Korean literature in English #9

The Library of Korean Literature series is a collection of ten Korean novels published in English in the U.S. last year. (photo courtesy of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea)

The ninth volume of the ten-part Library of Korean Literature is Park Wan-suh’s (1931-2011) “Lonesome You.”

This work was published in 2000 and is a collection of ten short stories, including “Withered Flower,” “Psychedelic Butterfly” and “That Girl’s House.”

“Psychedelic Butterfly” tells the story of an elderly woman who has endured all kinds of suffering as a widow and as a mother of three children. The gray-haired woman feels uneasy staying at either her son’s or daughter’s house. She ends up being diagnosed with dementia, which, sadly, brings her more peace and freedom than being with her children, as the disease clears up all the memories of her ordeal.

“Withered Flower” presents a love affair that sparked between a widow, who soon turns 60, and a middle-aged man while traveling on a bus.

The seventh story in the collection, “Thorn Inside Petals,” is told in the first person. The narrator subtly denounces the indifference and ignorance of the daughter-in-law toward her older sister. She also reminisces about an elderly French immigrant who worked as a dress maker. She later found out that what the French woman was really making for a living was burial clothes for upscale clients.

In these stories, the writer is believed to have tried to bring to light the later-life of the elderly and, also, immigrants, full of loneliness.

“Lonesome You” penned by Park Wan-suh was published in English last year.

The title story, “Lonesome You,” too, is centered on an elderly couple. The husband’s shabby looks, which have given in to the irresistible forces of time, are straightforwardly shown as seen in the wife’s eyes.

The “you” who is described as being lonesome in the title is none other than the husband sitting next to the wife. The last scene shows the wife rubbing her husband’s shins, covered with the stains of age, disclosing her “acceptance at growing old” and the “sympathy” that has stirred up inside her for her husband.

The following is what the writer says in the preface of the collection, which she published at the age of 67:

“Don’t pity the elderly, as they feel that the world is still worth living in. I didn’t write this to make you feel that way, but that is true because I, one of them, still feel like I enjoy my life.

I don’t think that life is always sweet. It can be bitter sometimes. It is only the wisdom of age that can tell the taste of bitterness, and I accept getting old. That is what I cannot hide, no matter how hard I try…”

Writer Park Wan-suh (photo courtesy of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea)

Park Wan-suh was born in 1931 in Gaepung-gun, Gyeonggi-do, currently in North Korea. Park entered Seoul National University in 1950, but the outbreak of the Korean War (1950-53) cut her studies short. In 1970, at the age of 40, the writer made her relatively late literary debut with “The Naked Tree,” her first full-length novel about the Korean War and the tragic division of the country.

She continued to create numerous works that have long been considered a new chapter in Korean literature. They are usually themed on the division of Korea or on women who try to shape their identity.

Her works include the novels “Warm Was The Winter That Year” and “Mother’s Garden,” as well as novels that portray the materialism prevalent among the middle-class, such as “A Reeling Afternoon” and “Identical Apartments.”

Park’s work also targets the difficulties facing women, as told in “The Woman Standing” and “The Dreaming Incubator.”

Source:Korea.net