Product Description

An anthology of ten short stories by one of Korea's foremost living writers. The literary world of Pak explores the moral ambiguities inherent in Korea's society today and encourages the reader to question the injustices that prevail in the more impersonal world emerging in a "globalized" Korea.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1126461 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-07
• Original language: Korean
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 220 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Crumbling traditions and astonishing metamorphoses pervade the 10 stories in this collection by Korean writer Pak Wanso. All are oblique comments on the political events crucially shaping South Korea since the 1950s war. She finds particular irony in the disjunctions born of the conflict that challenged the cultural institutions of family responsibility. In "Thus Ended My Days Watching Over the House," the narrator's dominating husband, Professor Min, is arrested at home by a secret policeman. In his absence, the suddenly liberated wife neglects his precious bonsai trees and crystallizes her disgust for her mother-in-law, a bedridden glutton who becomes increasingly monstrous. In the title story, an elderly woman talking to her sister-in-law on the phone reveals the devastating effects on her family since her son was killed in a student demonstration in 1980, in which protesters called for the end of the military dictatorship and the government's democratization. Pak overloads this story, didactically, with too much recent Korean history, but she hits a more subtle note in "A Certain Barbarity," where the humble bathroom becomes the redoubt of Korean nationalism. The narrator suffers from constipation, a condition that afflicts him just as his neighbors upgrade from an old-fashioned Korean outhouse to the decadent flush toilet. The neighbors' grab for status stems from their sudden acquaintance with a supposedly rich cousin, and their sudden flaunting of wealth calls into question the whole neighborhood's cultural identity. The folkloric "Granny Flowers in Those Heartless Days" is Pak's best known story for its juxtaposition of war trauma, humor and, above all, tenderness. Set during the Korean War, it features two encounters between a rural matriarch and the military. In the first, she offers herself to a detachment of American soldiers to save the virginity of the village girls. In the second part, she takes the virginity of Korean Private Kim, to protect him from bullets in accordance with an old superstition. With a unique blend of historical acumen and feminist insight into Korea's changing culture, this volume discloses for the American reader the range of one of South Korea's most distinguished living writers. (July)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
...her messages in these stories are vividly focused. -- The New York Times Book Review, Janice P. Nimura

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Korean

Customer Reviews

Ten stories, three masterpieces
This book is a collection of ten short stories written over twenty years, so it should come as no surprise that the topics and tone range widely, though all are of superior style and form. Ms. Pak addresses topics relevant to the rapid urbanization of South Korea during these two decades, such as how to support the elderly in a society without a social welfare net, the alienation resulting from the hollowing of the extended family/community-centered social construct in favor of industrialization and urbanization, and the prevalence of hatred and anger left behind from the storm of war and the oppressive, militaristic governments that held power into the 1990s. The title story, clearly meant as the centerpiece, is a stream-of-consciousness piece that might not work for some readers, but three other stories are masterpieces:
"Butterfly of Illusion" brings together parallel lives of an elderly woman uprooted from her caretaker position and a young woman exploited by her money-hungry family and abusive employer now working as a fortuneteller in an old house. The older woman, longing for the rural village of her past, runs away from her daughter's urban apartment to the old house; here the pair form their own family away from the ugliness of reality.
"Thus Ended My Days of Watching Over the House" follows the life of a dutifully married woman and echoes the tones of Ibsen's "A Doll's House". Life interrupted by the taking of her soft-spoken professor husband into police custody, the protagonist becomes aware of her powerless state both as a citizen living under martial rule and as a wife/daughter-in-law within the traditional social structure. She compares her life to that of her husband's bonsai trees, bred and purposefully stunted to keep their size small; as her husband's absence lengthens, she smashes the trees.
In "Three Days in That Autumn", Ms. Pak portrays with sympathy and emotion the life of a "woman's doctor" who is alternatively racked with guilt for "killing enough people to populate a town" and pride in providing relief for sexually exploited women. As the doctor approaches retirement, her work is sought out more often by housewives preferring sons than by victims of crime and exploitation, and the doctor slowly descends into madness as she longs to deliver a baby into life rather than death.
In her stories, Ms. Pak effectively captures the gap between an older generation who longs for the simple past yet is plagued by memories of war, and the younger generation struggling to find deeper meaning in a newly urbanized, self-serving capitalistic society. Highly recommended.