Jo says writers must face truth of history
FRANKFURT, Oct. 21 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's best-selling novelist, Jo Jung-rae, has lived a life as turbulent as modern Korean history torn apart by ideological conflicts.
"I've received tremendous physical and mental abuse over the past decades," Jo recalled Friday in an interview with Yonhap during the Oct. 19-23 Frankfurt Book Fair. He is one of the 12 writers selected to represent South Korea, the fair's guest of honor this year.
Soon after his 1980s epic novel series, "Taebaek Sanmaek," or the Taebaek mountains, made a splash at bookstores, conservatives derided them as pro-North Korean. The novel's name Taebaek means the mountain chains which stretch down almost vertically through the length of the Korean Peninsula.
For years, the novel was a must-read for the country's university students. It was the first Korean novel to deal with the pro-North Korean partisan fighters' dream of establishing a communist regime in pro-Western South Korea. The series also had historical value as a spotlight on lives torn apart by the 1950-53 Korean War.
But in focusing on the human side of communist fighters, Jo broke a long-standing taboo and suffered heavy consequences. He was suspected of violating the nation's tough anti-communist National Security Law.
Jo's long ordeal ended in April of last year, when prosecutors decided not to file charges against him.
"I want to cry out to the world that oppressing a writer simply because of the idea that he preaches is a political evil that the entire human society might commit, not just South Korea," he said.
Jo maintains that novelists must step in where historians fail.
"When there is something wrong with historians who have a mission of writing down what is worth being remembered, writers should do that," he emphasized. "If they disregard the truth, they are no longer writers."
After a year of study and research, Jo began another multi-volume epic novel, "Arirang," a story of farmers who lost land during the 1910-1945 Japanese colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula and moved to Hawaii, Manchuria and Russia with anti-Japanese sentiments. The novel was completed in 1995.
After traveling himself to such countries as Vietnam, Saudi Arabia and Germany, Jo in 1997 embarked on his third historical novel series, "Han River," and completed it four years later. Han is the river running through Seoul, the South Korean capital.
Today, at 62, he looks back on 20 years of writing that has produced 51,500 manuscript pages, forming a stack three times as tall as he.
Jo was an elementary school student when the Korean War broke out. His still-fresh memories of the war inspired him to write a novel set in that period.
"I still feel the pain that I felt at the time. As other Koreans in my age might do, I always try to eat three meals a day. I already bought an woolen robe because it was too cold here in Germany. That's a kind of mental disease. But the scars of war remain in mind," he said.
This is borne out at the South Korean box office, where most hits are about the Korean War or ideological confrontation, he said, citing "Taegukgi," "Silmido," "JSA (Joint Security Area)" and "Welcome to Dongmakgol."
"South Koreans have aspirations for inter-Korean reunification and to wash out scars of war in their mind," he said.
"Taebaek Sanmaek" was published in Japan eight years ago and the complete 12-volume series of "Arirang" was published in France by the country's L'Harmattan publishing house in 2003. The same publisher is translating the "Taebaek Sanmaek" series in French with two of the 10 volumes already published.
"The Japanese publisher of 'Taebaek Sanmaek' told me that the books are not simply a story of the Korean War, but about how superpowers torment people of a weak country," he said. "The message of 'Arirang' is the same. That's how imperialists persecuted people of smaller countries. That's exactly what I meant to say in these novels."
The common virtue of human beings is "co-existence and peace," he emphasized.
"I've received tremendous physical and mental abuse over the past decades," Jo recalled Friday in an interview with Yonhap during the Oct. 19-23 Frankfurt Book Fair. He is one of the 12 writers selected to represent South Korea, the fair's guest of honor this year.
Soon after his 1980s epic novel series, "Taebaek Sanmaek," or the Taebaek mountains, made a splash at bookstores, conservatives derided them as pro-North Korean. The novel's name Taebaek means the mountain chains which stretch down almost vertically through the length of the Korean Peninsula.
For years, the novel was a must-read for the country's university students. It was the first Korean novel to deal with the pro-North Korean partisan fighters' dream of establishing a communist regime in pro-Western South Korea. The series also had historical value as a spotlight on lives torn apart by the 1950-53 Korean War.
But in focusing on the human side of communist fighters, Jo broke a long-standing taboo and suffered heavy consequences. He was suspected of violating the nation's tough anti-communist National Security Law.
Jo's long ordeal ended in April of last year, when prosecutors decided not to file charges against him.
"I want to cry out to the world that oppressing a writer simply because of the idea that he preaches is a political evil that the entire human society might commit, not just South Korea," he said.
Jo maintains that novelists must step in where historians fail.
"When there is something wrong with historians who have a mission of writing down what is worth being remembered, writers should do that," he emphasized. "If they disregard the truth, they are no longer writers."
After a year of study and research, Jo began another multi-volume epic novel, "Arirang," a story of farmers who lost land during the 1910-1945 Japanese colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula and moved to Hawaii, Manchuria and Russia with anti-Japanese sentiments. The novel was completed in 1995.
After traveling himself to such countries as Vietnam, Saudi Arabia and Germany, Jo in 1997 embarked on his third historical novel series, "Han River," and completed it four years later. Han is the river running through Seoul, the South Korean capital.
Today, at 62, he looks back on 20 years of writing that has produced 51,500 manuscript pages, forming a stack three times as tall as he.
Jo was an elementary school student when the Korean War broke out. His still-fresh memories of the war inspired him to write a novel set in that period.
"I still feel the pain that I felt at the time. As other Koreans in my age might do, I always try to eat three meals a day. I already bought an woolen robe because it was too cold here in Germany. That's a kind of mental disease. But the scars of war remain in mind," he said.
This is borne out at the South Korean box office, where most hits are about the Korean War or ideological confrontation, he said, citing "Taegukgi," "Silmido," "JSA (Joint Security Area)" and "Welcome to Dongmakgol."
"South Koreans have aspirations for inter-Korean reunification and to wash out scars of war in their mind," he said.
"Taebaek Sanmaek" was published in Japan eight years ago and the complete 12-volume series of "Arirang" was published in France by the country's L'Harmattan publishing house in 2003. The same publisher is translating the "Taebaek Sanmaek" series in French with two of the 10 volumes already published.
"The Japanese publisher of 'Taebaek Sanmaek' told me that the books are not simply a story of the Korean War, but about how superpowers torment people of a weak country," he said. "The message of 'Arirang' is the same. That's how imperialists persecuted people of smaller countries. That's exactly what I meant to say in these novels."
The common virtue of human beings is "co-existence and peace," he emphasized.
posted by Joa at
Thursday, October 27, 2005
