Courtesy of Simon Berger

I first came across the work of Kang Minsoo when someone shared an article he had written refuting the notion that Korean people possess an untranslatable profound sorrow or regret known locally here as "han." For a modern scholar, particularly one versed in literature, to challenge something that has been so instrumental in the creation and reproduction of Korean poetry, music, and film over the past few decades was extremely refreshing. Minsoo was writing something that many felt and often expressed in social media posts. However, few if any had gone to the same lengths in playing out their ideas publicly with such a degree of sophistication and, perhaps most importantly, empathy.

Minsoo was no doubt conscious that many would take umbrage with his ideas, particularly those in the Korean-American community who often seem to cling more proudly to essentialist ideas about the Korean people than those who live on the actual peninsula. He was also writing at a time when there was a slew of articles and commentary appearing that promised to shed light on global cultural successes such as "Squid Game" and "Parasite" by utilizing ideas such as "han" and a quasi-orientalist understanding of what it means to be Korean. He thus appeared to me as someone willing to swim upstream.

I reached out to him, curious to know more; to listen and learn. We spent hours talking on my podcast about history and Korea and, in doing so, I became aware of his personality, his charm, and his humor. My wife still affectionately refers to him as the guy who kept falling down in his chair while talking to me. Having seen his recent appearance on The Korea Society, I can confirm he still has the wonderful idiosyncracy. Since then, through in-person dinners and coffee on his visits to Seoul, as well as seeing his fart jokes, love of cats and self-deprecating humor about his weight on social media, I've come to develop something of a relationship with Minsoo. I did not expect, however, that those fart jokes and cats, that irreverent wit, as well as the rather complex life of a professor would start to come even more to life in his first novel: "The Melancholy of Untold History." But that's how my weekend began, receiving a copy of the book signed by Minsoo in three different languages.

The book

I finished "The Melancholy of Untold History" in a day, gripped by its plot, fascinated by its layers, and moved by its facetiousness. I'm sure there is much in terms of symbolism and self-referential passages that I missed. That is the way with any good book. They reward multiple experiences. And so as to not to provide spoilers or clumsily attempt to describe the plot, I will instead give you the impressions that the book made on me. This is also in-line with my current efforts to experience media completely blind, from movies, dramas, music, books and games. I've found that trailers are now simply condensed versions of the movie itself, often giving away the entire plot. Other reviews tell you what to think and leave little in the way of ambiguity or participation. Elsewhere, write-ups of bands and restaurants are little more than advertisements. Everything is awesome!

In making my way through "The Melancholy of Untold History," I knew I had read or experienced something very similar to Minsoo's novel before. The words. The ideas. They were all so familiar. Comfortable, even. Was it Nolan's "Inception" with its layers of dreams? No. Was it "One Thousand and One Nights" with a story framed within a story repeated almost ad infinitum like two mirrors pressed against each other? No…but also yes. Was it "The Buried Giant of Kazuo Ishiguro"? The generational tales of Gabriel Garcia Marquez? The unravelling of fictions as expertly, and at times autistically, displayed by Umberto Eco and his characters of Casaubon and Belbo? I don't think so.

And then, finally, I found my answer halfway through: Osberg and his Tlon be dammed. Yes, he was Jorge Luis Borges. The man who wrote reviews of books that didn't exist. Who constructed realities, built on myths, that become truths. Stories that read like essays, and essays that read like stories. Ficciones. To me, Minsoo had tapped into something that I have long loved: intricate-yet-surrealistic period-piece mind-fucks. Careful, abstract, innovative, and erudite.

The nature of history

Minsoo is both historian and storyteller. An extroverted introvert. The past and the present influencing each other in a way similar to the speculative fiction of the German time travel epic "Dark." He is also an emperor, experiencing moments of ‘pristine perfection' when confronted by beauty. He is a cat. He is a fart.

By talking about nothing specific in his work, by avoiding any direct references to particular countries or leaders and instead simply using colors and animals, Minsoo is (paradoxically) talking about everything. Despite containing no facts, this novel tells us everything about history. More than an 800-page tome on Stalin, French peasant potatoes, or the migration of Cambodian geese in the 17th century. And it does so by saying absolutely nothing about anything in particular. For every country and every culture has its animals and colors. And in this postmodern deconstruction, one can read attacks against the foundation of Han China or the legitimacy of the Baekdu bloodline in North Korea. He is questioning the nature of figures such as Admiral Lee Sun-sin and King Sejong the Great in South Korea. Just as he did with his essay on Han, he is pulling at the fabric of our reality: telling us that our history is myth and, at the same time, are stories are reality. What if Ancient Greece, like Atlantis, were really just an invention? What would it take to pull off a fiction like that?

Like no other

It's probably helpful that Minsoo and I like similar authors and have had our minds blown in the past by works from Vladimir Nabokov and Milan Kundera. What he has done with this book is combine it with a premise: When any civilization begins to tell stories about itself, about who they are, where they come from, and what they hope to be, they begin with stories of gods, monsters, and divine heroes. When that civilization develops, they move on to telling historical tales: stories of great personages like kings, sages, and warriors. But as the civilization enters the third stage, the modern era, it is the lives of ordinary citizens that become the most interesting. As a result, the book is written in three completely different styles. At one moment you are gripped by the ennui of modernity, a life filled with coffee, tables, and worries about one's weight and sex drive. Then you are whisked away into deep fantasy with gods speaking in a completely different register, commanding the world around them.

Maybe Minsoo and I were also friends in past lives, too. But while that is speculation, the only real truth we have are the mountains. The mountains bear witness to everything. They are given different names by different cultures, histories, and peoples, but they exist throughout. They are more permanent than the stories we create. More solid than the very foundations of our religious and cultural episteme. The material world is true; everything else some form of imagined community.

Minsoo's book is one in which the river of time flows differently from that which we are used to. Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim would probably be very comfortable there. It's a new Bible. It's Andy Weir's "The Egg." But with more farts, cats, and naked babies.

David A. Tizzard has a doctorate in Korean Studies and lectures at Seoul Women's University and Hanyang University. He is a social-cultural commentator and musician who has lived in Korea for nearly two decades. He is also the host of the "Korea Deconstructed" podcast, which can be found online. He can be reached at datizzard@swu.ac.kr.