Short stories
소낙비
Not translated into English
Kim Yu-jeong · 1935
Opening lines
음산한 검은 구름이 하늘에 뭉게뭉게 모여드는 것이 금시라도 비 한줄기 할 듯하면서도 여전히 짓궂은 햇발은 겹겹 산속에 묻힌 외진 마을을 통째로 자실 듯이 달구고 있었다.
Gloomy black clouds were piling up in the sky as though a shower might fall at any moment, yet the mischievous sunlight still blazed down on the remote village buried deep in the folds of the mountains, as if to swallow it whole.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from ko.wikisource.org
Synopsis
In a mountain village under Japanese colonial rule, a peasant who has lost his leased land looks for money to pay his debts and try his luck at gambling. He pushes his wife to give herself, for money, to a rich old man, a notable of the village. The story follows this wretched couple whom survival leads beyond all morality, in a tone where comedy masks real distress. The story also gives its title to the French collection, in which other peasant couples come together and fall apart.
Context
The story won the Chosun Ilbo spring competition in 1935 and made its author known, in the same year as another narrative distinguished by the Joseon Jungang Ilbo. Ridibooks reads in it the grotesque and tragic theme of the woman sold, the misery of the colonial countryside and characters whom survival detaches from rules. In French, it names the volume translated by Choi Mikyung and Jean-Noël Juttet, published by Zulma in 2000 and reissued in 2005, in which peasant life under the occupation comes through comic or scandalous adventures.
Who it is for
A short story, raw and funny, about peasant poverty; to be read in the French collection that bears its title.
Prizes and reception
Awarded a prize by the Chosun Ilbo in 1935, it marks, for its Korean readers, the author's entry into literature.
Sources for this page 5
The pages consulted to check this page.