Paik Nak-chung
Editor, The Quarterly Changbi. Professor Emeritus of English Literature, Seoul National University

 

* This is the English version of a paper presented in Korean at the Second International Forum for Literature held in Seoul, Korea, 24-26 May 2005, co-organized by The Daesan Foundation and The Korean Culture and Arts Foundation. ‘Writing for Peace’ was the general theme of the Forum. The present text is posted on this web site with the kind permission of The Daesan Foundation and the Forum Organizing Committee. [1] ⓒ Paik Nak-chung 2004

 

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The Search for Reconciliation and Peace on the Korean Peninsula

The Case of Hwang Suk-Young’s Guests

 

 

1

 

 

It is a proposition worth reiterating that overcoming the ‘division system' in Korea is not quite the same thing as simply overcoming Korea's division. [2] The latter will be true even of a reunification that devastates the whole peninsula or, while short of war, still proves calamitous to its population, but such a reunification cannot be our goal. We must aim at a unity that results in a better human society than the existing division system has supported.

 

Yet the reality of the Korean peninsula is such that we can neither build a decent society of reconciliation and peace while maintaining the division, nor are likely to achieve reunification by mobilizing the warlike and repressive characteristics of the division system. For any attempt at unification by force will surely lead to war involving nuclear weapons as well; while a project, as in Germany, of ‘unification by absorption' under the aegis of the establishment interests, would either provoke armed resistance and end up with a nuclear war, or result in chaos and a precipitous decline in Korea's global standing almost equally catastrophic. In this sense, there seems to be little possibility, either, that any actual overcoming of division can be other than an overcoming of the division system.

 

The abolition, rather than amelioration, of a system signifies a kind of revolution. But in the case of Korea's division system, its overcoming can only be peaceful and long-term, and consequently is in danger of stopping short of a real overcoming. Thus, it requires a project of originality and innovation far exceeding any revolutionary or reformist strategy in an undivided nation if it is to embrace the possibly oxymoronic ‘peaceful revolution' or ‘long revolution' and still achieve a systemic transformation in the shortest possible time, defying the lures of halfway solutions.

 

Precisely for this reason special stress is placed on the role of a truly creative literature in the process of overcoming the division system. Of course, art has an important role both in the agitation and propaganda of a revolutionary period and in the cultural development of a stable society, but the peaceful yet transformative task of overcoming the division system, more than other historical tasks, calls for the exploration and implementation of the most advanced consciousness and wisdom. I made a similar point in an earlier essay, “The Reunification Movement and Literature” (1989):

 

 

The creative role of literature is vital both in promoting … self-criticism and self-renewal among intellectuals and in activating minjung power. Of course, this is not the exclusive preserve of literature, nor is it the role of our literature alone. But unless Korea's reunification movement is a creative movement of the highest order, it will be difficult to succeed in its aim of overcoming this unprecedented system of division, under which nevertheless both north and south, while being exceptionally brutal and rigid, have borne their respective fruits, to the surprise of the rest of the world. The reunification movement must be pursued as a creative art, so to speak, and all reunification activists must become artists?artists of history-making. Only as one branch of this art can Korean literature bloom to the full; but if the art of the national tongue fails to do its part, it will be vain to expect artists of historical action to turn out for duty without fail. [3]

 

If we read ‘the movement to overcome the division system' for ‘the reunification movement', we may say that demands for the creative role of literature have become even more urgent today.

 

Literature that contributes in this sense to the overcoming of the division system need not be ‘division literature' as classified by the subject matter. Even when treating subjects apparently unrelated to territorial partition, national division, or interference by foreign powers, it is sufficient if the work inspires a new awakening and creative response to the current reality dominated by the division system. All the same, Korean literature would hardly be rising to its historic responsibilities if there were no work at all that, based on a knowledge of realities in both North and South, directly addressed problems arising from the division. As a matter of fact, the situation that hampers writers of each side to explore realities across the Armistice Line is precisely one of the conditions enabling the division system to survive to this day.

 

These restrictions are gradually being loosened with the expansion in legally authorized civilian exchanges between North and South. Thanks to such developments Korean literature, even before the June 15 Joint Declaration (by Kim Dae-Jung and Kim Jong-Il) of 2000, could bring forth a distinguished achievement like Ko Un's verse collection South and North. [4] Not only has the author traveled in both North and South and composed the poems “with the aim of producing a collection that would be read by people on both sides,” [5] but has in my view actually come up with a volume that would continue to be read even after reunification. But as virtually implied in Choi Won-shik's praise that “if Ko Un's Ten Thousand Lives is a glorification [avatamska] of people, his South and North is a glorification of the land,” [6] the world of this collection is quite sparsely populated and gives only a subdued expression to the turbulent conflicts of the age of division. No doubt this accords with the author's intention, but we may also assume that a visit of fifteen days (though longer than average for an ordinary visitor) was not enough for composing a volume of ‘glorification of the land' that amounted to ‘a glorification of people' as well; and a certain self-censorship peculiar to authorized visitors may also have come into play.

 

In that regard, Hwang Suk-Young, who since his first unauthorized visit to North Korea in 1989 has probably seen more of the North than any South Korean writer and has paid for it with exile and imprisonment, enjoys a special vantage ground. On that basis, and at a time when that ground was further strengthened by the Pyongyang summit and the Joint Declaration of June 2000, was his novel Guests [7] produced. If only because it deals with the North Korean scene (albeit focused mainly on brief periods after the liberation from Japanese rule and during the Korean War) on the scale of a novel, it deserves special attention in the course of seeking reconciliation and peace in Korea and overcoming the division system.

 

 

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Not that exploration of a new subject matter could be the main reason why Guests deserves our attention. Far more importantly, the author examines, through his uncovering of the truth regarding the massacre of civilians in Sinchon in North Korea's Hwanghae province during the Korean War, the process of formation and the constitutive elements of the division system, and evinces in the work a strong wish for “laying to rest by means of this kut (shamanic ritual) performance the war wounds and the specters of the Cold War that still remain on the Korean peninsula, and of starting a new century of reconciliation and mutual life-giving” (‘Author's Words' 262). [8]

 

Neither the ‘Author's Words' nor the novel itself employs the expression ‘the division system'. But I believe there is much in common with that notion in Hwang's pursuit of “a new century of reconciliation and mutual life-giving”. North Korea's official position on the Sinchon massacre defines it as “a nefarious crime of the American imperialist aggressors” (90, F 100). Generalizing further, it holds that “our division is basically due to foreign powers; the Japanese and American imperialists have caused this situation” (96, F 105), which does not give sufficient recognition to the internal factors that have enabled the division to set into a kind of system.

 

Pointing to the responsibility of foreign powers does make sense when applied to the partition of the country in 1945. But the process of the division's solidifying since the Armistice (1953) and its formation of a relatively stable structure that could justifiably termed a system of division has involved various acts of the Koreans themselves, including acts of mutual killing during the war. Guests, which reveals that the Sinchon massacre, unlike Pyongyang's official version, was committed chiefly by right-wing Christians, represents the insight that precisely such internal elements went into the construction of the division system and have kept it in existence to this day. It also foregrounds the fact that true reconciliation calls for an effort to ascertain the truth for oneself, unfettered by the official propaganda of either North or South.

 

The novel, however, is not a one-sided denunciation of the Christians. As a number of critics have pointed out and the author himself states, the ‘guests' of the title points not so much to the fact that Rev. Ryu Yosop (or Joseph), a U.S. resident, is visiting North Korea and in that sense is a guest, as that both Marxism and Christianity represent “the modernity that has been imposed on us as we failed to achieve autonomous modernization” (Author's Words 261), hence “two branches from a single root” (262), so that the author “designated Christianity and Marxism as ‘guests' … with a view to the fact that ordinary people of pre-modern Korea, conceiving smallpox as a Western disease and calling it mama or sonnim (guest[s]) in the hope of guarding against it, produced a form of shamanic performance called sonnim-kut” (Idem).

 

At the same time, it is important that the work does not strike a mechanical balance and blame Christians and Marxists equally. Christians themselves are not uniformly portrayed in a negative light, but particularly in the case of Marxism, Hwang faithfully renders the positive and emancipatory functions it exercised in Korean society. This is a worthy achievement in a writer living in the southern half where anti-Communist ideology is still dominant. As many critics have observed, the novel demonstrates that there was a material basis for the adoption of Marxism in Korea.

 

In fact, both right and left commit atrocities in Guests, but at least in Chansaem, Rev. Ryu's home village and the main scene of the novel's action, we can “sense no sign of madness” in the main left-wing characters, as critic Hong Sungyong observes. [9] Indeed, Ri Sunnam and Pak Ilang are moving figures. The specter of Sunnam, from the moment it comes to Yosop together with the latter's elder brother Yohan (John), displays a shrewdness, balanced perspective, and admirable humanity.

 

To be frank, didn't your father Elder Ryu Indok and grandfather Pastor Ryu Samsong serve as estate agents for the Japanese colonizers and so come into possession of your fields and orchards? Most of the others who attended Kwangmyong Church also had lands of their own more or less and didn't have to worry about feeding themselves. … Such people formed most of the members of the Committee for Founding the Nation and went by the respectable name of ‘the nationalist camp'. (125, F 137-38) [10]

 

I am not saying there were no problems on the left, either. Calling themselves communists, they had so many factions, a clodhopper like me couldn't tell which was which. (125, F 138)

 

You [Yohan's ghost] have said it well. In the Sinuiju uprising both sides were at fault. There are plenty of opportunists in turbulent times who run about on either left or right. (126, F 139)

 

The poor peasants and masses were, so to speak, these misshapen pots produced by Japanese imperialists. Wasn't it our class position to value them and start with them? You, on the other hand, were all for shattering them. (128, F 142)

 

And as is revealed later on, Sunnam dies with dignity, having decided out of love for his family not to run away by himself.

 

The story of Pak Ilang, the head of the village People's Committee who used to be a servant laborer and had all his life been known only by the Japanese name ‘Ichiro', is mostly told by others like Sunnam and Yohan, except for the scenes of his capture and death toward the end. Yohan targeted him with special hatred because he had used violence against Yohan's parents, his former masters, but his transformation as recounted by his long-time intimate Sunnam makes the readers reflect on the true meaning of liberation.

 

Just imagine. This Ichiro you all addressed familiarly and considered a fool with nothing in his head had come to know how to read. He could write his name, Pak Ilang. Isn't this what liberation is supposed to be? While you guys were eating white rice, sleeping under warm covers, and taking lessons in schools so you could read the Bible and pray and sing hymns in churches, Comrade Ilang who would be schlepping wood bundles and working like an ox had managed to read and write the words ‘land reform'. (138, F 153)

 

Ilang is dragged away with a wire run through his nose and dies an atrocious death, burned in a gasoline fire along with others who were confined in an air-raid bunker. But his last narration is deeply impressive with its genuine pride and advancing consciousness:

 

Ah, yes, throughout my life with not even a family or given name, I, Ichiro, labored and labored with my back always bent, yet for the past several years it's been worthwhile. …

 

I have never hated anybody in my life. On some special day when they would give out a big bowlful of rice, I would keep on digging the field so they shouldn't call me a good-for-nothing. But when I saw my family being killed before my eyes, I knew: you are no better than an animal unless you've woken up inside yourself. (224-35, F 247)

 

In the background of such authorial sympathy with characters like Sunnam and Ilang lies the recognition that the question of land reform above all else constituted the key agenda and the focus of conflict in their time. As Yohan's ghost recounts the tremendous shock of having the land confiscated (123-24, F 136), the beginning of the ‘madness' lay precisely there. (It was in the course of demanding that Yohan's father give up the land that Ilang came to hit him in the face.) This point, too, has been made by a number of critics, among whom Yi Chaeyong, noting that “not the repression against Christianity but the land reform provided the decisive occasion for the massacre of the population,” [11] concludes that “the choice of Guests as the title of this work does not seem to correspond to its actual content.” [12]

 

We probably need not take such a conclusion as a negative criticism. A title that does not accurately summarize the content could add to the attractions of a work. Only, the author's own words telling how he “designated Christianity and Marxism as ‘guests'” (262) do involve a certain danger of limiting the work's relevance; perhaps this is another instance where we should trust the tale rather than the artist. If we look at the work itself, there is indeed corroboration of the ‘Author's Words' in the protest by Yosop's great-grandmother: “You deserve the name of a human being only if you properly respect your ancestors. This country has gone to the dogs because we worship spirits of foreigners” (39, F 45); and again, “they would tell me the smallpox was originally a Western disease, that it came from the barbarians of the West. Isn't it clear it came from countries where they believe in the Western evil spirits?” (43, F 50) But whether, taken in their dramatic context, these remarks legitimately apply to the ideology behind land reform as well as to Christianity is by no means clear.

 

The contending theoretic claims of the ‘guests' and the land question as the primary cause are further complicated by the presence of An Songman, Yosop's maternal uncle. He is a devout Christian but also supports land reform: “It was good even in light of Jesus' life that the poor were given land and enabled not to starve. It was proper, too, that landless peasants came to possess lands previously owned by churches and temples” (176, F 194-95). But while his criticism of ‘new learning' has something in common with the notion of the ‘guests', it does not postulate a dichotomy of the indigenous vs. the foreign.

 

I think at that time we were immature on both sides. We needed to grow up more and realize that human affairs were complicated and called for much more mutual understanding. As far as affairs on this earth are concerned, the main thing after all was to labor hard with a full respect to material things and to share them equitably so as to enjoy them together. Only if such justice is done can your faith as regards heaven be honorable. It was less than a full generation since we had accepted either protestantism or socialism as new learning, and on each side there were only zealots who had forgotten about the ways of human living that had gone on from the old days. (176, F 195)

 

The implication is that, given more time and effort, the ‘guests' could have settled down as ‘hosts', and the way to reconciliation of Marxism and Christianity is left open as he finds material equality and social justice agreeing with both ‘Jesus' life' and socialism. Only the general immaturity that prevented the realization of this possibility gave rise to the madness and murder. [13] Here we find another reminder that we need a complex vision of both the internal and external factors that have gone into the formation and reproduction of the division system.

 

 

3

 

 

But what kind of response to actual reality would have resulted from a more mature understanding of human affairs? Starting from a fundamental recognition of the legitimacy and practical necessity of land reform, what kind of agrarian policy, for instance, would have done justice to “the ways of human living that had gone on from the old days”? The policy of ‘confiscation with compensation and distribution for value' later adopted by South Korea would have failed to meet the needs of most peasants and fallen short of social justice. Yet ‘confiscation with compensation and free distribution' not only would have overburdened state finances, but would still leave the question unanswered as to the precise level of compensation--or the precise range of uncompensated confiscation--that might have succeeded in both mitigating the landowners' resistance and carrying out an effective reform.

 

Of course, it isn't incumbent upon An Songman to answer that question--nor on Hwang Suk-Young, either. It is enough if an author through his work raises the right questions in good faith and makes his readers think for themselves. But it is part of the good faith that his raising questions should be so passionate and thorough that the reader cannot rest content with answers that are not authentic. If we are to criticize Songman's pronouncements in Guests , it is not that they fail to amount to correct answers, but that Songman is portrayed like a man who has arrived at correct answers to most questions in life.

 

The novel clearly shows that Songman's has not been an easy life. But by the time Yosop comes to him, all his conflicts are over and he has in his way achieved reconciliation. Referring to the day when the Sinchon massacres reached their height, he says, “I almost abandoned my God. The following night came to shake terribly fifty years of my faith” (210, F 231), but he gives no account what he saw that night nor any further mention of the trials he subsequently went through as a believer. It is not out of character that in talking to his nephew he should be reticent about his inner life, but the writer could easily have chosen to convey it, say, in the form of silent recollection.

 

Though a pastor's son and recipient of infant baptism, Songman, who even as a youth was more drawn to (the presumably non-Christian) Kang sonsaeng and furthermore experienced that ‘fiery hell' during the war, must have needed a rare spiritual experience in order to remain a Christian. Conflict with a communist system, too, must have been considerable. But the friction caused, for example, by his insistence on observing the Sabbath while on duty at the iron factory of Hwangju is resolved all too smoothly thanks to the enlightened attitude of the director (178-82, F 197-201). In short, he is now living as both a Christian and a party member highly regarded by the authorities, a man who has lived a long life through all sorts of tribulations, and as such can pronounce authoritative statements such as: “We needed to grow up more and realize that human affairs were complicated and called for much more mutual understanding”; or, regarding the visits of the specters, “Maybe because the world is ripe for change, their appearances have recently become quite frequent. … It shows time is ripe for those who went through those events. I mean it's ready for them. So-- they appear for their salvation” (174-75, F 193), and, after they have gone, “Those that are to go away must go away; now the living must start their life anew” (251, F 276).

 

It is not easy to date exactly these scenes where “time is ripe”. Songman, who is reported to have been thirty-five about the time of Liberation in 1945, says he is eighty-five now, which should make the year of Yosop's visit 1995. [14] On the other hand, if we take his “fifty years of my faith” literally, the time would more likely be 2000 or thereabouts, when Hwang was writing the novel and the Pyongyang summit meeting took place--a date more becoming as a time of change. But whether 1995 or 2000, it would postdate the death of the North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung (1994), yet the novel provides no indication of the fact. We may find this vagueness regarding the time appropriate in a work that, while utilizing memories from the author's visits in 1989 and 1990, also intends to embrace the spirit of “a new century of reconciliation and mutual life-giving”. It must be judged a technical flaw, however, that, by specifying Songman's age as eighty-five, the novel invites readers to conjecture the precise date.

 

It is due to flaws like this that the reconciliation portrayed by Guests comes across as, in the words of one critic, “somewhat sudden and forced.” [15] This is not, if I may repeat myself, to demand a concrete alternative or answer from either the author or a given character, but to insist on the need to scrutinize the artistic realization that is to ensure the importance and intensity of the work's questions.

 

I have noted that Yosop's uncle Songnam had virtually achieved reconciliation prior to his meeting with his nephew, but in fact Yosop's sister-in-law presents a similar case. Regarding the harsh and harrowing years she must have suffered through as wife of the murderous reactionary Yohan, a wife moreover abandoned by her husband the moment she had given birth to a son, the white-haired sister-in-law offers only a single quiet remark: “Remaining here alone as a culprit--having lost the daughters because I wasn't able to feed them properly, and living with that single surviving child [her son Tanyol], I kept thinking: God, too, is guilty.” (152, F 170) But she also managed, before Yosop's arrival, to come to terms with such a life.

 

“I used to think God, too, was guilty because he remained silent while looking down on those hellish scenes. But recently I came to change my mind. It's a long time since I read the Bible. I've forgotten most of it. But I do remember Job. … As a matter of fact, everybody is born into the world with his share of suffering. All those your brother killed had souls. They weren't devils. Ryu Yohan wasn't a devil, either. Only his faith was distorted. Now I know God isn't guilty.”

 

“What is your wish now, sister?”

 

“I hardly have any wishes. Maybe peace on earth and glory in heaven, something like that. Even though the world may be full of evils, those of us living should go on living by working to remove them.” (153, F 170-71)

 

And when Yosop has finished his brief sermon, she murmurs to herself, “I already knew it ...” (155, F 173)

 

Seen in this context, Yosop's receiving Yohan's clothes from her--with which the newborn baby had been wrapped--and later burying them along with Yohan's remains is no more than a ratification of the peace she had achieved on her own. Potentially more controversial is her remark, “There is no such thing as God of Israel or God of Korea. God is simply God” (157, F 174), for it sounds like a refutation of Ilang's dying cry, “Believe in God of Korea!” (17, F 22) [16] But this remark, too, is only given out as a sign of the sister-in-law's recovery of faith through her meeting with Yosop, and does not lead to any serious exploration of the conflict and possible reconciliation between ‘God of Korea and simply God', or between ‘God of Koreans and God of Americans'.

 

Probably the decisive reason for the less than fully convincing nature of the reconciliation in Guests is because Rev. Ryu Yosop himself, who returns to his native village for the purpose of apology and reconciliation, does not experience any serious new conflict in the course of the visit. The initial discord and embarrassment upon meeting his nephew Tanyol (Daniel) are soon worked out with little real problem. More importantly, Yosop is in possession of the main facts of the Sinchon events before he undertakes the journey, and has more or less settled views regarding them. When he visits his brother for the last time and holds a prayer service, he preaches, “Jesus taught love and peace. Those who have remained in our native village and have possession of it, I repeat, have souls like us. We must repent first” (15, F 18); and, upon meeting Tanyol, tells him, “In those days we hated and killed each other. But those people, too, are passing away, one by one. If we don't forgive each other, we'll never be able to meet again.” (94, F 104)

 

The accuracy of his diagnosis is another matter. For instance, this is his answer to the nephew's protest of why he had to come and rake up bygone matters:

 

“There is an old proverb about how it begins with pulling out a hair and ends up with killing somebody. Also, they say it takes two hands to clap. It wasn't some others who committed those crimes, it was us-- those of us who had lived amicably in the same village.”

 

“The superstitious wretches did it, I am told.”

 

“No, it was Satan who did it.”

 

“Which evil spirit is that one, now?”

 

Rv. Ryu Yosop answered, “It is something dark that always accompanies us in our hearts.” (116, F 126-27)

 

The statement that it was us and not some others undoubtedly comes closer than the official propaganda of ‘the crimes of American imperialists' to the truth as the novel presents it. But it focuses almost exclusively on domestic factors, and is liable to the charge of blaming the victim and the victimizer in equal measure. His gloss on Satan derives from his somewhat idiosyncratic view of God and salvation which, after reading from the Book of Job for his sister-in-law, he expounds in his short sermon: “This passage shows that the Almighty and All-knowing God, too, is a Being who has internal conflict like us. To say so isn't sacrilege. God becomes a perfect Being only through the faith and decision of human beings” (155, F 172). This thought offers a sharp rebuke to the habits of demonizing other people, but also runs the danger of making vague and abstract the real conflicts between human beings such as those surrounding land redistribution.

 

Perhaps a statement like this by Yosop works to draw attention to the limitations of a character born into the landowner class and currently residing in America as a Christian minister. The author's question, “Now that I look at it, isn't the U. S. as a matter of fact still the really fearful ‘guest'?” (262), hardly seems adequately realized in the novel itself, but could it have been his intention to bring in the problem of the U. S. by noting the limitations in Yosop's thinking? In order to succeed in such a project, however, not only should the work show a greater distance between the author and the character, but Yosop should have been delineated as a character who, as the rest of the story unfolds, is brought to face his own limitations, experiences certain inner changes through which some of those limitations are overcome, and so helps open the way to a genuine reconciliation.

 

To the contrary, the problem in the characterization of Yosop seems precisely to result from a lack of authorial distance. Despite the fact that Rev. Ryu Yosop is quite a different person than the writer Hwang Suk-Young, he often functions--as do his uncle and sister-in-law--as a device to convey the author's own message to the reader. Moreover, the implicit projection of the author's own patently different circumstances in the representation of the character's sojourn in North Korea tends to diminish the reality of the work. To cite an obvious example, the North Korean authorities not only grant him permission to visit his home village, for which he had not applied beforehand, but also many other privileges as well. This cannot be explained merely by the Party's expectation that Yosop, a pastor in the U.S., would “work actively for the reunification of the fatherland” (117, F 128). It would have been quite different with Hwang Suk-Young, the renowned South Korean writer who had braved the National Security Law to come north: granting him extraordinary privileges would have been natural enough; and plausible, too, would be the expectation that on a visit to his ‘home town' (actually his father's native place) Sinchon he would be impressed by and help to publicize the crimes of Americans. But what chance was there that Ryu Yosop, who as a boy of fourteen had been an eyewitness to the scene, would come to agree with the Party's propaganda line by visiting the museum in Sinchon or the site of the massacre in Wonam-ri and by talki