Got my copy of “Land of Exile” today from Acta Korean and I am about halfway plowed through it. The title gives the contents away, though I would also say that if this book were to get a subtitle it would be “And Collaboration.”

The “exiles” are all internal in the sense that no one is being sent to Japan or Manchuria (so far) and, in fact, some of the characters have created their own exilic states whilst still firmly planted in their traditional homes. The collaborations are also various, but so far there is at least one collaborator in each short story (and one brilliantly realized ‘career’ collaborator in Chun Kangyong’s Kapitan Ri). The stories also largely share the Korean fictional love of cycles.

But as I read the book, and the cover claims it is “the” anthology of Korean translated stories, I began to wonder if anyone in Korea could write a story that wasn’t about exile and/or collaboration? I quickly realized how idiotic/backwards that question was – “hey, over here! The white guy wants a different kind of story!” The question I should have asked myself was “how freaking big has the Japanese occupation, the civil war, and the split of the country (and the essentially dual occupation that followed) been to have had this enduring effect?”

I’m trying to think of anything comparable in a European state and coming up blank.

You probably need a small country and you probably need homogenous people. But you most certainly need something that has an impact that (quite literally) sweeps back and forth across an entire country and tears every physical and social structure to pieces. The Civil War in the US? Not so much. You could pretty much avoid that out in the Northwest and in the end the country still was what the country had been. The plague in Europe? Arguable for size of impact, maybe, but not physical destruction and psychic tearing, I think – If anyone knows of something suggesting the plague had long-term destructive effects on the socio-political layout of any European country

This gets to many thing . The “rudeness” towards strangers is beyond Confucian – but it is a sensible way to act when anyone you don’t know could be a collaborator. The relative xenophobia of Korea is also an obvious result. Even the local building style – without any pretense of permanence – seems a logical outcome of such a shattering history. I wonder how far this analysis could be pressed?

It’s like if the 49ers had ever lost a Super Bowl, but like.. almost twice that big!