The cover of "Unnie" by Yun-Yun / Courtesy of Yun-Yun
English-language fiction by ethnic Koreans is central to the literature of the Korean diaspora, which also includes significant bodies of literary work in Russian, Japanese and, increasingly in Korean, by ethnic Koreans in the Yanbian region of China. "Unnie" by Yun-Yun is a rare example of an English-language literary work by a writer based in Korea.
On April 16, 2014, the Sewol ferry, transporting high school students and teachers on a spring outing to Jeju Island, sank off the southwest coast of Korea. The ship's crew advised the passengers to remain aboard and await rescue, while they themselves evacuated. More than 300 of the passengers perished, the great majority of them students and teachers, and the remains of five of the victims were never recovered. It was subsequently determined that the boat had been overloaded with cargo, making it vulnerable to treacherous currents.
The Sewol sinking drew a multifaceted response from the Korean public. People wore yellow ribbons to commemorate the victims. The K-pop idol group 2NE1 performed an acoustic version of their song "Come Back Home" in which they wore the commemorative ribbons. Several authors have memorialized the tragedy. Kim Takhwan, an author of historical novels, has written of the tragedy from a "three embraces" perspective: that of the divers clutching the bodies of the victims as they returned them to the surface, that of the families of the victims comforting one another in periodic gatherings and that of the author himself taking to heart the subject matter of yet another human disaster met with an ineffectual response by the South Korean government.
The critique of that response by writers and other artists was significant enough that some found it difficult to obtain government funding for travel abroad for artistic and cultural exchanges. One of those writers, whom Ju-Chan Fulton and I have translated, told me in 2016 that many Koreans had already left the country in response to the tragedy. "Forever?" I asked. "Yes, forever," she replied: they weren't coming back.
Yun-Yun (a pen name) is the first writer to directly engage in an English-language literary work with the aftermath of the tragedy. Utilizing the personal accounts of several families who lost a loved one to the sinking, she guides us on a journey in which the families of the victims attempt to gain closure: Did their loved ones survive? If not, were their bodies recovered? How, when and where will they learn the fate of their loved ones? Most of the families are taken to Jindo, an island off the southwest coast, to await developments. Some are able to reunite with the bodies of their family members, only to experience the sloughing off of the victim's scalp as they pass a hand across the crown of the head. Some are taken on a boat to the spot where the ferry sank. Others wait in vain, asking rhetorically, "Does the Republic of Korea care about its children?"
Yun-young, the protagonist, is already launched on a journey of her own to recover the life of her older sister Park Mi-na, or "unnie," from where the book takes its name. She recalls the five frustrating years that her family experienced in the U.S., and more recently the time her unnie spent confining herself in a "goshiwon," a closet-like rented space, in order to prepare for the exam that would qualify her as a public school teacher. Yun-young attempts to cope with the knowledge that her unnie is the second female sibling she has lost.
Three years after the sinking, the ferry is finally returned to the surface. Her unnie is not aboard. A funeral is held for her sister and four other victims whose remains have yet to be recovered. Yun-young offers to the funeral pyre a book in which she has inscribed memories of her older sister, lost to the sea at the age of 29. She calls out to the soul of her sister that she will take on the role of oldest daughter.
In writing this book, Yun-Yun has restored the identity of not only the individual she names Park Mi-na, but by extension the innumerable victims of human-made disasters that have marked the modern history of a nation that today is one of the economic and cultural giants of the world.
That Yun-Yun has taken it upon herself to privately publish a novel that gives heartfelt expression to a national tragedy bespeaks the potential of literary art to effect healing and closure. Let us hope that through "Unnie" she will inspire others to write stories of all the unnies, indeed all the important others of our lives, so that those who perish in an untimely manner may not be forever consigned to the dark corners of historical memory.
Bruce Fulton is the co-translator, with Ju-Chan Fulton, of numerous volumes of modern Korean fiction, most recently the novels "One Left" by Kim Soom (2020) and "Togani" by Gong Ji-young (2023), and editor of "The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories" (2023), the first volume of modern Korean literature among Penguin UK's 3500-plus World Classics.