"We Do Not Part" (Han Kang, 2021)'s many tie-ins with "Suni-Samchon" (short story, 1978)

[Peter]

.
Having read the short story "Suni-Samchon" (1978) (순이삼촌) previously, I noticed many "intertextual" references to it in We Do Not Part.

The RAS Korean Literature Club read "Suni-Samchon" in March 2024; it's worth renewed attention in connection with We Do Not Part.

With an author like this, everything's deliberate. Han Kang expected her original (Korean) audience to know many references that non-Koreans will far-less likely recognize, including the allusions to "Suni-Samchon."

So:

RECOMMENDATION: Read "Suni-Samchon" before We Do Not Part (or after, if necessary).

The prolific Korean-novel reviewer Paul Fulcher says We Do Not Part is really a trilogy with Human Acts, The White Book, all linked.

For me, as a text "Suni-Samchon" is more useful than Human Acts for understanding what Han Kang is "up to" in We Do Not Part. (That's saying a lot, given that We Do Not Part is, on the surface, a sequel to Human Acts!)

________

Be warned! There are multiple translations out there of "Suni-Samchon." Some are less good. A fairly good English translation of "Suni-Samchon" was released in 2012 as part of a "classics of Korean short-stories" series (Asia Publishers, Bilingual Series). I read that one.

"Suni-Samchon" was originally published in 1978 by political dissident and Jeju native Ki-young Hyun. It is set in 1978 in Jeju, with many call-backs to 1948.

Author Ki-young Hyun says "Suni-Samchon" got him investigated and harassed by the authorities in 1978-79, his story banned (until around 1988?).

"Suni-Samchon" (re)gained attention among certain Korean reading-audiences in the 1990s and 2000s. Around 2000, the Kim Dae-jung government announced a study-commission, which in time declared the ROK state guilty (in 2019, the Moon Jae-in government had heads of government-bodies issue apologies).

There's more to say on the intertextual (and political!) connections between "Suni-Samchon" and We Do Not Part.

Of those who have reviewed the English-translation of We Do Not Part (2025), it seems few are competent or conversant in the relevant matters. (And in browsing the reviews on GoodReads, a common thing to see is: "This is the first I'd ever heard of...")

I may write, later, a political-historical review of We Do Not Part, as a friend suggested I do. For now, I want to mention:

Read "Suni-Samchon" to better understand We Do Not Part! It's a short-story so requires no great time-commitment. If you can find it.
.

[Peter]

.
Charles Montgomery reviewed an earlier translation of "Suni-Samchon" (a "horrible translation") in 2009:

https://ktlit.com/dong-mei-reviews-su...
.

The 2012 translation (Asia Publishers Bilingual Edition) was reviewed by Dongmi Hwang:

https://ktlit.com/dong-mei-reviews-su...
.

As far as I know, the good English version of "Suni-Samchon" (2012) is not available online. That 2012 version is findable through the print-runs from Asia Publishers -- look for the "Bi-lingual Edition Modern Korean Literature" series (printed with Hangul-original and English-translation side-by-side).

You can find the 2012 version (Asia Publishers) version in many of the bigger libraries in South Korea.
.

[Daniela]

thanks for the recommendation

[Daniela]

‘The mermaid of Jeju’, a novel, by Sumí Hahn also covered the Jeju Massacre. After reading her novel, I found that she based her novel on the accounts written by an author that was detained and beaten, Hyun Ki-Young and other historical documents.

There are other books by Kim Sok-Pom inspired by the Jeju uprising “Bak-seobang, Jailer" and "Death of a Crow" (1957) and later through The Curious Tale of Mandogi's Ghost, "Gwandeokjeong," and The Moon. Mr. Kim grew interested in the topic after hearing about the horrendous massacre from his relatives, who had stowed away to Japan. He devoted himself to raising awareness of such savagery through literature.

[Paul]

I didn’t refer to Suni Sancheon in my review of We Do Not Part but I did add a quote from We Do Not Part into my review of Suni Sancheon, so agree on the strong links.

Sadly though I read the earlier translation and it is indeed appalling. Would love to get hold of the better one although those books seems hard to get in the UK.

Added: just realised it is available on Kindle (although not the bilingual part it seems)

[Daniela]

The Waterstones interview with Han Kang about the novel We do not part!

https://youtu.be/OE1eum2wc_s?si=12dLd...

[Peter]

:
Paul Fulcher wrote: "Would love to get hold of the better [translation of "Suni Samchon", although those books seems hard to get in the UK..."

I've noticed a few things about the Asia Publishers' Bilingual Editions series:

(1.) The project has run from 2012 to at least 2022. But there were only slight changes over time to the model, most significantly a re-branding around 2018 to the series title "K-Fiction / "K-픽션," which focuses on recently published award-winning fiction rather than the heavy emphasis on classics of the original Bilingual Edition series.

(2.) The original idea for the Bilingual Editions series seems to have been something like "good stories as a museum-piece." That was the model on which almost all Korean fiction was published in English before about the late-2010s, when publishers sensed a paying-customer market was emerging. (The turn towards "healing fiction" largely a product, I think, of the cruel demands of the market; there are lot of people out there willing to buy such books despite how much many of us criticize their tendency towards emptiness. A common form of praise for the Korean healing-fiction novels has been: "Oh, the cover is so beautiful!").

(3.) Asia Publishers was likely in the planning stage of the Bilingual Editions project in 2010-11. They launched the project in 2012. That is when the first batches of these Bilingual Editions short-stories were published. They were not well-integrated, back then, into digital publishing; they remain not well integrated today. Their website is a bit of a shambolic mess. It looks like it's unchanged since ca.2010. I'm not surprised it's hard to find digital copies in any format.

(4.) The Bilingual Editions' side-by-side, Korean-and-English format is interesting. One wonders if a large part of the impetus behind the project, certainly in the first few years (mid-2010s), was academic: A neat tool to study English (or Korean), to see how phrases get translated. This is now an obsolete goal for Korean fiction publishing. There is a larger-than-ever market for English translations.

(5.) The Asia Publishers Bilingual Editions' translations are sometimes excellent, usually at least "good." Not quite always at a fully professional or editorially consistent standard, as they commission translators in some kind of scattershot fashion. With the case of "Suni Samchon," their 2012 translation is good but maybe still not excellent. I have read maybe 15 total of the Binlingual Editions and successor K-Fiction series and the trend towards good-quality translation increases with time, which should be no surprise. There are some real gems among this collection (hundreds in total now published), but sight-unseen it can be hard to know what's what.

(6.) The Bilingual Editions series and K-Fiction series are all short-stories, often with Author's Notes, and expert commentaries attached at the end which are sometimes illuminating.

My advice to those in Korea who have say a nice two-hour block of time unoccupied:

-- Find a public library anywhere in Korea. Find the General Collection room.

-- Find, within that room, the the machine to search for materials. Input the words "바이링궐" or "K픽션; see what comes up. (Almost any library of any good size will have some of these titles; some have large collections of them.)

-- Find the books in the stacks. (Tip: learning the order of the Hangul characters helps; because books are divided by call-number but also by author's surname; most of us never bother to learn the order, in which ㄱ is the first character of the alphabet. It will save you a lot of time looking through large areas of books with the same call-numbers).

-- Read then and there, time allowing (it being no great time-commitment to read a single short-story, unless you are highly interested in comparing the English with the Hangul original and reading it that way). Or borrow them, if you have library-card access (foreigners generally don't; but anyone can 'physically' enter and use public libraries these days).

You never know what you'll find. You can be rewarded highly for the effort. Now some weeks having passed since I read We Do Not Part, I still think those who went into it having read "Suni-Samchon" will have had a lot better of a time with We Do Not Part.

[Peter]

:
Daniela wrote: "The Waterstones interview with Han Kang about the novel We do not part!"

I've heard people commenting on Han Kang's speaking style say it sounds a lot like the tones of her books. That she is speaking slowly and deliberately in a foreign language (English) to her helps that image. I also expect she has cultivated that image for years, for artistic purposes? Just a guess. That she is committed to her craft and tries to match her personality to it.

---

Here is classic "interview" with Han Kang, from May 2016, shortly after Han Kang was awarded the International Booker Prize for translated fiction (a surprise at the time):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkkLm...

This event was hosted by Barry Welsh, a former member of this Korean Literature Club (Barry still does solo book-reviews, and is active here on GoodReads, but I haven't seen him in person in years). The moderator at that May 2016 event was Charles Montgomery, Korean-literature enthusiast-expert and friend of this RAS Korean Literature Club.


note: Charles Montgomery left Korea in early 2017, I think; he had sometimes attended this Korean Literature Club's gatherings in its early years, 2012-2016. In the early- and mid-2010s, Charles Montgomery was known as one of the top "Korean literature-in-translation" figures and was interviewed often. It was really "not a crowded field" back then.

A lot of the basis for the 2020s popularity of Korean literature-in-translation comes from the lonely efforts of individuals in the 2010s, Charles Montgomery among the foremost -- along with longtime friend and patron of the RAS Korean Literature Club, the prolific translator Brother Anthony of Taize (who we may coax into attending again one of these days).

[Paul]

Peter wrote: "I've noticed a few things about the Asia Publishers..."

Thanks. I have gone into Kyobo Books in Gangnam before where they did have the K-fiction series - which I agree are very good - but last summer I couldn't find them, and the information desk couldn't either.

Peter wrote: "I still think those who went into it having read "Suni-Samchon" will have had a lot better of a time with We Do Not Part.

Those who read it in a translation that wasn't unreadable!