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English(English) Article

Three Diaspora: of Departure, of Division, of Change | LIST

About the Article

Article
http://list.or.kr/node/1051
Journal
list_Books from Korea
Issued Date
-
Page
-
Language
English(English)
Country
SOUTH KOREA
City
Seoul
Book
BLACK FLOWER
Writer
Kim Young-ha
Translator
Chales La Shure

About the Author

  • Kim Young-ha
  • Birth : 1968 ~ -
  • Occupation : Novelist
  • First Name : Young-ha
  • Family Name : Kim
  • Korean Name : 김영하
  • ISNI : 000000012148951X
  • Works : 96
Descriptions - 1 Languages
  • English(English)

Three Diaspora: of Departure, of Division, of Change Author's Profile By Kim Young-ha on Nov 15 2014 21:09:43 Vol.24 Summer 2014 “Kim brings us the souls caught up on the ground of this larger drama.”  — Minneapolis Star Tribune   My grandfather went to Manchuria during the Japanese occupation where there were many Koreans that had left the peninsula. He started a business, but when it didn’t go well, he set sail for Japan. When Korea was liberated, he moved his family back to Gyeongsang-do Province where he had been born. My father-in-law was also born in Japan. My father and father-in-law discovered at the sanggyeonnye, or formal meeting between two families before a wedding, that they were the same age and given the period they were born into, had childhood histories that followed similar trajectories. They were both born in Japan into families that had gone there to find work, and returned to Korea and settled down after liberation. In the early 20th century, hundreds of thousands left the Korean peninsula and went to Manchuria or Japan. My father and father-in-law returned to Korea, but far more people remained. If the grandfathers of me or my wife had not returned, we’d be referred to as joseonjok (descendants of Koreans in China) or jaeil gyopo (descendants of Koreans in Japan) today. My novel, Black Flower, is based on true events that took place in 1905. One thousand and thirty-three Koreans left for Mexico after they were hired to work as laborers on henequen plantations. Some of them were swept up in the Mexican Revolution and others were involved in the Guatemalan Civil War, but most of them buried their bones there. Black Flower portrays a facet of the stereotypical diaspora experienced by the lower class when Korea was caught in a political whirlwind in the early 20th century.

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