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161 The Barbershop Boy Pak T’ae-wôn Pak T’ae-wôn was born in Seoul in 1909 and graduated from high school there, then spent two years at Hosei University in Tokyo. In 1933 he and such literary luminaries as Yi T’ae-jun, Yi Hyo-sôk (both included in this anthology ), Kim Ki-rim, and Yi Mu-yông formed the Kuinhoe (Circle of Nine). Later Pak was active in the Chosôn Writers Federation, and in 1948 he migrated to North Korea. Pak’s first published works were poems, but by 1930 and the publication of his story “ Suy ôm”(Beard) he had established himself as a prose writer. His two best-known works are the novella Sosôlga Kubo sshi Δi iril (A day in the life of Kubo the writer, 1934) and the novel Ch’ônbyôn p’unggyông (Streamside sketches, 1936– 1937), from which “ The Barbershop Boy,”which follows, is taken. The first describes poverty in Seoul in the early 1930s by focusing on bar girls and out-of-work intellectuals. The latter is a collection of vignettes set alongside Ch’ônggyech’ôn, a stream (since paved over and today a broad avenue) coursing through downtown Seoul. After Liberation in 1945 Pak began publishing historical novels such as Yi Sun-shin changgun (Admiral Yi Sun-shin, 1948), in which he drew on earlier biographies as well as contemporary newspaper accounts. Pak published at least two such novels in the 1960s in North Korea. Like other members of the Kuinhoe, Pak experimented with form and technique. The sentences of stories such as “ Ow ôl Δi hunp’ung”(The warm breezes of May, 1933) are economical in the extreme, while those in “ Chint ’ong”(Labor pains, 1936) approach two pages in length. And in stories such as “ P’iro”(Exhaustion, 1933) and “ Ttakhan saram t Δl”(The wretched, 1934) we find numerals, symbols, and even newspaper ads. Apart from these ongoing attempts to refine his craft, Pak will be remembered for his camera-eye accounts of everyday life in Seoul during the occupation period, of which “ The Barbershop Boy”(Ibalso Δi sonyôn) is a delightful example. in Chusa was not pleased with the face that greeted him in the mirror. The gray that was less noticeable when his hair was shaggy (the irony of this had not escaped him) seemed for some M 162 Pa k T ’ a e - w ô n reason to stand out as the barber’s expert trimming proceeded in time with the snip-snip of the shears. This was no revelation, of course. In recent years Min had always felt this way in the barber’s chair, but still the grizzled hair reminded him of his years, however reluctant he might be to acknowledge them; and the inescapable realization of the great age difference between himself and the woman from Ansông, with whom he had begun living the previous year, caused him plenty of suffering. For during the current year Min Chusa had turned fifty—the age, according to Confucius, at which one comes to know Heaven’s dictates—and this young concubine whom he d established in Kwanch’ôl-dong was precisely half that old. The narrow cast of Min’s face was accentuated by his hollow cheeks, and as he looked morosely at the creases and the wrinkles he so disliked and recalled that of late he’d been playing mah-jongg to the wee hours practically every other night, he told himself that dissipation was harming his health and that the first sure sign of this was his bad complexion. “I’m going to have to limit myself with these games,” he muttered. On second thought, though, even if mah-jongg meant staying up all night, there were times when he couldn’t find a game for lack of players, and then he had a bigger headache—trying to satisfy that young bitch of his. This thought depressed him even more. As the shears played above his scalp, Min kept looking with a kind of envy at the face of the barber, who couldn’t have been older than twenty-five or so, a face so full of vitality, and he found himself scoffing at the notion that modern medicine was much advanced—the mere idea made him angry, though he didn’t show it. He had religiously taken the yohimbine urged upon him by the young pharmacist in whom he had placed...

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