Category: Korea

Han Kang: We Do Not Part

“In every story, without exception, the woman looks back. She turns to stone on the spot.”

“Because Koreans don’t win the Nobel prize for literature,” says the young Nora in Past Lives when Hae Sung asked the aspiring writer why she was moving to Canada.

As much as I love that film that’s lodged in a heart space that I thought was only reserved for the Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight trilogy, I was glad Nora proved to be wrong when Han Kang became the first Korean and the first female Asian writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Lauded for her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life,” it then became a goal to read Han Kang for Women’s Month this year.

It is one of the most atmospheric books I’ve read. I can almost feel the snowflakes falling on my heart until now.

The novel takes place on Jeju Island, a place that I regarded merely as a popular vacation spot thanks to KDrama and the island’s visa-free policy for Filipinos. It also drew international attention on December 29, 2024, when a Jeju Air flight overshot the runway and resulted in 179 fatalities. That’s all I knew of Jeju — until I read this.

What begins as a woman having a series of nightmares and discernibly living with an unnamed trauma, builds suspense when a friend in the hospital asks her to rescue a pet bird that was left alone at home after an accident occurred. What Kyungha discovers in her friend Inseon’s home in the dead of winter gradually opens her eyes to the Jeju massacre of 1948. It is such a hallucinatory reading experience that I had to verify if something that horrific really happened in idyllic Jeju Island’s history.

“Extermination was the goal. Exterminate what? The reds.” But Jeju’s inhabitants were not all reds, and yet it was easier for the military to operate by decimating the population. For nearly fifty years after the massacre, it was a crime punishable by law for a South Korean to mention the event. A huge percentage of the thousands that perished were innocent.

“Collateral damage.” That’s what they call it. Now where have I heard that term recently?

Cheon Myeong-Kwan: Whale

This book does not say anything about Egon Schiele. But it very well could have been written by him, had he been a novelist instead of a painter.

An unexpected turn inside the Belvedere Museum in Vienna once brought me face to face with enormous paintings by Schiele. When you go to a place for Klimt and be confronted by Schiele, it is a staggering experience you will not easily forget.

Haunting eyes, naked and exaggerated anatomies, comical expressions, grotesque scenes, and dark humor — whether you like it or not, you cannot look away. Even if you eventually manage to, you will be forced to take another look, and another.

Because by some bizarre and compelling artistry, the artist wraps you around a strangely proportioned finger, the way Cheon Myeong-Kwan does in this whale of a tale.

So, do not let the cover design of the Archipelago Books edition with its happy colors fool you. Or maybe, let it fool you; so that it startles you, the way some skillful art and literature should. Maybe take that turn and be confronted by something you normally would not seek out.

Oftentimes, the art that we find grotesque are missives from a mind sensitive to how the world truly operates. For isn’t this book a critique on justice, economic, and social systems; and even on American influence through Hollywood? And aren’t these political caricatures in the guise of troubling characters and a metafictional storyline?

I would think twice before criticizing this book for what it seems on the surface, lest I become akin to that judge in 1912 who set fire to one of Schiele’s drawings at a trial wherein Schiele was accused of indecency.

“Reader, you will believe what you want to believe. That’s all there is to it.”