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Book Reviews195 to resolve this omission. The similarity between the fictional and real-life stories is stunning, but merely presenting such a similarity may not fully elucidate the distinguishable characteristics of Golden Age melodramas unless they are assumed to mirror Korean women's real-life experiences. On a parenthetical note, one other element underscores the practical value ofthese two books: the lack ofavailability ofthe relevant titles as film, DVD, or video with English subtitles. Limited availability is often identified as the main cause of correspondingly limited development of knowledge within English-language film studies on non-Euro-American cinemas. Certainly the situation is improving, as contemporary South Korean films released in DVD format are now usually available with English subtitles, and as international distribution is increasing. Korean companies and institutions such as the Korean Film Archive are also gradually releasing classic titles of the Golden Age era. My hope is that these two intriguing books help to accelerate the availability of interesting Korean films, which will in turn contribute to further academic research. Nikki Ji Yeon Lee Yonsei University, Seoul The Guest by Hwang Sok-yong. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005. 368 pp. $29.95 (paper) In the 1970s, Hwang Sok-yong (Hwang Sôgyông) established his reputation in South Korea as an uncompromisingly critical voice in intellectual circles and beyond. His stories ranged across many subjects, from South Korean participation in the Vietnam War and the plight of rural migrants in industrializing urban areas, to socialist realist works that sought (to borrow J. Hillis Miller's terminology) to "perform" the labor movement into reality. Since that time, Hwang has continued to produce works that engage the most urgent and vital issues confronting South Korea and the Korean peninsula in the global context. Hwang Sok-yong's The Guest, originally serialized in a South Korean newspaper in 2000 and now available in English translation, is one such work. The novel rewrites a historical calamity known as the Sinch'ôn Massacre, which took place in 1950 during the Korean War. Sinch'ôn, located in Hwanghae Province, north of the 38th parallel, was a place where two historical forces collided: the landed anticommunist Christian elites, and the peasants who rebelled against their masters under the new authority ofthe communist state. The novel takes the reader along Reverend Ryu Yosôp's journey back to his native Sinch'ôn, after living in the United States for over forty years. Ryu Yosôp's travel back to North Korea, his sojourn in Sinch'ôn, and his reunion 196The Journal ofKorean Studies with the surviving members ofhis family provide the narrative frame in which Yosôp is visited by a series ofghosts who were involved on both sides, including that of his older brother, who played a central role in the carnage. The ghosts' conflicting and contentious memories are resolved through a shamanist recitation that calls for consolation and reconciliation by all concerned. In the author's foreword, Hwang Sok-yong explains that the title of the novel, The Guest, comes from an appellation that smallpox attained when it first appeared in the late Choson era, alluding to the foreign origin ofthe disease . Hwang goes on to say that he has also employed "guest" as a metaphor for two systems of thought and religion, Marxism and Christianity, which derived from the West. Traditionally, authorial interpretations have carried considerable weight, sometimes passing as the authoritative word on literary works. Hwang's own remarks about The Guest are no exception, having operated as a guideline for critics and commentators. However, the complex portrayal of the historical forces that culminated in the Sinch'ôn Massacre surpasses the author's description ofhis own work. The novel illustrates the process through which a sector of the population in the northern part of the Korean peninsula emerged as a new elite group, from the latter part ofthe Choson dynasty through the colonial period. Away from the court and its clan politics and closer to the Chinese continent, the marginal literati class and middle strata of the north were more receptive to Christianity, or "Western learning." The combination ofnew knowledge and economic opportunities made available by the collapse ofthe old...

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