`Baridegi Presents NK Defector Girls Odyssey

Novelist Hwang Sok-yong, who has maintained popularity and critical acclaim throughout his career spanning four decades.

/ Courtesy of Changbi

By Seo Dong-shin
Staff Reporter

Last week, Hwang Sok-yong topped the list in an online survey asking readers which leading Korean writer they thought should be recommended for the Nobel Prize in literature. Out of about 58,000 respondents, Hwang won nearly 20,000 of the votes. Other prominent novelists included Cho Se-hui in second place with Lee Mun-yeol coming in third.

It's been a feat for the 64-year-old writer, whose first breakthrough came in the 1970s with the grand saga ``Jang Gil-san,'' and proves he can still remain in touch with a new generation of readers despite a brief gap that was forced upon him after his illegal visit to North Korea in 1989. To avoid imprisonment, he spent the next four years in Germany before returning home in 1993. He was, however, jailed upon his return for having violated the National Security Law. Released with a pardon in 1998, his 2000 comeback novel ``The Old Garden'' became an immediate bestseller and was made into the namesake film by director Im Sang-soo. ``The Guest'' and ``Simcheong'' followed, both again scooping up materials from the painful past of Korea.

Apparently he did not want to stop there. Hwang, who has been staying in cosmopolitan European cities such as Paris and London during the last four years, this month put out a novel that will further cement his reputation as a keen observer of the times and a natural-born storyteller.

The book cover of novelist Hwang Sok-yong's new novel "Baridegi," which is about a North Korean girl's journey through the world of the living and the dead.

The novel ``Baridegi,'' (Hwang Sok-yong; Changbi: 304 pp., 10,000 won), which was serialized in Hankyoreh newspaper over the recent six months, combines Korea's ancient myth with the latest events taking place around the globe.

In the Korean myth of Baridegi, Princess Bari was born the seventh daughter into a royal family. Enraged at the arrival of another daughter, the king abandons her, banishing her from the family. Raised by strangers who found her floating in a stream, Bari is sought by the king 15 years later when he falls ill and is told in his dream that only Bari can save him. Bari decides to set out on a long journey beyond the world of the living to find the water of life needed to revive the king. After a long and eventful journey she returns from the world of the dead with the water, heals her father and becomes a sort of goddess. So in Korean shaman rituals, she is considered a protecting deity; her story has also provided reference to feminism studies.

In Hwang's novel, a girl named Bari is born to a North Korean family. Driven by the famine that swept the Stalinist country in the mid-1990s, the girl's family members die or get separated and she crosses the border to China, where she studies to become a masseuse. There, a series of fateful turn of events leads her to be stowed away in a ship on its way to London.

Here Hwang uses his observations and experiences from London _ where many ethnicities and cultures have made inroads _ creating intricate sketches of underground minority communities. Too young to be hired as a prostitute, Bari works again as a masseuse at a beauty parlor run by Vietnamese entrepreneurs. Her colleague and housemate is Bangladeshi; her neighbors are Nigerian; and she marries a British citizen of Pakistani origin.

```Baridegi' is about migration, and harmony,'' the writer said in an interview, posted in the appendix of the book. ``I wanted to peep into a certain possibility of pluralist harmony beyond the ideologies concerning culture, religion, ethnicity, and economic polarization.''

Bari's husband, Ali, goes to Pakistan to bring back one of his younger brothers who went to join the terrorist organization after the Sept. 11 attack in New York _ a disastrous event that influenced the Muslim community in Europe as well. But Ali disappears in Pakistan, and the family learns later that he was forced into detention in Guantanamo camp for no apparent reason. The novel ends with a brief portrayal of terrorist attacks on the London underground in 2005 as the reunited couple walks on.

While the novel is filled with up-to-date world affairs, its chief merit is its distinctive Korean sentiments as Hwang blurs the border between the realm of reality and fantasy in a few critical scenes. The narrative depicting Bari's delirium caused by the loss of her baby daughter reads like a traditional exorcist ritual and Bari's fantastical journey through the world of the dead was seemingly inspired by the original myth.

The book is currently being translated into English, Japanese, German and French. There is no question about Hwang's masterful skill in churning out a powerful story. The book makes the reader want to turn the pages quickly while wishing there were still many more pages left to turn. As Bari's modern journey illustrates frustration and violence, wars and terror around the world, it will neither lack in universal appeal, while maintaining spiritual roots in the Korean myth. It would indeed be interesting to see whether the book will actually get noticed outside Korea, which no Korean novel can really claim so far.

saltwall@koreatimes.co.kr