The Seoul Literary Society, a group of Korean literature enthusiasts organized by the Swedish Embassy in Korea, hosted novelist Kim Young-ha at Scandinavian Design House in southern Seoul on Sept. 17.

Looking at North Korea “is very much like looking into a deformed mirror which shows your reflection, of the South Korea of the older days,” Kim said, adding “the reason why I wrote the novel, ‘Your Republic Is Calling You’ (2006) is because, in order to understand contemporary Korean society truly, we must not only reflect on what is going on in South Korea but we must also reflect on what’s going on in the North.” 

Kim, 43, recently relocated to Busan after a two-year stint in the United States. He is often described as a smart observer of life in today’s fast-paced hyper-globalized Korea.

He said this childhood perceptions of the North deeply affected his writing. He told an audience of about 50 Koreans, expatriates and foreign diplomats, including host Swedish Ambassador to Korea Lars Danielsson and Czech Ambassador to Korea Jaroslav Olsa Jr., about a character in “I Have The Right To Destroy Myself” (1996) who chooses death freely and voluntarily and another character who wants to climb over “that fence to enter a land of strangeness” in “The New Republic Is Calling You.”

“Growing up in the demilitarized zone I always wondered about North Korea which, for me, was very surreal,” Kim said. “I always wondered what went on behind the barbed wire and land mines separating North and South Korea.”

“When I was a child I wondered about the life beyond the separation, and to me it almost felt like a life after death. The idea that people would voluntarily go to North Korea was very strange to me.”

Kim’s father was a career Korean military serviceman and grew up in Hwacheon, Gangwon Province, where thousands of Korean soldiers are stationed.

The small village is just a few miles from the demilitarized zone that separates the communist North from the capitalist South, so close in fact that Kim said he could watch the stilted North Korean television programs.

“My childhood experiences with North Korea influenced me into thinking of life as a kind of theater,” he said. “Underlying its theatrical nature was an innate fear that all this theater could lead to something really terrible, but underneath all that I also saw an element of comedy, something very farcical.”

He spoke of the nature of Korean nationalism, describing how it morphed from one of victimization to Koreans desiring to show off culturally the films of Kim Ki-duk or even the music of Psy, who he described as a one-hit wonder.

“No one remembers where that song ‘Macarena’ came from. For overseas listeners who enjoy Psy’s music, it doesn’t matter where he is from. He could be singing in Japanese, Korean or even Chinese for (all) they care,” he said. “But Koreans would like to think of it as something we could be proud of, a product of our cultural experience.”

Kim began his literary career in 1995 after being discharged from mandatory military service, and his first book “I Have The Right To Destroy Myself” was published in 1996. He has written five full-length novels and received numerous accolades, including the Dong-in Literary Award in 2004 for “Black Flower.”

By Philip Iglauer (ephilip2011@heraldcorp.com)