Recent Books

A Girl Walking Into a Painting

Bae Hong-jin; Mentor Press; 224pp., 10,000 won

This is a fresh attempt to document the life of Kang Deok-gyeong, who served as a ``comfort woman'' to Japanese troops during the Japanese colonial period.

Writer Bae Hong-jin pens the miserable life of Kang, who died of lung cancer in 1997, saying ``although I was not asked by Kang to write an essay, it is kind of a documentary tracing her life, mixed with my imagination.''

The writer depicts her solitary and wandering life without a family from her girlhood to her death.

The author uses very delicate, poetic language to portray her traumatic experiences as a sexual victim at the age of 15 and its ever-haunting memories throughout her life.

The book includes Kang's paintings with strong messages that describe her painful experiences of losing her virginity to a Japanese solider, the feelings of humiliation, loss of her dream and her strong demand for an apology from the Japanese government.

The author taps into the emotions of readers with a vivid but poetic and subtle revelation of Kang's story, along with her realistic paintings.

-Chung Ah-young