Narrative
A Lucky Day
운수 좋은 날
Hyeon Jin-geon · 1924
Synopsis
In a cold rain, in a colonial city, Kim Cheomji, a poor rickshaw puller, is in luck: two customers bring him eighty jeon from the morning, then a student pays him one won fifty, far more than usual. His wife, bedridden for days, had begged him not to go out, and he dreams of bringing her the beef broth she asks for. Sensing misfortune at home, he tries to delay his return, stops at a tavern and drinks, passing from joy to anger and tears.
Context
The story appeared in June 1924 in issue 48 of Gaebyeok. It is regarded as one of the high points of the realism of the twenties: its author left behind the autobiographical stories of intellectuals of his early work for third-person narration, and his character becomes the type of the colonised people, in the line of so-called new-tendency literature. The title contradicts the whole story, which is built on tragic irony, and the rain that never stops foretells the drama as much as it speaks of the poverty of the outskirts.
Who it is for
A brief story, its irony sustained from start to finish, translated into French in 2018 and into English in 2014.
Prizes and reception
The library of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea lists five translations, including one French and one English.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.