THE VOICE OF THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL And Other Stories of Modern Korea
Chun Kyung-Ja, trans.
Introduction by Kim Uchang, Korea University
From the children of a
dwarf whose house is torn down by the government to a young man selling his
blood for money, the first-person narrators of the stories collected in The Voice of the Governor-General and Other
Stories of Modern Korea take us into the heart of turbulent
twentieth-century Korean history. This history includes colonization by the
Japanese, the devastation of the Korean War, and a program of rapid
industrialization that exacted the heaviest sacrifice from those already at the
economic and political margins of society.
The title story,
chillingly told in the voice of the former Japanese governor-general of Korea
who dreams of the day when the Japanese empire will flourish again, is a
disturbingly acute diagnosis of a society in transition. Throughout these
stories we witness the reality of division in Korea and the alienation of man
in a society of machines in parallel tales of displaced old men. We experience
powerful accounts, from the inside, of people whose lives have been overlooked
in the drive for progress. A sense of aloofness in one story contrasts with the
bitter humor of another, highlighting the despair of the survivors. This volume
is a startling blend of satire, realism, and comedy in the twentieth century.
“The works [of these authors], as expressions of
society in the pangs of modernization and industrialism, are indispensable for
understanding modern Korean literature as well as modern Korean history, and
also present exemplary case studies for many other societies under the
compounded pressure of dictatorship, capital industrialism and imperialism
throughout the world. . . .
“Chun Kyung-Ja, the expert translator . . . whose Peace Under Heaven I consider to be one
of the best translations from modern Korean literature, has done an invaluable
service in making these stories available to English-speaking readers.”
— from the
Introduction by Kim Uchang
CONTENTS
“Neighbors,” “The Uninvited Minstrel,” and “Pagoda”
by Hwang Suk-Yong;
“Mu-jeh” by Yoon Heung-Gil;
“A Dwarf Launches a
Little Ball” by Cho Se-Hui;
“Imprisoned” and “The Voice of the Governor-General” by Choi In-Hoon (with a commentary on “The Voice of the
Governor-General” by James C. West)
Chun Kyung-Ja is Professor of English at the Catholic University of Korea. She has published
many translations, including the novel The
Shadow of Arms by Hwang Suk-Young (1994). In 1995 she won the Korean
Cultural and Arts Foundation grand prize for Korean literature translation for
her 1991 translation of Ch’ae Man Sik’s Peace
Under Heaven.
EastBridge Signature Books 2002 190 pp
ISBN 1-891936-06-9 (pb) $29.95