By Chung Ah-young
Staff reporter
The Korean War (1950-53) could be one of the most preferred themes of any genre _ such as films, exhibitions, dramas and books _ this year, which marks the 60th anniversary of its outbreak.
Veteran novelist Lee Kyung-ja, 62, also jumps on the bandwagon of this trend, but takes a different angle to talk about the war through the eyes of a six-year-old girl.
"Suni" (Lee Kyung-ja; Sakyejul Publishing: 232 pp., 8,800 won) portrays the war-stricken social atmosphere in Yangyang, Gangwon Province, the home of the author in the 1950s.
The biographical novel projects her childhood memories which are written using the strong dialect and folksy language of the province.
The author describes her hometown as the "source of sorrow" full of longing and nostalgia mixed with scars and trauma. Indeed, her hometown has a special and complicated historical background. The 38th parallel that divided Korea ran through Gangwon which was part of the North; but after the Korean War truce of 1953, much of the province was returned to the South.
So the province displays the tragedy and chaos of the war as the same villagers became friends one day, and foes the next, due to the specific characteristics of the region.
But the author doesn't directly portray the formidable realities or battle scenes; instead she focuses on the girl protagonist and her family who live in poverty but peacefully in nature and naivety apart from the ideological conflicts.
Suni is the six-year-old girl who takes readers into the dark, bleak and fearsome memories counterpointed by the innocent childhood that is associated with the author.
She grows up disregarded and discriminated against by her mother because she is a girl not a boy. Her mother is the breadwinner in Suni's family who earns money by repairing military uniforms. But she is often beaten by her husband who does nothing particular for the family.
The girl spends her time with her grandmother who sends her sons to the battlefield and then hears nothing about them. For the grandmother who is often intimidated by her husband and ignored by her sister-in-law, Suni is the only one to talk within the family.
Unlike her mother's expectation that she grow up to be a decorous and tidy girl, Suni is a tomboy.