'Koryo Saram' , 'Person of Korea'

Paul Yoon isn't an unfamiliar name to me. But I rarely read his novels because I'm not super interested in their background and premises. However, his short stories are easier to digest. Read Paul Yoon's short story, 'Person of Korea' published in the April 2021 issue of The Atlantic. The story is set in southeastern Russia, after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The author wrote 'Person of Korea' because he felt that "the Korean diaspora was always shadowed by the Korean War and the effects that war had on migration and emigration—mainly because my grandfather’s and my father’s lives were directly impacted by that conflict. It’s taken me this long to open the curtain a bit wider and explore the greater and older history of Koreans who either were forcibly relocated or chose to find another country and place to start over again, live better, keep living."

Protagonist Maksim is a 16-year-old Korean teenager living in his recently deceased uncle's home. With no job and no money to pay for food or rent, he went search of his father Vasily who didn't reply to letters or came to his brother's funeral. Maksim hadn't seen his father for five years. He didn't even know if Vasily still lived on Sakhalin Island or if he still worked at a facility that once imprisoned his deceased grandfather. The teenager had questions, and decided to seek his answers. 

Maksim’s father is a prison guard. Or the last time they spoke he was, working at the prison on the island. The older people call it “the camp” because it was a labor camp run by the Japanese, when the Japanese claimed the southern half of the island. They rounded up thousands of Koreans during wartime and brought them there to log, pulp paper, mine coal. Maksim’s grandfather had been one of the laborers when he was in his 20s. When the war ended, many of them, including Maksim’s grandfather, never went back home. They took a boat west, first to Vladivostok, then eventually headed inland, north, where they settled.

That is their family story. That is the story of almost all the families who rent on the farm.

A Harvard lecturer day, the author also specializes in historical fiction and has an interest in people fleeing war-torn countries and settling down in other cities. He has published two short story collections 'Once the Shore' (2009) and 'The Mountain' (2017), and a novel 'Snow Hunters' (2013), all of which talks about the displacement of South Koreans from the war and their search for new homes. The author's latest novel 'Run Me to Earth' (2020) looks at Laos after the US bombing in 1964. 

Many of us in Singapore had family history of people fleeing from war (likely the Sino-Japanese Wars) and settling down in Malaya, and somehow, certain branches of the family ended up in Singapore. In spite of Singapore's terrible annexation in the Second World War, many families survive and build an identity in this country. Our generation have no more memories of the past, understanding only the country we have grown up in. We're comfortable, and confident. 

This is the story of Maksim looking for his family history and stories in a bid to find his own identity. Koreans fleeing the Korean War (1950 - 1953) headed west to Europe and America. That resulted in a huge Korean diaspora in the west, and the today's entire 7.5 million people living outside of South and North Korea. First generation Korean migrants' children grow up too fast, and often, they are conflicted. In many ways, Maksim's journey mirrors the thousands of journeys Koreans migrants and refugees have made in their own searches and understanding of their families torn apart by the Korean war. They seek answers to the questions that they hold dear. 

Vasily stubs out his cigarette. “You came all this way to ask if I got your letter, to talk about your grandfather, and to tell me you’re going to Africa?”

“No,” Maksim says. “I came to say two other things.”

His father waits.

Maksim’s throat tightens. He looks down and grips the edge of the tabletop. He says, “I don’t know if you were planning on coming back to check on me. But if you were, I don’t need you to.”

“You don’t need me to, yeah?” his father says.

“Yeah,” Maksim says. “I’m okay. I’m okay on my own.”