Brooklyn: Verso Books, 2021. ix, 610 pp. US$40.00, cloth. ISBN 9781839760839.
The Prisoner by Hwang Sok-yong is a slightly abridged English translation of a two-volume Korean memoir by Hwang Sok-yong (b. 1943), a renowned master of the contemporary Korean novel. Given that it is almost a thousand pages long in the original and came out in 2017, its publication in English in 2021, just four years later, feels relatively quick in terms of Korean literature in-translation. As someone who has been following the growing interest in Korea in the West for the past couple of decades, this feels like more evidence that the worldwide interest in Korean popular culture has begun to expand and encompass more serious aspects of Korean society, arts, and culture. I’m also glad to see this particular crossover, since Hwang is both a literary giant and a dedicated activist, who has been engaged in modern Korean history and thus is an exceptional witness to it.
As this memoir reveals, Hwang spent most of his formative years bearing the brunt of tumultuous modern Korean history. Born in Manchuria in 1943, just two years before the liberation of Korea from Japanese colonialism, he moved to Pyongyang, his mother’s hometown, in the northern half of the peninsula, which of course was divided by the occupying Allies in 1945, immediately after the end of World War II. His family then moved to Seoul, away from his parents’ northern hometowns, in 1947, as they could not tolerate the North Korean system. He became a refugee again in 1950, when only seven years old, until his family returned to Seoul three years later, and struggled to settle in.
As an adult, he plunged into the troubled reality of Korea, as an energetic and fearless activist, after years of literal and figurative wandering. Thus, he experienced the central events of Korean history in the second half of the twentieth century. For instance, he was conscripted into the Vietnam War, participated in the democracy movement during the three-decade-long military dictatorship era, assuming various key capacities in it, and then spearheaded the reunification and peace movement in Korea, and, as a result of all this, had to endure about 13 years of exile and imprisonment.
Because of this life’s journey, his memoir offers valuable information and insights into the troubled yet dynamic history of modern Korea. With his central role in many historical turmoils—the sixties and seventies labour and cultural movements, the Gwangju Uprising, and domestic and overseas peace movements—this work is a treasure trove of historical information, making it an invaluable resource for both specialists and laypersons who are interested in modern Korean history. In this respect, it might be compared to Conscience in Action (2018), the autobiography by the late President Kim Dae-jung, renowned South Korean democracy movement activist. Like Kim’s memoir, this one offers an insider’s view of many important episodes, concerning both well-known and lesser-known workers—domestic and international—who made possible the present-day triumph—however precarious—of South Korea. These memoirs also share an understanding of the larger, systemic structure driving Korean reality: the Cold War and postwar world order that is dominated by a handful of superpowers.
Compared to Kim’s autobiography, though, which focuses primarily on political history, Hwang’s memoir sheds light more on literary and cultural history, as well as the people’s movement. It’s possible that Hwang also did not feel as constrained as Kim in speaking about foreign superpowers. Even more conspicuously, and as expected, Hwang’s memoir is more inviting to readers because of his literary approach. Kim’s book was organized in a fairly straightforward, chronological manner, which of course has its merits. In contrast, Hwang’s is organized more loosely, interspersing chapters about his prison terms with those dealing with important stages in his life, which largely coincide with different stages of Korean history. In this way, the work grabs and sustains the reader’s interest more easily throughout its lengthy journey. His life story, arranged in parallel with his prison life, is varied chronologically, placing the years of exile he endured before and after visits to North Korea in front of chapters on his earlier years. This is a smart approach, since this way readers are introduced more gradually to the complex domestic and international dynamics at the heart of problems with the issue of North Korea, which are of more interest to contemporary readers.
In the epilogue, Hwang says the publisher persuaded him to write this memoir, despite his initial reluctance to do so, by scolding him that his story was “a valuable resource for all of Korean literature” (608). As I mentioned above, this work is a resource for not only Korean literature, but also Korean history, that of a “Cold War museum that is the divided Korean peninsula” (610), as Hwang puts it. As such, it leads a reader to wonder, after finishing it, when we might expect a sequel, since it ends with Hwang’s release from prison in 1998. This expectation is further supported by the fact that Hwang mentions that he left out a full testimony of his experiences in Vietnam, as he did not feel ready yet to tell it. As a literary reader, I also wondered if its sequel—if it is written—might offer a fuller picture of his reflections on what he perceives as failures as a father, son, and husband, fallout from an activist career, about which we have only glimpses.
In relation to this book’s professed mission as an historical resource, a few improvements might be suggested: the chronology translated into English, complemented by some maps, a short appendix with brief explanations of some people and events, and an index referencing major events, figures, and places.
A word of appreciation is also in order for the co-translators, Anton Hur and Sora Kim-Russell, two lauded translators who know well the vast world of Hwang’s oeuvre and Korean history. They have enabled international readers to enjoy and learn through a skilled and elegant translation, one faithful to the original style.
Seung Hee Jeon
Boston College, Boston