Friend

Starred review from March 1, 2020
As a Superior Court judge, among Jeong Jin Wu's most difficult tasks is to resolve divorce petitions and face the burden of having to deal with another family's misery. His latest case involves an opera celebrity and factory worker desperate to terminate their almost-10-year marriage, ruined by emotional and physical violence despite a shared devotion to their seven-year-old son. Wary of destroy[ing] a family, a unit of society, Jeong investigates the frayed bonds, becoming more friend than judge. Amidst his ministrations, he examines his own fraught union with his often-absent biologist wife. As quotidian as the narrative might seem, the shock is in its North Korean genesis, originally published in 1988, released in South Korea in 1992, and in French in 2011. "Friend is unique in the Anglophone publishing landscape in that it is a state-sanctioned novel, written in Korea for North Koreans, by an author in good standing with the regime, reveals translator Kim in his enhancing afterword, in which he also includes fascinating details gleaned from his visit with Paek in Pyongyang. With still so little known about the North Korean people beyond mostly tortuous escapee narratives, Kim enables a rare, welcome glimpse into a messy world of human emotions and relationships that is at once entirely alien and eerily familiar. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

February 15, 2020
A renowned North Korean novelist writes about marriage, family, and responsibility. Now a best-selling author, Paek (b. 1949) began his working life in a steel factory. Reading and writing in his spare time, he enrolled in college, taking mostly long-distance courses, and, in 1976, graduated with a degree in Korean literature. To contribute to the Three Revolutions campaign that urged citizens to enhance their understanding of political ideology, technical skills, and culture, Paek chose a career in writing, soon attaining national popularity. Published in 1988, this novel, deftly translated and with an informative afterword by Kim (Rewriting Revolution: Women, Sexuality, and Memory in North Korean Fiction, 2018), is set during a period of social and cultural transition, "the Hidden Hero campaign of the 1980s, which sought to recognize the extraordinary achievements of otherwise ordinary citizens" as well as continuing to promote self-improvement through education. To highlight the tensions involved in changing times, Paek focuses on a divorce: a couple seeking to dissolve their marriage and a judge who must decide on their case after a thorough investigation. The judge's examination of the wife, Sun Hee, a popular and esteemed singer, and the husband, Seok Chun, a lathe worker in a factory, reveals intricate relationships between individuals and the collective. Sun Hee and Seok Chun are driven apart by conflicting perceptions of their roles in society: Sun Hee developed her talents and was rewarded; but Seok Chun, despite his wife's goading, refused "to fulfill his true national duty--the duty to progress and advance in his social position." Merely being a devoted worker is no longer enough: "Life's true meaning is swimming upstream." In a society that "is actively progressing toward becoming intellectualized in scientific technology and the arts," marriage and family are at risk by individuals who refuse to move forward. Paek weaves themes of greed, corruption, and self-sacrifice into a subtle, restrained narrative that becomes nothing less than a paean to the family: society's most valued unit, "where the love of humanity dwells." A rare glimpse into an insular world.

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