Short stories
배따라기
Not translated into English
Kim Tong-in · 1921
Synopsis
One spring day, on the banks of the Taedong, the narrator, who dreams of an ideal beauty before the landscape, hears the boatmen's song and goes looking for the man who sings it. He finds a man who agrees to tell him his life story. Nineteen years earlier, he lived in Yeongyu with a beautiful wife and his younger brother; jealous of the affection his wife showed his brother, he often quarrelled with her. One day, he misreads a scene in which the two of them are chasing a mouse, and drives his wife out of the house.
Context
The story appeared in June 1921 in the ninth and last issue of the journal Changjo, then in a collection of 1948. It is a frame narrative: the narrator meets the boatman whose song drew him, listens to him, then loses sight of him. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture sees in it the failure of real life transformed into art, links the two parts through the song, notes weaknesses in the chain of causes, but makes it a finished example of the modern Korean short story. Ridibooks says it is drawn from a legend.
Who it is for
A short story of about ten thousand characters in Korean, built in two parts around an encounter.
Prizes and reception
Ranked among the author's major short stories, and translated into Chinese in 2010 under the title 船歌.
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