Short stories
객지
Not translated into English
Hwang Sok-yong · 1971
Synopsis
On a polder construction site, itinerant workers have been hired by a company under a poorly defined status. Supervised by a hierarchy of minor and major bosses and watched over by guards, they are paid in tickets that are valid only within the company's grounds, so that they fall into debt and the place becomes for them a foreign land. The youngest want to start a strike, and the movement brings out courage in some, cowardice or resignation in others, while the guards resort to violence and the police lend a hand to the company.
Context
The text appeared in the spring 1971 issue of the journal Changjak-gwa Bipyeong. Its author had drawn it from his years on building sites and polders, and the site DH News links the setting of the story, named Unji, to the Gyehwa-do site, in Buan, in the sixties. The Translation Institute reads in it a labour dispute among construction workers, under a military dictatorship where free trade unions were banned. French critics have praised a precise, detached style, without grandiloquence.
Who it is for
A long short story with many characters; it appeared in French in 2004 together with a second narrative, under the title Les Terres étrangères.
Prizes and reception
Translated into Japanese as early as 1986, then into French and Spanish; the Seoul Shinmun ranks it among the landmark works of the seventies.
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