Hwang reinvents both himself and Korean fiction

Hwang Suk-young, 64, is both a classic and contemporary writer. He took Korean fiction to a higher level in the 1970s, and reinvented the Korean novel in the 21st century.
His personal story is long and fraught with adversity. For Hwang, there was no 1990s. He visited North Korea in 1989, an illegal act at the time, resulting in his living in exile for almost four years. In 1993, as soon as he returned to Korea, he was arrested and locked in jail. He returned to society in 1998. His return was different from the comebacks of some legendary authors, who lost their creativity. After a long break, he published “The Old Garden” in 2000, “The Guest” in 2001 and “Simcheong” in 2003, novels said to have opened a new era in Korean literature.
In “The Old Garden,” he overlaps two different time frames, and in “The Guest,” he portrayed the massacre in Hwanghae Province during the Korean War (1950-1953) using an exorcism theme. For “Simcheong,” he rewrote modern Asian history as the Korean fairy tale, “The Story of Simcheong.”
In the 21st century, Hwang’s fiction has advanced to a phase that other Korean novelists have not entered. His work seems unfamiliar and is on a larger scale than even a novel sequence. His current style of literature is contemporary in every sense.
Hwang recently published a new feature-length novel, “Baridegi.” Baridegi is the name of a princess in a Korean myth.
Hwang came to Korea last weekend from Paris, where he resides.
“I have been shaping the idea since I was in jail,” he said.
Baridegi was a mythical girl, abandoned and reared by strangers who brought medicinal water from the underworld and brought her father back to life. The story emphasizes filial devotion.
Hwang has completely recreated the myth as a modern, international story. The story is about a North Korean defector, a girl named Bari, who wandered around China and secretly stowed away on a ship bound for Britain. Hwang narrated the story with his typical precise tone.
His experiment with structure shines again. “I put a lot of effort into two scenes where I turned the myth into a fairy tale,” he said. One scene had Bari suffering in the ship and the other embarking on her journey to the next world. In the two scenes, he intentionally obscured the line between fantasy and reality.
The fiction begins with Korean themes and moves on to embrace global issues. He describes the themes as “migration and harmony.” By migration, he means that the world is becoming more integrated, and by harmony he intends to indicate the state of people of different nationalities living together.
“The European society I experienced was very unstable. People from former colonies become illegal immigrants and comprise the lower class in Europe. There are thieves everywhere, and the welfare system is insecure. This is the result of imperialism in the 19th century,” he said.
Hwang included Korean and international themes in a Korean structure in the novel, for he knows this is the only way for Korean fiction to be read and appreciated overseas.

By Son Min-ho JoongAng Ilbo [jbiz91@joongang.co.kr]