The fantastical visions of Korean writer Ch'oe Yun explore how social traumas shape individual lives.
There a Petal Silently Falls"There a Petal Silently Falls," the first volume of Ch'oe Yun's fiction available in English (from Columbia University Press), is made up of a trio of tangy stories that dramatize the subtle links between public and private alienation.
The title story, which is much admired in Korea, brings a "ghost story" approach to the aftermath of the Kwangji atrocity. 2,000 South Koreans were killed for protesting the military rule of strongman Chun Doo Hwan. The other tales include "Whisper Yet," a melancholic melodrama about the plight of a leftist political refugee, and "The Thirteen-Scent Flower," a high-spirited lampoon of crazed environmentalism, science run amuck, and consumer faddism.
After her literary debut in the late ‘80s, Ch'oe Yun, a professor of French literature at Sogang University, quickly emerged as one of the most important authors in contemporary Korea, Her writing marries a concern with the spiritual reverberations of political/historical events, such as the Kwangju massacre (1980) and the Park Chung-hee dictatorship (1961-1979), with sophistocated fictional techniques.
Bill Marx, editor of World Books, asked Ch'oe Yun about what her fiction says about contemporary Korean realities.
The World: How are the stories in "There a Petal Silently Falls" representative of your writing?
Ch'oe Yun: The title story was my first published work of fiction and expresses an aesthetic of history and creative writing. In "Whisper Yet" I'm interpreting the issue of the territorial division of Korea; I selected it to accompany my prize-winning story "The Last of Hanak'o" in the 1994 "Yi Sang Literature Prize Anthology." In "The Thirteen-Scent Flower" I reflect on beauty in contemporary society by considering the status of the arts; it's the title story of one of my short-fiction collections. You could say that these stories are important in terms of these three areas that they represent.
The World: You are considered one of Korea's leading writers, which is as good a reason as any to have your stories translated into English. But why publish them now? Does "There a Petal Silently Falls" tell us anything Western readers need to know about Korea today?
Ch'oe Yun: The "Petal" story has to do with the Kwangju Uprising of May 1980, but I constructed it so that it could be read in terms of its universal significance. I emphasized the universal aspects of the story because I was concerned that this uprising would soon be forgotten in contemporary Korean history. All around us, albeit in different forms, violence is perpetrated endlessly against the pure and innocent, and this story can be read as an awakening to that violence.
The World: In what ways have the military conflict and the political arrangement generated by the Cold War and the American presence influenced your fiction?
Ch'oe Yun: With the 20th century nearing an end I wrote three stories titled "Wars," which haven't yet been translated into English — my way of saying goodbye to that century. It's fine with me if "Whisper Yet" were considered part of that series. In these stories I wanted to show how women in their daily lives suffer the aftermath of war, which is a male artifact. For example, among the "Wars" stories is a work dealing with how trauma resulting from the Gulf War has entered into the daily lives of Koreans.
The World: All of these stories dramatize the struggle of characters to embrace, in a constructive way, the traditions of the past. How well is contemporary Korea reconciling with its history?
Ch'oe Yun: I don't really think that the three stories in "There a Petal Silently Falls" attempt to reconcile with tradition. Instead, each of them points out a direction or a conclusion contrary to a prevailing view in Korea. But to the generation of middle-aged Korean women writers like myself, tradition is something that has to be made anew rather than a point of reference that we have to return to.
The World: Critics describe you as an experimental, post-modernist author, heavily influenced by Western literary influences. How have avant-garde techniques shaped your writing? In what ways have they not?
Ch'oe YunCh'oe Yun: In each of the three works I took pains to apply the most appropriate form to the story's world-view. I'll grant you that this approach can appear experimental. I've never been one to agonize over technique, though. The notion of language and expression as constituting their own world-view is part and parcel of much of what I've read in Western literary thought and aesthetics.
The World: Each of the tales in the book explores the fallout that follows political trauma, from the 1980s Kwangju Massacre to the silencing of leftist intellectuals and the pernicious rise of consumer culture in contemporary Korea. Is a serious writer in Korea inevitably a dissident?
Ch'oe Yun: Owing to circumstances of history and politics there does seem to be this kind of tendency, or fashion even, in Korea. In some circles it's an honor to be a dissident. In a country like Korea, which in certain respects lagged behind Western Europe, with the result that politics became an obsession to some and mythologized by others, I'm more interested in absolute truth than in the relative truth pursued by contemporary politics. This may be related to my Christian background.
The World: Why do most of the characters in "There a Petal Silently Falls" live a ghostly existence, existing on the margins of society?
Ch'oe Yun: Because those are the people I focus on. I've never been interested in public heroes — male public heroes, that is. The history of Korean literature is full of such heroes; the rest of us tend to be sacrificed to their cause and end up in the shade, so to speak.
The World: What is the status of women writers in Korea? Has it changed over the years?
Ch'oe Yun: Before the 1980s our numbers were few and our activities correspondingly limited. Since then, not only are there more of us but we've become a driving force in contemporary Korean literature. There's a great variety to our writing and we've gained a mass readership as well. I'm expecting big things from Korean women writers.
The World: What would you hope for English-speaking readers to take from this book?
Ch'oe Yun: When I sit down to write I don't have an exclusively Korean readership in mind. I speak to the people of the world and not to those of a specific region or state. It's my hope that English-language readers of Korean writing will encounter questions arising from their own reality.
The World: In what ways has Korea's treatment of artists and writers changed since you wrote the satire "The Thirteen-Scent Flower" in 1995?
Ch'oe Yun: Two years after I wrote this story Korea was subjected to the IMF meltdown. It's my feeling that in Korea literature among all the arts was hit hardest economically at that time. Everything was gauged by profitability — to an unhealthy extent, I'd have to say. I'm afraid that what I satirized in 1995 will soon become reality.
Translated from the Korean by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton
Read a World Books interview with Bruce Fulton about "There a Petal Silently Falls" and modern Korean literature.
