Novel
Your Paradise
당신들의 천국
Yi Cheong-jun · 1976
Synopsis
Colonel Jo Baek-heon is appointed director of the hospital on the island of Sorokdo, where lepers have been gathered, and wants to make it a paradise for them. His great project is a sea-wall construction that would link the island to the mainland, at the price of hard labour imposed on the patients. They remember a former director, Ju Jeong-su, who had a statue raised to himself and subjected them to forced labour, and they are wary. The official Lee Sang-uk argues that a freedom granted by a benevolent master is no freedom at all, and the patients' elder, Hwang Hui-baek, puts love before freedom.
Context
The novel appeared in book form in 1976 from Moonji. The Literature Translation Institute reads in it an allegory of the political situation in Korea after the Yushin constitution, and a questioning of whether a community founded on love and trust is possible. The Kyunghyang Shinmun sees in it the ordeal that power puts the one who holds it through, and a challenge to Park Chung-hee's dictatorship of development. According to the Hankyung, the main characters are inspired by real people.
Who it is for
A long novel of political and moral reflection rather than action; translated into French in 1993 and into English in 2004.
Prizes and reception
Reprinted more than a hundred times since its publication, and also translated into Spanish in 2003.
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