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| Winter in Sokcho |
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It’s winter in Sokcho, a tourist town on the border between South and North Korea. The cold slows everything down. Bodies are red and raw, the fish turn venomous, beyond the beach guns point out from the North’s watchtowers. A young French Korean woman works as a receptionist in a tired guesthouse. One evening, an unexpected guest arrives: a French cartoonist determined to find inspiration in this desolate landscape.
The two form an uneasy relationship. When she agrees to accompany him on trips to discover an ‘authentic’ Korea, they visit snowy mountaintops and dramatic waterfalls, and cross into North Korea. But he takes no interest in the Sokcho she knows – the gaudy neon lights, the scars of war, the fish market where her mother works. As she’s pulled into his vision and taken in by his drawings, she strikes upon a way to finally be seen.
An exquisitely-crafted debut, which won the Prix Robert Walser, Winter in Sokcho is a novel about shared identities and divided selves, vision and blindness, intimacy and alienation. Elisa Shua Duspain’s voice is distinctive and unmistakable
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Book ID
Title : Winter in Sokcho
Author : Elisa Shua Dusapin
Published : 2020
Publisher : Daunt Books Publishing
Genre : Contemporer
Pages : 156
Well, I finished it in past an hour considering thin pages and bigger fonts ( another reason made me grunting because it is more expensive compare to other books). It is easy to read but deeper than that it is lingering with heavy mood and angst.
So the story is about a tweenies girl who works at an almost-broke down hotel in the northern part of South Korea, Sokcho. The girl is unnamed until the end so we can call it the Narrator is a French-Korean. Her mother is a native Korean and his father is French. She never has a chance to met his father anyway since she was born.
Growing up in a small city, the narrator feels she is a misfit. Her ancestry still made people in there whispering about her, her mother-work as a fishmonger is a typical Asian mother who always criticizes every aspect of her life, about she is being too thin, about she should get married soon, about her glasses, or warn her to not being too fat.
She also has a long-term relationship with her boyfriend since college days. But her boyfriend is too focus on the standard appearance in South Korea, teasing her to get plastic surgery. That's why she always hostile to her boyfriend.
One day in a dull winter season, a French man come to the hotel, Kerrand. Intrigued by his nationality at first, the narrator keep drawn to get close to Kerrand.
But Kerrand and the narrator are two opposite pole. Kerrand feels like hot and cold. Sometimes he feels distant, an alien trapped in the slow and estranged city of Sokcho. But he keeps asking the narrator to accompany him to explore the city.
Kerrand is a comic writer. He is in the mission to finish the last installment of his book and travel for the first time to Korea.
Actually, I cannot feel the chemistry between both of them. When they exchanged words or traveling together, I can feel the angst of the Narrator because Kerrand is unpredictable. But what drew the narrator the Kerrand is not physical, I think it is due to the self-searching phase of the Narrator.
The Narrator keeps feeling frustrated because Kerrand didn't want to eat the narrator's cook. He chose fast-food or food from convenient store even he paid for half-board to the hotel. When they are talking about the difference between the beach in Normandy (the place where Kerrand live) and Sokcho, is the key of this book.
How people in Sokcho live on the edge of the cliff. Several kilometers across their beach are barbed wires where a tourist shot dead because he accidentally crossed the border. Nowadays, maybe they almost forget that currently, the war is still on, but who knows next year? maybe their hotel destroyed in crumble because of long due war.
I live in South Korea and I agree with the super detailed description of Sokcho by the author. I can almost taste the cold blow of wind over the beach during winter in Sokcho. It is super realistic. The nuance. the customary but somehow I still get that it is exactly how a foreigner saw South Korea. Not how South Korean sees South Korea.
I don't like the part where the Narrator saw the TVs and said that it doesn't matter though because most people look the same on the TV. The Narrator also exaggerating the plastic surgery part that people need to be beautiful to be accepted in a better job. I don't like the generalization.
But somehow, I love the diction, the beautiful description, dancing between words that sounded beautifully. Here is an example (p.132):
It had nothing to do with love or desire. He was a Frenchman, a foreigner. It was out of the question. But the way he looked at me had changed at some point. When he first arrived, he didn't see me at all. He sensed my presence, like a snake that coils its way into a dream and lies there in wait. But then I'd felt his hard, physical gaze cut into me, showing me my unfamiliar self, the other part of me, over there, on the other side of the world. I wanted more of it. I wanted to live through the ink, to bathe in it. I wanted to be the only one he saw. And all he could say was he liked the way I saw things. I had a good eye.
For the debut novel, it is a brilliant work. I can feel it right away it is the first novel because every chapter is amazing, but I think the author hasn't sewed the thread between the chapter very nice. And for me, I cannot categorize it as Korean Literature just because it is set in Korea.
Good work but not the cup of my tea. And please don't compare it with A convenient Store Woman like other persons do. But yes, if you love symbol and allegory, you will love this novella.
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