Author: Jo Jungrae
summary
Ch’on Mansok was born as a poor boy serving the Ch’oe family and had felt intense resentment toward his oppression since his childhood. He joins the People’s Liberation Army in his youth in hopes of reclaiming power and punishing his oppressors; his wife, Chomnye, leads the Alliance of Democratic Women. Unbeknownst to him, Chomnye has an affair with the PLA commander. He kills both of them when he catches them having sex, and thus has to flee his hometown. His parents and son are killed for his actions after the Ch’oe family regains power. He becomes a manual laborer. When he is fifty, he meets Sunim, who is around thirty. They have a son together, and he does his best to provide for his family. However, after taking a job further away from home, he comes back to find that his wife had run away with a younger guy. He becomes homeless, gives up his son, and dies unknown under the bridge in his hometown after finding out his one benefactor, Mr. Hwang, had died ten years past.
notes
- Class struggles and resentment
- Righteous indignation
- Personal anger
- Anger and rebellion as a privilege
- Anger as a tool
- Misunderstood intentions
- Crab incident
- Expectation to hold one’s tongue
- Crab incident
- Acts of violence
- War
- Killing wife and commander
- Beating the Ch’oe (Cheong in original) kids
- Getting hit first
- Receiving verbal abuse for being a commoner
- His father getting beat up for his son’s mistakes
- Verbal abuse toward wife
- Sexuality as a reclamation of power in Land of Exile
- Pure speculation
- Could also be blackmail or coercion
- Irony of unknown corpse — he is forgotten, just like many in the war
- Unable to escape cycle of war
- Gap between ideals of vengeance and justice and reality
- Eye-for-an-eye justice
- Where is the line drawn? When do you stop?
- Cyclic violence
- Rebellion against meek father and society
lecture (2025-04-15)
- Fragmented narrative
- Moving back and forth between present and past
- Blurred lines
- Impact of past
- How present can color/bring up memories
- Moving back and forth between present and past
- Timeline
- Born in Japanese occupation of Korea (Ch’oe yangban power, collaborators) 1926
- Crab catching incident, age 12, 1938
- Family allowed back in home, age 16, 1942
- Married at 21, 1947
- Beginning of Korean War at 24, 1950
- Korean War 1950
- Joins the People’s Army
- Joins the South Korean Army (ROK forces)
- Marries Sumin (33) at 49, 1975
- Death at 54, c. 1980
- Anger, nature or nurture?
- Generations of oppression
- Yangban: old systems of power during Joseon period
- Work from Japanese
- Mansok may have come from old slave classes
- Rigid social structures
- → Appeals of Communist ideas
- Yangban: old systems of power during Joseon period
- Transactional marriages
- Generational trauma
- Power breeding violence
- Violence and instability go hand in hand
thoughts
- Mansok’s hatred toward women makes me uncomfortable
- Spitting up blood — tuberculosis?
related
highlights
— Page: 2, added on Sun Apr 13 21:41:53 2025 Every son must have a father. It’s only natural that he should know.’
--- — Page: 4, added on Sun Apr 13 21:45:18 2025 The boy’s thin back resisted the prodding with a: pressure that passed through the old man’s hand and spread hotly through his body.
--- — Page: 5, added on Sun Apr 13 21:47:56 2025 He was tormented as much by the undying hatred he felt for his wife as he was by feelings o f remorse.
--- — Page: 10, added on Sun Apr 13 21:52:49 2025 It was a past he’d never told a soul, ever since he had fled his home under cover of the early evening dusk, driven by gunfire of the People’s Army, with which he had sided until the day before.
--- — Page: 12, added on Sun Apr 13 21:56:52 2025 Mansok listened to the drawn-out screams with a pleasure that thrilled every joint in his body. T h e sense of pleasure was, in fact, one of sweet revenge. All the sorrow and pain and mortification they had all known over generations o f slavery, and that he himself had endured for his twenty-five years, was slowly,_ slowly washed away by that thrilling pleasure.
--- — Page: 15, added on Sun Apr 13 22:01:42 2025 we live a life only to continue our bloodline.
--- — Page: 16, added on Sun Apr 13 22:02:28 2025 Now open those ears of yours and listen, before I break off those pretty legs: you just park yourself in a corner and stay put! Whether we eat or go hungry, we’ll do as I see fit.’
--- — Page: 21, added on Mon Apr 14 09:16:07 2025 ‘Our world today is just what it was when you people ran around like maniacs. There’s only one difference to speak o f - it’s. under new ownership. This world’s as treacherous as a seesaw.’
--- — Page: 23, added on Mon Apr 14 09:18:21 2025 Since he would be out to satisfy his hunger, there was nothing scary to Mansok about the crab claws.
--- — Page: 23, added on Mon Apr 14 09:19:05 2025 1hat much pain was no big deaf, Mansok thought, i f he could rid himself o f the hunger that coloured his vision yellow and made his knees buckle.
--- — Page: 25, added on Mon Apr 14 09:20:27 2025 Yet again he was up against the unfairness he had to face because he was a commoner. The prejudice wasn’t something expressed in words. Since it was unreasoning, words were unnecessary, completely useless. It all came down to doing as he was told.
--- — Page: 27, added on Mon Apr 14 09:24:02 2025 Neither you nor I have done anything wrong, except for being born with the wrong blood in our veins.
--- — Page: 29, added on Mon Apr 14 09:28:37 2025 When have those people ever fed us? We worked our fingers to the bone so the likes of them could get big and fat, and all we eat, is chaff and sweepings - it’s barely enough to live on.’
--- — Page: 31, added on Mon Apr 14 09:32:54 2025 He was willing to do almost anything i f it meant putting something in a stomach that knew only constant hunger.
--- — Page: 33, added on Mon Apr 14 09:35:36 2025 Perhaps it was this rootlessness that made him want to see Old Hwang again.
--- — Page: 36, added on Mon Apr 14 09:39:27 2025 Children, when they caught sight o f a snake, would turn tail and run away. But then, all it took was for somebody to catch one, then they would all grab stones and go on the attack.
— Page: 36, added on Mon Apr 14 09:38:35 2025 So the c,:hildren were only satisfied i f they could stone a snake to death and chop it into pieces.
— Page: 42, added on Mon Apr 14 09:45:27 2025 The man takes the horrific killing and being killed of that time as simply another entertaining tale of long, long ago. That’s what thirty years adds up to.