Two one persons, and then there were none

Kim Soom's "One Person" Above 11th Hyŏndae Munhaku printing (3 September 2018) of Kim Soom's Han Myŏng Back cover shows excerpts from Park Hye-Kyung's "History of memory, memory of history" Images of Korean and Japanese covers are Yosha Bunko scans Image of Korean obi was copped and cropped from Internet copy Below 1st San-Ichi Shobō printing (9 September 2018) of Oka Hiromi's translation as Hitori Front obi cites Kim Soom's epigraph, back obi shows excerpts from her afterword

Han Myŏng

One person's fictional reconstruction
of comfort women testimonies

김숨 Kim Soom [Kim Sum 金息]
한 명 Han myŏng [One person]
서울시: 현대문학
Seoul: Hyundae Munhak
1st printing 5 August 2016
11th printing 3 September 2018
Paperback, 287 pages

Contents

       7  Epigraph
       8  Note
   9-258  Text
 259-268  End notes
 269-284  Commentary, Park Hye-Kyung
 285-287  Author's words, Kim Soom

Front of obi of Korean edition

The front of the promotional obi on an earlier Korean edition of Han Myŏng (see image to the right) reads as follows (my translation).

〈대산문학상〉〈현대문학상〉〈이상문학상〉수상작가 김숨의 아홉 번째 장편소설

끝나지 않은 일본군 위안부의 아픔

역사의 이름으로 파괴되고 회손된 그 '한 명'으로부터 소설온 시작된다

현대문학

<Daesan Literary Award> <Hyundae Munhak Award> <Yi Sang Literary Award> award winner Kim Soom's 9th full-length novel

The unending pain of Japanese military comfort women

The novel begins from the "one person" who in the name of history has been devastated and damaged

Hyundae Munhak

Front of obi of Japanese edition

The front of the promotional obi on the 1st printing of the Japanese edition of Hitori (see image to the right) reads as follows (my translation).

韓国・現代文学賞、大山文学賞、李箱文学賞受賞作家

これは歳月が流れ、生存されている日本軍慰安婦の被害者が、ただひとりになったある日からはじまる物語です。(著者キム・スム)

Korea • Hyundae Munhak Award, Daesan Literary Award, Yi Sang Literary Award award winning author

This is a story that begins from the day that, with the passing of time, surviving victims of Japanese military comfort women have become just one person. (Author Kim Soom)

Back of obi of Japanese edition

The back of the promotional obi on the 1st printing of the Japanese edition of Hitori (see image to the right) reads as follows (my translation).

慰安婦は被害当事者にとってはもちろん、韓国女性の歴史においても最も痛ましく理不尽な、そして恥辱のトラウマだろう。プリーモ・レーヴィは「トラウマに対する記憶はそれ自体がトラウマ」だと述べた。

1991年8月14日、金學順ハルモニの公の場での証言を皮切りに、被害者の方々の証言は現在まで続いている。その証言がなければ、私はこの小説を書けなかっただろう……。(作者のことばより）

Comfort women probably -- for the injured [victimized] parties of course, and in the history of Korean women -- are probably the most painful, unjustifiable, and disgraceful trauma. Primo Levi said that "the memory of a trauma [suffered or inflicted] is itself traumatic."

Beginning with the testimony in public of Kim Haksun halmeoni, on 14 August 1991, the testimonies of the many injured [victims] have continued to the present. Without those testimonies, I probably cound not have written this novel . . . . (From author's words)

From author's words in Japanese edition

The passage on the back of the Japanese obi was cited from the "Author's words" (著者のことば) that follow the story (pages 252-254). The relavant passage is as follows (Author's words, page 253, my translation).

　慰安婦は被害の当事者にとってはもちろん、韓国女性の歴史においても最も痛ましく理不尽な、そして恥辱のトラウマだろう。プリーモ・レーヴィ [Note 71] は「トラウマに対する記憶はそれ自体がトラウマ」だと述べた。一九九一年八月十四日、金學順ハルモニの公の場での証言を皮切りに、被害者の方々の証言は現在まで続いている。その証言がなければ、私はこの小説を書けなかっただろう。

[Note 71]  ユダヤ系イタリア人の作家。アウシュヴィッツ強制収容所から生還した体験を綴った「アウシュヴィッツは終わらない　これが人間か」などの作品で知られる。

　 Comfort women -- for the injured [victimized] parties of course, and in the history of Korean women -- [for them it] is probably the most painful, unjustifiable, and disgraceful trauma. Primo Levi [Note 71] said that "the memory of a trauma [suffered or inflicted] is itself traumatic."

Beginning with the testimony in public of Kim Hak-sun harumoni (金學順ハルモニ 김학순 할머니 Kim Haksun halmŏni) [Kim Haksun grandmother], on 14 August 1991, the testimonies of the many injured [victims] have continued to the present. Without those testimonies, I probably could not have written this novel.

Note 71 Jewish Italian author. Known for works like "Auschwitz does not end: Is this a human?" [Se questo è un uomo = "Is This a Man" = "Survival in Auschwitz" (US)], which described experiences he revived from an Auschwitz concentration camp.

Epigraph

The epigraphs of the Korean edition (page 7) and Japanese edition (page 3) are the same except for the addition of "former" (旧 kyū) in the Japanese edition, hence "former Japanese military comfort women victims" -- apparently to qualify "Japanese military".

Preliminary note

The prelimiary remarks of the Korean and Japanese editions are somewhat different.

"comfort women grandmas

The Korean edition sentimentalizes the comfort women as merely "comfort women grandmas" (위안부 할머니들 wianbu halmŏni-dŭl), using "halmŏni-dŭl" (grandmothers), the plural form of "halmŏni" (grandmother), the affectionate term of reference to older "grandmotherly" women -- whereas the Japanese edition spells out "former Japanese military comfort women victims", repeating the same "former Japan military comfort women" phrase used in the epitaph.

The Japanese translation could easily have rended "comfort women grandmas" directly into Japanese as "ianfu obaasan-tachi" (慰安婦おばあさんたち) -- or even "ianfu harumoni" (慰安婦ハルモニたち), since Kōjien, Japan's most widely used desktop dictionary, has defined "harumoni" (ハルモニ) since its 6th (2007) edition as meaning "obaasan" (おばあさん) or "grandmother" (see Kōjien's definitions of "ianfu", 1955-2018. The sentimental "comfort women grandmothers" is commonplace among comfort women redress activists, while "former Japan military comfort women" is emotionally more neutral.

"novelistically"

The Korean edition states that the "novel" (소설 sosŏl)is something "novelistically reconstructed" (소설적으로 재구성된 sosŏl-ch'ok-ŭro ch'aegusŏng-doen) on the basis of comfort women testimonies -- whereas the Japanese edition specifically calls it something which has been "reconstructed as fiction" based on comfort women testimonies.

To say that a "novel" somehow "novelistically" does something is a bit loopy. Perhaps readers understand that a novel is a work of fiction, to call a novel a work of fiction is to stress that the story is not true -- at least not literally true. Kim Soom, and , but -- but Kim Soom does not say "fiction" in the Korean edition.

Kim Soom (author)

Left 2011 (35th) Yi San Literary Award Anthology with Kim Soom's novella Amu-do tol-aoji anhnŭn pam, copped from Gmarket Right 2014 bilingual edition of Amu-do tol-aoji anhnŭn pam and The Night Nobody Returns Home, Yosha Bunko scan

The Night No One Returns Home

Not many of Kim Soom's works have been translated into other languages. The only novel to be published in English, before the publication in 2019 of One Left (see below), was The Night Nobody Returns Home.

The biographical sketch for Oka Hiromi on the colophon of Hitori states that in 2012 she received the 11th Korean Literature Translation Award for New Career Translators for her translation of Kim Soom's 誰も帰ってこない夜 [The night no one returns]. But apparently her translation was never published, for she says in her translator's afterword that Hitori is "the first country [Japanese] translation" (初邦訳) of any of her works.

The award is given annually by Literature Translation Institute of Korea (한국문학번역원 Hanguk Munhak Pŏn'yŏk Won 韓國文學飜譯院), an organization funded by the government of the Republic of Korea to promote the translation of Korean literature into other languages. LTI Korea publishes the quarterly Korean Literature Now as well as English and Chinese editions of the quarterly -List: Books from Korea. LTI Korea's 2012 Annual Report describes the organization's "Construction of foundation of Korean current of literature" (문학 한류 기반조성 文学韓流基盤造成 Establishing the Korean Literature Wave) (page 38)

The 11th Korean Literature Translation Award for New Career Translators was given to multiple awardees in two groups, one for translations into "Western lanugages" (English, French, German, Spanish, and Russian) of The Sword by Yi Seung-woo, the other for "East Asian translators" (Chinese and Japanese) of Kim Soom's The Night No One Came Back (page 81).

. . . 261 submissions in seven languages (81 in English, 10 in French, 15 in German, 6 in Spanish, and 10 in Russian, 54 in Chinese, and 85 in Japanese) made the cut for consideration.

Two years after Oka Hiromi received LTI Korea's award, the novella she translated into Japanese was published in an English translation by Jeon Miseli (전미세리).

Kim Soom
The Night Nobody Returns Home
Translated by Jeon Miseli
Bi-lingual Edition, Modern Korean Literature, Volume 73
Edited by Jeon Seung-hee and David William Hong
Seoul: Asia Publishers, 2014
Paperback, 138 pages including title pages and colophon
Pages 7-104 novella, 105-117 Ko Bong-jun Afterword,
119-129 Critical Acclaim, 130-135 Kim Soom,
136-137 Translator and editors

Amazon.com's publicity for this edition reads as follows (viewed 24 January 2019).

Park Hye-Kyung's "History of memory, memory of history"

ROK media

Hitori

The Japanese translation of Han Myŏng

Oka Hiromi (translator)

The translator Oka Hiromi (岡裕美) is described as follows in the biographical sketch on the colophon (my translation).

The Night No One Returns received the 35th (2011) Yi Sang Literary Award Excellence Award and was published in the 2011 (35th) Yi San Literary Award Anthology (이상문학상 작품집 李箱文学賞作品集).

Yi Sang (李箱 이상 1910-1937 イ・ソウ I Sō) was a Japanese poet and novelist of Chosenese subnationality (territoriality). He was born in Keijō (Seoul) on 14 September 1910, 16 days after the Empire of Korea was incorporated into the Empire of Japan as the Japanese territory of Chōsen. His legal name was Kim Haegyŏng (金海卿 김해경 Kin Kaikyō). He excelled in drafting and drawing in high school, and after graduating in 1929, he got a job in the Architecture Section of the Internal Affairs Department of the Government-General of Chosen though connections of an uncle who was a GGC official. He designed a few covers for, and contributed some poems to, the magazine Chōsen to kenchiku (朝鮮と建築) [Chosen and architecture). Married but not doing well and sickly, he went to the prefectural Interior in the fall of 1936, wandered around, and was arrested by police on suspicion of thought disturbance. He was released a month later, but failing to recover, he died in Tokyo University Hospital on 17 April 1937.

San-Ichi Shobō

Fuemin, 25 January 2019

Shakai shinpō, 7 November 2018

Shuppan nyuusu, 3rd issue October 2018

Maeda Akira, blog

 、2018年9月12日
滂沱、呻吟、そして証言を聞くこと
Bōda, shingin, soshite shōgen o kiku koto
[ Hearing the weeping, moaning, and testimonies ]

Maeda Akira (前田朗 b1955) graduated in law from Chūō University and is now a professor at Tokyo Zokei University (東京造形大学). He also lectures at Chōsen Gakkō (Chosen School), which historically have alligned themselves with, and were at one time partly supported by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (sic=Chosen).

In 2014, Maeda proposed a "History denial offense law" (Rekishi hitei hanzai hō 歴史否定犯罪法) and a "Comfort woman denial statement punishiment law" (Ianfu hitei hatsugen shobatsu hō" (軍慰安婦否定発言処罰法) that would punish statements which deny such things as massacres, tortures, and sexual enslavery enforced under colonial control.

In his 12 September 2018 blog entry, Maeda characterizes Hitori partly in Kim Soom's words, and partly in his own, that she ". . . inclines her ears to the testimonies of the victims, and re-recollects the recollections as the recollections are, and with novelistic methods flows breath into [them], . . ." (. . . 被害者の証言に耳を傾け、記憶を記憶のままに記憶し直し、小説的方法によって息を吹き込み . . .). The most original remark in the blog is the follwoing observation, which turns out to be a collage of phrases from Hitori (viewed 28 January 2019). The green highlighting and page numbers are my references to the pages from which he has paraphrased or cited the narrative. The lavender highlighting in my translation identify the phrases that Kim Soom has shown in gothic (sans serif) type and marked with numbers that key the phrases to the 313 end notes which cite published and other recorded comfort women testimonies (the Korean edition has 316 end notes).

The most recent three of his many books were published by San-Ichi Shobō

ヘイト・クライム：憎悪犯罪が日本を壊す
Heito kuraimu: Zōo hanzai ga Nihon o kowasu
[ Hate crime: Hate crimes are destroying Japan ]
Tokyo: San-Ichi Shobō Rōdō Kumiai (三一書房労働組合), 2010

増補新版：ヘイト・クライム
Zōho shinpan: Heito kuraimu
[ Enlarged and supplements new edition: Hate crimes ]
San-Ichi Shobō (三一書房), 2013

ヘイト・スピーチ法：研究序説：差別煽動犯罪の刑法学
Heito supiichi hō Kenkyū josetsu: Sabetsu jōdō hanzai no keihōgaku
[ Hate speech law: Introduction to research: Peneology of discrimination incitement offenses ]
Tokyo: San-Ichi Shobō, 2015

Maeda is also a coauthor, coeditor, or contributor to the following five recent San-Ichi Shobō titles.

Distribution

The following figures are heavily rounded from statistics culled from various websites including publisher and bookstore organizations.

Japan has roughly 3,500 publishers, the top 500 of which account for 90 percent of all sales. About 400 publishers, including most major companies, are members of the Japan Book Publishers Association.

Publishers vie for space in about 14,000 bookstores, of which roughly 4,000 are members of the Japan Booksellers Federation. Book distribution is dominated by fewer than 10 of 25 wholesalers.

About 75,000 titles are published every year, of which 1,000 million copies are distributed and 600 million copies (60 percent) are sold. This means an average of 13,333 copies published per title, of which 8,000 copies are sold and 5,333 copies are returned.

Books are sold at prices set by publishers, and books are distributed to stores on consignment, which permits stores to return unsold copies.

Sales of books and magazines have been plummeting since peaks in the late 1990s as more reading matter is published and consumed on the Internet, and as people spend less time reading conventional publications. Bookstores have been closing at comparable rates, and publishing companies have been shifting to electronic publishing with print-on-demand for readers who prefer paper copies.

Reviews

One Left

The English translation of Han Myŏng

English excerpts from Kim Soom's Han Myŏng have been published by three people -- -- once by Korean Literature Now, by Bruce Fulton and Ju-Chan Fulton through PEN America on 1 May 2018 (viewed 4 January 2019).

Translation

Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton

Foreword

Bonnie Oh

The foreword begins with a false statement.

The story, One Left, takes place in some future time when there are no known surviving comfort women except for a hidden one. Hence the title of the novel, One Left. The one left is referred to only as "she."

The title of the novel is actual "One Person". The title refers to the "one person" who remains alive and known to the public as a comfort woman survivor. This is not the "she" progatonist -- who is another "one person" who is not publicly known as a comfort woman survivor. Toward the end the novel, as the publicly known "one person" is dying, the publicly unknown protagonist resolves to make her past known to the public, thus becoming a new "one person" survivor.

The protagonist is aware that there may be others, like herself, who are have not publicized their pasts as comfort women, hence there are possibly many more "one person" witnessess. The protagonist is also aware that, however many "one person" witnesses may decide to publicly relate their experiences, the day will come when there are none.

Bonnie Oh description of the opening of the novel contradicts the image created in the first paragraph. She rest of her brief introduction lacks the luster of a good summary. Her remark description of the "hundreds of endnotes" as "commenting on virtually every episode and name" in the book leaves me wondering how many of the endnotes she read -- since most are not "comments" but merely citations of the sources of the "real testimonies" she puts into the mouths of her fictional characters.

Bonnie Oh's appraisal of "comfort women" as a "euphemism" for "sex slave" is one of the most common remarks in writing that is "critical" of the use of comfort women by Imperial Japanese military forces. "Comfort women" -- as a "euphemism" -- refers to all manner of women who brought comfort to men in or near war zones -- whether professional prostitutes or opportunists, or women or girls abducted or tricked into sexually servicing military personnel. "Sex slave" is a latterday one-size-fits-all attempt to paint all comfort women as victims of attrocities on the part of Imperial Japan -- its government and military forces.

The rest (bulk) of the Foreword is Bonnie Oh's understanding of (1) the author's motives for writing the novel, (2) the history of comfort women, and (3) the spread of the "comfort women movement". She cites several secondary and tertiary works, including her own co-edited volume of conference papers titled Legacies of the Comfort Women of World War II (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2001).

Why a foreward?

The question I raise whenever I encounter an attempt to "introduce" a translation with a foreword or preface is -- why? Is the translated work so poor that it requires an introduction to brace the reader for disappointment?

Aren't novels, in particular, supposed to bait and hook readers with the first few words? Draw them into another world to the point they forget their own? And compell them to keep turning the pages to find out what happens?

So what is wrong with "One Person" aka One left that requires an 8-page distraction?

Absolutely nothing.

Kim Soom's story -- however I may fault it as a work that misrepresents itself -- quickly develops a plot that soon enough involves plenty of sex, violence, and anguish -- whets one's curiosity about the protagonist's postwar life and tell / don't-tell dilemma.

Moreover, the English version by the Fultons -- a veteran husband-wife translation team with many Korean novels to their credit -- is smooth and polished. And to the extent that I am able to vet the accuracy of selected passages of the English translation against the original Korean narrative, the translation is not free or loose but close -- faithful to Kim's metaphors, phrasing, and style.

In conclusion -- I think it a shame that readers can't open One Left and immediately savor the texture of Kim's narrative in English -- rather than encounter a misleading summary of the novel and a clunky attempt to background its controversial theme.

Bonnie also lacks precision. All this lost on

Bonnie Oh is more fully known as Bonnie Bongwan Cho-Oh or Bonnie B.C. Oh. She was born and raisewas raised believing in equal education for both men and women, despite the obstacles she faced as a woman growing up during Japanese occupation in the 1940s. Dr. Oh shares her story on how she came to America for higher education and how her husband became her main supporter in pursuing her academic career. Dr. Bonnie Oh is a graduate of Barnard College, receiving her Master’s degree from Georgetown University, and finishing her Ph.D. in East Asian History at the University of Chicago. Dr. Oh retired as Distinguished Professor of Korean Studies at Georgetown University, where she also served as the Director of Women’s Studies. Native of South Korea, Bonnie Oh (nee Bongwan Cho) attended Seoul National University a year and a half before coming to the United States to complete her undergraduate education. She received B.A. in history from Barnard College, Columbia University, M.A. in European and Russian history from Georgetown University, and a Ph.D. in East Asian history from the University of Chicago. She taught at Loyola U. of Chicago before moving to the Washington, DC- area, served as Assistant Dean for St. Mary’s College of Maryland and the University of Maryland at College Park. She retired in 2006 from Georgetown University after serving for 12 years as Distinguished Professor of Korean Studies, Acting Director of Women’s Studies Program, and the University Ombudsperson. She has authored, co-authored and/or edited books such as Legacies of Comfort Women of WWII (2001), Korea Under the American Military Government (2002), and The Korean Embassy in America and contributed articles to encyclopedias: Compton's Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, Oxford Encyclopedia, and World Book Encyclopedia; and written articles and reviews for refereed journals such as American Historical Review, Journal of Asian Studies, and Korea Journal. Her past positions in Asian studies include president of the Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs (MCAA) and the Book editor of the Journal of Asian Studies (JAS), the premier national academic journal of Asian Studies in the United States and the world. She served on the editorial board of the Seoul National University Alumni Association (SNUAA) of North America and published several articles and chapters in Korean and English, ranging in topics on Korean Catholicism, the Assassination of Empress Myongsong, Japanese encroachment on Korea, Women in the Korean independence movement, and on American Military Government in Korea. She gives talks on subjects on modern Korea. She currently serves on the board of the Korean Cultural Center of Chicago (KCCOC) and is scheduled to volunteer teach Korean history in English at the Center in the fall of 2011. Her major post-retirement project is historical fiction writing. A 250-page manuscript, “Murder in the Palace,” has just been completed and edited, awaiting a publisher. She had been married 50 ?? years to late Dr. John Kie-chiang Oh, a distinguished scholar of international and Korean studies and Dean of the Graduate School at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Academic Vice President at Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. Her family includes two daughters, an MD and a JD and a son also a JD and six grandsons and two grand-daughters, ranging in ages from 10-18.

Bonnie B.C. Oh, a retired professor of Korean Studies at Georgetown University, is best known as the editor of Korea Under the American Military Government, 1945-1948, a collection of articles on the fate of the southern half of the Chōsen peninsula during the period the territory was occupied and governed by US military forces pursuant to the terms of surrender signed on the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945. The northern half of the peninsula was occupied and governed during the same period by USSR forces.

The peninsula was still under Japan's control and jurisdiction at the time of the surrender. Japanese officials in the northern part of the peninsula surrendered to Soviet forces on , and Japanese officials in the south surrendered to American forces on 8 September.

Afterword

Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton

The translators are veteran interpretors of Korean literature in English. As a husband and wife, they have co-translated numerous works of Korean fiction. Bruce Fulton has also teamed with d

Novelists as historians

Historical fiction, fictional history, or ideological fantasy?

Forthcoming