Mujong: Korea in Transition
I finished reading Mujong (The Heartless) last night. It was first published in 1917 as a newspaper serial. When I went to hear Dr. Michael Shin talk about it at the Royal Asiatic Society some weeks ago he told us that it was extremely popular and people walked for miles to buy the latest copy. Dr. Shin also said that the novel’s plot line, a love triangle, has been very influential on South Korean television drama.
The love triangle consists of a male teacher Yi Hyong-sik, the daughter of a wealthy Church elder Kim Son-hyong and Pak Yong-ch’ae a kisaeng (the Korean equivalent of a geisha). In truth there isn’t a lot of real love between them. Hyong-sik is in love with surface appearances, Son-hyong is obeying her father’s wishes and Yong-ch’ae is in love with an ideal. The real story of Mujong is Korean society in transition from Joseon period Confucian traditions to Westernised modernity.
Yong-ch’ae is a traditional woman, educated in the Chinese classics. She makes certain life choices because she believes in filial virtue. When Hyong-sik believes that Yong-ch’ae has killed herself because of the loss of her virginity he thinks:
“Why die?” he thought. The Elementary Learning and Biographies of Virtuous Women have killed Yong-ch’ae! he thought.
In Son-hyong’s family they live out an imitation of Western culture without understanding what it is. When a marriage is arranged between Son-hyong and Hyong-sik, her father wants to be Western so he asks her if she agrees to the match. As a young Korean woman of that time she believed she had to obey her father, so she agreed even though she didn’t really like Hyong-sik.
Dr. Shin said that Mujong has been criticised because of its ending. The story finishes with Son-Hyong, Hyong-sik, Yong-ch’ae and a modern female character Pyong-uk standing in a field, all now good friends and declaring how they are going to become educated and make Korea stronger.
Hyong-sik lifted his head.“Let us work so that when we are old, we will see a better Korea. Let us think of how we resented our lazy, powerless predecessors, and let us work so that our grandchildren thank us.”
“Why don’t we tell each other about our future plans?” Hyong-sik said smiling … “
The ending is a little odd given that this is a novel about a love triangle, but as nobody really loves anybody else in a proper way it’s not as strange as one might think at first.
Throughout the novel old Korea clashes with the new. Hyong-sik sees an old man who was a significant person in the pre-modern period before the Japanese took control but is now marooned out of his time. Another character, an old woman, was the concubine of a wealthy old man who mutilated her private parts when she was found to be having an affair.
Yi Kwang-su appears to be very critical of traditional attitudes to women, as shown in the male characters’ attitudes towards Yong-ch’ae and the way that she views herself. Hyong-sik’s friend U-son and others thought it was perfectly acceptable to attack the chastity of a kisaeng but not that of a so-called virtuous woman. When U-son discovers that Yong-ch’ae is not the unchaste woman he thought her to be, he places her in the virtuous woman category and feels very sorry for having been rude to her.
At the beginning of the novel when Yong-ch’ae comes to find Hyong-sik, in the hope that he will save her, his entire opinion of her depends on whether or not she is a virgin and whether or not she has grown up as a kisaeng or as a girl in a good family. When he imagines that she grew up in a good family and is still a virgin he can see himself marrying her. When he thinks that she has slept with countless men, she becomes vile in his eyes.
Aside from the Korean society in transition theme, Mujong is also a novel about growing up and becoming fully human. Hyong-sik learns to appreciate other people as human beings rather than mindlessly condemning them because of society’s prejudices. I don’t know why but this theme in the novel reminded me of D.H. Lawrence. I haven’t read any of his stuff since I was a teenager. This is a pivotal scene:
Hyong-sik stared at the painting. The man on the cross was a human being. The men who put a crown of thorns on Christ’s head and stabbed him in the side were human beings. The person beneath the cross wiping their tears with the hem of their robe, the person who looked upon the scene indifferently … all of these people were human beings … It is only small differences in color and form that set us apart as “you” and “me”, “wrong” and “right”. Jesus could be the Roman soldiers … and the Roman soldiers could be Jesus … In light of this, all human beings seemed to Hyong-sik to be his brethren, and similar to himself.
Since finishing Mujong I’ve been reading Korean short stories (in English of course), I’ll blog about those another time.
