The White Book

through writing the life of torture survivor Lim Seon-ju, I again experienced things which it seems that, as a woman like her, I did not want to have to bear. And so, at first this chapter had the tone of observing Seon-ju from more of a distance, one night in August 2002. I then realised that this was because I had been trying to distance myself from her, and so I rewrote the whole chapter from the beginning. I struggled to write precisely her feeling of being unable to press the button of the dictaphone. And I wrote the final sentence of the chapter, ‘please don’t die’, in Seon-ju’s voice. Don’t die; that was something I wanted to say to her, to all the living, to us.

The Korean title of this book is the single-syllable hwin (흰). If hayan (하얀) indicates the white as an ordinary colour, in hwin there might be a certain sadness, the colour of fate. The white of this book’s title is a fundamental colour passing from a baby’s swaddling cloths to a shroud, through the white of salt and snow and frost and waves, the wings of a living butterfly and the wings of the same creature, grown transparent in death.

"I hold nothing dear. Not the place where I live, not the door I pass through every day, not even, damn it, my life."

"I hold nothing dear. Not the place where I live, not the door I pass through every day, not even, damn it, my life."

In the spring, when I decided to write about white things the first thing I did was to make a list.

Swaddling bands. Newborn gown. Salt. Snow. Ice. Moon. Rice. Waves. Yulan. White bird. “Laughing Whitely”. Blank paper. White dog. White hair. Shroud.

With each item I wrote down, a ripple of agitation ran through me. I felt that yes, I needed to write this book, and that the process of writing it would be transformative, would itself transform, into something like white ointment applied to a sw

In the spring, when I decided to write about white things the first thing I did was to make a list.

Swaddling bands. Newborn gown. Salt. Snow. Ice. Moon. Rice. Waves. Yulan. White bird. “Laughing Whitely”. Blank paper. White dog. White hair. Shroud.

With each item I wrote down, a ripple of agitation ran through me. I felt that yes, I needed to write this book, and that the process of writing it would be transformative, would itself transform, into something like white ointment applied to a swelling, like gauze laid over a wound …… I step recklessly into time I have not yet lived, into this book I have not yet written

In this City there is nothing that has existed for more than severnty years. The fortresses of the old quarter, the splending palace, the lakeside villa on the outskirts where royalty once summered - all are fakes. They are all new things, painstakingly reconstructed based on photographs, pictures, maps. Where a pillar or perhaps the lowest part of a wall happens to have survived, it has been incorporated into the new structure. The boundaries which separate old from new, the seams bearing witness to destruction, lie conspicuously exposed.

"In the spring, when I decided to write about white things the first thing I did was to make a list.

Swaddling bands. Newborn gown. Salt. Snow. Ice. Moon. Rice. Waves. Yulan. White bird. “Laughing Whitely”. Blank paper. White dog. White hair. Shroud.

With each item I wrote down, a ripple of agitation ran through me. I felt that yes, I needed to write this book and that the process of writing it would be transformative, would itself transform, into something like white ointment applied to a sw

"In the spring, when I decided to write about white things the first thing I did was to make a list.

Swaddling bands. Newborn gown. Salt. Snow. Ice. Moon. Rice. Waves. Yulan. White bird. “Laughing Whitely”. Blank paper. White dog. White hair. Shroud.

With each item I wrote down, a ripple of agitation ran through me. I felt that yes, I needed to write this book and that the process of writing it would be transformative, would itself transform, into something like white ointment applied to a swelling, like gauze laid over a wound …… I step recklessly into time I have not yet lived, into this book I have not yet written.

“This life only needed one of us to live it. If you had lived beyond those first few hours, I would not be living now. My life means yours is impossible. Only in the gap between darkness and light, only in that blue-tinged breach, do we manage to make out each other’s faces."

Sugar Cubes
She was around ten years old at the time. Her first outing to a coffee shop, accompanied by her aunt, was also the first time she set eyes on sugar cubes. Those squares wrapped in white paper possessed an almost unerring perfection, surely too perfect for her. She peeled the paper carefully off and brushed a finger over that granular surface. She crumbled a corner, touched it to her tongue, nibbled at that dizzying sweetness, then eventually placed it in a cup of water and sighed as she watched it melt away.
She isn’t really partial to sweet things anymore, but the sight of a dish of wrapped sugar cubes still evokes the sense of witnessing something precious. There are certain memories that remain inviolate to the ravages of time. And to those of suffering. It is not true that everything is colored by time and suffering. It is not true that they bring everything to ruin.

“White hair.
She remembers one of her bosses, a middle-aged man who used to say how he longed to see a former lover again in old age, when her hair would be feather-white. When we’re really old... when every single strand of our hair has gone white, I want to see her then, absolutely.
If there was a time when he would want to see her again, it would certainly be then.
When both young and flesh would have fallen away.
When there would be no time left for desire.
When only one thing would remain to be done once that meeting was over: to separate. To part from their own bodies, and thus to part forever.”

“Each moment is a leap forwards from the brink of an invisible cliff, where time’s keen edges are constantly renewed. We lift our foot from the solid ground of all our life lived thus far, and take that perilous step out into the empty air. Not because we can claim any particular courage, but because there is no other way.”

"Standing at this border where land and water meet, watching the seemingly endless recurrence of the waves (though this eternity is, in fact, illusion: the earth will one day vanish, everything will one day vanish), the fact that our lives are no more than brief instants is felt with unequivocal clarity.”

“Breath-cloud.
On cold mornings, that first white cloud of escaping breath is proof that we are living. Proof of our bodies’ warmth. Cold air rushes into dark lungs, soaks up the heat of our body and is exhaled as perceptible form, white flecked with grey. Our lives’ miraculous diffusion, out into the empty air.”

“Sand
And she frequently forgot,
That her body (all our bodies) is a house of sand.
That it had shattered and is shattering still.
Slipping stubbornly through fingers.”