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The Soil
A major, never before translated novel by the author of "Muj?ng / The Heartless"--often called the first modern Korean novel--"The Soil" tells the story of an idealist dedicating his life to helping the inhabitants of the rural community in which he was raised. Striving to influence the poor farmers of the time to improve their lots, become self-reliant, and thus indirectly change the reality of colonial life on the Korean peninsula, "The Soil" was vitally important to the social movements of the time, echoing the effects and reception of such English-language novels as Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle."
512 pages, Paperback
First published September 26, 2013
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346 people want to read
About the author
Kwang-su Yi
11 books8 followersYi Kwang-su (Hangul: 이광수) was born in 1892 during the twilight years of the Korean monarchy, which ended in 1910 with the anexation of Korea by Japan. Recognized as one of modern Korea's best novelists, especially for his 1917 novel The Heartless, he died in disfavor in 1950, accused of collaboration with the Japanese.
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April 27, 2016
Yi Gwang-su's (이광수) 흙 was originally published, in newspaper serialisation, in the Dong-A Ilbo in 1932-33, written under, and set at, the time of the Japanese occupation of Korea.
It was translated into English in 2013 as "The Soil" by the husband and wife team of Hwang Sun-ae and Horace Jeffery Hodges, as part of the Dalkey Archive Library of Korean Literature.
The story centres on the figure of Heo Sung (허숭), a trainee lawyer, from a rural family. The family was once prosperous but fell on hard times when the father was caught up in the Korean independence movement, ultimately leading to disease killing off Heo Sung's parents and siblings. The local villages themselves have also falls into decline, as the traditional way out of rural poverty, via studying for the national civil service exams, becomes less increasingly less viable. As one elder remarks: "'There's been no use for scholarship or in being Yangban nobility since the Reformation of 1894.'"
"As the villages slowly declined, the courageous gave up their government offices, tied headbands to their brows, the threw away their books and brush pens to wield hoes in rice paddies instead. Some, however, buckled down, sticking to their offices and hoping for the glory of old times."
This tension, between the traditional way-out route of study and the need to buckle down to a more primitive agricultural existence, lies at the heart of the novel. Heo Sung, as a proxy for the author's views, seeks to resolve this conflict by using his learning to advancing the lot of the rural worker via social reform, such as establishing kindergartens and workers cooperatives.
Heo Sung himself initially seeks his fortune in Seoul in the traditional way, working as a tutor for an aristocratic official Mr Yun, as he prepares for the law exams. A fellow law student, Kim Gap-jin (김갑진), a pro-Japanese city-dweller and son of a aristocrat, set up in the novel to represent the opposite views to Heo Sung, tells him:
"You'd be better off going back home to farm the soil of your forefathers instead of feeding yourself on cold rice and staying in a servant's room of some house, just living off somebody, which is so disgusting..."
("남의 집 행랑 구석에서 식은 밥이나 죽이지 말고, 가서 조상 적부터 해먹던 땅이나 파. 괜히시리 아니꿉게 놀고먹을 궁리나 말고...")
In a pivotal moment, Heo Sung realises:
"This was true. The rice paddies, fields and mountains where ancestors had toiled in blood and sweat - which would yield rice, vegetables, clothes, or all necessities of life if one worked them hard enough - had either been hocked at high interest or sold to support sons and daughters studying in Seoul. The only aim now of parents and children was to lead a life without tiling the soil. With dark-tanned faces, large rough hands, big feet, meek eyes, and rugged bodies, these offspring of farmers who have lived for generations by their muscles working land and struggling against nature now wore ill-fitting city clothes and roamed the streets."
But Sung has the chance to rise above this, and join the city aristocrats, when he, much to Gap-Jin's disgust, is favoured by Mr Yun to marry his daughter and heir Jeong-seon (윤정선), making his decision to move back to the countryside all the more of a heroic sacrifice.
All this is set up in the first 10% or so of the novel. The rest of the novel tells a rather involved story of both Sung's efforts to reform the local community but also of his personal relationships.
In the former, the novel at times becomes very didactic (I've hardly seen a review of the novel that doesn't have to reach for that word). The author clearly has some strong views on the necessary reforms to Korean society, and the characters are forced to expound them at length.
The latter involves some very tangled love affairs - replete with extra-marital sex, illegitimate children, violence between both spouses and love rivals - throughout which Sung himself displays little but virtue.
And that highlights one rather major weakness of the novel. Too many of the characters are unrealistically virtuous (e.g. Sung, his mentor Mr. Han Min-gyo 한민교, and "Little" Gap 작은갑, a peasant farmer who takes up Sung's cause), or the opposite. The "bad" characters in particular, are more types than fleshed out people, the cynical Gap-Jin, Dr Lee Geon-Yeong (이건영) representing the Korean academic who lives a dissolute life, and Yu Jeong-geun, son of the local landowner, representing those who oppress the farmers.
The novel is rather less sentimental about the Korean people generally. In one telling remark, his mentor Mr Han holds "that the common malice of Koreans was to make trouble over things that could no longer be recovered, thereby further increasing the harm for both sides."
Sung's efforts to established an idealised cooperative are also ultimately not totally successful, and Yu seems to win out with cynical counter-reforms:
"The farmers had resented Sung's cooperative because it lent only for food during the lean time before harvest, for cost of medical treatment, or for buying farming tools, and they had welcomed Yu's new cooperative that lent money for anything, even parties or gambling, as long as there was collateral. The poor farmers had not foreseen that this would lead to utter ruin."
Having taken that realistically cynical view of his own ideals in practice, the end of the novel is rather a disappointment as Yi Gwang-su tries abruptly to wrap up his serialisation a little too neatly and quickly, including rather unrealistic about-faces from some of the previously irredeemable characters.
The political background to the novel is interesting, written as it was under Japanese occupation, and presumably some censorship. The author himself underwent a controversial, journey in his life from pro-independence radical to, well after the time of this novel, pro-Japanese collaboration, dying in 1950 in disfavour.
Sung tries to stay out (albeit unsuccessfully) of pro- or anti- Japanese discussions, preferring instead to promote Korean nationalism via self-reliance and self-improvement - independence with a small i. Korea's plight as an occupied nation is blamed not, at least directly, on the occupier but on the Korean nobility (the Yangban - referred to topically as "the 1%") for creating inequality: "they didn't lead the people properly, and that's why Korea is in such trouble now." Indeed the fecklessness of the Korean population is contrasted unfavourably to that of their occupiers in a scene where some soldiers in the Imperial Army are feted as they leave to fight in Manchuria. "Observing this dramatic scene of imperial enthusiasm, Sung felt so touched that he almost cried", whereas, in contrast, "neither Gap-Jin or Jeong-seon could understand the mindset of the Japanese, who were happy to sacrifice themselves for their country."
The translation copes well, preserving Yi Kwang-su's relatively straightforward prose style, and coping well with idiomatic expressions. For example: "Originally a building in Korean style, it was now renovated and vaguely Japanese or Western in a mix as confused as the rice and vegetable dish called bibimbap." Or, where the natural English colloquialism would be "Every Tom, Dick and Harry" we get "Every Kim, Lee and Choe" (the three most common Korean family names).
Ultimately, an enjoyable and informative read, if not particularly notable in pure literary terms.
It was translated into English in 2013 as "The Soil" by the husband and wife team of Hwang Sun-ae and Horace Jeffery Hodges, as part of the Dalkey Archive Library of Korean Literature.
The story centres on the figure of Heo Sung (허숭), a trainee lawyer, from a rural family. The family was once prosperous but fell on hard times when the father was caught up in the Korean independence movement, ultimately leading to disease killing off Heo Sung's parents and siblings. The local villages themselves have also falls into decline, as the traditional way out of rural poverty, via studying for the national civil service exams, becomes less increasingly less viable. As one elder remarks: "'There's been no use for scholarship or in being Yangban nobility since the Reformation of 1894.'"
"As the villages slowly declined, the courageous gave up their government offices, tied headbands to their brows, the threw away their books and brush pens to wield hoes in rice paddies instead. Some, however, buckled down, sticking to their offices and hoping for the glory of old times."
This tension, between the traditional way-out route of study and the need to buckle down to a more primitive agricultural existence, lies at the heart of the novel. Heo Sung, as a proxy for the author's views, seeks to resolve this conflict by using his learning to advancing the lot of the rural worker via social reform, such as establishing kindergartens and workers cooperatives.
Heo Sung himself initially seeks his fortune in Seoul in the traditional way, working as a tutor for an aristocratic official Mr Yun, as he prepares for the law exams. A fellow law student, Kim Gap-jin (김갑진), a pro-Japanese city-dweller and son of a aristocrat, set up in the novel to represent the opposite views to Heo Sung, tells him:
"You'd be better off going back home to farm the soil of your forefathers instead of feeding yourself on cold rice and staying in a servant's room of some house, just living off somebody, which is so disgusting..."
("남의 집 행랑 구석에서 식은 밥이나 죽이지 말고, 가서 조상 적부터 해먹던 땅이나 파. 괜히시리 아니꿉게 놀고먹을 궁리나 말고...")
In a pivotal moment, Heo Sung realises:
"This was true. The rice paddies, fields and mountains where ancestors had toiled in blood and sweat - which would yield rice, vegetables, clothes, or all necessities of life if one worked them hard enough - had either been hocked at high interest or sold to support sons and daughters studying in Seoul. The only aim now of parents and children was to lead a life without tiling the soil. With dark-tanned faces, large rough hands, big feet, meek eyes, and rugged bodies, these offspring of farmers who have lived for generations by their muscles working land and struggling against nature now wore ill-fitting city clothes and roamed the streets."
But Sung has the chance to rise above this, and join the city aristocrats, when he, much to Gap-Jin's disgust, is favoured by Mr Yun to marry his daughter and heir Jeong-seon (윤정선), making his decision to move back to the countryside all the more of a heroic sacrifice.
All this is set up in the first 10% or so of the novel. The rest of the novel tells a rather involved story of both Sung's efforts to reform the local community but also of his personal relationships.
In the former, the novel at times becomes very didactic (I've hardly seen a review of the novel that doesn't have to reach for that word). The author clearly has some strong views on the necessary reforms to Korean society, and the characters are forced to expound them at length.
The latter involves some very tangled love affairs - replete with extra-marital sex, illegitimate children, violence between both spouses and love rivals - throughout which Sung himself displays little but virtue.
And that highlights one rather major weakness of the novel. Too many of the characters are unrealistically virtuous (e.g. Sung, his mentor Mr. Han Min-gyo 한민교, and "Little" Gap 작은갑, a peasant farmer who takes up Sung's cause), or the opposite. The "bad" characters in particular, are more types than fleshed out people, the cynical Gap-Jin, Dr Lee Geon-Yeong (이건영) representing the Korean academic who lives a dissolute life, and Yu Jeong-geun, son of the local landowner, representing those who oppress the farmers.
The novel is rather less sentimental about the Korean people generally. In one telling remark, his mentor Mr Han holds "that the common malice of Koreans was to make trouble over things that could no longer be recovered, thereby further increasing the harm for both sides."
Sung's efforts to established an idealised cooperative are also ultimately not totally successful, and Yu seems to win out with cynical counter-reforms:
"The farmers had resented Sung's cooperative because it lent only for food during the lean time before harvest, for cost of medical treatment, or for buying farming tools, and they had welcomed Yu's new cooperative that lent money for anything, even parties or gambling, as long as there was collateral. The poor farmers had not foreseen that this would lead to utter ruin."
Having taken that realistically cynical view of his own ideals in practice, the end of the novel is rather a disappointment as Yi Gwang-su tries abruptly to wrap up his serialisation a little too neatly and quickly, including rather unrealistic about-faces from some of the previously irredeemable characters.
The political background to the novel is interesting, written as it was under Japanese occupation, and presumably some censorship. The author himself underwent a controversial, journey in his life from pro-independence radical to, well after the time of this novel, pro-Japanese collaboration, dying in 1950 in disfavour.
Sung tries to stay out (albeit unsuccessfully) of pro- or anti- Japanese discussions, preferring instead to promote Korean nationalism via self-reliance and self-improvement - independence with a small i. Korea's plight as an occupied nation is blamed not, at least directly, on the occupier but on the Korean nobility (the Yangban - referred to topically as "the 1%") for creating inequality: "they didn't lead the people properly, and that's why Korea is in such trouble now." Indeed the fecklessness of the Korean population is contrasted unfavourably to that of their occupiers in a scene where some soldiers in the Imperial Army are feted as they leave to fight in Manchuria. "Observing this dramatic scene of imperial enthusiasm, Sung felt so touched that he almost cried", whereas, in contrast, "neither Gap-Jin or Jeong-seon could understand the mindset of the Japanese, who were happy to sacrifice themselves for their country."
The translation copes well, preserving Yi Kwang-su's relatively straightforward prose style, and coping well with idiomatic expressions. For example: "Originally a building in Korean style, it was now renovated and vaguely Japanese or Western in a mix as confused as the rice and vegetable dish called bibimbap." Or, where the natural English colloquialism would be "Every Tom, Dick and Harry" we get "Every Kim, Lee and Choe" (the three most common Korean family names).
Ultimately, an enjoyable and informative read, if not particularly notable in pure literary terms.
January 10, 2023
The best book i've read so far.
Yi Kwang Soo has talent in writing. During his time, it was hard to write something because of the japanese colonialism. But he did it.
He did it in a wonderful manner, you can enter in the story and think, even now after decades, that you see the Salyeol, the city Seoul and the train station. You can feel the pain of koreans, beaten and threaten by japanese.
As a Romanian, I feel attracted to Yi's story. It is not only because I think korean history look alike ours, but because his writing is so well organized. You wonder what happened in Korea in the last century, mostly between the World Wars, and you find answers in the story.
It is a historical novel because events in this book are real. Koreans suffered because of japanese.
Koreans wanted, in '30, to be free.
What Han Sung did for Salyeol was Koreans' right. Japanese however, took their chances. In 1931 Japan took all the korean rights as human beings, rights accomplished with bood, sweat and tears during 1919.
Koreans were destroyed as a nation by Japan, but they never lost their faith in a bright future. Han Sung helped them with this. He initiated a night scool and a kindergarden, he, with the help of his wife and Seon Hi, could teach people how to take care of themselves. Japan did help Korea, but not rural areas, where were the poorest people, japanese only look after cities, and this is why Han Sung went to a city, far away, only to bring a doctor. In Salyeol they did not have doctors and people died because of thyphoid fever or a drastic cold. Han Sung learned how to be a doctor. He acted like a nurse. He established a cooperative and, because of him, Salyeol became a better place to live.
Han Sung wanted to go also near Pyongyang.
Even if he had marxist ideas, his will helped him to do what he want. He lived for the people. Han Sung is the protagonist and the liaison to the "soil". He, like many koreans, has a strong bond to his natal land. He feels the soil of Salyeol and treat it like a wife. His love for korean land is the greatest and he is a symbol for all koreans who are like him.
Yi Kwang Soo has talent in writing. During his time, it was hard to write something because of the japanese colonialism. But he did it.
He did it in a wonderful manner, you can enter in the story and think, even now after decades, that you see the Salyeol, the city Seoul and the train station. You can feel the pain of koreans, beaten and threaten by japanese.
As a Romanian, I feel attracted to Yi's story. It is not only because I think korean history look alike ours, but because his writing is so well organized. You wonder what happened in Korea in the last century, mostly between the World Wars, and you find answers in the story.
It is a historical novel because events in this book are real. Koreans suffered because of japanese.
Koreans wanted, in '30, to be free.
What Han Sung did for Salyeol was Koreans' right. Japanese however, took their chances. In 1931 Japan took all the korean rights as human beings, rights accomplished with bood, sweat and tears during 1919.
Koreans were destroyed as a nation by Japan, but they never lost their faith in a bright future. Han Sung helped them with this. He initiated a night scool and a kindergarden, he, with the help of his wife and Seon Hi, could teach people how to take care of themselves. Japan did help Korea, but not rural areas, where were the poorest people, japanese only look after cities, and this is why Han Sung went to a city, far away, only to bring a doctor. In Salyeol they did not have doctors and people died because of thyphoid fever or a drastic cold. Han Sung learned how to be a doctor. He acted like a nurse. He established a cooperative and, because of him, Salyeol became a better place to live.
Han Sung wanted to go also near Pyongyang.
Even if he had marxist ideas, his will helped him to do what he want. He lived for the people. Han Sung is the protagonist and the liaison to the "soil". He, like many koreans, has a strong bond to his natal land. He feels the soil of Salyeol and treat it like a wife. His love for korean land is the greatest and he is a symbol for all koreans who are like him.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 25, 2014
Yi Kwang-su is one of the big names in early twentieth-century Korean literature, and The Soil (translated by Hwang Sun-ae and Horace Jeffery Hodges) is a big book. The novel, a story of life in the country and city in pre-WW2 Korea, runs to just over 500 pages and was serialised in a Korean newspaper in 1932/3. This edition keeps to the structure of the serialisation, with each of the 272 sections, divided into four parts, taking up less than two pages.
The story follows Heo Sung, a student from the country, who is in Seoul hoping to become a lawyer. After an enjoyable summer at home, he makes plans to return to his village after graduating, hoping to make a difference to the poor farmers - and marry the charming Yu Sun. However, life has different plans for him. After the death of the son and heir of Sung's patron in Seoul, the young lawyer is chosen as a suitable groom for the daughter, Yun Jeong-seong, ending up with a beautiful wife, a lucrative profession and a lot of money.
A happy ending? Not exactly. Sung is unsettled in his new life, and his marriage is not as happy as he might have hoped. His wife is a vain, shallow creation of the big city, and she soon grows to despair of her hard-working, honest husband. After one argument too many, Sung decides that enough is enough and heads back home to Salyeoul. It's time to put his idealistic plans into action...
The Soil is a big book, one with an array of interesting characters and several ambitious ideas. At its centre is an honest man in a moribund, corrupt society, a dreamer who wants to make his homeland a better place. After his initial slip, Sung works hard to improve life for his home village, using his money to improve farming methods and help free the locals from the shackles of perpetual debt. He dreams of a bucolic Korean utopia, hoping to raise living standards for all.
It's not going to be easy though when even those he wants to help are suspicious of his motives. The farmers find it hard to understand why someone would choose to leave the city behind (and the administrators are rather suspicious of his motives, suspecting anti-government behaviour...). Sung's pro-Korean fervour is also anachronistic as this is the height of the Japanese colonial era; the educated elite look down on the masses and hunt elsewhere for inspiration. With ignorant locals, poverty everywhere and totally outdated beliefs in areas such as traditional medicine, it's hardly unsurprising.
The writer's views on the possible effects of foreign influence are shown in two of Sung's rivals in love. Kim Gap-jin, another suitor hoping for Jeong-seong's hand, is a rich Japanese toadie and an arrogant womaniser, a man who looks east to Tokyo for excellence in all matters:
"There's also a Department of Korean Literature at your university, isn't there?" said Sung, who had not yet given up on leading Gap-jin in a certain direction.
"Yes. There's the department of Korean Literature. I really don't know what students learn there. I think literature is useless anyway. And to study Korean literature? Even worse. I don't understand the motives of anybody admitted to a prestigious university who studies Korean literature."
p.48 (Dalkey Archive Press, 2013)
This is typical of his attitude towards his mother country; he loathes the Korean language (and its primitive Hangul 'scribbles'), preferring to use Japanese whenever possible.
The second of Sung's rivals, Dr. Lee Geon-yeong, takes his inspiration from another source. At the start of the novel, he has just returned from ten years in America, having completed his PhD. However, beneath his smooth exterior and his claims to bring back new ideas, he is shown to be an inveterate skirt- and money-chaser, a heartless user. Like Gap-jin, he treats women terribly, behaving contrary to the dictates of traditional Korean customs.
While the womanisers have their moments, for me the most interesting aspects of the novel are those examining the Japanese colonial administration. Sung and Gap-jin are typical of the new governing class under the Japanese, sailing off to Tokyo to take law exams before returning to govern the country in the name of the invaders. It's fascinating when read against what was being published in Japan at the time - a sort of colonial shadow side of J-Lit (a good example of this is the plan the waster Kobayashi has in Natsume Soseki's Light and Dark to make his fortune in Korea...).
The colonial side reminds me a lot of what was happening in Ireland and England in the 19th century, where the elite Irish youth were incorporated into the system to become administrators of the Empire (Trollope's Phineas Finn is a book which comes to mind immediately). In fact, once you start thinking about connections with Victorian literature, it's easy to find more. The exploitation of workers brings Gaskell's North and South to mind while the tough life of the poor farm workers is fairly Hardyesque:
"Of this grain planted and harvested by the people, half would go to the storehouses of the landlord. The other half would pass through storehouses of several debtors for transport by car and ship providing dealers their profits before ending up as food or alcohol in the mouths of people who had never worked in fields or seen their reflection in the water. But those who had worked so hard in the fields, using their bodies as fertilizer, would remain forever poor, forever servants in debt, and forever hungry." (pp.92/3)
You might even say that these were hard times... ;)
The Soil is an excellent story with lots to recommend it, but it is a product of a different time and place, so a modern reader might struggle at times. It can be rather didactic and overplain, and it is frequently extremely melodramatic - the bad are cartoonishly bad, the good are far too good. Sung, a man who is apparently able to withstand anything, eventually wins over everyone in his presence, including characters we thought too far gone to bring back. At times, it seems a bit a little too much of a stretch...
While the writing is not always as perfect as you might wish, this is a book I enjoyed immensely. It's a novel which will be perfect for readers with an interest in Asia, post-colonial history or the fraught relationship between Korea and Japan - and it was the ideal start to my Korean literary journey. Let's see where the next leg takes me ;)
*****
This review first appeared on my blog, Tony's Reading List :)
The story follows Heo Sung, a student from the country, who is in Seoul hoping to become a lawyer. After an enjoyable summer at home, he makes plans to return to his village after graduating, hoping to make a difference to the poor farmers - and marry the charming Yu Sun. However, life has different plans for him. After the death of the son and heir of Sung's patron in Seoul, the young lawyer is chosen as a suitable groom for the daughter, Yun Jeong-seong, ending up with a beautiful wife, a lucrative profession and a lot of money.
A happy ending? Not exactly. Sung is unsettled in his new life, and his marriage is not as happy as he might have hoped. His wife is a vain, shallow creation of the big city, and she soon grows to despair of her hard-working, honest husband. After one argument too many, Sung decides that enough is enough and heads back home to Salyeoul. It's time to put his idealistic plans into action...
The Soil is a big book, one with an array of interesting characters and several ambitious ideas. At its centre is an honest man in a moribund, corrupt society, a dreamer who wants to make his homeland a better place. After his initial slip, Sung works hard to improve life for his home village, using his money to improve farming methods and help free the locals from the shackles of perpetual debt. He dreams of a bucolic Korean utopia, hoping to raise living standards for all.
It's not going to be easy though when even those he wants to help are suspicious of his motives. The farmers find it hard to understand why someone would choose to leave the city behind (and the administrators are rather suspicious of his motives, suspecting anti-government behaviour...). Sung's pro-Korean fervour is also anachronistic as this is the height of the Japanese colonial era; the educated elite look down on the masses and hunt elsewhere for inspiration. With ignorant locals, poverty everywhere and totally outdated beliefs in areas such as traditional medicine, it's hardly unsurprising.
The writer's views on the possible effects of foreign influence are shown in two of Sung's rivals in love. Kim Gap-jin, another suitor hoping for Jeong-seong's hand, is a rich Japanese toadie and an arrogant womaniser, a man who looks east to Tokyo for excellence in all matters:
"There's also a Department of Korean Literature at your university, isn't there?" said Sung, who had not yet given up on leading Gap-jin in a certain direction.
"Yes. There's the department of Korean Literature. I really don't know what students learn there. I think literature is useless anyway. And to study Korean literature? Even worse. I don't understand the motives of anybody admitted to a prestigious university who studies Korean literature."
p.48 (Dalkey Archive Press, 2013)
This is typical of his attitude towards his mother country; he loathes the Korean language (and its primitive Hangul 'scribbles'), preferring to use Japanese whenever possible.
The second of Sung's rivals, Dr. Lee Geon-yeong, takes his inspiration from another source. At the start of the novel, he has just returned from ten years in America, having completed his PhD. However, beneath his smooth exterior and his claims to bring back new ideas, he is shown to be an inveterate skirt- and money-chaser, a heartless user. Like Gap-jin, he treats women terribly, behaving contrary to the dictates of traditional Korean customs.
While the womanisers have their moments, for me the most interesting aspects of the novel are those examining the Japanese colonial administration. Sung and Gap-jin are typical of the new governing class under the Japanese, sailing off to Tokyo to take law exams before returning to govern the country in the name of the invaders. It's fascinating when read against what was being published in Japan at the time - a sort of colonial shadow side of J-Lit (a good example of this is the plan the waster Kobayashi has in Natsume Soseki's Light and Dark to make his fortune in Korea...).
The colonial side reminds me a lot of what was happening in Ireland and England in the 19th century, where the elite Irish youth were incorporated into the system to become administrators of the Empire (Trollope's Phineas Finn is a book which comes to mind immediately). In fact, once you start thinking about connections with Victorian literature, it's easy to find more. The exploitation of workers brings Gaskell's North and South to mind while the tough life of the poor farm workers is fairly Hardyesque:
"Of this grain planted and harvested by the people, half would go to the storehouses of the landlord. The other half would pass through storehouses of several debtors for transport by car and ship providing dealers their profits before ending up as food or alcohol in the mouths of people who had never worked in fields or seen their reflection in the water. But those who had worked so hard in the fields, using their bodies as fertilizer, would remain forever poor, forever servants in debt, and forever hungry." (pp.92/3)
You might even say that these were hard times... ;)
The Soil is an excellent story with lots to recommend it, but it is a product of a different time and place, so a modern reader might struggle at times. It can be rather didactic and overplain, and it is frequently extremely melodramatic - the bad are cartoonishly bad, the good are far too good. Sung, a man who is apparently able to withstand anything, eventually wins over everyone in his presence, including characters we thought too far gone to bring back. At times, it seems a bit a little too much of a stretch...
While the writing is not always as perfect as you might wish, this is a book I enjoyed immensely. It's a novel which will be perfect for readers with an interest in Asia, post-colonial history or the fraught relationship between Korea and Japan - and it was the ideal start to my Korean literary journey. Let's see where the next leg takes me ;)
*****
This review first appeared on my blog, Tony's Reading List :)
June 7, 2025
A very idealistic, matter-of-fact narrative in 1900s Japan-colonized Korea. A story about power, purpose in life, philosophy, economic opportunity, Korean identity, infidelity, violence, and love.
The style reminds me of Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan or To Live by Yu Hua (Asians am I right???) Straight to the point, no fat on the bone, the wheel of life keeps turning.
It’s a story that doesn’t just involve politics, but is driven by the morality and reflection of the characters political beliefs. We see educated, talented people wasting their lives away living indulgently (Gap Jin, Dr Lee, Jeong-Seon) while Sung dedicates his life to basically attempting to install Communism in his home village. It’s honestly over the top how altruistic Sung is, while so many other characters are just despicable low-lifes, but it works in context (especially when you read the epilogue, and see that Sung is loosely based on a real life figure, Choe Su-ban).
There’s a beautiful portrayal of the simple life of farmers and country people. Like this quote, page 45: “Among human works, farming seemed the only right, holy, and true one.” I have to imagine Yi Kwang-su loved Mao.
500 pages flew by with this one, great read 👌🇰🇷
The style reminds me of Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan or To Live by Yu Hua (Asians am I right???) Straight to the point, no fat on the bone, the wheel of life keeps turning.
It’s a story that doesn’t just involve politics, but is driven by the morality and reflection of the characters political beliefs. We see educated, talented people wasting their lives away living indulgently (Gap Jin, Dr Lee, Jeong-Seon) while Sung dedicates his life to basically attempting to install Communism in his home village. It’s honestly over the top how altruistic Sung is, while so many other characters are just despicable low-lifes, but it works in context (especially when you read the epilogue, and see that Sung is loosely based on a real life figure, Choe Su-ban).
There’s a beautiful portrayal of the simple life of farmers and country people. Like this quote, page 45: “Among human works, farming seemed the only right, holy, and true one.” I have to imagine Yi Kwang-su loved Mao.
500 pages flew by with this one, great read 👌🇰🇷
August 12, 2023
Korean Anna Karenina (not really but couldn’t get the parallels to Levin out of my head). Would have been 5 stars but some of the characters (especially at the end) were particularly unbelievable
June 17, 2019
There was a lot of this book that reminded me of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, except the reverse happened. Instead of somebody going from rags to riches, the hero of the story takes his vastt wealth and uses it to bring his hometown, a small rural Korean village out of the grips of the landowners who take from the people and keep them in abject poverty. During all of the experiences in this book, we get to see what life was like for wealthy Koreans as well as those who struggled to make ends meet during the Japanese occupation of the country. The characters are well thought out and the action keeps you involved throughout much of the story. There are a lot of aspects of the story that lends itself to high drama and makes it feel like one of Korea's first k-dramas that are so popular right now, but at the same time the themes of relationships versus the collection of wealth, and what it means to have pride in your country and herritage make this story worth looking at. The worst part of the book comes at the end. There is a distinct lack of a real ending. There are too many loose ends left in the story for it to feel like a satisfying ending. Kwang-su Yi even adds an epologue to the ending to state that he will someday write a sequel to the book so these loose ends give a stronger sense of closure, but he never got around to do so. All in all, it is an important book in the history of Korea, and worth a look at, but it leaves much to be desired in order to make it fall into the realm of great classical literature.
March 14, 2017
Serialized tragic romance from Colonial Korea
Assigned reading in my History of Korea course this semester, The Soil is quite readable. Like Dickens, the author contrives a web of characters and relationships to hold our interest chapter to chapter.
Assigned reading in my History of Korea course this semester, The Soil is quite readable. Like Dickens, the author contrives a web of characters and relationships to hold our interest chapter to chapter.
February 27, 2017
I enjoyed reading this 500+ page novel despite its slightly staccato translation. It reads very literally sometimes (The house of Sung was situated...) and I can only imagine how beautiful it might actually read in its original Korean. The theme of the book is so painfully idealistic that it is sometimes unbelievable and its characters are largely black and white except for Jeong-Seon who is more shaded. But all of this does not take away the enjoyment of reading this book and understanding the Korean situation during the Japanese occupation and also of keenly following the fates of the characters.
March 30, 2021
Another novel by Yi Kwang-su, written fifteen years later, this is obviously less important historically than Mujŏng, which was the first in vernacular Korean, but also seems to be better written, although it's hard to be sure given that they were translated by different translators. The repetitions are mostly gone, and although it is certainly didactic the didactic passages are handled in dialogue and given to appropriate characters rather than being intrusive monologues by the narrator. Some aspects of the plot are similar -- the weak protagonist who lets himself be convinced to marry the wrong, rich woman rather than his original love, the good kisaeng (spelled gisaeng in this book), the girl who goes to Tokyo and becomes a concert musician, and so forth. The emphasis on serving Korea is even more central, although education here is subordinated to economic concerns of the peasantry and setting up of a cooperative in the countryside.
The protagonist, Heo Sung, is a law student in Seoul, originally from the village of Salyeoul; he abandons the village girl he loves, Yu Sun, to marry Yu Jeong-seon, the daughter of a wealthy patron who pays for him to get his law degree. The marriage is unhappy, and Sung returns to Salyeoul to work for the peasants. The former gisaeng, Baek Seon-hi, meets him on the train and ends up accompanying him to the village where she becomes a kindergarten teacher. The novel then focuses on the countryside and its problems, as well as the relationship issues between Sung, Sun, Jeong-seon and Seon-hi. I don't want to go too much into the plot, but it involves slander, murder, prison, and a much darker overall feeling than Mujŏng, despite a not entirely convincing optimistic ending.
This is more of a propaganda novel than great literature, but still worth reading for the historical background.
The protagonist, Heo Sung, is a law student in Seoul, originally from the village of Salyeoul; he abandons the village girl he loves, Yu Sun, to marry Yu Jeong-seon, the daughter of a wealthy patron who pays for him to get his law degree. The marriage is unhappy, and Sung returns to Salyeoul to work for the peasants. The former gisaeng, Baek Seon-hi, meets him on the train and ends up accompanying him to the village where she becomes a kindergarten teacher. The novel then focuses on the countryside and its problems, as well as the relationship issues between Sung, Sun, Jeong-seon and Seon-hi. I don't want to go too much into the plot, but it involves slander, murder, prison, and a much darker overall feeling than Mujŏng, despite a not entirely convincing optimistic ending.
This is more of a propaganda novel than great literature, but still worth reading for the historical background.
February 11, 2017
Not always an easy read but helpful on understanding Korea.
September 30, 2015
My dismissive review would read: Korean 'Anna Karenina.' And I don't think I would be too far off. There is plenty if Levin in Sung and the vast majority of 'The Soil' reminded me of that oft-ignored half of 'Anna Karenina'.
There is required at times a heavy dose of suspension of disbelief, as people have lightning-flash changes of heart, and you may feel no pity towards the nameless villagers of Salyeoul because they must be not uneducated, but unable to process common sense. Towards the end I was basically rooting for their demise. They deserved it.
The writing is very plain. Almost shockingly so, but this isn't a bad thing. I don't know for sure, but I am certain the Korean was also very plain and easy to read to expand the audience and get Yu Kwang-Su's point across.
There is required at times a heavy dose of suspension of disbelief, as people have lightning-flash changes of heart, and you may feel no pity towards the nameless villagers of Salyeoul because they must be not uneducated, but unable to process common sense. Towards the end I was basically rooting for their demise. They deserved it.
The writing is very plain. Almost shockingly so, but this isn't a bad thing. I don't know for sure, but I am certain the Korean was also very plain and easy to read to expand the audience and get Yu Kwang-Su's point across.
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