Korean Studies
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My Very Last Possession and Other Stories by Pak Wansô, trans. by Chun Kyung-Ja et al. Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1999. 220 pp. (ISBN 0-7656-0429-9, paper).
Ten stories by the prolific author Pak Wansô are skillfully translated in the recently published My Very Last Possession and Other Stories by Pak Wansô (Chun Kyun-ja, ed., 1999). This anthology samples stories whose settings reflect a range of periods, from the Korean War and the subsequent rapid industrialization of the 1960s and '70s to the destructive riots of the '80s. Often closely related to her real-life experiences, Pak's stories unflinchingly mirror the state of the Korean family in a given era, especially as seen through the eyes of a mother or daughter. Realism seems to play an important cathartic role for the Korean reader. The plight of a people or the sufferings of individuals trapped in a system from which there is no escape is a common theme in modern Korean literature. However, several of the stories Chun Kyung-ja includes in this compilation end on a relatively positive note.
The first story in the collection, "She Knows, I Know, and Heaven Knows," reveals the pattern of frustration and release that Pak tends to follow throughout these stories. The story concerns an old woman who peddles odds and ends on the street for a living, but she is coaxed from her lowly job to live in the home of an upper middle-class widower on his last legs. The family needs a woman who can give constant care to the old man, so she becomes his surrogate wife of sorts. The story opens with the vicious gossip of neighbor ladies who have come to the old man's funeral; they deride and mock the old woman as greedy, self-interested, and coarse, which the omniscient narrator allows the reader to see as unfair judgement. Through the old woman's inner monologue we learn that her intentions and actions are honorable, yet she is scorned and wrongly used throughout the story. Frustration mounts as the reader experiences with the old woman the humiliation of being treated poorly and the anger of receiving but a meager salary and no thanks or kindness for the taxing work of caring for a man who cannot even feed or clean himself. In the end she is left to her own devices, after the widower's daughter breaks her promise to repay the woman for her pains with a small apartment of her own. Yet when she is left alone at the crematorium with no word of farewell or even a ride into town, she plucks up her spirits and tastes the freedom of being her own person again as she walks off into the sunset.
Pak's ending here is bittersweet in its ambiguity as to whether or not the denouement effects a change for the better. Another example of such ambiguity can be found in "A Certain Barbarity." Pak anchors her story in the satirical motif of rows of outhouses that match corresponding rows of apartments. The event that breaks the monotony of a lower middle-class neighborhood is the arrival of a neighbor's rich relative. Before the wealthy distant cousin shows up, the neighbor family installs a flush toilet and becomes instantly aloof. When he arrives, all who dwell nearby take delight in him and his "thoroughbred" Japanese dog. After a time, however, the cousin suddenly leaves his hosts high and dry, returning the neighborhood to its pre-frenzy mundane ways, and somehow affording the protagonist/narrator, who had suffered from constipation, "the most satisfying discharge [he] had experienced in a long, long time." The neighborhood families interact once again on equal terms. Yet the return to apparent normalcy is tarnished by the trap of socioeconomic stagnation in a neighborhood where families are unable to realize their dreams. The resultant frustration is made tangible in the neighbor's relentless beating of the wealthy cousin's abandoned dog, leaving the reader to question the narrator's positive take on ruptured "delusions of grandeur" and his recent "liberation from constipation."
"My Very Last Possession" differs stylistically from the other stories. It takes the form of a phone conversation that is presented to the reader as a monologue, with dialogic interaction implied throughout. This technique creates a tense atmosphere and a rapid pace as thoughts spill out of the protagonist's head indiscriminately. Recollections of the past enter the flow of her cathartic speech randomly, hinting at moments of hysteria or senility, while stylistically resembling stream of consciousness. The theme of madness in women is touched upon here and in "Butterfly of Illusion" and "Three Days in that Autumn," in which female characters suffer unbearable pressure from the maternal role expected of them in Korean society. In these stories, an old grandmother seeks an escape from being shuffled between daughter and son; a young woman marries her career as an abortionist in order to avenge her rape by an American soldier; and a mother of three neglects her daughters after the murder of her son in an anti-government riot. The Confucian-based pressure placed on women to marry, produce a son, and maintain 'respectable' households, coupled with the resultant feelings of guilt at not living up to such expectations, ostracizes these women from mainstream society and seems to push them over the edge.
I highly recommend this anthology of translated stories for those who would like to experience a slice of Korean life during different eras since the Korean War, and for those who would like to explore the inner workings of a uniquely Korean world view. The translations succeed in reflecting Pak's easy, fluid style, and I experienced only a few instances of awkwardness, nothing disturbing enough to point out here. The fast-paced, raw style of Pak's writing reflects a world that few Westerners have experienced. This volume is a wonderful first anthology of Pak Wanso's short stories in English translation; here's hoping the work will continue so that readers outside of Korea may enjoy more of her savory morsels.
Citation:
Hinds, Diana 2000
Review of My Very Last Possession and Other Stories by Pak Wansô, trans. by Chun Kyung-Ja et al.
Korean Studies Review 2000, no. 5
http://koreanstudies.com/ks/ksr/ksr00-05.htm
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