The Guest by Hwang Sok-yong

[Betty]

The Guest by Hwang Sok-yong begins with a chilling 'Author's Note.' It portrays the title as the uninvited disease smallpox and the story as

"essentially a shamanistic exorcism designed to relieve the agony of those who survived and appease the spirits of those who were sacrificed on the altar of cultural imperialism half a century ago."

The conflict is the Korean War and the Cold war after it, but specifically almost two months of terrible, internecine events in the northern province of Hwanghae.

The narrative begins in New York City and New Jersey. In each place lives one of the brothers who survived the catastrophe. Both of them, Reverend Ryu Yosŏp and the older Ryu Yohan a presbyter, have lived in America for about forty years and brought up families. The younger of them hopes to persuade the other to accept an official invitation to reunite with family members still in Korea. The cautious Yohan refuses. Instead, his 'phantoms,' 'dreams,' and 'sharp memories' haunt him. His brother Yosŏp has his own encounter with the supernatural in the form of an 'old hag' who gives him driving directions along with a dried leather pouch. All in all, the first chapter weaves suspense and realism.

[James]

My review:

The read for the World Literature group I'm in on Goodreads, this was the first of Hwang's novels to be published in English. The title, The Guest (Sonnim in Korean) is the name that was given to smallpox, a disease which was introduced from the west and reached epidemic proportions after the country was "opened" to western trade and exploitation. Hwang explains in the preface that he chose it to refer to Christianity and Marxism, the foreign ideologies which have divided Koreans from one another. I do have problems with his calling the Stalinist ideology of North Korea Marxist, and even more to his equating it with Christianity -- although I suppose it could be argued that modern Christianity, or at least the Korean version of Christianity, is equally distorted; unlike the situation with Marx, we don't have any idea what Jesus actually stood for. In any case, the forms in which these two western beliefs reached Korea were certainly both disastrous for the people of the penninsula. (I would also note, however, that the religion and culture they displaced were also largely a foreign import, derived from China.) Actually the novel itself does not treat the two sides as completely equal -- while there was overreaction on both sides, the guilt is clearly placed on the Christians, and the way the book is structured, it is largely about the repentance of the Christian characters.

This theme is not what made the novel so controversial; rather, it's that the book offers a revisionist view of the Sinchon massacre. Rather than simply present the novel as a fictional speculation, Hwang made the claim that he was revealing the real truth about the massacre. He apparently based his view on two alleged eye-witnesses, a minister who is the original of Reverend Ryu, the main character of the novel (and who according to some posters on the internet later said he was misinterpreted), and an anonymous person in North Korea. This hardly seems like conclusive evidence, and without questioning Hwang's honesty or sincerity -- it's obvious from his other novels that he is hardly an apologist for the United States or the South Korean government; The Shadow of Arms has a graphic description of My Lai -- I think it is better to treat the book as a fictional possibility rather than as a factual historical novel.

The official North Korean version of what took place at Sinchon is that there was a systematic massacre of almost forty thousand civilians by U.S. troops over a period of forty to fifty days. This certainly seems implausible to me; the two documented massacres by American troops, the 1950 massacre at No gun ri in Korea and the later more famous one at My Lai in Vietnam, were both carried out in a short time by small units and there were in both cases soldiers who refused to join in and eventually broke through the attempted cover-up. That a major operation against civilians was carried out by U.S. combat troops and no one ever spoke out about it, even after they had left the military, doesn't fit in with what I know about the mostly working class American citizen-soldiers -- only a highly professional elite corps like the European colonial armies or a highly fanatical military group like the SS could do something like this. On the other hand, despite U.S. and South Korean claims that it never happened, there seems to be real evidence of some sort of mass killing. That the U.S. military "advisors" may have participated in or even directed a massacre by the South Koreans is far more plausible, and would fit in with the atrocities in Vietnam carried out by Vietnamese troops under the supervision of the CIA in the "strategic hamlet" program. Another possibility of course is a right-wing paramilitary group of some sort, and this is essentially what Hwang is claiming -- an armed Christian youth group animated by religious and political fanaticism.

As presented in the novel, the underlying dynamic was one of class rather than religion, or rather the religious difference was the form taken by the class antagonism. The Christians according to the narrative were the more affluent farmers and petty bourgeois layers (the actual large landlords having already fled to the South), who had become wealthy through collaboration with the Japanese occupation; the Communists and their supporters were mainly among the tenant farmers, and the Christians were opposing the land reform which was giving the former tenants ownership of the land they had been working for the benefit of the landlords and the Japanese corporations. A violent opposition group made up of young Christians had fled to the hills after carrying out acts of terrorism, and armed themselves with the support of various groups such as the Anticommunist Youth Corps in the South; they returned ahead of the American invasion force and decided to exterminate the Communists and their families as agents of Satan. The returning Northern army troops then re-entered the area and suppressed the revolt, of course in turn going too far and killing many uninvolved Christians. The account seems quite familiar to anyone who has read about the alternating massacres of Christians and Moslems from Bosnia through the Middle East and into much of Africa, for example, or much of the violence in the former USSR after the collapse of the Stalinist regime. Some of the Christians at least belonged to a group called the Unification Corps; I couldn't help being reminded of the right-wing Unification Church of Rev. Moon, although I don't know if there is any direct connection between the two.

Leaving the historical controversy aside, the book has an unusual style, being based on the stages of a rite of exorcism; ghosts appear to the main characters throughout the book, and much of what we learn about the massacre is revealed supernaturally. The novel begins with the visit of the protagonist, Reverend Ryu Yosŏp, to North Korea after a lifetime in exile in the United States, and three days after the death of his older brother Yohan, an actor in the massacre. Apart from the ghosts, the narrative is made up of flashbacks and memories as in The Old Garden, but with many more characters' points of view; sometimes it is not immediately apparent whose memories are being given. There is much explicitly described brutality and this is a book that many people would have difficulty getting through. Despite putting the blame for the massacre on the Christians, the book seems very religious, being largely presented through the consciousness of the Reverend and concerned with repentance and forgiveness. There is much praying and many Bible quotations throughout. I have a problem with that whole theme too. It seems that from the original Athenian Amnesty to the recent Commissions on Truth and Reconciliation, the side of the rich and powerful always gets the benefit of any amnesty while the revolutionaries are always persecuted relentlessly. There isn't always forgiveness, of course, and one could point to many "red terrors", but if there is an amnesty it's always one-sided. Compare the treatment of the Shah of Iran or General Pinochet who tortured and murdered tens of thousands of innocent people with the treatment of say Leonard Peltier, convicted after a questionable trial of killing two armed FBI agents coming after him. I'm not for vengeance as such, particularly when the Stalinists punish people for their own and even their parents' and grandparents' class position, but when it comes to atrocities such as Hwang depicts (leaving aside whether events happened the way he depicts, I'm discussing this as a fictional narrative) there comes a point when one must ask, as one recent book on the Holocaust did, whether the living have the right to forgive crimes against the dead.

Although this is probably Hwang's most famous book, at least outside Korea, perhaps due to the controversies, I have to say that I thought the previous novel was better.

[Betty]

James wrote: "...Leaving the historical controversy aside, the book has an unusual style, being based on the stages of a rite of exorcism; ghosts appear to the main characters throughout the book, and much of what we learn about the massacre is revealed supernaturally..."

James, Korean history forms the basis for this novel as you point out in your meticulous review of The Guest. The story looks back to what changes happened to Koreans and their way of life when Western missionaries, traders, and Japanese occupiers persuaded or forced the country through spiritual (baptism or spiritual possession), cultural (language), political, (protectorate of a foreign power), and economic (land ownership) changes benefiting the non-Korean. There are the results of those phenomena on characters (fleeing to Manchuria, hunger, the scattering of family, post-liberation).

Though Big Brother makes a confession about his Korean life before he dies early in the book, Yosŏp's going back in time begins in earnest when he travels with a homeland tourist agency to visit North Korea.

"I'm telling you, a man needs to understand where he comes from in order to be truly human, to be blessed."

Various phantom characters of whom he can sense their presence and with whom he can communicate

"We're like particles of dust. There are many, many here."

accompany him and point out pastoral and other scenes as they once existed. Whereas, the tour bus shows comprehensive but generic sights.

One anomaly I am observing in Yosŏp's visit is his feelings about the homeland of his people and his fellow tourists who also take the homeland tour. He prays to like these people. The observations from the moving bus increase his separation from the people's lives. When he deliberately takes time out from the tour group, the guides chastise him

"You are a tourist, and you came here with a group."

Another anomaly is that he gives shifty answers to 'grilling' about his father's name and the family's hometown.

[Betty]

The following tells about Yosŏp's visit to North Korean sites and family members in his homeland.

With approval from authorities, he meets Yohan's son Daniel (aka Tanyŏl) and his sister-in-law, both of whom Yohan left in emigrating to the U.S. Renewing acquaintance with both people allows healing and forgiveness to begin, especially since Yohan's notorious complicity in murder after liberation from Japan remains an infamous memory in the village. Yosŏp also brings a leather pouch which contains a sliver of Yohan's bone from the crematorium. During Yosŏp's sojourn visiting his homeland, he often encounters the ghosts of Yohan and (Uncle) Sunnam, who speak with Yosŏp.

There happens a long digression about history which involved the ghosts, during the post-liberation phase after the Japanese occupation. When Korea no longer is a protectorate of Japan, various and sundry social groups with antithetical interests form for the interim. It's confusing to distinguish one from another because of the sheer quantity of similar sounding names for them. Various associations like People's Committee, Democratic Youth League, Women's League, Christians, Christian Youth, anti-Communists, Communists and many more are presented to mold a new reality. Soon, disagreement and violence break out over the intertwined problems of fair land reform and the class struggle to end feudalism in agriculture. With the Japanese administrators who practiced Shinto gone and the new role of Communism, the place and type of religion in society becomes an issue. Added to those problems are the voracious Soviet and American governments looking to acquire more of the 'peninsula.' In one instance,

"scores of students and Christians died in Sinŭju, protesting against the Community Party and Soviet authority."

In other parts of this story, the 'Christian Youth,' 'Anti-Communist Youth Corps,' and 'Korean Independence Party' create havoc while Communists are peacekeepers.

Probably, the lands passed down in the family through generations and its fair redistribution exacerbated things in a dreadful way and turn Koreans, who once extended the term brother to countrymen, against each other. That quest for freedom propelled former tenants who had felt heaviest the hand of oppression and deprivation.

"North Korea is like a beehive someone poked with a stick. Anyone who lived well under Japanese rule, anyone who had land--anyone at all--is now being considered a reactionary [...] who merited "close surveillance.""

That term for privilege included Yohan and Yosŏp's grandfather and father. It seems that Yohan's cruelty may have gathered its momentum from the disrespect and violence the formerly uneducated, once lowly members of economic society accorded to his forebears. Yet, the author tries to understand all sides.

"You see, the poor people and needy farmers of Chosŏn--they were the ugly pots, based in by the Japanese. To hold them up, to display them as something precious--that's been the position of our class. You people, you people just want to smash them to bits and be rid of them."

I kind of disagree with James that this is a story people might not want to read. I'm almost two-thirds into it. The magic realism and the philosophy of forgiveness makeup at least to this point an interesting story about a country clothed in secrecy.

[James]

"I kind of disagree with James that this is a story people might not want to read."
It's definitely a great book; but I just know a lot of people who can't deal with books that contain as much brutality as this novel toward the end. I would have to be very careful to whom I recommend it. Many of the people at the library where I work are almost afraid to read anything but children's books.
"One anomaly I am observing in Yosŏp's visit is his feelings about the homeland of his people and his fellow tourists who also take the homeland tour. . . Another anomaly is that he gives shifty answers to 'grilling' about his father's name and the family's hometown."
I think he is feeling much guilt and is very afraid that they will recognize him as Yohan's brother, who after all was largely responsible for the massacre. Ironically, they are afraid he will reveal the role of his brother and the other Korean Christians when the authorities want to claim it was all the fault of the Americans.

[Betty]

A couple of points seem worth noting from Hwang Sok-yong's book.

The story develops from characters tending to choose the sides of being Communist or Christian. Fraternizing for any reason with the opposition could bring death. Both sides carried out murderous acts to demonstrate their grip on power by mercilessly hurting others and get admiration from their peers. When members of his own group murder his sisters, the character Presbyter Yohan realizes that he actually has done Satan's work.

"It suddenly occurred to me that the whole notion of this side and that side, of us and them -- it was all over."

Two survivors, fourteen-year-old Yosŏp and his pleasant Uncle Some, escape the carnage by luck and their less excitable personalities. There are at least two other survivors, Yohan's North Korean wife and their son Daniel, whom he delivers on the morning of escape to America. When fifty years pass, Yohan's younger brother Yosŏp takes the opportunity to join a tourist group from America to tour the North Korean homeland. The phantoms of the killers and killed follow him and tell him the story of what occurred for over fifty days as the Americans were arriving and pushing northward in the peninsula in 1950.

Another point is the Epilogue titled 'Farewell Guests Eat Your Fill and Begone!' It represents the success of the 'exorcism' to banish the sad, haunting memories which depress the living. In it, the narrator/host encourages the panoply of ghosts addressed by their Korean and English names to enjoy the plenteous feast and hasten to depart with leftovers and coins for the destination of heaven where "old hatred and resentment" are gone. The host points out some general physical impressions about them, as some 'clutch a rice bowl' or 'tuck a skirt though with disheveled hair.' He also recites the general causes of their deaths.

[Fl]

Thank you both for your detailed reviews, especially James's, I didn't know this book was controversial. I haven't finished it (around 85%), the violence makes it a very slow read for me.
I am conflicted about this book: I don't like it, and I don't know why. Maybe you can help me rationalize my feelings?
In the past year I have read Human Acts and Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War, which are both similar in subject. They both graphically depict violence in the service of power and ideology, they both ask the question of whether it is possible to forgive the murderers, they both take sides. Han Kang's also uses ghosts to tell part of the story, and expresses the feeling of ''han'' that was pervasive in The Dwarf: the outcry of the downtrodden that will not suffer and die without claiming their dignity . - And I thought that both these books were extremely good! Can you please help me pinpoint how The Guest differs from them in quality?
I feel it might be because the author feels a bit less honest, I wouldn't be able to explain how, and why this would take merit from a fictional work... Thank you for your thoughts!

( If it helps, I didn't like The Chronicle of a Man Named Han, by the same author, which was praised to me by Koreans as a great introduction to the Korean psyche and partition trauma)

[James]

While I liked the book, it did seem to me to be a little less true to life than his two previous books, perhaps because they were based on his own experiences and this one was speculation about events he did not personally participate in or observe.

Monsieur Han was about his family, but it was his first novel and had some weaknesses in construction, although I did like it. The two that I was most impressed by were The Shadow of Arms about the war in Vietnam (he fought in the South Korean forces there) and The Old Garden about a longterm political prisoner (which he also was, although not quite as long) and his attempts to come to grips with the new realities on the "outside".

Perhaps you simply don't like his style of writing? I also liked Zinky Boys, and Alexievich's other books about Chernobyl, WW2 and the fall of the Soviet Union. Human Acts is on my list to read when we read it later for this group.

[Fl]

Might just be the style... You're right: in spite of the first person, the atroucious details, and even the really good descriptions of the countryside in the winter, it felt quite detached. Strangely, Alexievitch's style was deliberately flat, and it rang truer...

[Fl]

And Human Acts felt like a punch in the stomach...

[Betty]

Fl wrote: "...I am conflicted about this book: I don't like it, and I don't know why..."

Some readers noted that this book contains violence. One graphic scene I did cringe at when I began the story. That awful act grabbed a reader's attention. Why did the rest of the book differ?

The author looks back about fifty years from the present perspective of an older Korean-American Reverend Josop Ryu, who takes a tour from America to the homeland of North Korea, from which he has been cut off for that long, in place of his recently deceased elder brother. The latter character becomes one of the narrating ghosts, who explains what and why the atrocity happened and his complicity in it. The multitude of spirits who had been innocent victims remains present but silent. Besides the presence of those lifeless, tragic beings, there remains the disquieted, living characters, in particular, family members to whom Josop becomes reacquainted through approved visits.

James mentioned to the effect that the purpose of the journey to North Korea is an exorcism of the horrid memories for healing forgiveness in the psyches of the ghosts and the living. The story's narrative descriptions are like a talking cure to exorcise the wrongdoing. That successful conclusion occurs in the final chapter as an infinite procession of ghosts winds into the mountaintop and heaven, where all is one. Reverend Josop's sister-in-law, nephew, and uncle also benefit. If so, then the narrator's purpose is to point to what happened just enough to lay a foundation for the rapprochement of the main story.

[Betty]

James wrote: "it did seem to me to be a little less true to life than his two previous books, perhaps because they were based on his own experiences and this one was speculation..."

The historical record as the basis for this work of fiction is unclear and is complicated by the involvement of many sides after Korea's liberation from Japan. I liked the premise of Josop, because of a change in circumstances, going to his birth country after about fifty years passed. Whatever happens seems to be changeable, which may be part of the magic realism. Some are the trip's modification of itinerary, the uncle's lucky escapes, the unpredictability of existence, the adjustment to both sides when practicable.

[Betty]

So far, the Korean book selections are considered significant to literature. In a while, more recent fiction related to Korea will have a turn here. How will they be similar or different concerning period, place, historical event, characters, or style of writing?

[Betty]

Hwang Sok-yong, the author of The Guest , also wrote a book titled At Dusk , which made the longlist of the Man Booker International Prize 2019. We'll have to consider reading it as well as watch whether it makes the shortlist.

[Betty]

The theme of going back to reconnect and tour in the homeland that filled The Guest comes in snatches in this newer novel At Dusk . The potential for the main character's looking back grows steadily and happens with urgency in the last scene. Meanwhile, a reader has seen throughout the story the everyday details of where Park Minwoo's reminiscences will take him from childhood in a crowded Seoul shantytown to a wealthy architect involved in urban regeneration.