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| Listen to the Words of 'Jia' |
| [Book Review] 'Jia: A Novel of North Korea' (2007) by Kim Hyejin |
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Ida Grandas (jezaky)  |
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Published 2008-06-06 15:25 (KST) |
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| | | Book Details | | | |
Jia: A Novel of North Korea (2007)
Author: Kim Hyejin
Publisher: Midnight Editions, San Francisco, USA
ISBN-13: 978-1573442756 | | | | |
This book made me cry in the subway on my way to work in Seoul. It made me go almost the whole outer circle of line 2, just because I started reading already on the platform and didn't notice the direction of the train I entered.
Kim Hyejin's debut novel "Jia: A Novel of North Korea," known as the first novel about present day North Korea published in English, absorbed me from the first page and kept me in that state trough out the whole book.
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FROM THE SECTION |
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| The author grew up in South Korea, constantly being told that North Korea was something to be afraid of. Then, while living in China, Kim bumped into a North Korean woman on a bus. The meeting made her realizing that there was a North Korea she didn't know anything about. As time passed, she started to encounter more and more stories about North Koreans, and learned about the everyday life in the North. The experience inspired her to write Jia.
Jia's story takes off in a poor village close to a political concentration camp where she lives with her sister and grandparents. One day, a soldier knocks their door, and everything changes. The soldier is staying with his unit close to Jia's home, and becomes a friend of the family. One day, it is time for him to leave back to Pyongyang and Jia's grandfather decides letting her go with him, giving her the chance to find a better life.
The story enfolds through military vehicles, an orphanage, hotels, rivers, bordellos, and finally in a new home in China. Along her way, she meets people helping her to find that better life her grandfather wanted her to have. One of them is Teacher Song who helps Jia becoming a professional dancer at a hotel in Pyongyang. But when the famine starts in 1995, Jia starts witnessing the misery of people not as lucky as her. Persons she loves starve, get captured and sent to concentration camps, are unwillingly separated or end up as sex slaves after having escaped to China.
The strength of the book is not a beautiful poetic language, but from the story itself. Kim's language is simple and straight forward, letting Jia herself telling the story. Reading it is like listening to the words of Jia directly; like she is sitting close to me, telling the words straight to my face.
While reading, I had to remind myself over and over again that the story is not about a place far away in time and distance -- it is based on the stories of real people in present time, in a place not further away than 192 kilometers from Seoul.
I first found out about the book when I was just randomly surfing the internet. Almost at once, I went to some of the biggest book stores in Seoul, but no one ever heard about the book. Instead, I found Kim's e-mail address and I asked her directly where to find the book. She said she though I wouldn't find it in Seoul at all.
In the end, I found the book in an English speaking book store in Itaewon. I was upset that the book was hard to find. The book is important for anyone to read, but maybe especially to people living in South Korea.
Finishing the last sentences of the book, I was once again in the subway. Jia left me with the feeling of how lucky and cruel life can be to human beings and I was trying to hide the tears in my eyes. For me, the book is important; because even if it is fiction, it gives voice to people I otherwise probably never would have heard spoken.
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©2008 OhmyNews
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