The Naked Tree, by Pak Wan-sô (trans. Yu Young-nan). Cornell East Asia Series, 83. Ithaca, N.Y.: East Asia Program, Cornell University, 1995. (ISBN 1-885445-73-3 cloth; ISBN 1-885445-83-0 paper).
The last few years have witnessed increasing overseas interest
in the writing of Pak Wan-sô, arguably South Korea's most
popular female author. The Naked Tree (Namok), the
first of Pak's full-length works to be translated into English,
appears under the auspices of the Cornell East Asia Series, which
has also recently brought forth such important contemporary Korean
novels as Hwang Sôk-yông's The Shadow of Arms
and Cho Chông-nae's Playing With Fire.
Set during the Korean War, The Naked Tree is narrated in
first person by Kyung-a, a young woman working in a studio that
produces hack portrait paintings for American soldiers. The plot
largely concerns itself with her less than fulfilling relationships
with men, most notably a married painter who has fled to Seoul
from the north, and her melancholy existence at home with her
mother. An even deeper sense of tragedy underlies the protagonist's
life, but Pak is careful to leave the precise causes for this
aura of gloom oblique; the climactic flashback is postponed until
late in the novel, thus effectively building a suspense that propels
the narrative forward. The story itself is an engaging one, but
several aspects of the text render it of particular interest to
readers in the west and make it potentially valuable for courses
on modern Korean literature, history or society, as depictions
of contact between South Korea and the United States and a vivid
portrait of Seoul in the early 1950's are set within a compelling
frame about coming of age during a traumatic period.
The novel opens with an encounter between the narrator and an
American GI that establishes an undertone of cultural conflict,
the very first sentence drawing attention to the "Otherness"
of these recent en masse arrivals on the Korean peninsula: "a
hand covered with thick brown tufts of hair thrust something in
my face" (1). Attitudes towards America are deeply ambivalent,
to say the least, as the United States is viewed simultaneously
as a glamorous land of riches, and one whose inhabitants generally
deserve little respect. One character launches into a tirade that
grows progressively more obscene as it contrasts the purity of
Korean blood with that of American "mongrels" (20).
Nonetheless Pak succeeds in eliciting the complexity in South
Korea's relationship with its ally: disdain mixes easily with
envy, admiration, and compassion for those who have to give up
"happiness and family in order to face death on brutal foreign
battlefields" (94).
The picture of wartime Seoul will likely engage and may even surprise.
Although the narrative invokes a contrast between the capital
and southern cities like Pusan and Taegu, "where the houses
still were brightly lit and the streets were thronged with crowds
of people" (4), Seoul's dynamism protrudes almost in spite
of itself. Under Pak's pen, the city comes alive and we observe
life going on in the face of the era's difficulties. Tea rooms,
taverns and even a Japanese restaurant form the backdrop for the
novel's conversations, while outside we encounter itinerant toy
vendors, Clark Gable smirking on movie posters and crowded Myông-dong
alleyways, whose excitement, the narrator remarks, makes wartime
seem far away. Nevertheless, consciousness of the war remains
omnipresent. The tensions are especially well conveyed when New
Year's Day, 1952, finds Kyung-a sitting down in her home to a
scarcely celebratory meal of kimchi soup and rice; on the gray
walls hangs an American calendar that depicts a healthy-looking
couple fresh from a ski slope quenching their thirst with a bottle
of cola.
To concentrate on these (admittedly intriguing) aspects of the
text, however, would be to detract from its primary focus, which
is very much the story of a historically particularized young
woman's coming of age. Kyung-a, who presents a tough exterior
that conceals an inner fragility, is a realistically drawn and
complex character. Equally cynical and idealistic, she usually
commands the reader's sympathy. And yet she can also display a
striking lack of compassion towards Diana Kim, a single mother
who sleeps with GIs in order to make ends meet: "What an
evil woman. Does she think she can do all those terrible things
in the name of motherhood? Thick-skinned bitch!" In response
to a friend's attempt to instill a modicum of understanding within
her, she remarks "I couldn't control my anger at all the
good, naive people who were swayed by the word 'mother' "
(92). The reasons for this venom, which at times makes Kyung-a
unlikeable, only become clearer late in the novel as we discover
more about her life with her own mother. Tensions between women
of the older and younger generation form a recurrent theme in
Pak's work; in The Naked Tree the narrator's combative
relationship with her mother at times erupts into virulent expressions
of hatred.
The protagonist, finding herself drawn by the "mysterious
power of the opposite sex" (95) and searching for romantic
love, navigates a course somewhere between the Diana Kims of Korea
and the fortunate few whose lives are further removed from the
effects of the war. Her quest is beset by disappointment, however:
an unsatisfying date leads her to muse that "all I experienced
from my first kiss was that it was cold" (43), and she later
portrays sexuality to herself as animalistic. Eventually she forms
a brief, disastrous relationship with an American soldier, the
denouement of which triggers the crucially missing flashback in
the novel's most powerful scene.
Yu Young-nan's translation is very readable and largely unobtrusive,
one of the finer compliments a translation of a Korean novel can
have. Only occasionally during dialogue does awkward phrasing
prove jarring (a noteworthy example occurs on p. 62 in the discussion
of regional variations in dumplings, a passage that would strain
the capabilities of even the most gifted translator). All in all,
however, the appearance of The Naked Tree forms a most
welcome addition to the growing body of both Korean novels generally
and the work of Pak Wan-sô specifically that is available
in English.