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--></style><title>KSR 2008-03: _Three Generations_, by Yom Sang-seop
(Yô</title></head><body>
<div><font color="#000000"><i>_Three Generations_</i>, by Yom
Sang-seop (Yôm Sang-sôp). Translated by Yu Young-nan. Brooklyn,
NY: Archipelago Books. 2005. 476 pages. ISBN 0-9749680-0-5. US
$30.</font><br>
<font color="#000000"></font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><i>_Trees on a Slope_</i>, by Hwang
Sun-wôn. Translated by Bruce and Ju-chan Fulton. Honolulu: University
of Hawai'i Press, 2005. 197 pages. ISBN 0-8248-2767-8 (hardcover),
0-8248-2887-9 (pbk).<br>
<br>
Reviewed by Brother Anthony/An Sonjae<br>
Sogang University<br>
ansonjae@sogang.ac.kr<br>
<br>
<br>
The two novels being reviewed here probably have little in common
beyond the fact that both are works of Korean literature, and both
translations were published in 2005. However, something might be
gained by viewing them together. The first,<i> Three Generations</i>,
is a work that was first published in 1931, being serialized from
January through September in the<i> Chosôn Ilbo</i> daily newspaper.
The work, like many other lengthy novels serialized during the
Japanese period, was not published in book form until after 1945.<i>
Three Generations</i> was finally published as a book in November
1948, and the<i> Afterword</i> notes that the author "revised the
second half of the book, making the ending more optimistic"
(474).<br>
<br>
The novel tells the story of a few months in the life (and for the
grandfather that includes death) of three generations of the Jo
family, but focuses mainly on Deok-gi, the grandson. Deok-gi, a member
of a new, pragmatic generation holds a philosophy of life vastly
different from the pre-modern outlook of his grandfather, or his
father, Jo Sang-hun, who once aspired to become a modern intellectual
but lives now in utter dissipation. The underground activities of the
socialists Jang-hun and Byeong-hwa in external society propel the
narrative action forward, as well as the amorous pursuits of the main
characters.<br>
<br>
The book's brief (4-page)<i> Afterword</i> by Kim Chie-sou situates
the novel in the literary and social context of its time: "In
1924, with the formation of the Korean Artist Proletarian Federation
(KAPF), proletarian literature became the mainstay of Korean
literature. Yom challenged this faction. In a critical article
entitled 'Refuting Bak Yeong-hui's View in Discussing Newly Emerging
Literature,' he supported the national literature movement, with its
basic thrust of 'digging out what is Korean,' which was in opposition
to the proletarian literary movement, whose focus was the liberation
of the oppressed. While his commitment to this liberation was
unwavering, Yom insisted that the quest for Korean-ness should come
first" (475). Prior to this, the commentator has stressed that
the novel's central figures are representatives of the "Jungin"
class, to which the author himself belonged, "which played a
pioneering role in the history of Korea's enlightenment (late 19th
century)." What is most obvious throughout the novel is that the
three generations of men in question enjoy almost unlimited access to
inherited, accumulated wealth and have as yet none of the worries of
those obliged to scrape a living as best they can.<br>
<br>
The main thrust of the novel, then, is dominated by considerations of
class and social morality, indeed of ideology. There is always a
danger when fiction is asked to serve to illustrate social theory. In
the present case, the risk is clear that the symbolic, social value
attached to each of the main male characters is going to dictate their
reactions to situations, at the expense of more subtle, individual
psychology. In particular, the identification of the author with the
hesitations and scruples of Deok-gi, the most modern and most anxious
of the three, might be felt to push him to adopt attitudes that are
not clearly motivated at the psychological level.<br>
<br>
Female characters appear on almost every page and they play a central
role at every moment of the story. As the story develops, it becomes
clear that in this society, despite the changes it is undergoing, the
women always pay the price for the men's feckless irresponsibility.
The novel's main sensibility (as opposed to its main ideological
thrust) is for the suffering and the strength of the women who are
obliged to find real solutions to the real problems that arise in
daily life, while the men remain helpless or indifferent. If anyone
has to read this work, it will be for its portrayals of resolute
women, not for its self-centered, dogmatic, and infuriating
men.</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br>
Just thinking of the work involved in translating such a long work
(some 470 pages) leaves one with a headache, and full of admiration
for the way in which Yu Young-nan has managed to produce a text where
the reader never feels that the translator is not in perfect control
of the English style. One of the people providing quotations for the
back cover says that the book is "mellifluously translated"
and that seems an apt word. Other scholars have, I know, detected a
few places where the Korean is not "exactly" rendered, but
mostly the cases they quote show only a nit-picking determination to
find fault at all costs. This reviewer would say that the translator
has been extremely faithful to the original while striving to use
English terms and idioms that sound natural to a non-Korean reader.
The smoothness of the English does, certainly, suggest a very sensible
preference for readability over precise verbal correspondence.<br>
<br>
The translator does not provide any glossary of unfamiliar cultural
terms or customs. She makes Yom's story available in English exactly
as it was published in Korean, without explanatory apparatus or
commentary. The work is offered, then, above all as a document from
the past, as an example of early Korean fiction. The<i> Afterword</i>
tells us "it was only in the 1960s, however, that critics began
to consider<i> Three Generations</i> a masterpiece of Korean fiction
in the 20th centuryŠ.Their consensus is that through this work, Yom
instills pride into the generation of citizens who did not receive a
Japanese colonial education" (476). Now, that is a very strange
reason for calling a novel a "masterpiece," one having a lot
to do with nationalist, anti-Japanese ideology, perhaps, but meaning
nothing to non-Korean readers, for whom "masterpiece"
implies high literary quality: a really well-constructed, well-told,
thought-provoking novel.<br>
<br>
For this reviewer, what is most striking about this work is the way in
which he found himself wanting to stop reading and shut the book after
only a few pages. In the end, total boredom won. I think I have never
tried to read so utterly tedious, uninteresting a work of fiction. The
"action" develops at a snail's pace. There is no suspense
and no refinement of psychological perception. The male characters
remain undeveloped, being mainly seen in stereotyped terms of their
social positions and options. There are no vivid descriptions of
places, the urban setting being assumed to be familiar to readers. The
problems facing Korea as it moved into the modern era were certainly a
source of intense conflicts, and those conflicts are the material of
the story told here. But they fail to come alive in an interesting
manner.<br>
<br>
The essential difficulty is that Yom does not write narrative in such
a way as to carry a reader's interest. It is hard to explain the need
for so much of what is written, while dialogues, too, are mostly
desultory exchanges without any clear direction or conclusion. Surely
people did not talk to one another like this? The narrative employs
what can best be called a "flip-flop, zig-zag" manner of
writing. Each statement is qualified by at least one "but"
or its equivalent. The narratives are never simple when they can turn
three times around the bush before getting anywhere. The novel cannot,
I think, be read with aesthetic or literary pleasure, nor can it
provoke admiration for the quality of the fiction being written in
Korea at that time. It is striking that the<i> Afterword</i> says
nothing about what works served as models for Yom, or about the
origins of the stylistic features just mentioned. What was the
influence of Japanese writing, one wonders. There is mention of the
Japanese novel<i> The Makioka Sisters</i> by Tanizaki, but no
developed exploration of the similarities.<br>
<br>
Hwang Sun-wôn's<i> Trees on a Slope</i> is a very different work in
terms of length (190 pages) and readability. Published in 1960, it,
too, is constructed around a group of three men, the friends
Hyôn-t'ae, Yun-gu and Tong-ho. They are, of course, caught up in the
processes of Korean history and social evolution as those in<i> Three
Generations</i> were. The novel is divided into two parts of equal
length. The first part takes place during the later stages of the
Korean War and during the months following the armistice, the second
part begins in 1957. During the first part, the three are comrades in
the same army unit on the battlefront, then waiting to be discharged.
Tong-ho kills himself just before the first part ends, after shooting
a prostitute together with her client.</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"> </font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">In the second part, the two survivors are
back in civilian life, and Yun-gu is building up a successful chicken
farm, thanks to help from Hyôn-t'ae, whose father is wealthy.
Tong-ho has been replaced by Sôk-ki, a former boxer who was obliged
to stop boxing by an eye injury. Like Hyôn-t'ae, Sôk-ki is a
drunkard. A number of women come into the story, including Sugi,
Tong-ho's former girlfriend, and Kye-hyang, an orphan bar-girl.
Hyôn-t'ae is about to leave for studies in the US when he casually
gives Kye-hyang his knife and allows her to kill herself when she
tells him she wants to die. He is imprisoned for having virtually
caused her death. The story ends with Yun-gu refusing to help Sugi,
who is pregnant after being raped by Hyôn-t'ae. Earlier in the
second part of the story, Yun-gu's girlfriend Mi-ran dies after an
abortion he arranged for her.<br>
<br>
>From time to time in both parts the main characters meet An and
Sônu. An is a devout Christian, acting as "his brother's keeper"
in an attempt to keep Sônu from destroying himself. An explains that
Sônu, who once killed a man, is obsessed by guilt. In the first
part, when both are soldiers, this leads to violent drinking and
strange behavior. In the second part, when Hyôn-t'ae meets An by
chance, he learns that Sônu had accepted An's help, started to go
with him to church but then began to act strangely and had been
hospitalized. He goes with An to the hospital where they find that
Sônu, who seemed to be improving, has gone completely crazy.
Hyôn-t'ae seems to be aware of a parallel between Sônu and himself,
for near the start of the novel he killed a helpless woman, whom they
found in an otherwise deserted village, in order to prevent her
telling the enemy about their presence.</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br>
The novel, then, inevitably, is full of violence, whether that of the
war or that of brutalized postwar society, where Sôk-ki loses the
use of one hand after being beaten and stabbed by drunken gangsters.
It stresses the powerlessness of people to overcome the consequences
of this self-perpetuating, destructive violence. The Christian An
might be thought to represent the author, since Hwang was himself a
Christian. An is ultimately powerless, his faith and practice unable
to prevent Sônu from sliding into madness, where he takes himself
for a second Jeremiah, ranting in solitude. This book, too, has a
short, 5-page<i> Afterword</i> in which the translators survey briefly
the novel's place in Hwang's work and try to identify its main themes.
They suggest that duality and ambivalence are the two words best
suited to characterize the way in which the novel approaches the harsh
reality it describes.<br>
<br>
Since this review is already overdue, I cannot now take time to
compare the translation with the original, and see no need to do so.
As is usual with the translation work of the Fultons, readability is
clearly the overriding option. Korean literalists will undoubtedly be
troubled by the use of expressions such as "cut the crap",
"shut the fuck up," "that's a pretty far stretch,"
or "what if we call it quits?" But if we are to translate
the colloquial speech of Korean soldiers, or ex-soldiers, how else is
it to be done? While reading, there is never a feeling of
incongruity.<br>
<br>
In their<i> Afterword</i>, the translators stress one interesting
fact: after the end of the war, Korean writers by and large did not
take the events of the war as a subject for fiction. Above all we do
not, they say, find accounts of outstanding heroism. Certainly,
although this novel includes scenes of battle, it too is mainly
concerned with other events and incidents. In particular, we need to
remember that Hwang did not see military action, he had no firsthand
experience of battle. His knowledge comes from what others told him.
Could he have written this book if he had been a soldier?<br>
<br>
It might also be said that this novel has another, very different,
unifying theme, with the troubled sexual relationships of almost all
the men and women calling attention to the more troubled (and
troubling) regions of the human psyche. In the first part, Sugi is
only present as a secret memory for Tong-ho. The first evocation of
what she means to him comes when the other two go off to spend time
with prostitutes and we learn that Tong-ho never goes with them. He
recalls the last night before he left for the army, two years
previously, which they had spent together in a hotel by Haeundae
Beach-at Sugi's suggestion, it is stressed. His memory focuses on the
delicate fuzz he noticed on her face. Almost immediately after, on
another such occasion, he recalls that night in much greater detail,
making it very clear that they had held back from direct sexual
contact, with only very limited kissing and touching: "by
controlling his desire, he was able to preserve Sugi's dream"
(35). In this much longer evocation, it is plain that both are
inclined to yield, but "in the end, he thought only of how
precious everything about Sugi was, and that she would forever be his"
(37) Another, contrary memory strikes him at this point, of something
Hyôn-t'ae said, "that you could never make a woman yours till
you had conquered her." His inner response is: "But one
thing you'll never know, my friend, is the purity and the beauty of
having the feel of Sugi on my lips, face, and hands." Both he and
Sugi seem to be radical Platonic idealists, unwilling to come to terms
with their physicality.</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br>
That moment of memory is interrupted by the first, lengthy encounter
with Sônu. An evening of drinking with bar girls that culminates
with "And then she took him" (60). His friends are jubilant,
while he cannot stop retching. "He told himself that part of his
body was soiled." The following day, "remorse gnawed at his
heart" (61), but he then tries to persuade himself that his love
for Sugi is "as pure as ever" (62). Returning to the bar a
few days later, he demands to meet the same girl, Ok-ju, and learns
that she is with the local head of the Youth Corps and he has to
wait.</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br>
After this, his memories of Sugi become complex, he burns her previous
letters, refuses to read a newly arrived one. He starts to ask Ok-ju
personal questions, "I wanted to know a little more about you"
(71). The next time he visits her, he pays for a whole night and tries
to repeat the restricted lovemaking of his last night with Sugi, with
no great success. Ok-ju understands: "You're looking for the one
you love in me. Well, it's not going to work" (79). Then she
tells her secret, of having been married and pregnant, but the news of
her husband's death in action kills the baby and all she has is the
scar of the operation. All her memories have lost their power:
"There's nothing as heartless as the flesh. Sometime it scares
me" (81). And she draws him to her more gently than before. He
finds a "peaceful emptiness" in which he feels neither
guilty nor apologetic toward Sugi. Yet one month later, after hearing
her come to sexual climax with someone else, he kills her in a burst
of rage, then kills himself.<br>
<br>
The novel is in fact constructed as a diptych, the second part
bringing Sugi into the action as, after several years of silence, she
tries to learn why Tong-ho killed himself. Neither of his friends will
tell her. She finally ends up, for no very clear reason, in a hotel
room outside of Inch'ôn with a drunken Hyôn-t'ae. He tells her:
"I see now he could never escape that worthless dreamworld of
yours-it stifled him till the end and now he's dead" (146). And
he rapes her. She meets him once more, and simply says: "The lot
of youŠTong-ho, yourself, you're beyond salvation" (164). The
novel ends with her leaving Yun-gu after he refuses to allow her to
stay at his farm until her child is born.</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br>
More than any other element, it is this complex story of paradise lost
that structures the novel. If the innocence of the night at Haeundae
figures the dream represented by prewar Korea in memory, the rape in
the hotel in Songdo (Inch'ôn) reveals present-day realities. For
Tong-ho, the failure to keep the impossible demand of sexual purity
represents a primal fall, where Ok-ju is a kind of Eve. The descent
into depravity, all values lost, that follows that fall he blames on
her, and at the same time he sees in her promiscuity a reflection of
his own betrayal of Sugi's idealistic trust. Yet it is true that Sugi
also bears responsibility for what happened; her sentimental idealism
placed a responsibility on Tong-ho that he should not have been asked
to shoulder.<br>
<br>
So Hwang's novel provokes reflection in ways that Yom's fails to do,
touching as it does on archetypal themes of sin and fall, guilt and
damnation, body and soul. It offers little in the way of redemption,
unless it can be found in the rather uncertain resolution of Sugi to
bear the child. That seems at least closer to redemption than raising
chickens, which is the only goal Yun-gu has left to live for.<br>
<br>
Is this a novel worth reading? Surely. Does it have limitations?
Certainly. Perhaps, in the end, the greatest limitation Hwang was
faced with was the insoluble problem facing a novelist's would-be
omniscient narrator who is obliged to give an account of people who
are profoundly unable to give a coherent account of themselves, who do
not know who they are, what they feel, or what they want. All of the
characters in the novel are, in the end, victims of their lack of
self-awareness. Not knowing what it is they desire, they cannot set
themselves any goal, make any clear choices. Their actions then become
incoherent, fragmented. In the war, one goal was clear: survival. In
peacetime, too, the end of the novel seems to say, that emerges
finally as the only goal, though it might mean a life spent staring at
the behinds of chickens, trying to determine their sex, unwilling to
hear the voice that says: "You're beyond
salvation."</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab> <br>
Citation:<br>
Brother Anthony/An Sonjae, 2008</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">Review of<i> </i> _Three Generations_,
by Yom Sang-seop (Yôm Sang-sôp), tr. by Yu Young-nan, and _Trees
on a Slope_, by Hwang Sun-wôn, tr. by Bruce and Ju-chan
Fulton</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">_<i>Korean Studies Review</i>_ 2008, no.
3<br>
Electronic file: http://koreaweb.ws/ks/ksr/ksr08-03.htm</font></div>
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