocked.” Everyone laughed, including Nergüi.  Nergüi mimicked a teacher scolding a student.  “You better not look up at the sky the first time it snows!”  Professor Kim delightedly agreed.  “All I have to do is not look up? That’s easy,” he said.  “Something tells me it won’t be as easy as you think,” Professor Park said. She looked at the clock on the wall and asked Nergüi, “Can you tell us any other funny taboos?”  That was a clear sign that it was time to break for lunch. Nergüi pondered what else he could share with them, then laughed out loud.  “Raindrops,” he said. “You must never catch them in your hand.”  He spread open his palm and pretended to catch the rain.  “When you do that, the rain clings to you and becomes yours, and in a land where water is precious, that endangers all life. We also do not sew new clothes for babies in the womb. Even though they’re bound for this world, you’re not supposed to do anything for the not-yet born. You have to be very careful. As careful as you are about not saying the name of the sacred Bogd Mountain when you’re in its presence.”  “You’re supposed to call it Big Mountain instead, right?”  The Korean researchers recalled Nergüi’s funny way of addressing Professor Park’s pregnancy by asking her, “How is our new person doing?” They’d thought at first that he was being cute, but now they could see how his words carried a deep sense of care.  “Not that we Koreans are ones to talk about superstition. After all, we’re supposed to give fetuses ugly nicknames to avoid bad luck.”  “That’s not strictly the case anymore. You see a lot more cutesy nicknames nowadays, along with jokey ones. I met this one woman who named her fetus ‘BTS.’”  Now the Koreans were having fun with it.  “And it’s not just fetal names. Ages ago, when infant mortality was really high, people used to have separate amyeong just for childhood. You know, those goofy names parents gave children to trick Death from coming for them? Emperor Gojong and Councilor Hwang Hui had some really good ones, like, Dog Shit and Piggy.”  “Those weren’t just nicknames?”  “Nope, those were their actual names when they were children.”  Nergüi opened the file on his laptop that contained all of the dictionary entries they’d compiled so far and searched for amyeong. Surely they’d gone over it already, but he felt as if he were hearing this noun for the first time. He saw that it had been struck from the list. Their criteria had been to eliminate words that were either fully obsolete or rarely used in daily life, and it seemed that “childhood name” had been ruled out before they could even begin to discuss whether there was an equivalent for it in the Mongolian language. Though Mongolians used plenty of nicknames and terms of endearment, they did not create separate names just for one’s childhood.  “But you know, we’re just as cautious as Koreans when it comes to naming children. We too choose names to prevent the spirits from messing with them. Take my name, for example. Nergüi means Nameless. My grandfather named me that to prevent misfortune from finding me.”  “Oh wow, I had no idea that’s what your name means.”  “Traditionally, there are a lot of names like mine. The name Terbish means Not That One. Khemedekh means Who Knows? There’s another misleading name like that, which translates to No One Knows. Some parents even name their child Khenbish.”  “Khenbish? Khen . . . bish . . . Nobody? Is that really what it means?”  “Yes,” Nergüi said with a nod.  “That’s funny. Dog Shit and Piggy are nothing compared to those.”  For reasons he couldn’t explain, Nergüi suddenly found himself overcome with longing. He ached with the melancholy of one who’d traveled a long way. His Korean colleagues, and this work of matching up vocabulary words, often had this effect on his mood. He felt himself traveling toward a place that was somehow both strange and welcoming. But naming a baby while it was still in the womb? That struck him as terribly impatient.  Every time Nergüi spoke, fumbling through explanations, his Korean colleagues listened as intently as if they’d been transported to the Gobi itself. The expressions on their faces said that these encounters with the inner life of the language gave them a much deeper understanding of the nomads’ world than a single night spent in a ger could, and that the whole world seemed to have more commonalities than differences.  These conversations would end when they suddenly reached one of those life mysteries that couldn’t be resolved by language, and their heads would tilt up as if under some other power, their eyes turning to some distant place. Alas, their voices seemed to sigh.  “But Nergüi, I bet you’ve caught rainwater in your hand before, haven’t you?”  “Of course. I’d be crazy to miss out on something that good. When it rains, your hand opens on its own.”  “That’s right . . . The same way your head lifts when it snows.”  But even those riddles were not as fascinating as Nergüi’s tale of the tin cans. His colleagues all agreed on this. It was no exaggeration to say that cans were what had made Nergüi the man he was now. Last December, they’d discussed the dictionary entry for can, ggangtong in Korean and лааз for Mongolian. Just like today, his colleagues had spent half the day lost in Nergüi’s story.  Nergüi had grown up in the southern Gobi Desert, in a distant corner of the steppes whose name meant “many small birch trees.” In actuality, there were few birch trees to be seen. Only sparse patches of hardy grass in a parched wilderness of sand and rock.  His parents had left to find work in South Korea when Nergüi was four, leaving him in the care of his grandfather. Grandfather Enebish was an elderly camel and sheep herder in his eighties. The boy’s parents had told the old man that they would work in Korea for three years and return before Nergüi started school. They sent gifts from abroad that fit right into the grandfather and grandson’s simple life in the ger. There were household goods—a plastic cutting board, a frying pan, a thermos, a trunk—and clothes and toys for Nergüi. The plastic model airplane they’d sent him back then was currently sitting on the desk in Nergüi’s lodgings.  The gifts took at least a season, sometimes over half a year, to reach them. The nearest city, which had a post office, bank, and school, was a day’s horseback ride away. Grandfather Enebish had grown far too old to make the trip. Fortunately, his younger brother was an elder monk in the city’s temple and always forwarded Nergüi’s parents’ packages to them. He sent them via the temple trucks that made their rounds to purchase wool and camel fur or else tasked younger lamas with hand-delivering them.  From some point on, grandfather and grandson had become preoccupied with waiting for others. His grandfather would sit for hours on a chair in front of their ger. His line of sight was broken only by the far-off southern horizon, and every now and then, when the normally poker-faced landscape was stirred by columns of dust swirling skyward, he would peer through his old Soviet binoculars. Nergüi, too, would pause in his playing and watch as the cloud of dust slowly moved from east to west, sometimes west to east. Surely it was a passing car, but few travelers ever found reason to enter their valley.  As Nergüi learned the lay of the land, he came to know that somewhere beyond the southern horizon were his parents, past the northern horizon were the school and city, and to the west was the dinosaur graveyard.  At five, Nergüi saddled his first horse and took to racing as far as his gaze could reach. The more he raced toward the horizon, the more it retreated, faint and distant. This taught him despair, but also kindled his longing. He felt he was trapped in some very deep place, like where he imagined the night sky must end. He stacked small stones at his heart’s horizons before returning home. The cairns gave him the courage to go further with each ride.  One day, way out to the east, he came across a jeep carrying travelers, a married couple from Korea, accompanied by a local guide. They followed Nergüi back to his ger. His grandfather always welcomed guests, but he was even more delighted to learn they were Korean. He set out tea and cheese. The man and woman stayed for an hour and boiled instant ramyeon noodles for lunch.  Grandfather Enebish showed the Koreans the letters and photos the boy’s parents had sent. They told him in turn about the city where the parents worked in a furniture factory. The city had a big lake, they said. They looked at the photo that Nergüi’s parents had taken in front of a fountain and said that it was indeed the same musical fountain found at that lake. They told Nergüi all about the delightful fountain.  In a voice heavy with emotion, his grandfather said, “It looks like a nice place to live. Your parents are clearly doing well. That’s good.”  Before the travelers left, they gave them an armful of drinks and snacks. It would be years before Nergüi learned that the gifts they’d given him were Choco Pies and Coca-Cola. Grandfather Enebish treasured the box of Choco Pies and the five cans of Coke as if they’d come from his own son and daughter-in-law. That first taste of Coke etched itself permanently into Nergüi’s memory. His grandfather had the first gulp then sat straight up and let out a rattling belch. Nergüi was terrified by his grandfather’s reaction to the beverage and took a cautious sip. His mouth and throat burned, and he felt like all the air was being sucked out of his body. Unlike the sweetness he was used to, the kind that lingered while barely even registering as sweet, this was a loud burst of sugar that vanished as quickly as it had come.  The two shared amused looks as they passed the can back and forth.  “Such an odd flavor,” his grandfather said. “It could shock a dying man back to life.”  His grandfather set the can down.  “We’ve been gifted something really precious. Better make it last.”  Nergüi did as his grandfather suggested and resisted opening a second can for an entire day. The next day, he cracked one open and drank half. He placed the rest in the cupboard. That evening, when he came back in from herding the sheep, he took another sip and found that the flavor had changed. It tasted like nothing more than lukewarm sugar water. He realized that once you opened a can, you had to see it through to the end.  It was no easy task for a child his age to keep from drinking all five at once. They didn’t last even three days. He displayed the five empty cans along the head of his bed. Each time he looked at them, he was overcome by an unbearable thirst. He even tried filling one with tarag and drinking it that way. Nergüi returned from the outhouse in the middle of the night and wept like a child waking from a nightmare. His grandfather sat up in bed. The boy was holding an empty can. The grandfather understood the enormity of the child’s suffering, and how dreadful a thing this was.  When Grandfather Enebish was around Nergüi’s age, the socialist government had come in, and some summer after that, a European named Jan and his family became neighbors. Jan and his wife were anthropologists. They’d come from some place called Oslo. They said they would be staying for two years to record life in the Gobi. They set up their tent near a well in the summer camp just one hill over, a mere stone’s throw from Enebish’s ger. He’d encountered foreigners before, when Soviet troops had come to conduct surveys, but it was his first time having them as neighbors.  With Enebish’s family helping Jan’s family out, they all grew close. When the nomads packed up to move from the summer to winter camp, Jan’s family decamped with them. They joined the nomads for every holiday and special event.  “Jan had a little boy who was the same age as me, named Anders. We were as inseparable as two puppies.”  The time soon came for the foreign couple to finish up their research and return home.  The day before they left, Enebish went with his father to help them pack their belongings into their truck. He’d grown so fond of them and missed them so much already.  “I gave Anders a bow that I’d spent a month making. He gave me these Soviet binoculars.”  Before returning home, Enebish’s father grabbed the horse’s reins and asked Jan, “Friend, can your home be reached on horseback?”  Jan smiled at this and nodded. He raised his long arm and gestured like he was tapping his hand against the western sky.  “The city where I live is out there, where this land and that sky end. We walk the same earth and carry the same sky.”  He spread his arms wide and embraced Enebish’s father, then gave Enebish a peck on the cheek.  Enebish wiped away tears the whole ride home. His father consoled him.  “Just as you have more than one finger on your hand, so people have more than one path. There’s no point in crying over their leaving.”  The next morning, before the sun had even risen, his mother woke him.  “Get up, little one. We’re leaving, too. Your father and I talked about it all night. Bring in the camels. Last I saw, the animals were by the black bog.”  Though he knew it was time for them to move to the summer camp, they didn’t usually leave so abruptly. His father had taken the horses and was already gone. Confused, Enebish went to look for the camels. By the time he’d returned with all twelve, the ger had been dismantled and packed on the cart, and the sheep were being readied. His father had returned and kept hurrying them along. His mother sat in the horse cart while Enebish and his father drove the livestock.  Enebish was beside himself. He’d promised Anders he would come say goodbye in the morning. But as luck would have it, their path took them over the hill to where Anders and his family were still camped. It seemed that Enebish’s father had had the same idea of saying goodbye on the way.  Jan and his family had finished breakfast and were packing up. Jan was startled to see them appear with all of their livestock.  “Are you decamping?” he asked.  Enebish’s father nodded. With a determined look, he said, “Our family is too sad to see you go. So we’re going with you instead.”  Looking deeply touched, Jan held his hand out to Enebish’s father.  “That is the best goodbye I have ever received.”  Enebish’s father took his hand and said, “We can’t travel as fast as your Swift Horse (and here, he meant Jan’s truck), but we’ll do our best. How many days will it take?”  At last, Jan realized that the herder’s words had not been in jest.  “Ah, that’s not possible.” He gazed off to the west and shook his head. “It’s much too far.”  “No distance is too far as long as horses can go there.”  “You sound just like Genghis Khan.”  “Do you mean that you plan to spend the summer on the road?”  “The road isn’t the problem. It’s the border. Borders are harder to cross than oceans.”  Enebish’s father didn’t understand. Neither did Enebish nor his mother.  “Our Mongolian horses can go anywhere. They can fly up to the sky and swim any sea.”  Jan went to his wife, and they spoke together for a long time. Then he came back and told Enebish’s parents, “She says there’s no grass for your sheep to eat where we live.”  “You mean there’s even less grass there than in the Gobi?”  “That’s correct.”  Enebish’s father’s shoulders sagged. In a disappointed voice, he said, “We cannot go where there is no grass. Friend, please understand that I cannot leave my sheep behind.” And just like that, Nergüi’s great-grandfather’s dream of migration came to nothing.  This story always reminded Nergüi of where he had come from and the true Gobi that he’d left so far behind. But how far away was it? It seemed even farther than over the horizon.  The six years that Nergüi spent in the Gobi with his grandfather were no different. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the introduction of a market economy, the world had changed, and yet Nergüi and his grandfather were oblivious to it all. They’d continued to revere Comrade Lenin and follow the People’s Revolutionary Party. The more he looked back, the sadder he felt to know that a whole life could just fade to nothing.  The next day, Nergüi’s grandfather pointed at his collection of Coca-Cola cans and asked, “What do you think about throwing those out?”  Nergüi shook his head.  “You’ve refused to even look at tarag or camel milk for five days now. If I could sell the sheep to buy you more of that stuff, I would. But there’s nowhere to buy it out here. Our guests only gifted you suffering.”  His grandfather set a woven leather basket in front of him.  “Shall I throw them away for you?”  Nergüi shook his head again and placed the cans in the basket himself.  He rode his horse to the horizon where he disposed of the cans at a stone tower he’d built and went home.  When his seventh year was on the verge of ending, a school bag arrived from Korea. It contained a thermos, ten notebooks, a set of twelve crayons, and a pencil case stuffed with pencils and erasers. There was no news of whether his parents were returning.  Nergüi’s grandfather told him, “This means it’s time for you to go to school.”  “Even if my parents aren’t back yet?”  His grandfather looked like he didn’t know how to respond.  “As Comrade Lenin said, all children should attend school by the time they turn eight. The children of the Gobi are no exception. However, I’ll speak to the authorities. If I tell them that you’ll start when you turn nine instead, they’ll understand. Because your case is special. You can go to school next year when your parents return. It’ll be good for you to go to school in the big city.” The school was very far from the Gobi, and the children who went there had to live in dormitories. He could come home during school breaks, but the problem was, who would take the sheep to pasture in the morning and bring them in again at night, and who would check that the camels hadn’t wandered off, if he wasn’t there to do it? Who would fetch water for his grandfather? Who would open the ceiling flap in the morning?  That was around the time when they learned that Nergüi’s parents had broken up. His grandfather couldn’t hide this tragedy from him. Not only would the two of them not be returning home together, but there was no way of knowing whether his mother or his father would ever come to get him. “You’re here, so of course someone, either your mother or your father, will come for you. Don’t be too heartbroken over it.” But his grandfather was the first to break. First his cough worsened that August, then he spent the autumn confined to bed. A zud struck, starting in early winter, taking many of their sheep with it. His grandfather knew he no longer had the strength to survive as a herder and sold off their remaining livestock. All that was left were two horses to serve as their feet and one elderly dog.  His grandfather told young Nergüi, “Child, grow like the summer sun until you’re big enough to herd again.”  The year Nergüi turned nine, he spent most of the summer in the dinosaur graveyard to the west. It was a tourist site. Foreign tourists came in droves, and locals made money giving them horse and camel rides. Children Nergüi’s age made pocket money leading the animals around by their reins. Nergüi joined them. The work was fun. The travelers were generous with tips and offered him items from their backpacks that made for nice souvenirs.  Having sold off their livestock, Nergüi and his grandfather stayed put in the winter camp year-round. They got by on the money sent to them from Korea. One day, Nergüi returned to their ger to find his grandfather waiting for him with a gloomy look on his face. There were obvious signs that someone had been to see them. He spotted a sack of salt and some foodstuffs, which told him that it had been the errand runner from his great-uncle’s temple.  His grandfather set the supper table and waited in silence until Nergüi was done eating. Then he fetched an old, worn-out sack from next to the stove and poured the contents onto the floor. It was the empty cans. Mixed in with the ones that Nergüi had left at the stone cairn was a very old-looking tin can marred with rust. Its khaki color had faded, but it hadn’t lost its shape. Nergüi didn’t understand why his grandfather had brought the cans back and spilled them all over the floor.  “They haven’t rotted at all.”  Nergüi listened to his grandfather’s words without responding.  “Animal bones fall apart. In the Gobi, even rocks decompose, but these laaz do not. It has taken me seventy years to remember their name: лааз. I wish for you to take them far away from here.”  Nergüi had never heard the word for cans before, and he would never forget that moment of meeting the word for the first time.  “Where do you want me to throw them away?” Nergüi asked. He thought about the horizons he’d visited.  “Somewhere far. Very, very far.”  “Dalanzadgad?”  “They won’t have a place for disposing of these. You need to go somewhere bigger.”  “Ulaanbaatar?”  His grandfather nodded. Nergüi was shocked. Ulaanbaatar was five hundred kilometers to the north, a tremendous distance. And his grandfather was telling him to go there alone. Nergüi looked worriedly at him, wondering if his grandfather was joking, or maybe he’d grown so feeble that he’d stopped talking sense.  “Look at this.”  His grandfather plucked from among the Coke cans the khaki-colored can that had piqued Nergüi’s curiosity. Dark red sand spilled out.  “This was a can of ham that your father received from some Soviet troops when he was twelve. I discarded it on a red sand dune, and it has frightened me my entire life to see that it never rots. That has always bothered me. It’s far too dangerous to bury something in the earth that refuses to rot. I think that if you leave these unrotting things here, you too will suffer your whole life.”  Nergüi could hear the desperation in his grandfather’s voice. There was no other way about it, he had to take this voyage.  “But Ulaanbaatar is too far. I can’t make it.”  “Why do you say you can’t make it? Am I telling you to take a hundred sheep with you? All you have to do is take this little sack, so what are you afraid of? If you don’t go, then I’ll have no choice but to go myself.”  And so Nergüi set out on the road. Before leaving, Nergüi fetched enough water from the well to fill each water jug to brimming. He gathered plenty of well-dried dung for the fire and stacked it next to the ger.  He placed the cans in his schoolbag. His grandfather lashed a supply of food and water to the saddle, then pulled some cash from his shirt.  “Go to Dalanzadgad first and look for the monk. He’ll tell you how to find your way from there.”  Nergüi wept. He’d never left home before. His grandfather gripped the right rein and led Nergüi around the ger three times.  “I’ll get rid of these and come right back,” Nergüi said. “Please take care until I can return.”  Nergüi left. He rode to the east, passing three stone cairns he’d built. After a day of riding, he reached the outskirts of Dalanzadgad. As evening fell, one end of the earth glittered as if the stars had fallen from the sky. He slowly rode into the center of that light. Houses huddled together with fences between them, and large trees stood in rows. There were more cars than horses. Standing beside his horse on the asphalt, Nergüi felt himself shrink. He instinctively avoided the large roads where cars traveled and kept to the alleys. The smell of food and the smoke of cooking fires filled his lungs.  The temple was not within the city but was instead out past a hill where a monument stood. It was a small temple. Next to the yard with its white stupa was a single poplar tree. A flock of ravens clung to its branches like overripe fruit. He tethered the horse and entered the temple.  The evening was still and quiet. The thick scent of incense hung in the air. Three lamas of different ages came out to greet him. Nergüi recognized the youngest as the errand runner who’d frequented their ger.  “Nergüi, what are you doing here?” he asked, clasping Nergüi’s hands. The young lama explained that the elder monk, his grandfather’s younger brother, had left for a pilgrimage to Tibet.  “He’s been gone three years already. But I can help you in his place with whatever it is you need.”  The young lama gave him dinner and a bed for the night.  “Did you know I delivered a letter to your grandfather three days ago? But I wasn’t able to stay long enough to see you.”  Nergüi nodded. “Who was the letter from?” he asked, remembering that the lama always read letters to his grandfather, who couldn’t read himself.  “The letter was sent from Korea.”  “From my father or my mother?”  “Well . . . I can tell you it was your father.”  The look on the lama’s face said that it was difficult for him to say anything more. When Nergüi explained that he was on his way to dispose of the metal cans, the lama patted his head.  “Your grandfather must have a lot on his mind. I’ll help you. I’ll find you a ride to Ulaanbaatar. We’ll have to leave early, so you’d better get some rest.”  At dawn, the lama took Nergüi to a wool collection yard downtown. Nergüi climbed into the passenger seat of a wool truck.  The driver was kind. He played music loudly the whole day for Nergüi. The Soviet truck was big and old and bounced slowly over the unpaved highway across the steppe. It stopped in at collection points both large and small in the Gobi to load up wool. When night fell, they covered the top of the truck with a canvas tarp and slept on the steppe.  They were three days out of Dalanzadgad. That afternoon, the driver shook Nergüi awake.  “Look at that, Country Boy.”  Nergüi gaped at the enormous smokestacks and the city so tightly packed with houses that none of it looked real.  “Welcome to Ulaanbaatar,” the driver said with a laugh.  Nergüi watched an airplane ascend into the western sky. The truck seemed to be headed straight for the smokestacks downtown. Just then, he spotted a towering pile of something by the side of the road. To his shock, it was all metal. An actual mountain of metal. But what really made his heart jump were the familiar looking cans in that mountain.  “Here!” he shouted at the driver.  The driver pulled over.  “This is the place you’re looking for?”    “I think so. But, mister? What do they do with all of that?” Nergüi asked, pointing at the cans.  “They send it to China. China buys it from us.”  Nergüi jumped down from the truck and said goodbye to the driver.  “Good luck, kid. If you want a lift back home after, then head to the place I told you about.”  Nergüi walked into the open-air junkyard. There wasn’t even a gate or door. Inside were brown mountains of broken-down cars, harnesses, factory parts, cables, signboards. Nergüi reached yet another mountain of metal cans and took off his backpack. He added his cans to the pile. Like rain drops falling into a stream, his were soon unrecognizable from the other cans. He couldn’t believe how easy it was to get rid of them. Now, he was terribly eager to get back to his grandfather. He walked out of the junkyard, glancing back as he went.  This was where Nergüi’s story of the cans ended. If the boy had his version of the story, then the grown-ups had theirs. On his way out of the junkyard, Nergüi ran into a youngish woman. The woman was holding a baby. She studied Nergüi. The woman looked very familiar to him. She spoke first.  “Nergüi? Is that you?”  The woman came running and threw her arms around him.  “Baby, let me get a look at you.”  She stroked his face as tears ran down her own. Nergüi couldn’t believe what was happening to him.  “Mama, I came to throw away some cans,” he mumbled. “Yes, baby. Yes, you did . . . Well done. I see that your grandfather sent you.”  Nergüi’s story did not end with the dramatic reunion with his mother. His mother had returned from Korea several years earlier and remarried. The junkyard was her home. Several days later, Nergüi accompanied his mother to the airport to retrieve her ex-husband’s ashes. She had Nergüi go ahead of her.  “Your father has been waiting for you here for five months, because you and your grandfather are the only ones who can claim him. But now it’s done.”  Nergüi never returned to the Gobi to Grandfather Enebish. The way the grown-ups told it, packing up the cans and sending Nergüi on that long trip was his grandfather’s way of saying that he was taking his own final journey. That was the way of the Gobi, was what Nergüi told his fellow researchers.

by Jeon Sungtae

Reviews

[Review] The Wisdom of Stories Rooted in Nature

Jeon Sungtae’s fiction, grounded in the distinctive narrative aesthetics of Korean literature, has consistently captured the shifting values and lived realities of contemporary communities through a keen sensitivity to historical and social change. In his novel Crossing Borders, he has articulated the ethical responsibility of literary language in the following terms: “I have faith that language must not wound either the writer or the listener. The labor of honing language may not lie in sharpening a blade, but in softening its edge through writing and rewriting.”  Jeon’s debut short story collection, Burying Incense, gives clear expression to a language uniquely his own, distinguishing itself from the literature of his generation, which often focused on the sensorial immediacy of popular culture. While articulating a lyrical sorrow for a world that has been lost, the collection gently brings to light the world of traditional sensibilities that our present reality cannot afford to ignore. His fiction offers the pleasure of encountering anew the linguistic acuity and narrative vitality once exemplified by major figures in Korean literary history such as Kim You Jeong, Ch’ae Mansik, and Lee Mun Ku. At the same time, it invites a compelling question: How might this inheritance of tradition be refined and transformed into new forms of storytelling?  Jeon’s sustained attention to the nuances of vernacular Korean and to traditional narrative aesthetics begins to expand decisively into a more contemporary and global narrative space amid shifts in global capitalism with Crossing Borders. With the turn of the twenty-first century, his fiction increasingly foregrounds the movements of subjects who traverse borders. This spatial expansion is not merely about physical border-crossing, but about carefully tracing the crosshatched lines of discrimination and exclusion produced by divisions of region, race, gender, nation, and class. While much of Korean fiction of the 2000s explored the experiences of outsiders moving through transnational and regional spaces, Jeon’s work stands out for inscribing the concrete realities of life on the Korean Peninsula. The literary interest in what might be called “Korean” within a global frame was already being explored in his fiction in a gradual and deepening way.  This trajectory becomes especially vivid in Jeon’s third short story collection, Wolves, which constructs layered narratives by juxtaposing the histories of Asian nations with the divided reality of Korea. Across the collection, the transformation of Asian territories is depicted in diverse ways that prompt reflection on Korea’s own path of modernization. The title story, “Wolves,” offers a poetic and critical vision of the destruction of Mongolia’s natural environment in the name of modern progress. The wolf’s apocalyptic voice functions as a powerful metaphor for the conditions of development and marginalization that Mongolia is forced to endure under global capitalism: “Now I will travel freely through a dark place. I sense the souls of the humans asleep by the fire. I may be wretched, but they, too, are wretched. They hunger, always, like me. That is how we were born.”  Marked by sustained critical reflection on the success myths of modernity, Jeon Sungtae’s fiction renders with great care the chaos borne by those who live on the margins. His work refuses to simplify or transcend the harsh constraints of reality. This attentiveness proves especially persuasive when he addresses the concrete problems of life under national division. His fourth short story collection, The Second Self-Portrait, presents finely wrought stories that trace the points at which historical reality intersects with the rhythms of everyday life.  Among them, “Visiting Graves” stands out for its subtle vision of moving beyond the wounds left by division. In the story, an elderly former soldier who farms near the Demilitarized Zone begins, quietly and without drawing attention, to tend the unmarked graves of enemy soldiers during major holidays. Fearing repercussions should the military discover this, he is startled one day to find flowers placed on one of the graves. He removes the flowers so that the unknown visitor may continue their act of remembrance undetected. While the story squarely confronts the long-standing hostility embedded in division, it also probes the possibility of reconciliation and healing beyond that reality. A similar sensitivity appears in “Rodong Sinmun,” which depicts security guards at an apartment complex discovering copies of the North Korean newspaper in a recycling area and immediately suspecting defectors that live in the building of espionage. Through this everyday incident, the story vividly exposes the division complex lodged in the unconscious of ordinary citizens. The lines of division, Jeon suggests, do not exist solely as a physical border, but persist as fear and vigilance woven into daily life.   In his most recent collection, We’re Okay Here, Jeon’s narrative gaze gathers diverse historical moments into the present, constructing intricate layered stories. Mongolian history, the Sewol ferry disaster, the ruptures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, national division, and separated families converge into compelling stories that traverse time and space. Across these works, the connective power of literary language takes form through what might be called “place memory.” Characters store their memories in specific, deeply personal locations, transforming them into meaningful narratives. Whether it is the elderly man traveling to Mount Geumgang to reunite with his younger brother in “Reunion,” the people checking in on one another during the pandemic in the title story, or the mother’s life revisited in “Family Bus,” these stories show how history and memory take tangible form through the power of place.  Among these works, “Empty Cans” is particularly striking. Centered on the everyday object of a can, the story compresses memory across time and space. Nergüi, now an adult, is a researcher dispatched to a university-affiliated institute compiling a Korean-Mongolian dictionary. Through casual conversation, he introduces his Korean colleagues to Mongolian taboos and historical sensibilities embedded in naming practices, migratory birds, and childhood names. Expressions that may sound merely negative or prohibitive to Korean ears, in fact, carry the accumulated wisdom of nomadic life lived in long coexistence with nature. The Mongolian Gobi, where the story unfolds, is rendered as a singular space of origin, encounter, and parting for the young Nergüi and his grandfather. The cans, “лааз” in Mongolian, contain the long years of waiting shared by grandfather and grandson as they awaited the return of Nergüi’s parents who had left Mongolia to work in Korea. They also store traces of kindness and friendship extended by foreign visitors, along with the many meetings and farewells that shaped their lives. When the grandfather realizes that the time has come to part from his grandson, he urges Nergüi to leave for the city to discard the cans that do not rot. In the end, Nergüi reaches the city, reunites with his mother, who has formed a new family, and later goes to the airport to retrieve his father’s remains.  The emotional core of the story lies in the understated way Nergüi recounts the long history of the cans to his colleagues: “Nergüi never returned to the Gobi to Grandfather Enebish. The way the grown-ups told it, packing up the cans and sending Nergüi on that long trip was his grandfather’s way of saying that he was taking his own final journey. That was the way of the Gobi, was what Nergüi told his fellow researchers.”  Framed as a story within a story, “Empty Cans” condenses the history of three generations of a Mongolian family and the trials they endure into a tightly woven narrative. Its beautiful and restrained ending reveals a distinctly novelistic irony in its grasp of historical time. Even amid the pain of being broken apart and dispersed by modern development, the lives depicted in the story retain a quiet humility, preserving the value of human bonds and dreams for the future, and leaving a deep and lingering resonance with readers.  KOREAN WORKS MENTIONED: Jeon Sungtae, Burying Incense (Silcheon Munhak, 1999) 전성태,『매향』 (실천문학, 1999) Jeon Sungtae, “Author’s Note,” in Crossing Borders (Changbi, 2005) 전성태, 『국경을 넘는 일』 (창비, 2005) Jeon Sungtae, “Wolves,” in Wolves (tr. Sora Kim-Russell, White Pine Press, 2017) 전성태, 「늑대」『늑대』 (창비, 2009) Jeon Sungtae, “Rodong Sinmun,” “Visiting Graves,” in The Second Self-Portrait (Changbi, 2015) 전성태, 「로동신문」, 「성묘」,『두 번의 자화상』 (창비, 2015) Jeon Sungtae, “Reunion,” “Into the Forest,” “Family Bus,” and “Empty Cans,” in We’re Okay Here (Changbi, 2024) 전성태, 「상봉」, 「숲으로」, 「가족 버스」, 『여기는 괜찮아요』 (창비, 2024) Jeon Sungtae, “Why Did I Get Off the Train,” The Journal of Literary Creative Writing 24, no. 2 (2025) 전성태, 「나는 중간역에서 내린다」, 『한국문예창작』 24권 2호 (한국문예창작학회, 2025) 

by Baik Jiyeon

Fiction

[Fiction] Half-Life

1 About twelve years ago, one wise student of mine asked me, out of the blue, “Professor, do you have some money to spare?” “Money to spare?”“Thirteen million won . . . the more the better, if you have it.” I looked at him, impassive. He avoided my gaze, tracing the wood grain on the hardwood surface of my office table.This kid is real trouble. I’d already decided even before he finished talking. “What for?” I asked.“I want to set you free.” Ha—The loud sigh escaped from between my lips before I even realized. Only then did he look up at me. Maybe it was his heavy eyebrows, but the whites of his eyes seemed unusually deep. Sung Woojung.That was his name. A third-year student who had skipped the regular high school route, passed the High School Equivalency Exam, and enrolled at the university at twentyone. His registered address was in Mok-dong, Seoul, but he was living alone in a studio apartment near campus in Jinwol-dong, Gwangju. When he was a first-year, he’d shown up to department events now and then and seemed to take part in study groups and the writing club, but by the following year, he’d all but vanished. He didn’t come to class, let alone finals, and ended up receiving academic warnings at the end of the first semester as well as the second. The Terminally-Online Recluse Supreme. That was the nickname his friends in the department gave Woojung. TORS for short. The classmate you seldom saw in school but always found online; the guy who occasionally surfaced in online communities for first-years to drop game items or share e-books and films from dubious sources, then vanished like smoke; the TA’s silent savior who, in the comfort of his studio, single-handedly debugged the cross-platform glitches between the mobile and PC versions of the department’s website.  But those quirks alone weren’t enough for the title of “Recluse Supreme.” What clinched the nickname TORS was the police raid that took place in the second semester of his sophomore year.  “Professor, did you hear about Woojung getting raided?” I first heard about it over coffee with some students between classes. “Raided?” I asked. “Is that some kind of internet slang?” “No, no. A real police raid. With a search warrant and everything.”  The students seemed unfazed, as it was old news to them, but, to be frank, I was stunned. It was something I’d never encountered before. Suddenly it felt like I was the student and they were the ones with lessons to teach.  “What happened?”  At my question, chaos erupted. One student said it must be for distributing illegal videos; another guessed it was related to quick-cash loan scams. Quick-cash loan scams? You know, those places that send out emails and upload posts advertising easy loans? He must have been working for one of those scammers. But do they raid people’s apartments for that kind of stuff? They’d have indisputable proof without even having to search his place, no? That brought on a brief silence, then one student—who had a Business Administration major friend living in the same building as Woojung (it was the one with the priciest rent in the area, being a new construction with Renaissance-style pilotis; as such, no other student in our department lived there, or could afford to)—spoke up:  “Apparently everyone in the building came out to watch when the raid happened. You know those boxes? The ones they use for all the seized property. My friend said they had the NIS logo on them.” “Holy shit, then it has to be—”  And the chaos resumed: It’s got to be something North Korea-related. I knew something was off when he was sharing all those e-book and film files. That must’ve been a manifestation of his proletarian comradeship for us. It could’ve been part of the proletarian revolutionary tactic to destabilize South Korea’s free market. Dude, then what, are torrents supposed to be Lenin’s invention now? Why are you suddenly bringing up Lenin? That film we watched with the professor, it was The Torrent Horse, wasn’t it? That was The Turin Horse, you moron . . . Wasn’t that about Lenin? It was Nietzsche!  “But, professor, my friend said Woojung had seven computers in his apartment.” “Seven? Seven computers for a guy majoring in a field that only needs a word processor?” “I study Excel sometimes,” one student offered.  The conversation veered again. You can’t write novels if you mess around with sciency programs like Excel. I heard Professor Lee draws tables with an actual ruler because he doesn’t know how to make one in MS Word.  “Gotta hand it to you, Professor!” The students gave me a thumbs-up.  Without a word, I stepped back into the lecture hall. Later, I heard about the raid from Woojung himself.  “It was nothing.” “I heard it was the National Intelligence Service . . . that can’t be right, can it?” “It was. It was the NIS.”  I stared at him. He wasn’t fazed at all—he might as well have been naming his favorite kimbap. “The NIS really raided your studio apartment? Why would they do that?” I was sure he was lying. “They were just putting on a show,” he replied, then added it was because of a defamation charge. “That just . . . doesn’t make any sense. I mean, the NIS conducting a raid for defamation?” “Because the director of the NIS was the one I defamed,” Woojung said and even let out a soft snort.  That year was the final year of the Lee Myung-bak administration. The presidential election was scheduled for December, and starting that spring, or actually even from the year before, the internet had become a cesspool of criticisms, hate speech, and insults. People consumed it like entertainment, like some new online game had just dropped. Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust: hatred alone is immortal.  “Funny thing is, those people can’t take criticism.”  At the time, Woojung had been repeatedly posting the same message on an online sports forum, referring to the director of the NIS as the director of “NDS”—National Durian Service. This was in reference to the scandal where the director had tried to smuggle three boxes of durians as a gift for his wife on his way back from a business trip to Vietnam and got caught at customs. The NIS issued a statement explaining that he’d disposed of the fruit at the airport upon learning it was prohibited.  “Is this . . . what is . . . ”  I still couldn’t believe it. The director of the National Intelligence Service smuggling in durians—not schematics for new weapons but durians—and filing a defamation suit against a twenty-something college student over jokes? It made no sense.  “He’s just harassing me,” Woojung said, as if comforting me. “He knows full well it’ll never stick.” Twelve years later, I would hear something similar from him, standing outside the main entrance to the Gwangju Nambu Police Station. “How can you set me free with thirteen million won?” I asked, settling back into the sofa. “There’s this thing called Bitcoin.” “Bit . . . what is that, some kind of laundry detergent?”  I was completely serious, thinking of a similar-sounding laundry detergent brand, which was actually Beat. I wondered, Did he join some pyramid scheme hawking laundry detergent?  “No. It’s called cryptocurrency, and it’s—”  Woojung then gave me a lengthy explanation involving blockchain, P2P networks, and mining. He mentioned nodes and algorithms, but none of it made any sense to me. I only kept thinking, Was he always this talkative?  “If you buy Bitcoin now, it’ll pay off in the future.”  Just five hundred coins for now. He said they’d cost about thirteen million won. I nodded like I understood. “So you’re telling me that I should buy some kind of cyber money, right? Like credits, similar to acorns for Cyworld?”  “No, it’s not . . . ” Woojung started, but gave up. “Have you eaten?” “Yes. Well, no.” “Let’s grab something,” I said, getting up. “I’ve got a night class.”  He stared at me, puzzled, for a moment, but stood up as well. I was startled to notice he was shorter than I’d thought.  Over stone-pot bibimbap at a hole-in-the-wall near campus, I asked, “What gave you the idea?” “Pardon?” “Why did you want to set me free?”  Woojung picked up some seasoned bean sprouts with his chopsticks, then put them back down. He downed his water and said, “Because. You’re a writer.” “You want me to quit teaching and just write?” “Yeah,” he answered in a low voice. “Hey, am I that terrible a professor?” He only smiled at my remark.  It must have been because of what he’d said. That evening, we finished eating in near silence and grabbed coffee from the coffee shop next door before parting in a hurry. At the time, I was teaching five days a week, with two night classes running until 10 p.m. The small private university outside of Seoul where I worked didn’t have the budget to hire faculty when needed, which meant I carried a heavy load. By the time I got home after class and finished all the household chores, I’d sit at my desk to write, and a dull ache would wrap around my temples, like elastic bands cinched too tight around my ears. Even in that condition, I wrote anyway, but . . . when I opened the file the next day, there they were: sentences I couldn’t possibly read without cringing remained on the page, their words like malaria pathogens, staring back at me with blank faces. I should’ve deleted them on the spot, but instead, I kept trying to salvage them, until finally I took out my frustration on the poor delete key—and then it was back to square one. Day after day after day.  I tried not to show any of this to my students. One of them worked part-time loading and unloading trucks when he wasn’t in class, and I’d heard about another student, who’d come to study late in life, working weekends, carrying a double-door refrigerator on his back up stairwells for a moving company. How could I possibly grumble in front of them? There were people with actual grounds for complaint. So I’d walk into class and, like a middle-school student trying to look cool by bragging that he’d watched all the TV he wanted and slept all he wanted before an exam, I’d say things like: “Everyone has their own circumstances, their own life. That’s where the aesthetics of fiction comes from.” Empty words.  And yet. This kid saw something. I kept thinking this as I drank my Americano with him. He must have seen something. And naturally I found myself drawn to him. “Do you have some of that yourself? That Bit-whatever?” To my question, Woojung answered quietly that he’d managed to get about two hundred so far. Geez, this kid. As we walked out of the coffee shop, I said to him in a serious voice, “Don’t get mixed up in stuff like that.” He just looked at me. “Setting yourself free doesn’t happen with that kind of thing, how can it? Even if you hoard a mountain of acorns, a squirrel is still just a squirrel.” After saying that, I gave him a quick wave. I had ten minutes before the night class began.  That had been twelve years ago.  2 Fast forward to this year, the third Friday of June 2024, around 2 p.m. I stood under the awning outside the Civil Service Office of the Gwangju Nambu Police Station, constantly opening and closing the contacts on my smartphone.  I should give him one last chance, shouldn’t I? I hesitated. A hot, muggy breeze kept pushing into the shade, carrying with it a smell of something metallic. At the guard post by the parking lot entrance, a young conscript cop—one of those kids doing their mandatory military service with the police instead of the army—kept glancing my way. It seemed he was looking for a chance to leave his post for a moment once I headed inside. If he asks for forgiveness, if he admits what he did.  Then I’d call the whole thing off, turn around, get in my car, and drive away. Going to the police station, over something between a student and his professor . . . But if I’m being honest, I was also imagining other scenarios. Filing a lawsuit, being interviewed by detectives, taking the witness stand in court. He insulted me and harassed me constantly. My days have been shattered, and I’m even receiving medical treatment due to extreme stress—no, no, I’d better scratch that last part since I haven’t actually seen a doctor. This was the kind of routine I’d fallen into around that time whenever I thought about the incident. Moments when I kept driving myself into an even more miserable state, when what had never happened mingled with what I shouldn’t say. Ha—  Out of old habit, I let out a long sigh and returned to my original resolution. Then I tapped the call button as if I were being extremely generous. “Hello?”  After a few rings, a voice drifted through the phone. We’d exchanged texts now and then, but it had been ages since I’d heard his voice. Calm and composed, neither high nor low— it was Sung Woojung. Maybe it was his tone, but I found myself flustered and tongue-tied. Perhaps that was when the storm started brewing in my heart. How can he be this calm at a time like this? Isn’t this a bit brazen? Isn’t this, in itself, another kind of insult?  Quietly, making sure not to make a sound, I tapped the call-record button.  * The strange happenings began in early March of this year. I woke up late in the morning and checked my phone to see that I’d received more than two hundred messages on the messaging app KakaoTalk. (Around that time, I’d been putting my phone on silent after work.) Over forty missed calls from restricted numbers. I sat on the edge of my bed and pressed one hand to my forehead.  What the hell is this? Did Father . . . again? That’s where my mind went, naturally. Some debt I didn’t yet know about.  What happened was, starting the previous year, I’d been barely scraping by because of a debt that had appeared out of nowhere. It was a debt incurred from my father’s failed real estate investment, and the total came to 430 million won. Monthly interest alone was 2.6 million; principal and interest together came to nearly 4.8 million won. When I went to the bank counter and received the slip with that number written on it, I walked back to the waiting area and sat down on the sofa. Strangely, I felt calm. I thought of the date tree in the garden of the old house where I grew up. Not the lush summer tree but the thin, bare one with its reddish branches in the dead stretch between late autumn and early winter. When I was in elementary school and middle school, I was too scared of that tree to walk past it or even look at it. I kept imagining someone was hanging from the top. On blustery days, the rattling of branches crept through the window into my room, and the sound was like — well, like someone desperately clutching a hand over their mouth to stifle their crying, their breath leaking out. In those days, I tried so hard not to listen, and yet I kept putting my ear to the window. On the slip the bank teller had given me, the one with the numbers, I carefully sketched branches of the date tree. With 430,000,000 written in the background, I drew the long, arching limbs that resembled the strands of someone’s hair. My heart kept sinking. But I never grew afraid.  Ten years earlier, my father had taken out a loan of nearly 200 million won, using the apartment where he lived as collateral. With the money, he purchased some wooded hills in the town of Jucheon in Yeongwol County, Gangwon Province, apparently planning to open a camping ground. Of course there was a real estate broker involved. A man called Mr. Lee, who claimed to be a distant relative— someone my father had met for the first time at a family clan gathering. While Mr. Lee was shuttling my seventy-three-year-old father around Yeongwol, in and out of banks and credit unions and a judicial scrivener’s office, I was completely clueless as to what was going on. Because my father was in Wonju, Gangwon Province, and I was in Gwangju, but that was no excuse. I knew about the property. My father had bought it in my name. After you retire, you can go there and write as much as you want. Writers need a place like that, don’t they? That’s what he said when he called asking for copies of my ID, my registered seal certificate, a letter of attorney. Hills? Why are you suddenly buying hills? Only people who want to be close to nature live in places like that. Writers all live in cities these days. And yet, I sent him all the documents he requested. Apparently this is how people pass on their assets to their children. That way, you can avoid inheritance tax or gift tax. I learned later that Mr. Lee had coached my father to say exactly this.  Those hills, purchased for a little over 200 million won, came back to me a decade later as a debt of 430 million.  So naturally, I assumed those two hundred messages and forty missed calls were related to that. Like some other loan or unpaid taxes, some private lender who hasn’t surfaced yet. But that wasn’t it.  hey gorgeous, what u wearing rn? u said call u so why tf aren’t u picking up?? u frigging bitch! it’s me, oppa! send a pic rn Most of the messages were like this. (Actually, much worse.) Trash talk and insults sent to me, mistaking me for a young woman. And yet also informing me that they’d come see me right away. All the phone calls from restricted numbers seemed to be more of the same. Messages and calls from not one person but dozens, all arriving around the same time.  With a sullen face, I scrolled through all of them, one by one. Some contained insults I’d never even heard before, and there was plenty of slang I couldn’t decipher (though they were clearly profanities, from context), but the more I read, the more relaxed I became. It was obvious that these were misdirected. They’d arrived at my number, but I clearly wasn’t the intended recipient, and they had nothing to do with some other debt I didn’t know about. Hate speech like this was everywhere these days. I hurried to get ready for work and soon forgot about the whole thing—dismissed it as a fluke, a misunderstanding, a prank at most. Geesh, kids these days . . . I thought, blaming the hollow world.  Of course, I didn’t know that was only the beginning.  * “Hey, it’s me. How have you been?”  I tried my best to keep my voice cool. But doing that made me feel like something was tickling at my throat. “Good,” Woojung answered, his voice flat. “And you, Professor?” “Well, you know, same as always.”  Neither of us spoke for a moment. The brief silence made me uncomfortable, but I decided to endure it. He would be the one more on edge, anyway. That thought gave me strength. “What’s going on?” Woojung was the first to break. Instead of answering him right away, I waited. Then I said, “Don’t you have something to say to me?”  This time, he stayed quiet. It felt like cowardice. About two weeks earlier, I’d sent him the same message by text. Don’t you have something to say to me? He hadn’t replied then, either. That gave me conviction.  “I’m at the police station right now. I wanted to confirm with you one last time.” “Okay. What is it?” “No, no, I’m not the one to talk. You’re the one who should be telling me.”  I pulled the phone away from my ear for a second to make sure the audio recorder was running. By then, “one last chance” and “forgiveness” had begun to sound useless. What I need now is evidence, or a confession. Maybe that’s what I’d wanted from the very beginning.  “Professor.” “Yes?” “You don’t have to talk to me, just do what you want to do.”  I said nothing. Woojung continued, “This is just to harass me, isn’t it? If you’re going to do that anyway—” “So you have nothing to say to me?” I cut him off, my voice sharper, insistent. “No.” “Okay, I got it.”  That was the end of our conversation. I glared at the conscript officer in the guard post for a moment, then took one short breath. Then I opened the door to the police station and walked in. This was the real beginning of Scenario B. I did my best to keep my cool and braced myself to be—to maintain the attitude of—the professor who had struggled to be as magnanimous as possible but could no longer take it and so, reluctantly, had come to the police.  I believed I was in the right.  * The flood of nightly messages and calls from restricted numbers that began in early March continued every day for an entire month. Some days, there were fewer than twenty, but most days, there were over a hundred. They usually began with “cutie” or “hey babe,” but ended with “fuck it, bitch!” and “imma keep calling u til the end, just watch!” They came between 2 and 5 a.m., without fail. Once, I stayed up during those hours to answer every single call. When I said, “Hello,” nearly all of them muttered, “Fuck, it’s a guy. Fell for it again!” and hung up. But, regardless of my voice, a few stayed on the line for at least five minutes, making strange moaning sounds. (In those cases, I was the one who had to hang up.) Still, it didn’t bother me much. I figured I could just ignore them. Sure, sure, you pathetic idiots. Call and text all you want. That was the extent of my feelings. My information must have leaked from somewhere. Oh no, was it the bank, maybe? Father had mentioned looking into private lenders and payday loans . . .  Then, starting in April, the calls came not only during the middle of the night but also during the day. While I sat in a strategy meeting about job placement for graduates in our department, while I led a writing workshop for grad students, while I had a late lunch with colleagues, my phone rang without a pause, like an old window rattling in the wind and rain.  “Professor, shouldn’t you take that? It sounds urgent.” Whenever my students said this, I’d hand them my phone. “Take a look. It’s driving me insane.”  They gathered around it in a circle. “Why . . . are they calling you ‘babe’?” “Looks like you’ve been hacked.” “Professor, have you been going on those . . . websites?”  All eyes turned to me. I closed my eyes and shook my head without a word. Then one of my graduate students offered practical advice. “Professor, try changing your KakaoTalk profile picture.” “My profile picture?”  Until then, I’d never uploaded a photo on my profile. I hadn’t even filled in my name; a question mark graced the empty space where the name should have been.  “Post your picture and your name. That way people won’t mistake you for a woman.”  Aha. Then my students began pouring out more suggestions. Post a picture of you in hiking clothes; I think the one where you’re getting an IV would be best (that was a picture I’d sent them, explaining why I couldn’t make a study session); we could take one right now; just stand over there by that orchid pot, it’ll do wonders, and so on. I sat quietly, listened, and uploaded a picture that looked the least embarrassing.  “In any case, what could possibly have caused this?” I muttered in a dejected voice, and suddenly the room fell silent. “Sure, my information could’ve leaked, but this is just . . . ” One grad student raised her voice with righteous anger. “Frigging Korean men are the problem. It’s like hatred is their default setting!” She said this staring straight at me, and I couldn’t help but close my eyes again.  Perhaps thanks to my students’ advice, I did receive fewer messages from that day on. The hundred-plus texts I used to receive day and night dropped to three or four. (Mostly questions like “You’re not actually a man, right?” “Is that a pic of your dad?”) That was encouraging. But the calls from restricted numbers were another problem. Those kept coming. If anything, there seemed to be more of them.  Once, I was driving to a resort in Sinan, South Jeolla Province, for a faculty workshop, accompanied by my colleague Professor C. The whole ride, my phone was ringing off the hook. My car’s GPS had been broken for ages, so I used an app on my phone, but the calls kept interrupting . . . Eventually, it got to the point where Professor C handed me his own phone and said, cautiously: “Professor Lee, these calls—they’re because of that problem, aren’t they?”  That problem C mentioned was my debt. Last February, before the semester started, I happened to mention it over drinks at a pub near campus. There are fixed costs bleeding me every month, but then 4.8 million on top of that? It’s suffocating. Loans on top of loans . . .  He’d listened quietly, then said in a soft voice, “But you’re a writer, Professor Lee, so you should keep writing, given the situation.” I knew full well what C meant. And yet there was such a thing as a heart that couldn’t bear his sincerity. “Professor C. The thing about anxiety . . . when it gets thick enough . . . it turns into hate, and . . . ”  What I mean is that I can’t write anything in this state, everything I write is garbage. I said more, but that’s about all I remember. But, what I do remember—what stayed with me for a long time—was something C said, almost to himself, right before we left the pub:  “But Professor Lee, hate sometimes comes when you don’t know yourself very well.”  That day in the car, I said nothing to him about the calls. I just smiled and left it at that. Because a thought had suddenly crossed my mind: This might not be a simple data breach; someone might be leaking my number on purpose, out of spite, because of “that problem.” For instance, someone like Mr. Lee, who had coaxed my father to purchase the hills. (Two years earlier, my father had sued him for fraud, as it turned out he’d been in cahoots with the previous landowner and the judicial scrivener, and was tangled up in several other lawsuits involving real estate scams.) Why hadn’t I thought of that before? I was nearly convinced it was that.  The calls kept coming. I thought about changing my number, but I couldn’t. I, again, had reasons I couldn’t change it . . . So I kept suspecting Mr. Lee and his associates, waiting to get my hands on proof.  Then I actually stumbled onto something.  The phone call that came around 1 a.m. on Children’s Day, May 5, was from a guy who must have been in a hurry, or maybe he didn’t know how to hide his number because he called me with his caller ID fully visible. Instinctively, I hit the call-record button and answered.  “Huh? Huh? Goddamn it . . . ”  The moment he heard my voice, he was about to hang up.  “Hey, wait, wait. I can see your number. The last four digits are 2832, right? If you hang up now, I’m going to keep calling you the same way you’ve been calling me.” He didn’t hang up. Instead, he kept muttering in a low voice, “Man, this is bad.” “Okay, so what I want is simple,” I did my best to keep my voice calm. “How did you get this number?” “I don’t know anything. I didn’t do anything, I just happened to get it.” He seemed to be a boy freshly out of puberty, his voice only recently dropped. A kid who thought speaking tough was a way to protect himself. “So, how did you get this num—”  Even before I finished speaking, 2832 said, “It’s not my fault. She was the one who said she wanted to see me and gave me her number and told me to call . . . but then you answered . . . ” “Where? Who gave it to you?” “In a video game. She sent me a note.” “A video game?”  StarCraft, he said. People still play that?  “That’s it then, right? I told you the truth.” The boy was about to hang up again.  “No, no, wait, wait,” I was almost pleading. “Can you tell me her username? Please. It’s really important.” He hesitated for a moment, then told me to hold on a second. I knew I was close. “The username is . . . how do you even say this? Turn . . . turning horse? It’s spelled T-U-R-I-N H-O-R-S-E.” “Turin Horse? You’re sure?” “Yeah.” That was the end of our conversation.  Turin Horse. From The Turin Horse. I knew exactly who that username belonged to. The guy who had watched that film over twenty times after I first told him about it.  It was Sung Woojung’s username. 3 “Gee, all kinds of stuff happens these days, don’t they?”  The detective’s name was Park Doyoung. Of the Phishing Investigation Team in the Detective Division. That was what he said while scrolling through the messages on my phone. “Bereavement scams are on the rise these days. You’d be surprised how many people fall for them.” He swiveled his computer monitor around to show me. On the screen was a text message: I am deeply saddened to share the news of the passing of my beloved mother. A simple funeral service will be held at—followed by a clickable link.  “Once you click that link, your phone gets hacked and becomes a ‘zombie’ phone. Sixteen people fell for it in our jurisdiction this month alone.” I nodded half-heartedly.  Detective Park Doyoung, the man I’d been told to speak with, looked about ten years younger than me. Wearing a pair of horn-rimmed glasses and a white slim-fit dress shirt, he looked more like a church lay leader or a sales rep than a detective.  “If people abuse others’ good intentions, eventually there won’t be any good intentions left anywhere.” He handed my smartphone back to me. “And you suspect your student is behind all this?”  I stared at him without answering. I’d already told him all about what had been happening to me, the username I’d discovered, the story about my student who used the username. I was the one who laid everything out, and yet hearing those words come out of his mouth, I felt like I was the one with issues. A heartless teacher accusing his own student. That phrase wouldn’t leave my head. “I’m not certain,” I said. “But I’d like to find out.”  Two days after my call with 2832, I dialed the customer service number for the Korean branch of Blizzard Entertainment, the company behind StarCraft. (Even while I was on the phone, calls from restricted numbers kept coming.) After navigating through several layers, I finally connected with the Manager and launched into a long, slightly exaggerated explanation of my situation. I can’t even think straight because of the calls—they’re coming in even now, as we speak—and all I want to know is simple: the identity of the user behind the username “Turin Horse.” After listening patiently, the Manager said, “Oh, sir, I’m terribly sorry for all the trouble caused by one of our users. Please allow me to apologize on their behalf.” Then, she continued in a voice more exaggerated than mine, “But I’m afraid we cannot provide that information.” Under no circumstances could they disclose personal information about their users.  I raised my voice at her pointlessly. “Did you hear what I said? I literally can’t live a normal life right now.” “Of course, sir, I understand completely. But providing that information would mean breaking the law.” “There’s really no way?” “I’m very sorry, sir. Please understand that we value your opinion as a customer—” She was immovable. I had no choice but to hang up with nothing solved. Before I did, I snapped hysterically, “I’m not your valued customer! I’ve never even played your stupid game!”  “Is there some kind of bad blood between you and this student?” Detective Park asked, hands poised over his keyboard. Bad blood. Bad blood . . .  I wasn’t sure. That question had plagued me ever since I heard the username “Turin Horse” from 2832. But no matter how I dug through my memories, nothing came to mind. I believed I’d been on good terms with Sung Woojung and assumed he’d feel the same. Other than reading, writing, eating, and talking together, what more could there be between a professor and his student? It was frustrating.  Could it be . . . that? After racking my brain for days, an image came to my mind out of nowhere, like a page from a picture book you’d randomly picked up in a bookstore. Perhaps it was a memory I’d invented in an effort to find a possible explanation, and perhaps it had been distorted and exaggerated, but for some reason, once the thought entered my mind, Woojung’s expression that day grew sharper and clearer. That moment, I had realized that his back was rather hunched, as if something about him were twisted.  But even if my memory were accurate, that had been nearly a decade ago. It was far more plausible that he had no memory of it at all, had not even thought of it in years. And above all . . . there was no context, none whatsoever. It was beyond my comprehension. I could forgive him, if only I could understand what was going on . . .  * After we had bibimbap together at the hole-in-the-wall near campus, Woojung started coming by my office now and then. I’d return from class to find him sitting at the table with his hands on his laptop keyboard and a serious look on his face. (I never locked my office door when I was on campus.) “What is it? What’s with the serious face? Did someone sue you again?”  That was my standard joke every time I saw him, and he’d scratch his temple and quietly chuckle. We shared the same space but didn’t talk much. Him at the table, me at my desk (separated by a partition), we worked on our own things. After hours of going through paperwork and student assignments, I’d look up and realize he’d packed up and left. He didn’t even say goodbye, I’d mutter sometimes, but I was never disappointed. I believed it was his way of being considerate.  Once, he asked me with a look of genuine disgust, “Professor. Why is this supposed to be a good movie?”  He’d been watching The Turin Horse on his laptop. I answered in jest as always, “It’s black and white. All black-and-white films are good films.” Then I added, “Isn’t it terrifying?” In all honesty, that film—the story of a horse, a man, and his daughter, all awaiting death in the house without moving as a storm raged outside—frightened and terrified me. I didn’t want to be afraid alone, so I often recommended it to my students.  “Is it good because it’s terrifying?” he asked. I answered in a voice full of uncertainty, “Well, in art . . . it’s not easy to arouse that kind of emotion, is it?”  “I . . . think the daughter in this film is just foolish,” he remarked and went back to watching. But even after that, I saw him watching the same film again and again. (I asked him later and he told me he’d seen it at least twenty times.) He even changed his username to the film title, and revised his position on the daughter.  “Now that I’ve watched it more, it’s not that the daughter is foolish . . . she was trapped. She was the horse itself.” I didn’t take his words very seriously.  In December, I went on an overnight retreat to a vacation lodge near Metasequoia Road in Damyang with my students from the department writing club. It was something of an annual tradition, a consolation trip for those who dropped like autumn leaves from the Spring Literary Contests, the newspaper-sponsored competitions that served as springboards for new authors, and that year, Sung Woojung, who hadn’t partaken much in club activities, came along as well. There were eight of us in total.  We strolled loosely through Gwanbangjerim Forest where the leaves had all turned rusty red, stopped for a late lunch on Damyang Noodle Street, then returned to the lodge and got right into grilling pork belly and drinking soju. Guys, I keep turning down offers to judge the Spring Literary Contests because one of you might win, but, huh? How many years has it been now? I cracked joke after joke, trying to lighten the mood that kept growing heavy, but that wasn’t enough to shake the look on their faces, so I kept downing shots. In the end, I got drunk first and headed up to a room (on the loft level, and I vaguely remembered climbing the stairs on all fours), and fell asleep immediately.  I was deep in sleep when someone shook me awake. “Professor, I think you need to come down for a sec.”  He was a second-year student, one of the youngest in the writing club.  “What’s going on?” I asked, unable to even open my eyes. “It’s . . . I think something’s about to go wrong.” What does he mean, something’s about to go wrong? Did these kids get into a fight? I put on my glasses and ran my fingers through my hair.  When I went downstairs, the students were still drinking, looking the same as before. It was around three in the morning. Soju bottles and paper cups were strewn across the coffee table. Christmas carols were drifting from a Bluetooth speaker someone had brought, and the kids were talking in twos and threes, occasionally bursting into laughter. Bloodshot eyes, a faint smell of mint wafting from somewhere, street lights growing brighter as the night deepened, warmth and coldness, relaxed minds, and anxiety hidden within . . .  And there, in the corner near the decorative fireplace, I caught sight of Sung Woojung’s back as he sat hunched over, clutching a backpack and crying. As well as the white pellets scattered around him.  “What’s wrong with him?” I asked the second-year student standing next to me. “He’s been like that for an hour.”  He said he’d come to wake me because Woojung was making him nervous, because he felt like something might go wrong. Upon closer look, I realized the white pellets were popcorn. Someone, or perhaps several people, had been throwing them. As I watched, one of the fourth-year students threw popped kernels in Woojung’s direction.  “Damn it. Give me back my fucking backpack! What the hell are you doing clutching my backpack?”  I made the conscious decision to approach Woojung first. He didn’t stop crying even when I sat down beside him.  “What’s going on? What happened?”  At my question, he lifted his head for a moment and stared at me. He must have been crying a while—his eyes were red and puffy, his forehead was pale. Then he buried his face in the backpack again and cried even harder.  “Professor . . . they’re all fools,” he sobbed. The fourth-year got to his feet. “Just fucking stop!” Woojung continued, still sobbing, “They don’t even know they’re fools . . . and they keep doing foolish things . . . ” “Goddamn it, for real!”  I don’t know why, but everything felt annoying in that moment. The immaturity of being unable to hide his feelings, the mindlessness, the self-absorption. Those judgments solidified inside me.  I spoke in a hard, cold voice. “Stop.” That was what I said—not to the fourth-year student but to Sung Woojung. “You’re the one being foolish right now. So stop.” He looked up at me. His eyes showed embarrassment, but soon turned to resentment. For a long time afterward, I didn’t forget his gaze. I didn’t look away.  * “Professor, I’m sorry to say this, but . . . ” Detective Park trailed off. “It looks . . . it might be a little difficult to press charges.” “Why’s that?” I asked, leaning forward. “You didn’t incur any financial damage, and . . . the problem, if there is one, is that he gave your number to other people, but that’s not enough to . . . ” “Even though I’m suffering this much?”  Detective Park nodded as though he sympathized with my situation. But his words said otherwise: “The problem is really the people who made the calls, not the person who gave them your number, so . . . ” He added that it’d be better to press charges against those who made the calls, but even that was tricky. Because all they did was make calls. That was the precise moment when a strange hostility began to envelop me. What’s tricky about it? All they did was make calls? Does he really not understand their disgusting intent? I stifled my anger, flexing my calf muscles. The humiliation and helplessness I felt every time my phone rang—and yet, the reasons I couldn’t change my number. Could this man even fathom what was going on inside me? What kind of circumstances surrounded him? Could he also have debt beyond his ability to pay off?  Last autumn, my father, having been diagnosed with hydrocephalus, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s all together, had begun calling me at all hours. Nine, ten times a day. Every time we connected, he asked the same question: “How come you don’t call these days?”  At first, I tried to take it matter-of-factly. This isn’t my father talking, it’s his disease. But it only lasted a few days. He kept bringing up the wooded hills. I got fifty-three points on the land transaction permit score. Fifty is passing, so it was all good from the start. You have no idea how hard Mr. Lee worked. It wasn’t the Yeongwol County Office he had to visit, but the Provincial Office’s Forest Management Department and the National Forestry Cooperative Federation. And every trip cost money, so what could I do? He didn’t want to burden you, so he even looked into loans with the land as collateral . . . Say, I heard, you’d have to register legally as a person engaged in forestry. Want me to look into it for you?  It was unbearable to listen to those words. So on days when I couldn’t bring myself to answer his calls, I set my phone on silent after work. Then my mother would call immediately. “Hon, can’t you call him to save your poor old mother?”  That was exactly what she said. She said my father trembled with anxiety when he couldn’t reach me by phone. He would strip off his diaper and urinate on the bed as if it were normal. My mother, who refused to send him to a nursing home, saying, “I can’t do that to your poor father,” was desperate as she pleaded with me.  And once—just once—I’d yelled at my senile father.  “Father! Please just stop!”  At my words, he stopped talking and went silent for a moment. Then he said, “I just . . . since you’re a writer . . . I really like that you’re a writer, you see.” “No, that’s not what I’m saying!”  And then I burst out crying. After listening to me sob in silence, he spoke with sadness in his voice: “Why are you crying? You miss your mother? Oh you poor thing . . . ” It was his disease speaking to me.  “Then what can you do for me here?” I lowered my voice and asked Detective Park. “Well, even if you do decide to press charges . . . it’ll be processed by priority.” His face showed some annoyance. Perhaps, out of his seasoned experience, he’d sensed my hostility in that moment. It was a defense mechanism against hostility. That was how it felt. “You mean you’re not interested in things like this.”  He gave no response. I got to my feet. “Seeing as you’re just sitting there talking about ‘good intentions.’” He looked at me with an impassive face. Without glancing back, I left the station.  4 Sung Woojung finished all four years of college but didn’t graduate on time and ended up registering for his mandatory military service while still in school. About three days before he shipped out, he came to see me in my office.  “How’s it going? It’s going to be rough, serving at your age.”  I offered a rather perfunctory greeting. Since the retreat, something between us had evaporated, but I didn’t think much of it, nor did I care to.  “Professor,” he said, looking me in the eye. “You said before that everyone has their own circumstances and their own life, right? That the aesthetics of fiction comes from that.”  I sat quietly, listening. “But . . . is that really true? Is that really the aesthetics of fiction?” Around that time, I’d heard that Woojung had moved out of his studio apartment near campus and into a cheap, cramped room at a goshiwon . All kinds of rumors were circulating among his classmates in the department— someone said his father’s business had flopped; another said he’d simply moved because his lease was up, that he was only staying at the goshiwon for a few days before registering for the military service. But the most credible account came from the second-year student, who’d grown close to Woojung since the retreat. That’s not it. He said he was the one paying his own way the whole time. The studio apartment, he paid for with the money he earned himself, and now that he’s not making money, he’s cutting costs wherever he can. “Hey, what’s all this about fiction when you’re about to ship out?” I said, trying to change the subject. Or actually, he was making me uncomfortable.  “Then . . . why do we write fiction?” Woojung muttered, almost to himself. “Is emotion really all there is?”  That day, sitting in my car in the Nambu Police Station parking lot, I called Woojung again. He didn’t answer, and yet I kept tapping the call button, more and more obsessively. Fine, don’t answer. Please don’t answer. That was part of what I felt. Cold sweat ran down my back, and my hands shook. I was that furious. Woojung still didn’t pick up.  Unable to stop myself, I started typing a text. Pick up the phone. I was about to hit send when . . . when . . . when my eyes drifted to the messages we’d exchanged around last Christmas. They were texts from those days when the strange calls hadn’t yet started, when I was consumed by interest payments on the debt that had appeared out of nowhere.  Did you sell it all back then? The Bitcoin? Yes. Really? All of it? You told me to sell it, so . . . Hey, how could you actually go and sell it just because your professor told you to? LOL  He hadn’t replied to that one.  I stared at the last message I’d sent.  LOL.  I finally understood that there was a certain truth buried in those three thoughtless letters.  * Until recently, I’d spent a lot of time thinking about emotions, mostly feelings like anger, shame, hatred, guilt. I believed it was difficult, exhausting work, this task of listening to someone’s heart, and I’ve tried to channel it through my writing.  But is that true? Many times, I’ve wondered if those feelings were only ever resolved inside me. Just understanding and fathoming someone else’s discomfort and humiliation.  What changes after you fathom?  What comes after your heart overflows? I couldn’t shake the thought that the answer was a bigger lie. I’m still on edge, paying off the bank interest every month. I couldn’t just be on edge, so I put the apartment I’d been living in for years on the market. Hardly anyone comes to look, but I’m hoping that it sells soon. That’s my main emotion these days.  My father ended up moving into a nursing home early last month, and he doesn’t call anymore. Or rather, he can’t. As for those strange calls and messages, they stopped like magic the day after I went to the police station. I can only guess how that came about.  Some nights, late, I read through the texts Woojung and I exchanged, and every time, I think of a horse trapped in the stable. A horse that was mercilessly whipped. A horse that is no longer moving.  That was what I saw, in the place where a certain feeling had passed.

by Lee Ki-ho

Essays

[Essay] 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

Poetry

[Poetry] Two Poems by Yoo Seonhye

Motel & Moth Why does knowledge come only once all acts are over and done with When actively walking into self-destruction I tend to think how beautiful  This building is full of rooms  Like the warning on the cigarette packet that you just remembered And the lung brimming with contaminated cells Like the slow pain that arrives by the time you hear There’s nothing more we can do  He left—incompletely                                         extinguished cigarette butt billowed smoke into the room and when I opened the slight window a heap of dead moths between the screen and the frame  Body hair, alcohol, breath, carbon dioxide, phlegm, body fluids, moans, or screams It is yet to be clarified why a moth flies toward the light This building is full of people’s exhalations right now  Human beings want to be beaten want to be drunk want to wobble want to forget want to pant want to cry want to faint it seems Moths are known to rely on the moonlight to orient their flight As most of their species are nocturnal  Turn against the light: Rule of moth  Maybe this isn’t what I wanted A light too bright comes in the shape of pollution not salvation  So we can’t tell where’s up and where’s down Is what I mean Playing with fingers or walking aimlessly in a busy street with shoulders pressed against each other waiting for cues like should we go in somewhere or finding an unfamiliar tattoo or caressing the frown peeking through a tussle of hair or a series of such events maybe None of that I ever wanted  The artificial light surging in from all directions is opaque at least Throwing myself into fire As if a moth never loved a light bulb You know Like it was homicide and not a suicide  Human beings do not want to disappear do not want to become fragments do not want to hurt do not want to leave do not want to be forgotten do not want to be torn or to burn ablaze  and just want to live on                  it seems  I force the ill-fitting window shut                                                             the bodies of the moths crumble and their crushed wings get jammed in the screen and rustle  Turn against the light Leave one another As utter nonmeaning  What I mean is I think I just wanted to live  Like it or not humans leave traces on humans Cigarette smell, addiction, youth, financial gain, family, life, vertigo, ecstasy, strangle marks, eternal dream, future, HPV  Raven Paradox* Do you know that there exist ornithologists amongst birds as there do anthropologists amongst humans? R, a renowned professor in ornithology and a raven, was reported missing one day. The investigation yielded a letter. The complete text of R’s letter is as follows:  Dear fellow ravens,  There is a theory that I have long propounded and that has been accepted in our society as common sense. That is the claim that “all ravens are black.” The black color of our feathers has been the basis of our time-honored identity as a species. Even to call it a “claim” would have been embarrassing, so established was its status as a truth-statement.  Then tragedy struck me one day. I found, buried deep within my wings, a single white feather. I questioned my reflection in the mirror. Had I finally gone mad? But as you know, we ravens are one of the few animals with the capacity to recognize ourselves in the mirror. Apparently, humans call this the mirror test. The white feather was clearly there. Seized by anxiety, I began observing myself in the mirror each morning and checking my wings. The white feathers only multiplied with time.  The statement “all ravens are black” is logically equivalent to the statement “if something is not black, then it is not a raven.” White milk is not a raven, white paper is not a raven, and white snow is not a raven. At first, I plucked the feathers one by one. My skin reddened and swelled. It was painful. Then the number of white feathers grew uncontrollably. I agonized over what to do. My heart sank every time I faced their whiteness. If one day they were to take over my entire body . . . If someone were to discover my white feathers . . . Granted, I could revise the theory that “all ravens are black.” But I have invested too much in it. I have flown every day to foreign lands to observe the ravens of this entire world. I have dissected more bodies of my kin than I can count. Meanwhile, my spouse and my children have turned away from me in exasperation, and I traded the disintegration of my family for fame. Powerful politicians asked for my advice. Giving up on this theory means a death sentence for me. I believe I have thoroughly proven it. The theory is my life itself, and I cannot accept such a thing as a white raven.  My body is already half covered in white. I cannot hide this any longer by plucking my feathers, and I am tired of wiping the blood afterwards. Therefore, I have reached the following conclusion:  I am not a raven.  From now on, do not call me a raven. I am one strange organism that cannot be classified. I am sure you would not want to undergo the unpleasant experience of finding a white raven and having to correct your common sense. Thus, I have made the decision to leave for the snowy north. If I become completely white . . . no one should find me there. My reflection in the mirror will become transparent. The mirror test will become useless. As such you have no reason to revise my theory. I am not a raven and therefore all ravens are still black.  Yours, A now unidentifiable R* This poem was influenced by philosopher and logician Carl Gustav Hempel’s “raven paradox” and the quote “the philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds,” often attributed to the physicist Richard Feynman. There is no substantive evidence that these were Feynman’s actual words.

by Yoo Seonhye

Poetry

[Poetry] Two Poems by Shin Yi-in

Prosperity of the House of Fireplace My surname is Fireplace. When I introduce myself that way, I sound like someone who enjoys boasting . . . but it is plainly true, and because I know it’s nothing to boast about, I’m writing it down anyway. “Fire is warm, and a little unsatisfying, and if you sit facing it for long enough it makes things grimy . . . yet unmistakably, it gives.” My parents kept feeding it log after log so I would never learn what it is to go without, trying to protect the fireplace they had built, their fireplace, theirs alone. But when it came to the questions the child not yet born would fling at a name they hadn’t chosen for themself, they had no way to answer.  “Fire hurts, it stings, it’s terrifying . . . unmistakably, it kills everything.” Stubborn Mr. Ashheap was my first lover. Anyone who tried to correct Ashheap’s way of understanding, said Ashheap, along with Ashheap’s family, in one voice, could not truly love Ashheap. But because they were Ashheap, they couldn’t help it: they wanted me. Rude fireplace, ill-omened fireplace, filthy fireplace, stupid fireplace, a fireplace that won’t die, a fireplace that won’t go to ruin. Crushing pale fingers, scribbling in places no one can see.  After that I began to love ferociously. I took anyone into my body, without discrimination. Among them were hard young ones that stayed a long time, like brass bowls, like diamonds, but in the end I melted them away, or drove them out, or turned them into ash. And that left me with a bleak, unlucky feeling, as though it might mean I wanted Ashheap. Rude fireplace, ill-omened fireplace. Once you make ash, the same words come back. And somehow the flames always sink, one way or another. So, after all, is fire simply that kind of thing? I’m a fireplace, and yet I don’t hurt, I don’t sting, I’m not frightening. I’ve never died because of fire. I can’t even move away from fire. On days when I blazed up, when I burned high, I sincerely wanted to crumble down and lie there. I wanted to live a little less. I wanted to remain as tiny, free particles. I wanted to become graffiti. But I didn’t want to become a dirty wall that gets graffitied on. I wanted to feel pain, to learn fear, to curse, cleanly, fully, to my heart’s content, to want what I want, and in wanting, to grow lighter . . .  My surname is Fireplace. When I introduced myself, they said, “See? You’re a fireplace too, aren’t you? You can’t help being a fireplace.” The fireplaces gathered, laughing, as if they could see straight through me. They were the sort obsessed only with the great hole at their center, a hole you can throw anything into, a hole you can look straight through. They were the sort who try to hide a hole by pressing it to another hole, scheming a splendid life in which holes don’t look like holes at all. I made a family with a fireplace and lived out the rest of my days, warm, and a little unsatisfied, turning no one into ash; standing, wall facing wall, in a life where no one could ever step inside anyone else.  The Dream MachineThe fault began with me. That day I pulled out a large, secret-shaped hammer, one I’d wanted to tryfor a long time, and brought it down on the machine with a crash. It was a machinethat had run for ages, solidly, smoothly. The person who had been running it with me started in shock and fled. Hewent to my friends and impressed on them that I was hiding a big hammer,that I might not be in my right mind. When the machine heard that news, it grew sad. Kids, I’m fine. Get along.If you start fighting and stop handling me, I’ll become nothing but a uselessheap of scrap, unable to make anything at all. Turning the worst possibilitiesover and over, it slowly began to rust from the inside. We couldn’t tell what was best to do. To sell it, or to repair it before themachine got any worse; who ought to pay, who ought to be responsible, whoought to be compensated, and whether, once all that was done, our relationshipwould improve. We were decent people, people with shame. We felt guilty for breaking themachine, and yet in our hearts we didn’t want to believe we were the cause, sowe shut our mouths and didn’t speak of it again.Later I met a few shameless people, and then—then I learned: you’re supposedto grind your teeth and insist, It’s because of you. It’s your fault, andmake the other person pay the price. If you do that, does it become as if nothinghappened? As if, once you’re the only one smiling, everything can returnto the way it was? As if you could try running the machine again . . . ? I was filledwith remorse, butWe had too much shame. We couldn’t let go of apology or embarrassment.We couldn’t even lay it on each other, so no one’s hands were free.Both of us, exactly alike, had pawned both hands to shame. In the end noone could hold the other, could pat them and say it’s okay, could joke, couldslap, could even speak—watching the other’s face, hesitating. And the machine,from a certain day on, was left untouched, out of reach.Then one day, when I was free again, I remembered that time. Alone, I hovered,unsure, and opened the machine’s lid. Today, staring into it, I write here:It’s because of me.It’s my fault.The old, broken machine remains as it is.Quietly, I set both hands upon itand thinkof what it was, exactly, and how heavy, the thing those hands held for so long.

by Shin Yi-in

Reviews

[Featured Review] Reading and Healing

The past few years have seen the emergence and global embrace of South Korean “healing fiction.” The concept behind these books issimple: to provide comfort and healing to readers suffering from the stresses and pressures of modern life. The protagonists of this genre are, like these readers, burnt out and exhausted. Seeking a simpler and more purposeful existence, characters in healing fiction retreat to a rotation of cosy locales—bakeries, cafes, laundromats, bookshops—to reevaluate their lives and priorities from a new vantage point. From there, revelations occur, unhealthy jobs and relationships are jettisoned, and selves are fashioned anew. There is an undeniable comfort to be found in this fantasy of quitting. After all, who does not wish for a quieter life less focused on competition, profit, and gain? However, there is also good reason to be sceptical about this fantasy: in our current historical moment, when people face ever greater economic, health, and climate precarity, is opting out really an option?  Kim Jee Hye’s first book, Soyangri Book Kitchen,is a wonderful example of what happens when real-life healing becomes the impetus for healing art. Kim , a former office worker intimately familiar with the intense grind of South Korean work culture, left her job during the COVID-19 pandemic—a decision prompted, among otherthings, by the pressures she experienced as a working mother. She eventually refashioned herself as a bookseller and book cafe owner, much like Soyangri Book Kitchen’s protagonist Yoojin. Yoojin is the proprietor of the titular venue located in the Korean countryside: a book cafe and guesthouse that caters to world-weary visitors from all walks of life. The novel unfolds as a series of character portraits that each speak to a specific mental health issue. In translator Shanna Tan’s deft hands, these characters are rendered with beauty and complexity. There’s Da-in, a famous singer who struggles to reconcile her public-facing persona with her true self; Mari, whose traumatic childhood triggers a pattern of compulsive lying; and Soohyuk, who experi-ences suicidal ideation after the death of his mother. There are also a number of characters dealing with burnout: Sohee, a portrait of success and diligent work ethic now grappling with a cancer diagnosis; and four friends, Nayoon,Chanwook, Siwoo and Serin, who are questioning their life choices—as well as the narrative of what success and a good life looks like—as they enter their thirties. Readers of Soyangri Book Kitchen gain insightinto South Korea’s rigorous secondary and postsecondary educational culture. The novel also paints a critical portrait of working life where yageun—the practice of working overtime—is endemic, and where the competition to land a secure government position requires several years of full-time study. While these features are specific to South Korean working culture, the broader landscape they depict—markedby extreme economic precarity and an increas-ingly unaffordable housing market—dovetailswith the picture the Lancet Commission sketchesin their 2018 report on global mental health and sustainable development. As inequality heightens in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemicand ongoing war, genocide, and climate disaster, it seems likely that this situation will only intensify and worsen around the world.  To her great credit, Kim resists offering an easy solution to any of these issues. What she offers in Soyangri Book Kitchen is rather an invitation to imagine a life decoupled from the imperative to keep producing, grinding, and staying the prescribed course. This is easier in theory than in practice. As Yoojin observes, “society never stops reminding us that a suc-cessful life is to stand at the top of the pyramid. We aren’t allowed to fall, even if we’re still learning how to walk . . . We grow up with a deep-set fear that the moment we deviate from the path, we’re going to fall off the cliff.” It’s here that books and the act of reading play a crucial role. Books can be “painkillers,” as Yoojin puts it, blunting the pain of hardship and stress by transporting readers to other worlds; they can also offer a roadmap for finding one’s “optimal route” to a life that squares with one's own values rather than a prescriptive path. The novel slyly offers up literary prescriptions for its readers, namedrop-ping authors from Maeve Binchy and Min Jin Lee to Haruki Murakami and coupling themwith the particular life ailments they address. In its abundant references to contemporary Korean works—Kim Honbi’s Reflections on Kindness, Go Soori’s We Can Walk in Midnight, Kim Hana’s The Skill of Relaxation—Kim’s novel also gestures at the extraordinary breadth and scope of Korean literature yet to be translated into English and other languages, and the healing potential contained within these pages.  Because of healing fiction’s immense popular-ity, there has been a tendency to overlook its politics—to dismiss it as either a variation on a generic ditching-the-big-city-for-country-lifetheme or as an example of the “no plot, just vibes” narrative beloved by Gen Z BookTok. But there is, I would argue, something profound and quietly radical about Soyangri Book Kitchen’s message of reading for reading’s sake. As Nayoon puts it, “what truly mattered wasn’t whether to open a macaron dessert shop or to stay in her office job. It was the realisation that each and every one of us is an imperfect being made with love.” Learning to listen to each other’s stories is a profound act of care, and it is what will sustain us in the trying times to come.

by Claire Gullander-Drolet

Book Cart

Synchronized Sea Anemone / Grandma / The Cheerful Life of Lee Si-bong, Short and Struggle-Free / The Cut

Synchronized Sea Anemone by Kim HyesoonNanda, 2025, 196 pagesGrandma by Hwang Sok-yongChangbi Publishers, 2025, 224 pagesLandmark feminist poet Kim Hyesoon has returned with her newest poetry collection. The first publication in the Nanda Poetry Series, Synchronized Sea Anemone is composed of sixty-five previously unpublished poems divided into eight sections. Rounding out the collection is a letter from the writer and an English translation of the titular poem by Mia You. Kim herself has said she wrote these poems as a way of shocking her system, the works serving as a bucket of cold water jolting her out of a previously “dark, dark, dark, shadow.” Fittingly, her words seem to dance across each page, with playful descriptions and straightforward professions of affection mingling with her characteristic explorations of gender and identity.Hwang Sok-yong’s Grandma opens with a scene of death begetting life: a dusky thrush meets its end near an estuary, but the small seed in its stomach is returned to the soil and grows into a giant tree—Halmae, or Grandma. This guardian deity forms the axis around which the narrative unfolds. In his first novel since his 2020 International Booker shortlisted Mater 2-10 (tr. Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae), Hwang takes readers on a sweeping saga through six hundred years of Korean history, from a Joseon Dynasty monk experiencing a moment of enlightenment under the tree to Halmae witnessing Japanese soldiers using a beloved sapling for target practice. Grandma offers a moving look at the price of human greed and the hope that endures against all odds.The Cheerful Life of Lee Si-bong, Short and Struggle-Free by Lee Ki-hoMunhakdongne, 2025, 528 pagesThe Cut by Gu Byeong-moMunhakdongne, 2025, 352 pagesIn The Cheerful Life of Lee Si-bong, Short and Struggle-Free, the titular Lee Si-bong is a dog— a Bichon Frisé with a royal pedigree, to be exact. Lee Si-bong’s owner Lee Si-seup learns of his pet’s impressive lineage when a breeder named Michelle informs him that Lee Si-bong is one of only a few remaining “King Bichons.” Michelle offers a generous sum in exchange for the dog, assuring Lee Si-seup that she will provide only the most luxurious care and accommodations for his beloved companion. As he struggles to decide Lee Si-bong’s fate, Lee Si-seup makes a startling discovery that sheds light not only on the canine’s own past, but on the lives of his royal ancestors as well. Inspired by the author’s real-life dog, this immersive novel asks, “Do humans truly know what’s best for our animal companions?”The Cut tells the story of a woman who can read a person’s mind by touching their open wound. Enigmatic businessman Moon O-eon takes a penniless young woman under his wing, giving her a new name and life in a sprawling mansion where she reads people’s minds for him. She begins to develop complicated feelings for O-eon until one day, he commits an act of betrayal that shatters the tenuous trust between them. In a desperate attempt to make her understand him, O-eon asks her to read his thoughts. He, however, is the one person she refuses to read. In her characteristically propulsive style, Gu Byeong-mo weaves a complex tale that is at once a mystery, dark romance, and exploration of the basest instincts we keep hidden deep within. 

by Sarah K. H. Yoo

LTI Korea Now

Between Sentences: Reflections from An LTI Korea Translation Award Winner

Visitors to the annual Frankfurt Book Fair can encounter booths from countries all over the world, each making a concerted effort to introduce its national literature to an international audience. Korea is no exception.  Founded in 1996 as the Korean Literature Translation Fund and later designated a special corporation under the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism in 2005, the Literature Translation Institute of Korea is now marking thirty years as a leading force behind Korean literature’s global outreach. During that time, LTI Korea has financially supported the publication of more than 2,400 works of Korean literature in forty-four countries and continues to play an active role in funding translations today.  I got my own start as a translator in the winter of 1998 when I received a grant from the Korean Literature Translation Fund. In that sense, my career and LTI Korea can be said to have practically grown alongside each other. While Korea is now one of the world’s top dream travel destinations, there was a time not so long ago when it was hard to find foreigners who had even heard of the country.  The LTI Korea Translation Award was established in 1993 to foster more professional literary translators and to raise interest in literary translation both in Korea and abroad by selecting outstanding translations among the works of Korean literature published overseas. Now every year, first-, second-, and third-place prizes are awarded to translations of Korean literature into three foreign languages.  I was honored to receive the 2025 prize alongside Najbar-Miller Justyna Agata, the Polish translator of Han Kang’s We Do Not Part, and Tayfun Kartav, the Turkish translator of Chang Kang-myoung’s Homodominance. Given how few awards exist for translators, it should not be surprising that this one is so highly coveted in our field.When I first learned the news, my immediate thought was that I owed this honor to the unwavering support of LTI Korea, which has worked tirelessly for decades to make Korean literature truly global.  At the end of last November, I returned to Korea to accept the award—my first winter visit since my study-abroad days. Although my visit was brief, feeling the full force of winter in my homeland again was a deeply moving experience. The ceremony brought together my fellow LTI Korea Translation Award recipients, winners of the Award for Aspiring Translators and the Outstanding Service Award, esteemed guests and judges there to congratulate the winners, and representatives from LTI Korea and the Ministry of Culture. What delighted me the most was getting to meet and talk with translators I had previously known only by name. A fleeting thought crossed my mind that day: How great would it be if there were a regular gathering like this, where translators of Korean literature could come together to exchange and discuss ideas?  In all honesty, I never once dreamed of becoming a translator. I had always kept works of foreign literature close at hand, but I never imagined I would be the one to translate such stories myself. Had it not been for that fateful translation grant twenty-eight years ago, I would likely have continued to read foreign literature while remaining largely oblivious to the time and painstaking effort that translators put into their craft.  There is a saying that goes: Translation is treason. A task that requires restraint, wavering between the more literal translation and the more liberal one, resisting the urge to interpret or alter each word and sentence according to one’s own whims. Work that leaves the translator lost in unfamiliar woods, sometimes missing the beauty that lies beyond the forest of the source text. I have spent countless long and grueling hours on this task—from my very first translation, Kim Jooyoung’s A Fisherman Does Not Break the Reeds, to the more than forty works of Korean literature I have translated into German since. I still vividly remember the days I spent wandering from library to library with thick Korean-German and German- Korean dictionaries in tow. I also remember, like it was only yesterday, how happy I was when the advent of online dictionaries lifted that literal weight off my shoulders. And now, I’ve gotten to a point where I don’t need a dictionary at all. The world has changed over the years, yet I am still living as a translator, drifting between sentences.  Each time I complete a manuscript, I am reminded yet again how difficult and arduous a task translation still is. Before I can even savor the joy of holding a published translation of mine in my hands, the fear of critics and judgment comes rushing in. And yet the moment I encounter new words and sentences, sometimes chilling and other times indescribably beautiful, my insistence that I have no more translations left in me completely falls away, and before I know it, I am drawing a breath and stepping up to face another work of literature head-on. A translated work’s journey into the world can never be accomplished through the translator’s efforts alone. The voyage is made possible by the excellent editors who toil alongside us, refining the text to breathe new life into it in the reader’s language. Likewise, I know I’m where I am today thanks to the translators who came before me—those who, by the time I started knocking on random German publishers’ doors with my first translation in hand, had sowed the seeds that allowed Korean literature to take root in a land once barren of our stories— as well as my dedicated fellow translators who are every day, in places unseen, walking this path with me.  Looking ahead, I sincerely hope that LTI Korea will remain a steadfast source of support for young translators on this same journey.

by Ki-Hyang Lee