'The Shadow of Arms' by Hwang Sok-yong (Review)

After enjoying The Guest, I was looking forward to the second of the Hwang Sok-yong books I received from Seven Stories Press a while back.  As you can see from the cover, though, while The Guest was a slow, reflective novel about a man's return to Korea, today's choice is a slightly different work.  War, what is it good for?  Well, small business and the black market, apparently...

*****
The Shadow of Arms (translated by Chun Kyung-ja) is, rather unusually for a Korean book, set outside the Korean peninsula, taking us further South-West.  The novel takes place during the Vietnam War, where we meet a Korean soldier Ahn Yong-kyu, who is whisked out of the trenches to the city of Da Nang.  The lucky soldier has been chosen to replace a returning officer at the Joint Investigation headquarters - meaning his job has changed from hunting the Vietcong to looking for blackmarket cigarettes.

However, while life is certainly more comfortable in the city, it's by no means simpler.  The scale of the war entails a massive influx of consumer goods from America and elsewhere, leading to a black-market economy on a breath-taking scale.  Both sides in the conflict are syphoning off food, money, white goods and weapons from the warehouses scattered around the city, and it's inevitable that connections will be made between people on opposing sides.  When it comes to business in the back streets of Da Nang, Yong-kyu soon learns that you're never quite sure who exactly you're dealing with...

The story may start in the jungle, but The Shadow of Arms is a book which mostly plays out in the city.  It's a story of Koreans in the Vietnam war, there as support for their American allies and protectors, a story many people will be unaware of.  At times, it comes across as a kind of M*A*S*H* for black-market investigators, but without the humour - this is a serious book exploring serious issues.

It's made abundantly clear from the start that money is behind everything taking place in the country, with a picture drawn of people hooked on both opium and consumer products.  Early on, Yong-kyu has a glimpse of the packed American warehouses:

"What is a PX?  A Disneyland in a vast tin warehouse.  A place where an exhausted soldier with a few bloodstained military dollars can buy and possess dreams mass-produced by industrial enterprises.  The ducks and rabbits and fairies are replaced by machines and laughter and dances.  The wrapping paper and the boxes smell of rich oil and are as beautiful as flowers."
p.6 (Seven Stories Press, 2014)

A third-world country and first-world goods - it's no wonder that many people are led into the temptation of the black market...

The Korean newcomer proves himself to be surprisingly adaptive, soon making a name for himself in the markets of Da Nang.  While having to take part in the game in order to do his job, he's not greedy, diving into the black market mainly to make connections.  In doing so, he introduces the reader to a world of clubs, whore houses, American warehouses and back-street dealings - at which point many of you will be wondering where the war went.

It is out there, though, and Hwang does take us on occasional visits to the 'real' Vietnam.  The two other main characters in the book are Pham Quyen, a powerful Vietnamese Major, and his younger brother Pham Minh - an undercover agent for the National Liberation Front.  Away from Yong-kyu and his work, it's here we see some bloodshed amongst the corruption, receiving an insight into the mindset of both sides.

We also hear of atrocities, mainly from American court-martial reports.  These chapters take the form of written statements, in which soldiers are interviewed by the military police for their involvement in attacks on civilians.  Whole villages are murdered, women are raped and disposed of, yet the statements are taken calmly and filed away.  The way the crimes are handled is eerily clinical, in contrast with what actually happened...

The Shadow of Arms is a fascinating view of the Vietnam war from a different angle to the one most of us will have used before.  Yong-kyu acts as a quasi-neutral observer - he's mostly detached, but his mask does slip occasionally:

"Drink, drink, you'll feel great at heart, peel and and eat it while it's still soft and tender, chew it, relish it, suck it, suck it, stick it in deep and suck it, see you in a clean bedroom with graceful designs and tasteful decor, soft touch, for diminishing stamina, for indigestion, it'll make you younger, it'll make you sleep, stocks and savings and investments will make a deluge of money, of rifles machine guns rockets grenades cannon napalm helicopters tanks kill me take the GI money and run for the room down the hall, hey, whore here's your customer, take him to your room sit down lie down undress go ahead spread insert suck pay soldiers of the Cross rise up for the Lord go away brimstone is burning God bless Americans God bless America." (p.236)

As you can see, while he's usually cool and professional in his work, even he gets a little disillusioned with what's going on in the country...

While both sides have their bad points, the book certainly dwells more on the shortcomings of Americans.  Certainly, an American (especially one with a personal connection to the war) might be more affected by the negative portrayal of their behaviour than I was, and there's little about Vietcong atrocities until the end of the novel.  For this reason, The Shadow of Arms (based on Hwang's own experiences in Vietnam) was a controversial book in Korea; in fact, the second part was only published after a political change of regime.

The Shadow of Arms is an interesting read, but there are a few issues I had with it.  The book needed a conclusion after the development of relationships between Yong-kyu and the two brothers, but it seemed a little forced, too quick and contrived.  As a whole, the book suffers a little from the uneasy mix of literary fiction and thriller (similar to the issues I had last year with Ryu Murakami's From the Fatherland, With Love).

In some places, the translation also seemed a little off.  There were unusual typos ('of' for 'off' in some phrasal verbs, 'taught' instead of 'taut') which perhaps should have been picked up (and may have been in a later print).  I also found it hard to distinguish between the Americans and Koreans at times, although I actually found that the Vietnamese characters were much clearer and more distinct.

Perhaps a question to resolve here is who would enjoy this book most.  I have a feeling that it's less for lovers of K-Lit and literary fiction than readers interested in the Vietnam War, as it's a solid novel which looks at the conflict from a new angle.  It gives us a picture of Da Nang as a temporarily multi-cultural city, a Vietnamese Casablanca, if you will.  The moral of the story, though?  Well, that's hard to distill into one idea, but where there's a war, you need cocktails and dancing, and there's always someone who can get his hands on them - at a price...

'The Guest' by Hwang Sok-yong (Review)

We're back to Korean literature today, and after looking at work by such luminaries as Yi Mun-yol, Park Wan-suh and Kim Young-ha, we have another big name to add to the list.  The book itself is a good one too - after several looks at South Korea, we finally get our first extended glimpse of the North...

*****
Hwang Sok-yong's The Guest (translated by Kyung-Ja Chun and Maya West, review copy courtesy of Seven Stories Press) is an excellent novel focused on an atrocity which happened during the Korean War.  The main character is Reverend Ryu Yosop, a Korean man who moved to the United States, escaping from the chaos left by the civil war.

Now, forty years later, he has the chance to return to North Korea, one of a number of emigrants permitted to meet family members again.  Just before his departure, though, his elder brother Yohan passes away, and Yosop's homecoming turns into something more than just an opportunity to see some relatives.  You see, Yohan was responsible for some terrible things back in Korea, and it's now left to Yosop to face up to the ghosts of the past.  And when I say ghosts...

The Guest is a book which was met with dismay by the authorities on both sides of the border, and it's little wonder considering the subject matter.  It deals with a massacre in a collection of towns in the North in the middle of the Korean War, an incident which was blamed on the advancing American soldiers.  However, it turns out that the murders were all carried out by Koreans, with Ryu Yohan being amongst the leaders of those carrying out the atrocities.

Hwang structures his book in such a way that the reader is pulled in two directions (chronologically, that is).  We follow Yosop on his journey back to North Korea, and through his eyes we see the changes that have occurred in forty years, allowing us a rare insight into the country.  For the elderly reverend, it's to prove an emotional homecoming, despite his tainted memories:

"The moment he uttered Ch'ansaemgol, Yosop realized that some forty years had passed since he'd last mentioned the name of his hometown.  Ch'ansaemgol.  The word started out with the scent of a mountain berry, lingering at the tip of one's tongue - but then the fragrance suddenly turned into the stench of rotting fish.  It was as if a blob of black paint had been dumped on a watercolor filled with tender, pale-green leaves, the darkness slowly seeping outward towards the edges."
p.15 (Seven Stories Press, 2007)

It's with as much trepidation as joy that the old man heads off to Korea.

However, what he finds there surprises him (and perhaps us...).  He arrives to find a country which, if not as advanced as the US, or South Korea, is nonetheless a normal functioning place.  While the officials in charge of the tour are naturally suspicious of every step he takes outside the officially-sanctioned timetable, they help him to meet up with surviving relatives and even allow him to have a glimpse of his home village.  Still, not everyone's pleased to see him...

This is all due to what happened in the past, and the second strand, compiled from various eye-witness accounts, tells of the build-up to the massacre, before detailing the actions of those few horrific days.  Hwang tells the reader about the slow rise of Christianity on the Korean peninsula, and the inevitable clash of cultures which was to occur when the Communists, supported by China, began to throw their weight about after the liberation from the Japanese at the end of the Second World War.  The two imported ideologies, utterly incompatible, are the catalyst for a breakdown of the family- and community-based life the Koreans are accustomed to - the war is almost merely an excuse for the fighting to start.

The title is an interesting one.  Much as you'd assume that Yosop is the guest, there are several others highlighted in the novel.  The two foreign ideologies, Christianity and Communism, are treated as unwelcome guests (depending on where you're standing), and the word is also a euphemism for smallpox, another unwelcome 'guest', brought into the country by foreigners:

"You don't know how scary the Guest can be, do you?  Just over the past few years, in this valley alone, hundreds of children have died from it.  Even if you survive, I'm telling you, it's no use - the Guest scars you, it scars your face, leaves you marked for life." (p.43)

It's a warning about the dangers of imported evils - and a premonition of what's to come later.

One of the more interesting features of the novel, though, is the way in which Yosop is forced to face up to the ghosts of the past - literally.  You see, while most novels would be content with flashbacks, The Guest uses the protagonists themselves to tell the reader what happened, dragging them back from the other side of the grave.  Yosop has several encounters with his brother and other villagers, at one point becoming overwhelmed by the encounters with the ghosts:

"As soon as the tail of this group disappeared into the next room, Yosop began to wonder whether all the tourists in the group might not be dead." (p.93)

Luckily, he realises that he's not the only one receiving these guests.  One night, he and his uncle sit down for a final chat with a whole host of the dearly departed...

The Guest is a book I enjoyed greatly, an informative, fascinating story on a topic which can't help but intrigue.  The translation is smooth and enjoyable to read (although I wasn't sure we needed quite so many footnotes on Korean clothes and food items).  Of the Korean books I've read so far this year, this is probably the one I'd recommend most highly as it's a great mix of story and traditional culture.  It might be a little dry for some, but there's something there for most to enjoy.  I'm certainly happy I got to encounter another talented Korean writer, and you can rest assured that I'll be looking at some more of Hwang's work - hopefully quite soon, too ;)