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BOOKMONGER
Found in translation:
context, understanding
Married for almost forty
years, Bruce and Ju-Chan
Fulton have spent more
than thirty of those years
working to translate literary
works from Korean into
English.
She is Korean born-
and-raised, but is fluent in
English and has lived in the
U.S. for many years and
earned a Master’s degree
from the University of
Washington. He’s a native
English speaker, but earned
his doctorate at Seoul Na-
tional University and now
holds the Young-Bin Min
Chair in Korean Literature
and Literary Translation at
the University of British
Columbia.
The latest effort from
the Seattle-based couple is
“Sunset: A Ch’ae Manshik
Reader.” This is an an-
thology featuring a wide
selection of works by Ch’ae
Manshik, who lived and
wrote in Korea in the first
half of the 20th century.
That was a turbulent
time in Korea’s history.
Japan occupied the Kore-
an Peninsula from 1910
to 1945. The Japanese
embarked on an ambitious
modernization campaign
in Korea, which before
then had been described
as a hermit kingdom. The
changes came at the bitter
cost of repression and
AUDITION NOTICE
disruption of a culturally
distinctive society that had
developed over a thousand
years, and Korean writers
during this period were
subjected to scrutiny and
intimidation by their colo-
nial overseers.
In an introduction that
really needs to be read
twice — once at the begin-
ning in order to understand
the general historical con-
text, and then again after
reading through the anthol-
ogy so as to connect the
dots further — the Fultons
trace Ch’ae’s navigation of
tricky ideological waters
as his writings contribute
to a “national literature”
that was constantly being
tugged in two opposite
directions: the expectation
that it would support the
occupiers, and the incli-
nation to give voice to the
occupied.
In a short essay writ-
ten in 1935, “A Writing
Worm’s Life,” Ch’ae mulls
over these pressures: “I
can’t tell what’s clean and
what’s murky in my life
…”
The Fultons also pro-
“Sunset: A Ch’ae
Manshik Reader”
Edited and translated
by Bruce and
Ju-Chan Fulton
Columbia University
Press
224 pp
Paperback $30
vide transcripts from later
roundtable discussions in
which Ch’ae further reflects
on the challenges of being a
writer in Korea at that time.
Today, much of Ch’ae’s
work is characterized as
satire, and readers who pay
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attention will note passages
that on the surface appear
to pay lip service to the
power structure, but also
contain undercurrents that
suggest otherwise.
Ch’ae started out as a
reporter, and that surely
informs the keen details
he transmits in his fiction
— from a young woman
“vivacious as a minnow,”
to the description of a drug
addict’s body: “a hideous
infestation of scabbed-over
boils surrounded by black-
and-blue bruises, along
with new boils of mung
bean-like protuberances
with an angry red halo
around them — all of them
coated with a gummy black
salve.”
“Sunset,” the title novel-
la, was published in 1948.
This piece investigates the
ways different characters
attempted to game a newly
post-colonial system that
had become unpredictable
and even treacherous.
It’s fascinating to con-
template the bifurcated Ko-
rea of today and consider
the insights this anthology
offers from the not-too-dis-
tant past. The Fultons’ work
makes that possible.
The Bookmonger is
Barbara Lloyd McMichael,
who writes this weekly col-
umn focusing on the books,
authors and publishers
of the Pacific Northwest.
Contact her at bkmonger@
nwlink.com
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