Languages

In this excerpt from Choi Jin-young's To the Warm Horizon, Dori, fleeing a pandemic that's wiped out the country, meets the nonchalant Jina and finds herself desiring more than mere survival.   Dori I opened my eyes. The bonfire had gone out. I could hear a babble of voices. Speaking Korean. It sounded like more than a couple of people. It was still dark outside. I woke Miso up and took a peek. There were two large box trucks parked in the vegetable garden. I did a head...

Last winter, I reunited with my fifth-grade homeroom teacher. It had been thirty years since I last saw her. She ran the school’s literature club as well, so I’d been under her tutelage for three straight years. She was the one who first planted the dream of becoming a writer in the mind of this country boy who grew up without enough good books to read. Back then, she used to loan me books and take me to writing contests. Her notes on my daily journal assignments were sometimes...

Only a few machines on this moon-base remain working. The satellite camera that always faces Earth, the monitor connected to that camera, the memory device, and the replay device. They run on solar power, so I suppose they’ll stay on as long as the sun exists. They’ll keep their vigil over Earth after I’m gone. The sun won’t last forever, but at least I’ll have disappeared before it goes out. It’s sad to disappear. I guess it’s like being an old...

The Devil’s Cinnamon Cookies. 2 per serving. 9000 won. Ingredients: flour, cinnamon, brown sugar, raisins, and a secret extract. The essence of the extract will not be revealed, as certain ingredients may be found revolting. (Baker’s note: Extract contains no known allergens, so not to worry. Besides, you’re not going to eat it yourself!) Product Details: Give the cookie to someone you don’t like. The cookie will mentally incapacitate the recipient for an average...

Now is a time of national mourning. Not for the death of a king we have never seen. Now is a time of national mourning during which we all should thrust our heads down  to the bottom of the sea where the flower-like lives,  the greening lives of children we still have in our eyes were all taken from them, murdered so absurdly. For goodness’s sake! For goodness’s sake! What a dreadful life it will be where we have to go on living with all those bright children, those...

Boat People Yawn. Yawning always makes me sleepy. There are still two boats out on the water, but I lie down anyway. There’d be trouble if the boss saw me. It would be so great if the polar ice caps melted right now. No one would care about a ticket-taker asleep at an amusement park if there were a flood, would they? Slowly melting, melting . . . so tired. I lie down and close my eyes like a dying rat. I’m a rat. Dying. Four o’clock in the afternoon. I can tell, even...

Dahn sent me the first letter a year after he joined the military and was selected for the special forces. It was more than five pages long. He didn’t mention anywhere in it that he was in a special forces unit. I unfolded the letter and put it on my desk. From GI Dahn to Civilian Yoon . . . I stared at those words for a long time. It pained me to realize that I had never written him back. I filled a fountain pen with ink, took out a new notebook, and wrote his name at the...

Once Maternal Grandmother set off, a basin of injeolmi rice-cakes on her head, to sell in this neighborhood and that, I would pull out scraps of glass, bottle tops, a broken pocketknife, medicine bottles, a handle-less fruit knife, burst beanbags, all hidden on the sunny side of the old wattle fence behind the privy, and play with them. Bored of even that after half a day, I would chase the innocent chickens from the house behind, then end up being scolded by my youngest aunt for scuffling...

Before my wife turned vegetarian, I’d always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way. To be frank, the first time I met her I wasn’t even attracted to her. Middling height; bobbed hair neither long nor short; jaundiced, sickly-looking skin; somewhat prominent cheekbones; her timid, sallow aspect told me all I needed to know. As she came up to the table where I was waiting, I couldn’t help but notice her shoes—the plainest black shoes imaginable. And...

He was fifty-four years old with a sound mind and a body that was rotting away. He died. He wasn’t young enough to have required a specific cause of death, or young enough to cause great sadness. Only a vague sadness existed about death itself. He died at fifty-four years of age, and he had no one who would be sad about his death. There was no one who would remember him. Because he had already died he couldn’t even claim ownership over such people. Death meant losing all things,...

My friend F’s call came in the middle of December, when the snow would not stop coming down and Manhattan was all but paralyzed. He said he had to get to New York right away but couldn’t find a hotel room since it was Christmas, and he asked if he could stay with us for a few days. My wife and I were living in a one-bedroom apartment so all we had to offer was a loveseat in the living room, but we told him he could come if he was OK with that. I wouldn’t say that F and I...

The first thing I learned in piano class was how to press Do. Since it’s the first note, you use your first finger. When I pressed the key, Do let out a weak doooooh. I pressed it again so I wouldn’t forget the same Do. Caught off guard, Do stammered out another doooooh and watched the trajectory of its name as it floated by. I sat in that spot where a single note had disappeared so neatly, my pinky finger sticking up. The afternoon sunlight trickled faintly through the cracks...

During wartime the men die, the women survive. Cockerels have their necks twisted and die, hens sit on eggs. Gamak Valley in Yeonsan, north of Nonsan in South Chungcheong is where sharp hills approach the ridges of Mount Gyeryong. Fifty men died there, once, while two men twisted their hair into topknots and revered Kim Il-Bu’s esoteric “Jeongyeok.” The small room, the door of which is never opened was pitch dark even at midday. Yeonsan’s Gamak Valley. Some forty...

My wife is sad and seeing my sad wife, I too am sad, then as she answers her mother’s phone call, “Sure, we’re fine,” the wife inside my wife grows sadder still. I want to live in a world that’s perfect like magic. The rabbit that came out of a hat voluntarily goes back into the hat. When I try to go into a mirror, I wonder why the rigid surface stops me? A mother abandons her child, a job abandons a father, a disease abandons a sick person and a magician...

I think the time has finally come when I can try to explain what happened that winter, all those years ago. I’m well past thirty now, and I’ve got a family I have to provide for; so every morning I go out to work, wearing a suit and really looking quite respect­able. At last I have come to realize that all our feelings need to be filtered over and over again, and that fine phrases achieved by exaggera­tion, or mis­repres­ent­ation, are nothing at all to be...

She lies there with her hugely pregnant body. At dawn a ship leaves, cutting through her stomach. As it emerges from her body, headed for the sea, trailing its umbilical cord, oh, from within her body forcefully the innocent sun is driven out and up. Inside her empty body remain scattered shrouds, nothing but head-towels women forgot. Empty cockle shells that become feed for living creatures become silent, empty midday houses. A flock of speckled seagulls comes flying, they force their way...

Mother, I think I'll go pay a visit to Hell. No matter how far away, I'll set off as if leaving for work in the morning then come back as if coming off work in the evening. Don't skip meals, chew your food well before swallowing, be sure to turn off the gas when you step out, and don't worry too much about me. Hell too must be a place where people live, so if I go to Hell to earn my keep at last I'll be able to become a human being....

My mother’s last words to us as we stood in the middle of the empty potato field, her voice carrying above the razor-sharp wind that seemed to carve away at our flesh, still ring in my ears. “You’re on your own now. I don’t have the strength to go any farther with you two.” Despite the howling wind that ripped and tore at my body, I felt no pain. Even when my frostbitten toes began to rot and ooze with pus, it did not hurt. Nothing could have hurt more than...

At its essence, the purpose of North Korean literature is to praise the Korean Workers’ Party. While South Korean poetry deals with topics such as love or life, North Korean poetry refers only to Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jong-un, constantly reinventing itself as a mechanism of hymnal thought-control. In North Korea, whatever literary genius poets may possess, ignoring Party ideology in their work is a certain path to being mentally or physically broken by the state. This...

Both the seller And the buyer Have nothing to offer but themselves In Pyongyang’s marketplace The filters of cigarette butts Provided cotton for this blanket on display “Face-wash for sale!” The ladies shout And clutch at passers by With nothing to offer but a bowl of water For one face-wash The traders sit here To sell their poverty The reasons for their poverty Are on display In every street In every alley On the dark posters Of murderous intent:...

We stayed in the mountain village up until we left the North. Before that, when we had been living in the farming village, we couldn’t afford to visit our relatives in China. But after a few years in our new location, we started applying for temporary passports so we could travel back and forth across the border. With both my father and mother making trips to China, our family seemed to be among the better off in the village. My father, who traveled frequently to procure materials...

1 As harvest season begins, the field slowly reveals its bare body. The thousand-year-old promise is that you reap what you sow. The land of promise stretches out behind the footprints of man. Winds blow. Snow falls. Holding the aching cold of ice in its breast, it passes the long tunnel of summer, spewing pain and nourishment. Then, in silence, it offers up teardrops of rice.  2 Here in Seoul, there are people who make a fuss about saving rice from death. I don’t...

So many miracles have happened to me in the last few months. I left behind my beloved homeland where I was born and raised and made my way through hell, just under the nose of the grim reaper. Today, I enter through the gates of heaven. The Republic of Korea! This is heaven. When the gates of this paradise open wide—a heaven once glimpsed only in fairy tales—that beautiful world I so ardently longed for will spread out before me. I will no longer be forced to struggle against...

Dark clouds were scattered low and despondent in the sky, loitering above the creeping flow of the river. As it always had, the Aprok River echoed through the deep ravine. The water was rising after a sudden, unseasonable squall, and seemed massive under the gleaming moon. A loud gunshot sounded not far away. At the noise, a night bird dozing in the leaves of a willow tree fluttered its wings and shot, startled, into the sky. At the same time, a young man dressed in black...

I grew up in a harbor town by Korea’s east coast where the hill and sea meet. Back then, the town was colorless and empty of any striking buildings. Come winter, it made for a dreary sight, cloaked in a dark, solid color. Serving as a fishing port, a military port, and a seaport for coal and cement, the town was often enveloped in a suffocating haze of coal ash and cement dust scattered by the sea winds. In the summer, rain fell ceaselessly over the rotting smell of fish guts. Then...

Marilyn Monroe came to South Korea in February of 1954. While honeymooning in Tokyo with Joe DiMaggio, she had boarded a military plane and was en route to Seoul even before the marriage was fully consummated. At the airport, she was swarmed by hundreds of GIs who had been awaiting her arrival. When she came down the gangway, Monroe was dressed in a flight suit. Reporters noted that “half of the buttons on the top were undone, offering tantalizing glimpses of her chest, which got...

If only she had not misread “The Chef's Mail” as “The Chef's Nail,” none of this ever would have happened. It all began a few months ago, at the moment Jung misread that sign hanging outside a shop. When she saw the sign reading “The Chef's Nail” from a distance, she took another look at the note on her cellphone. She had thought that the client was a restaurant, but upon seeing the sign she was momentarily confused as to what sort of business...

“What’s wrong with this kid?” It wasn’t a real question. The teacher wasn’t expecting an answer, and even if she were, no one could have answered it. Ran raised her head, with no intention of bowing down, and gave her response by stealing a glance at the homeroom teacher's face. “What happened?” “What did you do to make your pretty teacher so upset?” Ran hated it, this humiliation. She knew it would happen sooner or later, but...

“O. Cuniculi” is featured in Hye Young-Pyun’s third collection of short stories, Evening Courtship, for which she was awarded the prestigious Dong-in Literature Prize last year. The story begins one night in a park when a man on temporary assignment out in the country is captivated by the red eyes of a rabbit “whose white fur had turned filthy.” The man brings the rabbit home inside his shirt. But he will soon regret it, and in the end he will not know how to...

A rabbit. He turned at the sound of rustling in the bushes and spotted a ball of white fluff. What he’d mistaken for a white dog was staring at him with red eyes. He wouldn’t have known it was a rabbit if not for the eyes. He knelt before it. The eyes held him captive. As he gazed into them, relief at the thought that he was not the only one in this world with eyes red from exhaustion washed over him, and he chafed to think such a being had been stranded in an unlit park for so...

Whenever I gaze into a horse’s virtuous eyes, it seems to know nothing but the indigent evening in the direction the wind is blowing from. Translation of   "Seongeup maeureul jinamyeo. " By arrangement with the author. Translation copyright 2011 by Brother Anthony of Taizé and Yoo Hui-Sok. All rights reserved.

Sham-seeming life gauze-mask-like thoughts is there no removing the mask from consciouness? Disposing words without meaning Writing poems without meaning Writing poems like scraps of debris scraps of shattering consciousness Translation of   " Eumi eopneun sireul sseunda. "   By arrangement with the author. Translation copyright 2011 by Brother Anthony of Taizé. All rights reserved.

Each and every person’s eyes all shine in the sky. The sea under the sky is limpid through and through. It seems the crying of countless newborn babes can be heard emerging from the sea 230 feet down 260 feet down that far down everything can be seen in the sea limpid limpid. Above the sea the sun eventually sets. It will rise again tomorrow. Rise and set again tomorrow. Ah, the sunset glow over the whole East Sea! Some hundred miles out from the shore out in...

Today seems another good day for spreading barley or wheat to dry. He was always smiling. One of his front teeth was missing. Even alone he was always smiling. On and on he walked. Walking on and on was his way of study. The road was his study room. The birds went flying above, he walked on along the road. Twenty, thirty miles a day murmuring to himself was all his prayers and chanting, walking with lips tightly shut was his meditation. On and on he walked....

There is an orchid that only blooms underground. Because it never shows itself above ground few are said to have seen it. Only white ants can enter the blooms, drawn by the fragrance rising from the runnels cut by the autumn rain. The orchid withers in sunlight, which the white ants burrow into the ground to escape, their bodies sparkling white, though they work in the dark. Like undeveloped film, this orchid never shows itself; its whole body consists of roots, even its...

My mother's finger was cut off by a slamming door. Or should I say that she stuck her finger in it to stop the slicing wind. Honey, don't shiver, just feed the hungry wind this bloody piece of meat. At the sight of the flame ignited by the blood, the coyotes outside the door ran away. O my mother pacing and pacing, clutching her pale stiffening finger like a candle. Translation of "Danjee." Copyright Ra Heeduk. By arrangement with the author....

That pomegranate lives the same life, yearns for the same light. Its pointed scarlet blossom is an open mouth, "Ah," gathering every ray of light. This fall, in my red gums, pain burned belatedly, and the soft bones of love that I couldn't accept became sunlight stuck in the distance. Though I have reached the age to stop believing in love I still yearn for light, I call out to somebody, "Ah." Copyright Ra Heeduk. By arrangement with the author. Translation...

If you climbed up the back stairs to the church a piano stood like a sad black animal in a corner of the nave. The child reflected in the black sheen of the piano opened the cover and cautiously began to play. Though her hands were too small to thaw the frozen keyboard, the sound rising into the cold air of the church was incense for a ten-year-old to burn. The back door opened, and when the deacon and his old mother entered she shut the cover and walked down the stairs....

Even as I scoop Korean sushi into my mouth with a trembling hand, the train forces the fields of summer into my eyes. The light-green rice paddies prick my pupils. Why is the field so green? No, the word "green" is hardly adequate. Every shade of green is said to be the same, but to me light green is different— a color containing a wave or a rustle that never bows its head. Look at the pure rice plants. Why is my heart so dark? I swallow a fourth piece of Korean sushi...

For the rap version of this story, click here. 1 She's here, she's here. Here at the office to see us. The Big Dog, her manager, comes, too. Comes in a bomb-ass Chrysler, his lackeys tag along. She's here, back at our PR club. Back after six months to erase herself. The new girls are all excited, 'cause this singer shows up. All crazy with excitement. They shout. Get all worked up. But she doesn't budge. She sits stiff behind the tinted glass inside the fuckin'...

Washing her hair as the sun rises a thighless one pours a dipper full of sand over her hair and lowers her head into the sand pit with a splash. The footless one tosses her hair in pendulum as she rinses it out in the sand river. This chestless, hairless, O, bodiless one washes her hair. We shall never come . . . or go . . . you there . . . and me here. Dry strands of hair from the fallen days rise and tumble, swaying this way and that. From sunrise to sundown the woman...

I got up early in the morning, brushed my teeth, washed my face, and sat at the table. (Not true. To be honest, when I got up late this morning and sat at the table, my wife asked me to brush my teeth and wash my face before coming to the table. So I brushed my teeth, washed up, and sat at the table.) Because there was a bowl of reheated soup before me I yawned long and hard even though it was morning, like an animal in the zoo opening its lower jaw without a noise, closing its ugly...

Note: The narrator is a South Korean soldier who has just returned from the war in Vietnam by ship and is waiting on the dock to be transported home by train. At the urging of a young sergeant who once served in his platoon, the two men decide to sneak out for a night on the town. "Please, can I have a look, Commander?" "At what?" "You said you'd brought back something special." I pulled the clear plastic pouch out of my shirt pocket. I removed the two hook-shaped objects from...

light, a red button in the sky (body, you tremble with cold a white daffodil smiling inside a glacier) light, dropping thousands of gold threads from the spot where it once jumped (body, what spider weaves your nerves and veins?) light, whenever you blink, the knife that cuts you cuts the December of forty-three years (body, the white blood you shed becomes frost on the window of early morning) For the next poem in this sequence, click here.

Note: The narrator and her family have fled the Korean War and arrived at a small village where they are renting a room from a one-eyed carpenter whose daughter Bu-ne is rumored to have gone mad and died. The narrator's father was taken away while they were fleeing, and the family has not heard from him since. Her mother has taken up a job working nights at a restaurant in town. Mother slept late. Older Sister and Second Brother had long ago left for school. When sunlight landed on...

In the mid Joseon period, when Buddhism was only practiced high in the mountains, a mendicant monk heard that the head monk at Songgwang Temple in Jogye Mountain renowned in the Way, was encouraging monastic practice, and came from the North to see him. Below the temple, the river turns into a stream and as he climbed up alongside the stream a cabbage leaf came floating down on the water. Seeing that, the wandering monk exclaimed: 'Why, I've come on a fool's errand....

Although Mother survived a crisis and is home from the hospital she's not the same-her mind is hazy. How can I express my sorrow when she insists our guests in black suits are detectives from the KCIA or another branch of intelligence come to arrest my brother, or when she strikes matches in the living room to start a fire in the kitchen? Now she even forgets to call to God, the very God before whom she knelt at dawn and prayed on the cold floor of the church when I was...

There remained a few graves at the deserted factory site They were torn up, then there were puddles Yesterday the wind blew all day long like a sweltering cotton quilt Rain this morning-a tall stalk of horseweed looks down blankly At the ground, blossoming from the body of another In that incarnation there is no pleasure For the next poem in this sequence, click here.

Here's a question we all ask ourselves at least once when we're young: Where does that starlight come from? It's been there before I was born, and before my grandmother, and her grandmother were born. So just how far is that star from Earth? The curiosity of children is insatiable. They'll grab a flashlight and aim it at the stars and think, This light will get there someday, won't it? When I'm dead, and my grandchildren are gone, and their grandchildren as well....

From time to time, climbers ascending Mt. Everest or Nanga Parbat stumble upon migrating birds, frozen on snow-capped peaks at 8,000-meter altitudes. The cross-continental flight formation these birds launched in the northern tundra of Canada passes straight through the heart of the Asian Continent. The migrating birds pass over the Himalayas to reach the Adrian Sea, off southern India. The exhausted ones fall and die in Himalayan whirlwind on snow-covered mountain tops, while others...

Winter day, under a short tree The quick hurried steps That dark cold blue light Drawn out by a fleeting glimpse The light entered me Stayed and lived in me There are certain lights, so short One can see them only sometimes Crouching low, tilting the head up

Worrying about a white horse, so white, suddenly barging into my room: What if the horse fills up the room, jamming it, settling in? What if the horse locks me behind its large eyeball, not letting me out? Into the White Horse Station enters a glowing train and dark-silhouetted people get off the train. Sun goes down and as the door opens at the abandoned house, she runs out, a woman, soiled faced, clutching her ripped blouse, and tripping over the stars scattered about her ankles. Just...

I lost sight of my child in the Yi dynasty hall: Like a forgotten royal concubine, I had been staring at the king's rice bowl, goblet and spoon. I dash back at once to the Goryeo dynasty hall, shedding the lotus petals from the white porcelain ink-water container. I scamper amid the jade-green vases. It is as if the vases are falling to one side, collapsing. A dainty crane leaping up, a young pine tree, fresh-water fish falling on the floor and I, helter-skelter. I call out my...

Without its little spring, what would make Yongtun Village a village? Endlessly, snowflakes fall into the spring's dark waters and dissolve. What still still stillness, as Yang-sul's wife, covered in snow, goes out to draw water, puts down her tiny little water jar and picks up the gourd dipper but forgets to draw water, watching snowflakes die: that still still stillness. For the next poem in this sequence, click here.

When I remove my clothes in the bathroom, there's something else I'd like to remove. I feel within myself an old crepe myrtle dreaming of transmigration, of changing its body into another life. Like bent bodies entering the tub curved crepe myrtles, three hundred years old, stand along the edge of the pond. When the red flowers of August glow like charcoal exposed to the wind, growing brighter near me, I'd like to plunge naked into that tub of flowers and...

This narrative poem is an adaptation of the rap by "El Guante," Kyle Myhre. Read the prose translation here. she was never here the man shouts as he moves about through the office and I cant make a move or else cause Id be uncool gotta stay firm and frozen no emotion feelins toward her is hopeless his words are potent, kicks dont stop at all my girls on the floor rolled up like soccerballs you know what happens when you go around talking shit better behave, the man yells as he...

Every time the moon rose, she prayed. Finally Wol-nam's mother, at forty, bore a son. In dreams before pregnancy, she swallowed the moon. After her son was born, Wol-nam's mother would lose her mind without fail every time the moon rose. Late at night, washing dishes, she'd smash one bowl— the moon then hid in a cloud and the world grew blind. For the next poem in this sequence, click here. From Ten Thousand Lives by Ko Un, published 2005 by Green Integer Press....

"I really didn't do anything," a woman sobbed. "I didn't even go near a factory. I've never once been to a strange rally," the woman shouted. "I have no interest in who died from self-immolation or in who jumped from the roof of a building or why," the woman wailed, pulling out her hair. "I didn't do a thing except sit like an animal. Who brought me here? Why am I being locked up? My uterus is a piece of rotten iron. I can't even give birth to a son who...

The affable young clerk laid out the photographs on the glass case backlit by a small fluorescent bulb. Their reddish tint, a bit like the color of the lilies that grew everywhere in the summer, suggested discoloration. Though taken with color film, the pictures were monochromatic, as if they were black and white photographs processed with red toner. "The film's destroyed. It's been too long since you took these pictures. You didn't store it properly, either. You really...

In this 1995 story, Bun-nyo is an elderly superintendent at a reservoir in the countryside. She devotes much of her time and effort to taking care of a flourishing flower garden that she has planted in honor of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung, who visited the reservoir once in her younger days. The story begins as she hears the devastating news of Kim's death. "Grandma, Grandma, get up." Bun-nyo heard voices, choking with tears, and felt small, desperate hands shaking her shoulders....

The narrator, a manager at a factory in the city, is sent on an urgent business trip to his wife's hometown. As the hapless narrator sets out on his journey, his wife pressures him to visit his in-laws while he is there, to take care of various family matters including playing matchmaker to her younger sister. *** It makes me shudder just to look back on that day's journey. I had been walking for about half an hour when the fickle mountainside weather suddenly brought on rain....

This story, written in 1960, is narrated by a middle-aged party committee chairman in the countryside who encounters a young woman on the train, on his way back from an important regional meeting. The narrator is quite taken by the maiden's vivacity and youthful beauty, and becomes interested in the tin pail that she has carried aboard the train, full of baby carp that she is transporting to her fish farm. The following excerpt begins right after the young woman, who got off the train...

This is a story about something that took place over ten years ago, during the 13th World Youth Festival. It is now Juche Year 88 (1999).1 Outside our window slogans on the street, visible everywhere, bear witness to the hardships we've suffered over the last ten years and the upheavals of today: "Let's make this year shine with a great transformation in building a strong and prosperous country!" "Let's continue the arduous march vigorously onward to paradise!" But why am I...