South Korea – Please Look After Mother
By Kyung-sook Shin
The last time that I was aware of the idea of a “Korean farmer” was in 2005, when hordes of them came to Hong Kong to protest against the WTO meeting held here. The Korean farmers organized more than a thousand members to rally behind their cause against globalization. That there are still peasants living in the industrial powerhouse that is of South Korea today is beyond my ordinary stretch of imagination. Yet the “Korean farmer” comes alive in this book by South Korean author Kyung-sook Shin, who tells the gripping tale of a countryside mother lost in the metropolis of Seoul and the fruitless effort to search for her by her family.
The story of this heartbreaking disappearance is told through the eyes of four people in the family, with regret being the thread that weaves together the joys and pains of fifty years of family life in the countryside. Park So-nyo, the mother of the family, can grow anything that she touches. Amidst flavorful descriptions of the rustic food that she makes, the story unfolds and lays bare the tensions felt between generations, spouses, in-laws, and siblings. As the protagonists in each chapter reminisce their time with mom, readers are led into a world of delicate balance between familial obligations, personal sacrifices, spousal loyalties and the hopes and dreams that parents had for their children, all taking place in a difficult period of post-war reconstruction followed by a take-off of significant economic development and urbanization.
Yet despite its setting in a faraway place and time, in a peasantry and poverty that is little known even to most of the South Koreans today, the human emotions, aspirations and frailties revealed are familiar to all of us. As the readers are told in the first chapter that mom buys her eldest daughter the first book she owns in her life after selling a litter of puppies, the daughter’s choice of Human, All Too Human seems to foretell the lament with which the readers will greet the ending. This book has the power to elicit my deepest sympathies and moved me to abundant tears.
This book has been recommended by the Guardian’s World Literature Tour.