In these months and months of travel restrictions, I’ve been reading even more international fiction for even more armchair travel than usual. Here are some of my favorite stories set in Korea:
If I Had Your Face, by Frances Cha, tells the stories of five young women living and working in Seoul. There are so many American books and movies about young people trying to make it in New York City and this novel hits some of those familiar notes, with cruel supervisors, depressing dating problems, and that ache of being working-class right next to extreme privilege and luxury. But this is a distinctly Korean story, too. The novel also focuses on the importance of good family connections to get a job, the name-dropping of unfamiliar schools and neighborhoods, and the intense South Korean beauty industry. The mix of the familiar and foreign makes this an engrossing novel.
Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee, tells the story of a Korean family over several generations. One of the things I love in a good family saga is seeing one relationship affect the next, and seeing how one generation affects their children, intentionally or not, and Pachinko really excels. The highs and lows of this book are set in motion years and years earlier. Teenage Sunja’s pregnancy sets most of the novel in motion, although the story doesn’t start there. The novel shows us how Sunja’s life is a product of her parents’ lives, and as we discover other characters, they’re also clearly the product of their families and family decisions. The novel takes us through several generations, showing loyalty and secrets.
Fans of the final chapters of the novel, that deal with a younger generation of Korean-Americans, will enjoy Min Jin Lee’s other novel, Free Food For Millionaires.
Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, by Cho Nam-Joo, is a novel about gender discrimination, all written as the psych case notes for a patient. The story covers Jiyoung’s life, in a dispassionate way, from childhood through university, work, marriage and finally motherhood. I discovered after reading this that Kim Jiyoung is a pretty generic name, making this more of a story about a generation of women than about an individual. The story has uniquely Korean features, like mandatory work drinks and strict student hierarchy, but the endless waves of subtle gender discrimination that Jiyoung experiences feels familiar.
The author seems ready for the common insistence that, ok, maybe one or two women faced discrimination, but all of them? Aren’t you exaggerating a little? So there are regular footnotes throughout, which back up the narrative and constantly remind the reader that a woman’s lived experience is often not enough proof that her experiences are real.
Lisa See’s novel The Island of Sea Woman takes place on Korea’s Jeju Island, where women divers support themselves and their families by diving for shellfish, octopus, and more. I mostly knew of this place as a honeymoon destination, so I discovered a lot about these haenyeo divers. There’s a real sense of the mystery, power, and riches of the sea in this novel, beginning when young Young-sook and Mi-ja start training. This is a saga spanning generations, but the relationship between these women is the heart of the story. Lisa See’s novels excel at showing complex friendships between women (Shanghai Girls, etc.), and The Island of Sea Women is another example. The long years of loyalty and love between Mi-ja and Young-sook are tested and tried through the years by war, family loyalty, and more.
White Chrysanthemum, by Mary Lynn Bracht, also begins on Jeju Island and also includes haenyeo women. This novel tells the story of two sisters in Japanese-occupied Korea. I almost didn’t include this one because it’s such an upsetting story, but it’s beautiful, too.
Some parts are a little hard to read, simply because the forced marriage, the treatment of “comfort” women, and the wartime starvation aren’t plot devices for fictional Hana and Emi, they’re actual experiences for real women. The story moves through Jeju Island, Manchuria, Mongolia, and other places affected by the war, but not necessarily the first places that spring to mind (at least not for me), and I was very interested in seeing a new part of history.
My new interest in Jeju Island led me to the historical fiction, The Mermaid From Jeju by Sami Hahn. This book shows more about Jeju’s history and about haenyeo life, so I really enjoyed that part, although I found the second half of the book a bit disjointed. We’re introduced to characters and then pop into the future when their story is finished, and there are so many time jumps. It’s hard to really fall into a story when you’re trying to figure out how this scene connects to the last scene. Odd narrative choices but still worth a read if you’re interested in diving life and Jeju history.
Bonus reads: Cute YA novel I Believe In A Thing Called Love isn’t actually set in Korea, but it blends the K-drama staples with a YA romance. Perfect for fans of Netflix series Dramatown, a fun riff on the familiar scenes and beats of K-dramas.
And Honolulu is set in Hawaii, but the protagonist is a Korean picture-bride. Jin, nicknamed Regret in a family who prefers sons, makes her way to Hawaii with the other picture brides, all promised to Korean men, which begins her story of life in Hawaii. Korean culture plays a large role in this book, although not much of the novel actually takes place there.
What other Korean fiction do you recommend? I’m especially interested in any translated novels that might not be on my radar yet.