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Korean Society as Mirrored in Fiction: Literary Representation as a

Reliable Source of Knowledge?

Andreas Schirmer

Abstract

We are used to associating literature with “feeling”, as opposed to science, which we associate

with “fact”. Using literature as a mirror of real conditions thus could be perceived as a precarious

undertaking that at the same time makes an inappropriate demand on literature, thus failing to do

justice to its potential.

However, literature can be an important source of knowledge about social issues and the “reality”

(be it historical or contemporary) of actual conditions, and some prominent social scientists even

assert that literature should be taken just as seriously in that respect as conventional academic

literature by scholars of social sciences.

In the case of a pluralistic university major like Korean Studies it is, however, a considerable

challenge to defend the merits of literature as relevant and mattering much beyond the narrow scope

of just another field of cultural production.

The proposed paper discusses the unique features and advantages of literature when it comes to

imparting knowledge about Korea, using the example of Park Min-gyu’s stories about the effects of

job insecurity and stress in employment and drawing on the presenter’s personal teaching experience.

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1. Fiction and reality: Preparatory reflections

The relation of literature to reality has always been central to aesthetic reflection. Is “mimesis”

what art has to achieve?; is it “autonomy” or an “alternative” to reality? Does reality set the ultimate

benchmark, or is it rather the artist’s task to “add”153 something?

Common wisdom tends to perceive literature, be it poetry or narrative fiction, as lying in innate

conflict with reality and truth. After all, common sense considers newspapers to be a much more

reliable source of knowledge about conditions of the world surrounding us than novels. For common

sense, only non-fiction (factual books – „Sachbücher“ – as they are, tellingly, called in German) is

truly committed to reality. Fiction inevitably takes its imaginative freedoms and poets are prone to

lying ‒ as a locution says that was already quoted by Aristotle (Metaphysics A 983a 3‒4).

On the other hand, if we look at how fiction is sold by publishers or praised in reviews, we find

that it is quite common to judge literature by its usability in testifying to historical or contemporary

conditions. If we only take the 100-volume-plus library Bi-lingual Edition Modern Korean Literature,

we find in the accompanying afterwords, commentaries and excerpts of critical acclaim statements

such as the following, meant to be evidence of these texts’ worth:

“reflects the ever-worsening reality of the time […] Kang chose to describe the wretched lives of

the underprivileged and their hopeless reality as faithfully as possible, rather than envisioning a will

to change their reality”154

153 “Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it.” This often-quoted aphorism is apocryphally attributed to

C.S. Lewis. First by Holmer, Paul: C. S. Lewis: The Shape of His Faith and Thought. New York: Harper & Row 1976, p.

76.

154 Vol. 90 of the series. Kang Kyŏng-ae: The Underground Village / 지하촌. Seoul: Asia 2014 [backside cover].

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“excellent portrayal of the other side of the industrialization and urbanization”155

“presents the most essential dimension of the social reality of our time”156

This tendency to praise literary works for their ability to portray a time or a side of reality is not

determined by the character of the specific piece of literature in question. In other words: be it a work

of the “cold” realism of the 70s, be it a work of an author who insists on a pure literature that is not a

tool to any mundane political purpose – in any case literature is rather not touted as an aesthetic

achievement but as a reaction to historical or contemporary conditions.

Thus it is a perfectly well accepted idea that literature can be an important and reliable source of

knowledge about the world, about social issues and the “reality” of (be it historical or contemporary)

actual conditions – and some prominent social scientists even assert that literature should be taken

even more seriously, as a source of “authoritative knowledge”, in that respect than conventional

academic writing by scholars of social sciences.157

But in a field like Korean Studies, which in most of the Western world is categorized as “area

studies”, with social sciences prescribing the main paradigms and cultural anthropology the tolerated

sidekick (it should be not forgotten, however, that Eastern Europe still upholds a strong philological

orientation), the dealing with literature needs more justification. At best, literature is accepted as

representing, portraying, or giving a special comment to phenomena that seem more aptly covered

by social sciences. In neighbouring area studies fields (Chinese, Japanese Studies) it is the same;

dealing with literature is accepted if literature can be sold as contributing to some serious matter of

155 Vol. 9 of the series. Sing Sang-ung: Our Friend’s Homecoming / 돌아온 우리의 친구. Seoul: Asia 2012 [backside

cover].

156 Vol. 7 of the series. Hwang Sok-yong: The Road to Sampo / 삼포 가는 길. Seoul: Asia 2012, 103. 157 David Lewis / Dennis Rodgers / Michael Woolcock: The Fiction of Development: Literary Representation as a Source

of Authoritative Knowledge. Brooks World Poverty Institute Working Paper Series 2008.

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public discourse: literature and its answers to Fukushima, literature and the Tiananmen Square

protests, literature and the Seweol disaster, etc. But even then, the value of literature is (if we talk to

our colleagues behind the stage) contested due to its alleged suspicious nature in terms of exactitude

and reliability.

Let me take a newspaper report158 as a starting point for a more general reflection on this question.

The article starts with reporting that an overwhelming majority of Swiss is convinced that the

environment is on a good track. The article then contrasts this with the fact that biodiversity is quite

objectively in drastic decline. In other words: we seem to have, and actually we experience this

regularly every day, a discrepancy between an “image” and the corresponding “facts”. And it seems

to be a respectable matter to know about the factual decline of biodiversity in Switzerland, while the

knowledge that most Swiss think that their environment is okay is a sort of luxury because it concerns

an erroneous and misguided opinion.

However, opinions, assumptions, and discourses also form a kind of reality. They guide behavior

and may have more impact than the actual, “objective” facts. In other words: “Literature is concerned

with the living reality of the individual’s perceptions and understandings (which will also, quite

properly, include his or her perceptions and misunderstandings).”159

158 A report from the 20th of September this year in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Gregor Klaus: Das stille Sterben in Wald

und Flur, p. 40) [„Wie geht es der Biodiversität in der Schweiz? Auf diese Frage des Forschungsinstituts „gfs.bern“

antworteten vor drei Jahren drei Viertel der Befragten mit „gut“ oder „sehr gut“. Diese positive Beurteilung steht

allerdings in völligem Widerspruch zur Realität, wie die am Dienstag vom Bundesamt für Umwelt (Bafu) für Planzen

und bestimmte Käfer publizierten Roten Listen verdeutlichen. Bei Ersteren hat in den vergangenen 15 bis 30 Jahren jede

dritte einheimische Art teilweise drastische Areal- und Bestandsverluste erlitten und musste deshalb als gefährdet

eingestuft werden. Noch dramatischer ist die Situation bei den Holz bewohnenden Käferarten. Hier gilt jede zweite Art

als bedroht.“] 159 Allan, Derek: “Literature and reality”, Journal of European studies 31 (2001): 152.

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2. Park Min-gyu’s Castella as mirroring reality

The following observations are mostly based on a close reading of the ten novels collected in Park

Min-gyu’s collection of short fiction, Castella, published in 2005160 (the single stories having been

published individually from 2003 onwards). The collection made a huge impact, with sales reaching

into the hundreds of thousands. Since many years, the notorious, prominently placed desks for

“steady” sellers in the major Korean bookshops are featuring piles of this book. In 2011 the author

was “chosen as the face of Korean literature in the 21st century in a poll of literary critics”.161

Obviously, this is literature that made an impact, which is acknowledged and widely read ‒ creating

a substantial reality itself.

The close reading was all the more close as I translated these ten stories into German. For the

purpose of this presentation I will, for convenience sake, refer mainly to the five stories that are

translated into English.162

The reason to chose this author as an example for a fiction that “mirrors” Korean society is not

only that I translated these texts but, of course, the fact that these stories truly lend themselves to

exemplify a fiction that “mirrors” Korean society and numerous kinds of living conditions (although

rather those of young male strugglers are depicted). If, for example, you are looking for a trustworthy

160 Bak Min-gyu: Kaseutera. Paju: Munhak dongne 2005. 161 Korean Literature Now 12 (Summer 2011), http://koreanliteraturenow.com/interviews/face-twenty-first-century-

novelist-park-min-gyu). 162 For the purpose of this presentation I will not dwell on the fact that my translations differ from these English

translations in many ways. Four stories are all available online: Castella, translated by Sora Kim-Russell

(http://theamericanreader.com/cas), Say Ah, Pelican, translated by Jenny Wang Medina

(http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/say-ah-pelican), Raccoon World, translated by Jenny Wang Medina

(Azalea: Journal of Korean Literature & Culture, Volume 1, 2007, pp. 193-214, http://muse.jhu.edu/article/253609),

Korean Standards, translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé (Koreana: Korean Art & Culture 22/1,

hompi.sogang.ac.kr/anthony/KoreanStandards.htm). Is That So? I’m A Giraffe, translated by Sora Kim-Russell was

published as vol. 34 in the Bi-lingual Edition Modern Korean Literature (Seoul: Asia 2013). Several of the stories are, to

my knowledge, translated into Russian. The complete collection is also available in Chinese translation. The complete

German translation done by me (in collaboration with Insook Schrof) is submitted and will hopefully be published in the

very near future.

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representation of living conditions in a gosiweon163some 15 years ago, be referred to the story Gabeul

gosiweon cheryugi. After all, the author has been hailed as “spokesman for the trends of the 21st

century”.164 It is quite evident that the author deals with conditions that mattered for Koreans: broken

families in the wake of the IMF crisis, precarious jobs, and merciless capitalism. In a way, we have

here a precursor of the currently popular “Hell Joseon” discourse.

At the same time, we have elements of fantasy that accompany the realistic representation. Fantasy

is often said to be a genre of literature that caters to readers who view reading as a way to “escape”

from reality, i.e., escapism. Now, it is fascinating to watch how in Park Min-gyu’s literature the

elements of fantasy – and, as we may call it, of grotesque exaggeration – serve the purpose of

conveying an original response to matters of well known reality.

The clearest escapism, in a quite literal sense, is seen in the story Is That So? I’m A Giraffe that

starts with the hero’s envy in regard to the Martians whom he supposes to have a much nicer existence

than the terrestrials, along with the story Molla, molla, gaebokjirani, which is about a journey into

space (with quite a lot of associations with a trip on drugs). But we can detect elements of “escapism”

in most of these stories. The simple problem-solving in Castella complements this attitude: The old

joke-question “How do you get an elephant into your fridge?” (correct answer: “Open the door of the

refrigerator, put the elephant in, close the door.”) is applied to all sorts of problems, inspiring the hero

to put, among others, his father, his university, the USA and China into the fridge.

163 The Naver dictionary (endic.naver.com) provides the following useful definition: “A goshiwon is a very small room

that students live in while studying for an important test, or if their normal home is far from their school. Goshiwon are

usually rented in short-term leases and do not usually include private bathrooms. Often, there is a common room for doing

laundry, and some sort of kitchen that also has basic food supplies.” Very small may mean two square metres as in the

story. One other main characteristic is constituted by the extremely thin walls. 164 Korean Literature Now 12 (Summer 2011).

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On the flipside of the heroes’ escapism and their envy of the extraterrestrials there is a story like

Korean Standards that features hostile aliens who terrorize the former anti-government activist Giha

on his farm, destroying his alternative organic crops and burning the Korean Standard logo into his

field.

But rather the extraterrestrial world serves as an alternative to an unfavorable, merciless world on

planet earth.

3. Modern myth, popular tale, urban legends? Rather: Epitomes of their times

Rather than documenting, Park Min-gyu’s stories capture real-life stories that epitomized their

times:

The high-school student who takes on three jobs (the Korean expression “bijeongyujik” evokes all

the related associations) in order to support his family (Is That So? I’m A Giraffe);

the college graduate who sends 72 applications and is refused everywhere (Say Ah, Pelican);

the worker at a shopping mall who gets aching wrist joints because he has to direct customers in

their cars to parking lots by making “butterfly movements” with his hands (Yakult ajumma);

the salaries withheld from foreign workers, i.e., migrant laborers (Say Ah, Pelican);

the salary withheld from the student doing areubaiteu in a supermarket (Castella);

the intern who is exploited in a competition with seven others for half of a year, as only one out of

the eight will make it to a real employment, so that for six months they try to make the race, earning

not even the expenses to commute to work (Raccoon World);

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the employee/salaryman who is financially burdened by his daughter attending three different

afternoon classes (Korean Standards);

the sons who are held reliable for their fathers debts (Castella);

the businessmen who went bankrupt and goes into hiding (Say Ah, Pelican) and finally commits

suicide;

the father of a family who disappears because he cannot shoulder any more of the burden of earning

for both his mother and his wife, who had fallen into a coma (Is That So? I’m A Giraffe)

etc., etc.

These are, in fact, not simple realities nor inventions – these are recurring stories that became iconic

epitomes of their times and had captivated minds anyway; thus, they are not presented as some main

ingredient of the story, but rather as mere elements and sidekicks.

The strength of the stories does not lie in the mere reflection of reality. When, for example, the

narrator of Korean Standards confesses: “Quietly, from being someone hoping that society would

change, I turned into a person hoping that his office ranking would change.” this reflects a change of

attitudes that simply took place with many of his “real” peers.165 But it is not these earthbound insights

which render these stories so unique.

165 Brother Anthony in his remarks accompanying his translation of Korean Standards for the magazine Koreana

comments as follows: “This confession clearly reveals the dramatic shift in the attitude of Koreans, between the 1980s

and the 2000s. In the past, the younger generation, who were filled with Utopian ideals, believed that they could change

the world, fundamentally and rapidly. But over the course of two decades, this younger generation has become today’s

middle-age group, who somehow abandoned their dreams along the way. Meanwhile, their lofty hopes have been replaced

by an overriding desire to simply survive.”

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4. Alternative objectivity: Imagination

Taking a remark by Brother Anthony about Park Min-gyu as a challenge – “he seeks to have readers

discover a new prism for viewing reality” – we may ask ourselves what this “new prism” may be like.

On the one hand, there is the prism of de-familiarization: When the power of capitalism makes

alternative farming a hopeless endeavor, the attack from extraterrestrials symbolizes the

overwhelming force of those who do the regulations.

The other type of prism is absurd invention: The mobility of third-world workers via flying duck

boats (Say Ah, Pelican) is a crazy metaphor for a crazy system that compels workers in the global

chase for low-paid labour. In a similar vein, constipation becomes a consequence of pressure on the

job and the extinct dodo serves the parallel case of a haunted existence, as these animals began to

suffer – in Park Min-gyu’s imagination – from constipation during their fight for survival, when

defecating meant giving hunters a lead (Yakult ajumma). The habitat of the working poor (and

studying poor) in the gosiweon becomes an allegory of being marginalized in society, the absurd

emblem of this being the snail living in the inner ear of an artificial human ear growing on the back

of a laboratory mouse (Gabeul gosiweon cheryugi). The raccoon becomes the emblem of people who

are not willing to adjust to the capitalist regime, its grip over workforce and the regulation of life

through the paradigm of dependent wage-earning labour (Raccoon World). The “headlock” into

which the narrator in Headlock is taken by Hulk Hogan (which nobody believes) becomes a clear

metaphor for the use of sheer arbitrary power of the strong when the narrator himself becomes a

perpetrator, feasting on the plight of the weaker, third-world victims and when his sons are sent into

headlock afterschool classes. The sudden attack by giant calamari (or giant squids) signifies human

hubris that accounts for this vengeance from the abysses of the deap sea (Daewangojingeo seupgeok.)

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There are these large-scale metaphors and allegories that dominate a single story en gros, but every

story is also full of running-gag-comparisons and recurring metaphors en detail that characterize Park

Min-gyu’s style and form an important part of the appeal of his stories. Thus the weekenders who

visit the artificial lake for a ride on a duck boat in Say Ah, Pelican are compared to machines energized

by cheap night electricity. The crowded underground platforms become a symbol of a cruel the-cake-

is-not-big-enough-for-distributing-bigger-shares ideology (Is That So? I’m A Giraffe). Thus the

narrator in Castella conceives of his noisy fridge as the reincarnation of a hooligan – and of course

his existence (he bought it from a soon thereafter shuttered forever second-hand shop) is well

characterized by the fact that he does not even think of a replacement.

5.

If these stories are used in class, they might be contrasted with “objective facts” like exact salaries

or the rise of precarious jobs or the number of suicides by broken businessmen who went into hiding.

But this approach would, as said above, view literature as only a deficient mode, wanting of

objectivity. We are better advised if we acknowledge these stories value as messengers of things that

captivate(d) Korean minds. “What, for science, is the ’merely personal’ is, for literature, the sine qua

non of existence.”166

166 Derek Allan: “Literature and reality”, Journal of European studies 31 (2001): 154.

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References and further reading

Allan, Derek: “Literature and reality”, Journal of European studies 31 (2001): 143-156.

Asholt, Wolfgang and Ottmar Ette (eds.): Literaturwissenschaft als Lebenswissenschaft:

Programm, Projekte, Perspektiven. Tübingen: Narr 2009.

Bak, Min-gyu: Kaseutera. Paju: Munhak dongne 2005.

Isomaa, Saija (ed.): Rethinking mimesis: Concepts and practices of literary representation.

Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2012.

Lewis, David, Dennis Rodgers, and Michael Woolcock: The Fiction of Development: Literary

Representation as a Source of Authoritative Knowledge. The University of Manchester 2008 (Brooks

World Poverty Institute Working Paper Series).

Nabergoj, Irena Avsenik: Reality and truth in literature: From ancient to modern European

literary and critical discourse. Transl. by Jason Blake. Göttingen: V&R unipress 2013.

Novitz, David: Knowledge, Fiction and Imagination. Philadelphia: Temple University Press 1987.

Zacks, Dustin A.: “A response to Epstein: Honoré De Balzac’s rise and fall of Cesar Birotteau and

literature’s relevance to social science”, Whittier Law Review 36 (2015) 2: 283-305.