arirang's review
3.0
"삼포 가는 길" / "The Road to Sampo" by 황석영 (Hwang Sok-yong) is Volume 7 in the Asia Publishers bilingual series of Modern Korean short stories.
For my general comments on the series see https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1709389820?.
This story has been translated by Kim U-chang, and the afterword comes from the novelist Bang Hyun-soek.
Hwang Sok-yong is perhaps the most famous of all living Korean novelists, and I have previously read his novels [b:The Guest|1447640|The Guest|Hwang Sok-yong|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320517182s/1447640.jpg|1438348], [b:The Old Garden|2525119|The Old Garden|Hwang Sok-yong|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328015626s/2525119.jpg|2532623] with [b:Princess Bari|25525419|Princess Bari|Hwang Sok-yong|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1431422891s/25525419.jpg|45312176] on my TBR pile. This is reflected in the author's biography in this edition which is particularly extensive and helpful, showing how his work has evolved with his life.
Hwang is known not just as an author, with a prolific highly varied output, but as a political activist, anti imperialist and pro labour rights, Korean re-unification and democracy, even spending 5 years in prison (1993-1998) after an illegal visit to the North and a period of exile.
This particular story was written in 1973 while working as a factory worker and serving on the Planning Committee of a trade union, and focuses on the lives of transient construction workers during the period when Korea was transitioning from an agricultural to an industrial economy.
The main character 노영달 (No Yeong-dal *), is one such worker and the bleak life such workers faced in the cold Korean winters is established from the first, atmospheric, lines;
"Yeong-dal stopped in order to try to decide which road to take. The cold winter wind was especially sharp at the break of day. As the sun rose across the scraggy fields, the frozen streams and puddles, lying about here and there, threw back glints of sunlight. The wind blowing from afar passed overhead, cutting through the air above him. The bare trees standing in clumps at the edge of the plotted fields shook in the wind.
The construction season was drawing near to an end. Winter was not far off. The construction would come to a stop only to resume in the spring. He would have to leave."
As he leaves, covertly as he leaves his bar debts behind, he encounters Mr. Jeong (he never shares his given name), another, slightly older, worker. "He came across this man of about thirty years of age several times at the construction site, on the village roads, and in the taverns."
Jeong plans to make the lengthy journey ("several hundred li, that is to the sea coast, and then we have to take a boat") back, after ten years, to his home town ("고향" - a term that has more cultural resonance in Korea than in the West), the small southern island of Sampo (a fictional place) with just ten houses.
And with nowhere particular to go Yeong-dal joins him, although he is curious why Jeong is making the journey now:
"그냥 ....... 나이 드니까, 가 보고 싶어서."
"For no particular reason (+). As I'm getting old, I just feel like visiting it."
(+ The Korean word 그냥 is one of my favourites and encapsulates "for no particular reason" much better than any English equivalent, of which "just because..." is perhaps the closest).
The previous winter Yeong-dal had shacked up with a barmaid, and although they had to go their separate ways "we promised to each other that we'd come together as soon as we could make some money", but, he adds sadly but realistically, "what is a promise to people like us."
On the road to Sampo, they find Baek-hwa, a 22 year-old barmaid, having left home at 18, who also sells her body to the customers and GIs ("I've let more than a military division of men pass over my belly"). Baek-hwa is herself running away from an even larger debt (50,000 Won). Indeed the landlady of the tavern at which she worked had offered them 10,000 Won if they find Baek-hwa and bring her back, which Yeong-dal, to Jeong's amusement, initially tries to facilitate, before Baek-hwa rapidly makes it clear that "if you think you can sell me off to that fatso for some snotty pay, however, we'll die together, you and me."
Baek-hwa (her working name, "I never tell my real name to anybody") also says she is returning to her home, which is on the road to Sampo. She admits that girls like her "think every night that we will go home first thing in the morning, but that's only what we think at night
...
[but] there are times when we really make up our minds and head home. Twice I almost made my way home. Once I looked at the village elders from afar."
So the three journey on together, each carrying the tools of the trade on their back, the men their hammers and nails, and Baek-hwa "a couple of old slips, panties, lipstick powder and what not."
As they travel, Yeong-dal's underlying decency shines through and his friendship with Baek-hwa deepens to the extent that she invites him to come with her to her home village. He is tempted to go and try to settle down with the girl but realises "I don't have anything to settle down with." They separate but at the moment of parting:
"She turned round and came back. Tears still in her eyes, she was smiling. 'My real name is', she said to the two men standing, 'not Baek-hwa but Jeomrye, Yi Jeomrye. I wanted to tell you that."
The two men prepare to take the train to where the ferry departs for Sampo. Only to be told that in the ten years since Jeong left the construction boom has reached Sampo. A dyke has been built and filled with rocks to make it part of the mainland and the small village is "full of construction workers ... They say they're going to build some tourist hotels."
Yeong-dal reacts "that's all the better, we will get work at the construction sites."
But "Jeong did not feel like going. He had just lost his heart's home."
A relatively simple although highly atmospheric as well as humorous story, which explores, in an unromantised fashion, the lives of the workers on which the South Korean industrial and construction boom was built.
(* I've reverted to my, and the Korean government, preferred Romanization for names rather than that used in the book)
For my general comments on the series see https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1709389820?.
This story has been translated by Kim U-chang, and the afterword comes from the novelist Bang Hyun-soek.
Hwang Sok-yong is perhaps the most famous of all living Korean novelists, and I have previously read his novels [b:The Guest|1447640|The Guest|Hwang Sok-yong|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320517182s/1447640.jpg|1438348], [b:The Old Garden|2525119|The Old Garden|Hwang Sok-yong|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328015626s/2525119.jpg|2532623] with [b:Princess Bari|25525419|Princess Bari|Hwang Sok-yong|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1431422891s/25525419.jpg|45312176] on my TBR pile. This is reflected in the author's biography in this edition which is particularly extensive and helpful, showing how his work has evolved with his life.
Hwang is known not just as an author, with a prolific highly varied output, but as a political activist, anti imperialist and pro labour rights, Korean re-unification and democracy, even spending 5 years in prison (1993-1998) after an illegal visit to the North and a period of exile.
This particular story was written in 1973 while working as a factory worker and serving on the Planning Committee of a trade union, and focuses on the lives of transient construction workers during the period when Korea was transitioning from an agricultural to an industrial economy.
The main character 노영달 (No Yeong-dal *), is one such worker and the bleak life such workers faced in the cold Korean winters is established from the first, atmospheric, lines;
"Yeong-dal stopped in order to try to decide which road to take. The cold winter wind was especially sharp at the break of day. As the sun rose across the scraggy fields, the frozen streams and puddles, lying about here and there, threw back glints of sunlight. The wind blowing from afar passed overhead, cutting through the air above him. The bare trees standing in clumps at the edge of the plotted fields shook in the wind.
The construction season was drawing near to an end. Winter was not far off. The construction would come to a stop only to resume in the spring. He would have to leave."
As he leaves, covertly as he leaves his bar debts behind, he encounters Mr. Jeong (he never shares his given name), another, slightly older, worker. "He came across this man of about thirty years of age several times at the construction site, on the village roads, and in the taverns."
Jeong plans to make the lengthy journey ("several hundred li, that is to the sea coast, and then we have to take a boat") back, after ten years, to his home town ("고향" - a term that has more cultural resonance in Korea than in the West), the small southern island of Sampo (a fictional place) with just ten houses.
And with nowhere particular to go Yeong-dal joins him, although he is curious why Jeong is making the journey now:
"그냥 ....... 나이 드니까, 가 보고 싶어서."
"For no particular reason (+). As I'm getting old, I just feel like visiting it."
(+ The Korean word 그냥 is one of my favourites and encapsulates "for no particular reason" much better than any English equivalent, of which "just because..." is perhaps the closest).
The previous winter Yeong-dal had shacked up with a barmaid, and although they had to go their separate ways "we promised to each other that we'd come together as soon as we could make some money", but, he adds sadly but realistically, "what is a promise to people like us."
On the road to Sampo, they find Baek-hwa, a 22 year-old barmaid, having left home at 18, who also sells her body to the customers and GIs ("I've let more than a military division of men pass over my belly"). Baek-hwa is herself running away from an even larger debt (50,000 Won). Indeed the landlady of the tavern at which she worked had offered them 10,000 Won if they find Baek-hwa and bring her back, which Yeong-dal, to Jeong's amusement, initially tries to facilitate, before Baek-hwa rapidly makes it clear that "if you think you can sell me off to that fatso for some snotty pay, however, we'll die together, you and me."
Baek-hwa (her working name, "I never tell my real name to anybody") also says she is returning to her home, which is on the road to Sampo. She admits that girls like her "think every night that we will go home first thing in the morning, but that's only what we think at night
...
[but] there are times when we really make up our minds and head home. Twice I almost made my way home. Once I looked at the village elders from afar."
So the three journey on together, each carrying the tools of the trade on their back, the men their hammers and nails, and Baek-hwa "a couple of old slips, panties, lipstick powder and what not."
As they travel, Yeong-dal's underlying decency shines through and his friendship with Baek-hwa deepens to the extent that she invites him to come with her to her home village. He is tempted to go and try to settle down with the girl but realises "I don't have anything to settle down with." They separate but at the moment of parting:
"She turned round and came back. Tears still in her eyes, she was smiling. 'My real name is', she said to the two men standing, 'not Baek-hwa but Jeomrye, Yi Jeomrye. I wanted to tell you that."
The two men prepare to take the train to where the ferry departs for Sampo. Only to be told that in the ten years since Jeong left the construction boom has reached Sampo. A dyke has been built and filled with rocks to make it part of the mainland and the small village is "full of construction workers ... They say they're going to build some tourist hotels."
Yeong-dal reacts "that's all the better, we will get work at the construction sites."
But "Jeong did not feel like going. He had just lost his heart's home."
A relatively simple although highly atmospheric as well as humorous story, which explores, in an unromantised fashion, the lives of the workers on which the South Korean industrial and construction boom was built.
(* I've reverted to my, and the Korean government, preferred Romanization for names rather than that used in the book)
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