The Story of Hong Gildong

January 18, 2016
In this old Korean tale, the illegitimate son of a government minister, barred from civil and military service, becomes the leader of a group of righteous bandits and later king of his own lands. The fast-paced, sometimes fantastical story of the underdog who becomes a hero—which has been adapted into books, films, television shows, video games, and comics—is “arguably the single most important work of classic (i.e., premodern) prose fiction in Korea,” according to translator Kang, associate professor of European history at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. In his helpful introduction, Kang (Sublime Dreams of Living Machines) challenges modern understandings of the story’s origins and intent, asserting that the work most likely comes from the 19th century—traditional scholarship places the work in the 17th century. Kang also explains the social context of Hong Gildong’s dilemma during the Joseon dynasty of the 16th century and discusses the story’s significance to modern Koreans. Kang has translated the longest and perhaps oldest version of the tale (a shorter manuscript was published in English in 1968 and reprinted in a 1981 anthology). Detailed endnotes provide further information for curious readers. This engaging, essential tale will interest not only students of classic East Asian literature but enthusiasts of Korean modern culture.

January 15, 2016
The famed saga of Korea's bandit prince comes in for a new translation, if one that's not quite idiomatic. "Kick me with full force, so that I may know your strength." Not exactly the sort of thing that one would cry out in the midst of some emotional moment, not exactly the most memorable of challenges. Yet, the statement and its rejoinder--"But after you kicked me I could feel my organs vibrate and my body shiver, so I know that you are a man of tremendous power"--alert us that we are in the Land of Translation, a place lots of readers associate with mustiness, fustiness, and all-around yawns. The most exciting of Hong Gildong's adventures come to us in a chrome of not-quite-English. In fairness, he has many of them.The anonymous early modern epic celebrates the deeds of a lowborn lad, the son of a concubine, whose abilities--"He needed to hear only one thing to understand ten, and learning ten things allowed him to master a hundred"--did not go unremarked in court but naturally excited intrigue and jealousy. What's a good prince to do? Go off and battle for truth, justice, and the Korean way, of course, taking up cause with the merry bandits of the Taebaek Mountains, robbing from the rich to give to the poor, and doing suchlike things that would meet with the approval of a checklist-wielding Joseph Campbell: liminality, check. Near-death experience, check. Students of comparative mythology will be interested to see how bits of other literatures (especially Arthurian) turn up in Hong Gildong's story. The introduction might have made more of this lineage and discussed in more detail how modern Korean writers make use of the story in their work, but it does a competent job overall of placing the book in the context of Korean literature.If you read only one book about Korean heroic outlaws this season, this should be the one.

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