Between chronicle and fiction

Between chronicle and fiction

The
impact of “Lonely Room”¹⁾ on the Korean contemporary
generation is extended to the boundary that the society itself takes
to heart the education system and its evolution to avoid some
pressure on the Korean school system²⁾. It seems interesting to
note, in this story, the facts of the personal and intimate struggles
of rural youth coming to study in the big cities and especially in
Seoul. The question is whether the proposed model is currently
controversial, even among its principal actors? Then,
can we learn and possibly think over reflections proposed from Shin
Kyong-suk ‘s novel?

The
story is that of two young cousins​​
girls, aged sixteen and nineteen coming from the countryside to work
in the city. The purpose of the first girl is to become a writer. The
second wants to be a photographer. But they must
first find a training school then integrate the selection for the
most praiseworthy candidates. To work at the factory they must have
first a home. This will be the “big brother” twenty-one
years’flat. He will find a business center, then housing and feeding
his sister and cousin. It is the role of any senior
brother who is empowered by his family
and by the links connecting him to his cousin on the maternal side.

Living
in a room with three and four people (the third big brother is coming
to enter the university) with the bare minimum necessary and its
logical organization that combines the difficulties of money to
provide and / or the discomfort and the narrowness of the flat. The
two girls are admitted to enter an electrical factory named Tongnam
after filing a false record for the youngest. Tongnam company
is in the industrial zone sector 1- Kuro. The room rented by the
elder brother is situated in the residential sector 3, near the metro
station. A thirty-seven rooms. There are other
houses in front and behind that count all tooms. When the young
people open the window, they see the metro station expelling an
inexhaustible flow of passengers. The grocery market entry or
gateway are always filled with people.

And
yet, for the tenants of this flat, their room
is lonely in a lonely place, isolated
from the rest of the world. Nevertheless, life goes on. The
girls are selected to work in the chain of a Training Center which is
gathering by other twenty young people. Before assigning positions,
the sub-foreman announced a speech by the Secretary General of the
Training Center. The
latter concluded his talk by recommending the folk not joining any
union and also they must denounce those who are unionized. The
two cousins ​​are assigned to the hi-fi section. There are three
production teams – teams A, B and C, plus a preparation team. The
two cousins ​​were held hands in order to work together. They
became No. 1 and No. 2 in Team A. The work is to get the disc-shaped
parts from the team preparing and attaching a polystyrene coating
with seven screws. As the screws are different sizes, they must learn
the position of each of them. Whenever a screw sinks, electric
screwdriver moves with a noise similar to that of the wind. The No. 1
must finish for the No. 2 to continue. There is a distance of
about two meters between the two cousins. According
to the team leader Number 1 must work so hard to reach Number 2 on
time. Suspended or hung, the screwdriver is too unwieldy and not
easily handed for the two cousins. The treadmill is often empty at
Number 3. In the evening, they walk back from Sector 1 area to their
housing in Sector 3 area while rubbing shoulders.

The
salary is Woon seven hundred and dust. In three months, they will be
increased by five hundred Won, after two months of two hundred and
even after three months … But this manufacturing-work is daily
paid. When removing Sundays and Saturday afternoons there is very
little left … 1280 Won multiplied by 24 or 25, minus the canteen
lunch fees. So they all need to work overtime. According to the
Ministry of Labour, the minimum working salary for an apprentice,
usually a girl, is 24,000 Won. But when removing the canteen and
transport costs, the daily wage is of five or six hundred Won, then
the monthly salary of 19,400 Won. A real pittance.

A
year has passed away with many ups and downs. Spring, autumn and
winter brought echoes of exchanges of letters between family, her boy
friend named Ch’ang, an engaging lover and changes within the Centre
staff training, as the ejection situation of Ms. Yu Ch’aeok, General
secretary of the Union. In addition, the eldest brother,
completed his university studies. The third
brother begins his own to get a scholarship in order to full fill the
exam of the judiciary faculty. The elder brother has to do his
military service. For life survival of the group,
everyone must work very hard. Thus, the older brother found a
teaching job early in the morning before going to the barracks. then
another teaching job very late at night after leaving the barracks.
To hide its bare head as a soldier, he must put a wig, making her
sister laughing.

Another
year has passed. The “cousin” who loves
writing, has recorded in a notebook all events. And then one of her
professors advised her to write fiction. But all that was summarized
in this book, for examples the events of the year 1980, the year of
the Olympic Games organized by South Korea but also the year when
Chet Baker⁴⁾ was found dead, fallen from the first floor of the
hotel where he is housed in Amsterdam. Then there are also copied
pages of the book “Small ball thrown by a dwarf” as well as
personal stories about the girls who worked at the Training Centre,
particularly Hijae, the “big sister’s love story” as well
as Kim Kyonsuk’s dead at twenty-one years, Kim Samok or else the
assassination of the first Korean lady Yuk Yongsu, wife of President
Park Chung Hee. The first lady recalled a magnolia which a funeral
march was organised during several days in the manner of Handel’s
Sarabande. For the funeral of her mother, the eldest daughter, Park
Geun Hye ⁵⁾ was very admirable alongside with her father. However,
Park Chung Hee came to power through a “coup”, then fell
under the bullets of one of his underlings. A corrupted dictatorship
of eighteen years has collapsed. Then took place the “renewal”
and the movement for the democratization of Kwangju called Kwangju
Uprising or massacre⁶⁾.

During
a Sunday’s dinner with her third brother and his family, the latter
asked her “the novel you’re about to write recounts the time
when we lived in the neighborhood Karibong-dong? And he revealed “I
wanted to write”. But now that he has chosen law school, he
explained: “I came to the conclusion that literature could not
change. A country where such a military coup staged by the base
cannot change anything. If the Army more than any other institution
is supposed to enforce the law, there is, where can I find some
order? … If you’re a writer, you can not ignore these
problems. This coup is the origin of what happened in Kwangju. This
is horrible! … What’s the point of having a civilian government?
What’s the point of having a civilian president? A man who opened
fire in Kwangju ostensibly occupies a seat in Parliament. If
he had any shred of conscience, he would have refrained from claiming
to serve the people, do you think so?”.

And
yet, what to answer? Really she does not know. For her, an eighteen
years old sister, it is important to know if the briquettes are not
cutting out of the fire, if her third brother did not sleep in the
street after carrying away his belongings in a bag … For her, it is
the literature .. pleading eyes of a dog watching his master .. the
beauty of destiny contained in these eyes, the sorrow of those who
worshiped love, the silence of one who has seen that should not be
seen. Another was the shock caused by Higae’s suicide..This death was
a ruin at the bottom of the girl friend of nineteen, an future
obstacle to contact and friendship with others.

Between
head and heart.

Sixteen
years after these events, the author of the Solitary Room, draw up
that this text will not be chronicled facts or fiction, but something
in between. We believe that it is placed between
head and heart now that she has
notoriety.

It
is very subjective to use memory that can capture, encode, store and
reproduce the stimuli that we are perceiving. This is the head
because it involves both physical and mental structures as here, the
author has referred to a kind of game, the repeated reminder “of
course” between two girls’ friends who understand how to support
or emphasize agreements that are unique and known and only exchanged
between the two. And the heart
that keeps a memory for everything, every corner of the Solitary room
as regards the office desk and the attic as unfulfilled desires,
leaving traces that are sometimes impossible to erase.

And
benchmarks, such as for example historical
chronicle those events occurred in 1980
in South Korea in accordance with written chronologically (May 18,
1980 May 27, 1980). This is the work of research and
historical records of the historian. Between head,
heart and historical chronic records, there are still rambling
chatter to describe how we feel at that
very moment, like a flash or as something ephemeral like the beauty
of the rose described by the French poet, Ronsard.

Shin
Kyong-suk has written with her guts and her heart but also with tears
of joy or despair. The girls cousins ​​cry of joy when they have
been accepted to attend evening classes. They cry of despair when the
pay does not arrive in due time or they shed tears of horror when
they have to pay intimate favors in returns to the Deputy Chief of
the workshop. In three years time of living together, they will
experience hardship, backbreaking work and solitude like a cold rain,
drawing themselves every day then renewed their strength to live
overnight. And then … and then .. all those suicides of young
employees and one of them was only twenty-one!

In
Korean society or even in Korean family there is a considerable lack
of communication between children and parents. Parents spend more
time at work than at home. Thus, the children are containing or
returning to people who are often in the same situation.

Ms
Jeong Eun-Jin and Mr. Jacques Batilliot as Translators, were
sensitive to the details of life to immerse ourselves in the
loneliness of the young folk leaving in this solitary room in a
squalid alley. The magic of words has surfaced when it comes
to hindsight … I saw quietly open the back door of the classroom
high school girls Yongdûng’p. or the description of the light
is from a fishing vessel placed on the sea darkened slips through the
window. Is this also the specter of Titanus
fighting against the storm with I
remained titanised as within the scope of a surprise attack?

Solitary
Room is a novel of intense realism
especially for readers in search of echoes on Women in Southeast
Asia, particularly in South Korea, whose economic expansion is not a
miracle due to failing businesses and rising unemployment resulting
in a high rate of suicide among young people. As concerning women,
the Korean society has always assigned them to a separate place in
the home and in social relations. A subordinate place,
obviously, but a separate place. Whose
attributes they frequently use the word “inside” because
Women rule over the interior, to the point of managing the household
money⁷⁾. As concerning education,
according to a PISA 2010 survey, South Korean students aged 15 are
the world leaders in terms of reading and mathematics. It is
naturally unaware admiring what lies behind this achievement
qualifications of the race was started in South Korea in the second
half of the 20th century when the country is experiencing
unprecedented economic expansion in history. This exponential growth
often incorrectly classified as economic miracle (the concept of
miracle erasing all traces of the sacrifice made by the people during
the years of Japanese colonization followed by a civil war), is part
of this “mad man made” elitism⁸⁾.

Nguyen
dac Nhu-Mai

Notes

1) Shin
Kyong-suk, Philippe Picquier Editions, 2008. Story translated from
Korean by Jeong Eun-Jin and Jacques Batillot.

2) Victoria
B:
South Korean
education system:
a controversial model,
even with its main
actors?
in
Society,
Languages
​​One
No. 28,
November-December 2012
p.6.

3)
Shin Kyong-suk
:
Born in 1963 in
South Korea, she became novelist in 1985. She published a very
regular ten novels and collections of short stories that conducted
her into the country’s most prestigious literary prizes. She is now
one of the most beloved writers, both by critics and by readers for
her work at the intense quality of introspection. The ” Solitary
room” is the first of her novels that the Philippe Picquier
Editions wish to introduce to the French public.

4)
Chet Baker :
Chesney Henry
Baker, Jr. said, “Chet Baker”, born at Yale (Oklahoma, USA)
December 23, 1929 and died in Amsterdam (Netherlands) on 13 May 1988,
is a trumpet, bugle and jazz singer
in
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chet_Baker (Consultation Dec. 20,,
2012)

5)
In the late 1990s, during financial crisis, Park Geun Hye was
propelled into the forefront of the South Korean politics. She was
elected last December 19, 2012, President of the country.

6)
The movement for the democratization of Gwangju – Gwangju Uprising
(Hangul: 광주민주화운동
is
a student union uprising taking place in the city of Gwangju in South
Korea, which began May 18, 1980. During this movement, citizens rise
up against the dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan, put in place after the
assassination of President Park Chung-hee in 1979, and take control
of the city center before being severely repressed by the army resume
control of the premises on May 27. Gwangju was the stronghold of the
Democratic opposition leader, Kim Dae-jung, who was sentenced to
death after the riots, and subsequently pardoned. During the
government of Chun Doo – hwan, this event was presented as a
rebellion inspired by communist sympathizers, but once a civilian
rule was established, it was recognized that it was a movement that
aims to defend democracy against the military dictatorship in 1997,
former presidents Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo were convicted, with
17 other defendants for their “links to the coup of 12 December
1979, the Gwangju uprising secret funds “to be subsequently
pardoned. were created in 2002 and a national cemetery Memorial Day
(May 18), to ” compensate victims and restore honor ” This
event is commonly called” 5 1 8 “(“오일팔
“,
pronounced” o it pal “, that is to say” one eight five
“in French) in Korean, refers to the date of the uprising (with,
in order, month and day). http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul% C3% in
A8vement_de_Gwangju (consultation Dec.28, 2012).

7)
Jeong Eun-Jin and Patrick Maurus: Kimchi 2 INALCO, Paris 2012, p.6
especially the role of Kisaeng as guardians of the oral tradition
(Korean songs and dances).

8) Victoria B, op.cit. p.6.