Looking back upon American society in the 1950s and 1960s in his seminal novels “V.” and “The Crying of Lot 49” Thomas Pynchon laments the division of America into Left and Right, or radicalism and conservatism, which he describes metaphorically as “the street and the hothouse.” In his famous short story “Entropy,” Pynchon once again deplores the fact that conservatives choose to stay in the hothouse, not caring about what happens in the street, while radicals constantly instigate chaos and violence in the street to overthrow the establishment. 

Using the entropy theory, Pynchon warns us that both ideologies, if pushed to the extreme, will create a closed system and eventually annihilate our society. He suggests that in order to avoid this inevitable annihilation, the conservatives should open the window of the insulated hothouse, while the radicals should reduce chaos and restore order. He also suggests that we transcend the boundary between “ones and zeroes” and seek a third possibility.

Pynchon is not alone in this. The eminent Korean novelist Choi In-hoon also suggests that we need to soar toward a third possibility, which will ultimately bring about a rainbow coalition in Korean society, by transcending the fixed political ideologies of Left and Right. Choi’s monumental novel “The Square,” published in 1960, offers profound insights into and powerful criticism of a Korean society that has been plagued by the two mutually antagonistic ideologies of communism and capitalism, symbolized by an open square and a private chamber in his fictional work.

Lee Myong-jun, the protagonist of “The Square,” is a frustrated young man who is torn between Marxism and industrial capitalism, nationalism and internationalism, or North and South Korea, in the whirlwind of the division of the country and the Korean War. In the South, Lee is constantly harassed and interrogated by a police detective who thinks he is a communist because Lee’s father has gone to North Korea voluntarily. Under the stifling situation, Lee escapes to the North, hoping that North Korea is much better than the South. But he is equally disillusioned in North Korea, where people have lost hopes and dreams under the tyrannical rule of communist leaders. In his eyes, North Korea is nothing but an ash-gray, totalitarian society that eradicates personal space and privacy. Even Lee himself is frequently forced to do self-denunciation at the cell meeting after work.

When Myong-jun reunites with his father in the North, therefore, he confesses, “When I was in the South, no matter where I looked, there was no space anywhere where I could live and feel it was worthwhile: It was too foul and too gruesome a square. Father, you were right to escape from there. It was right up to that point. But what have I seen since coming north? This heavy air! Where does this suffocating air come from?”

In North Korea, he finds that people are deprived of individuality and their own private chambers. Referring to the miserable predicament of the North Korean people, Myong-jun tells his father, “They are just watching the political show. They are pulled along like puppets. They just shout out slogans like parrots. Yes, to the political leaders of North Korea, people are nothing but a flock of sheep.”

When the Korean War breaks out, Lee joins the North Korean army and comes down to the South. On the Nakdonggang River battlefront, he becomes a prisoner of war. When President Syngman Rhee releases the POWs and lets them decide where to go, Lee chooses neither the North nor the South. Instead, he chooses a third country and sets out on a journey to the unknown but ideologically free territory.

In his preface to the epoch-making novel “The Square,” novelist Choi writes: “An open square is indispensible to human lives. At the same time, we cannot live without a private chamber.” The problem is that we always try to confine ourselves to one of the two only. According to Choi, life is a journey to find the path from our private chamber to the square and back. Yet, we tend to either hide in the private chamber or stage violent demonstrations in the square.

In 1989 Choi wrote pessimistically, “Lee Myong-jun lives in my mind because I find myself still living in basically the same political situation as his.” Alas! Even in 2014, Choi would say exactly the same thing because we still hopelessly watch the same ongoing confrontation between Left and Right, progressives and conservatives, on this small peninsula.

The two great writers of our times, Pynchon and Choi, univocally warn that the outcome of such ideological clashes will be catastrophic for our society. Watching our society being sadly and radically divided by Left and Right, we cannot help but worry about the future of South Korea. In English, we say “Divide and conquer.” If we are already divided, we will be conquered soon, eventually and inevitably. Conquered by whom and what? We already know the answer from the painful lessons we have learned from our tragic history.

By Kim Seong-kon 

Kim Seong-kon is a professor of English at Seoul National University and president of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. ― Ed.