The Story of Hong Gildong, Anonymous, trans. Minsoo Kang, Penguin Classics, 2016, £9.99 (paperback)
Thirty minutes north west of Seoul, next to the Han River, is the government-sponsored Paju Book City, a sprawling office complex from where most of South Korea’s publishing industry – that makes a massive $2.7 billion per year – operates. The buildings, which are smart and modern with windows that overlook trees, creeks, wetland and reed-land, house over two hundred and fifty publishers and printers who release tens of thousands of titles a year, negotiate deals with foreign publishers and find ways to spread Korean literature around the world. Along with initiatives born from Paju Book City, a recent surge of interest in fiction in translation in the West has brought many Korean titles to English-speaking countries. Following South Korean author, Han Kang’s and translator, Deborah Smith’s victory in the 2016 International Man Booker Prize for the strange and phantasmagorical The Vegetarian, South Korea has garnered a reputation for being a place from which we can expect exciting and innovative new literature.
Penguin’s recent Korean release, however, presents something very different. The Story of Hong Gildong, the first Korean title to appear on the Penguin Classics list, has no credited author or definitive date of composition. Instead it names only the translator, Minsoo Kang, who, in the introduction attempts to identify the story’s origins. The Story of Hong Gildong is a typical vigilante story. Hong Gildong is born to a Joseon-era state minister and his lowborn concubine. Due to his secondary status, even when Gildong grows up to become a gifted writer and archer, he is not permitted to become a general or minister. When he develops magical powers and superhuman strength, he is still treated with disrespect and a plot against his life forces him to leave his father’s household. Denied the future he feels entitled to, Gildong – in self-imposed exile – begins taking what is not his; he joins with a group of bandits, becomes their leader and steals from high officials all over the country, tricking them with his sorcery. This plot is familiar; Kang compares it to those folklore tales of Robin Hood of England, Song Jiang of China and Nezumi Kozo of Japan and others, explaining that, amongst other unifying themes, Gildong does not take from the common man and only takes from the rich, like the heroic outlaws of other cultures.
Kang’s translation, continuing this comparison, also adopts the language of English folklore; the prose is economical, fast-paced and non-descriptive and, at times, fairy-tale like (the story opens, ‘in the time of the ascension of King Seonjong, […] there lived a…’) and any descriptive passages are memorable and grand and/or repeated throughout (for example, Hong Gildong is born with a ‘face the colour of snow’ and a ‘presence […] as grand as the autumn moon’; he also has ‘strength of body and brilliance of intellect’). The legacy of this story hinges on not only its vigilante plot, but also these memorable descriptions and passages – preserved by Kang in the English – that people, since its conception, have quoted and repeated in retellings. Kang writes: Most Koreans [even if they have not read the text], can recite the hero Hong Gildong’s lament at his condition as an illegitimate child. Even though he is a sturdy man of great talent he is not allowed to “address his father as Father and his older brother as Brother.”
The origin of The Story of Hong Gildong is hazy and has been complicated by various misconceptions and misattributions. In his introduction, Kang debunks several myths about it; he challenges, first, the idea that it was written by Joseon dynasty poet and statesman Heo Gyun (1569-1618); second, that The Story of Hong Gildong was a ‘manifesto of Heo Gyun’s radical political ideas’; and, third, that it was the first work of fiction to be composed in Hangul, Korea’s twenty-eight character phonetic alphabet, invented in 1446 by King Sejong to improve literacy rates.
Kang explains that these misconceptions ‘have been firmly established in the public consciousness through repetition in Korean school textbooks.’ In a fascinating section exploring and challenging scholarly writing on Hong Gildong, Kang expertly pieces together the story’s true origins. He locates the story’s conception in the middle of the nineteenth century, notes that ‘there is no record of anyone actually having read a work entitled The Story of Hong Gildong until the second half of the nineteenth century’ and explains that there is no evidence for it being the first piece of fiction written in Hangul (this myth was first purported by a Japanese scholar in 1948). He credits the work not to highborn poet-politician, Heo, but to a ‘likely anonymous writer of secondary or commoner status’. Kang argues that Gildong’s journey in The Story of Hong Gildong can be considered a metaphor for the history of modern Korea, a country that, following rule under Imperial Japan and the division of North and South – like Gildong – has faced and recovered from humiliation, disrespect and oppression.
The themes of The Story of Hong Gildong ‘[have] a profound resonance in the Korean psyche,’ Kang explains and, perhaps because of this, The Story of Hong Gildong remains iconic and popular in Korea. So ubiquitous is the story, he continues, that, as with the name John Doe in England, Hong Gildong appears on forms in Korea, indicating where a signee must write his or her name. Considering its huge legacy, relevance and lasting influence, it is alarming to think that, for so long, the story’s origins have been misconceived and the work wrongly credited. Due to this, the publication of Kang’s introduction is arguably as important as his new translation of the text itself. The Story of Hong Gildong gives us insight into Korea’s long and rich history of storytelling. To not know of English classics is to not fully understand the history and influences of contemporary English literature. The same might be said for classical Korean literature and the new literature emerging from Paju Book City and beginning to appear in the West today. Hong Gildong is an aspect of a sprawling literary history, under the influence of which many new works are today being written.
Claire Kohda Hazelton writes on books for The Guardian, The Observer, The Financial Times and The Times Literary Supplement. For the latter, she writes mainly on South East Asia of which she has a particular interest in post war society and literarture in Japan and contemporary Korean literature. For other publcations, she writes, most often, on fiction in translation. Claire is also a violinst and has played with various ensembles including The English Chamber Orchestra.