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The House with a Sunken Courtyard
An occasionally terrifying and always vivid portrayal of what it was like to live as a refugee immediately after the end of the Korean War. This novel is based on the author’s own experience in his early teens in Daegu, in 1954, and depicts six families that survive the hard times together in the same house, weathering the tiny conflicts of interest and rivalries that spring up in such close quarters, but nonetheless offering one another sympathy and encouragement as fellow sufferers of the same national misfortune: brothers and sisters in privation.
229 pages, Paperback
First published September 26, 2013
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April 27, 2016
"Our reminisces about that most poverty-stricken and squalid period of our lives were often prefaced by 'When we were living in the house with the sunken courtyard...'"
"간난스럽던 지난 시절을 이야기할 적이면, 으레 '그 마당 깊은집 에 살 적에 ... ' 란 말을 곧잘 쓰곤 했다".
The House with a Sunken Courtyard (마당깊은 집) by Kim Won-il (김원일) was published in 1988 and translated into English as part of the Daley Kilt series by Suh Ji-Moon in 2013.
The story is set over a year in the city of Daegu from April 1954, 9 months after the July 1953 armistice that ended fighting in the 1950-3 Korean war, to the following spring.
The story is narrated by Gilnam (길남), a middle-school age boy at that time, although the novel is written as his reminiscences ("more than thirty years have passed since then") prompted, in part, by a TV campaign in 1983 "to reunite sauntered families" still separated by the aftermath of the war.
Daegu is in the southeast of Korea and although the fighting came very close, the city remained in Southern hands throughout the war, and hence was a place for relative refuge for people from other parts of the war-torn country.
As the story opens, Gilnam's mother has been working as a seamstress and built up a reasonable client base amongst the local gisaeng ("entertainment ladies"). She has been able to rent a room in the sunken courtyard of a house owned by a more prosperous family. A tiny room (13m2), but that still puts them in a much better position than many families with no permanent shelter, enabling her to summon Gilnam and his siblings to join her, from where they had been living with other family members.
The dwelling in the sunken courtyard was designed in olden times ("those days of class distinctions"), as servants quarters, for "the lower classes to occupy physically lower terrain", but now has been split into several rooms, each housing a refugee family.
Gilnam, as first person narrator, introduces us in detail to each of these, mostly fractured, families, and their respective travails. All of them lack a dominant male figure: Gilnam's father is lost in the North, one father was killed in the war, one absent and another a crippled war veteran. There is plenty of tension, living at such close quarters and in such difficult conditions, but also mutual support:
"There was gossiping, inevitably, and a little hypocrisy, but we all understood what hard work it was for refugees to keep alive, and did not withhold emotional support from one another"
The novel paints a stark picture of the aftermath of the conflict: men wearing sandwich boards are advertising not products for sale, but rather appeals for information on families split asunder by the war, living conditions are basic, and political repression and anti-communist reprisals are already in force.
But there is also an element of hope, almost sentimentality, about Gilnam's tale. In particular he makes it clear that these formative experiences set him up for later life.
And in that regard, the most memorable character in the novel is Gilnam's mother, constantly exhorting her son to better himself, through study, hard work and also developing.
After ten days she gives him some of her savings and tells him to set himself up in business. The passage is worth quoting in detail:
"Listen, Gilnam. You are the eldest son in this family with no father. You have seen how the world treats people whose only crime is their poverty. I'm sure that, young as you were, you have experienced through grinding hunger what sorrowness and bitterness poverty causes. As you know, those who have nothing but their brawn to rely on must work twice as hard just to put food in their mouths. You must realise you are very differently situated from our landlords' sons. Those boys have wealthy parents, an imposing house, and plenty to eat. So, they can go to college if they study hard, and can get good jobs after graduating from college. And they can get on in the world easily. It's true that if even if you study twice as hard as those boys until you come of age there may still be exactly the same gap between you and them. But you can't just stand by and leave everything to fate. That'd be like a farmer doing nothing but pray in a severe drought. Rice doesn't grow of it's own accord. But you must try as best you can to improve your lot. As for me, my mission in life is to support the four of you until you can become independent.
...
You must make up your mind very firmly to get out of this poverty. As I see it, there are only two options for you. One is for you to study very hard and become twice as able as the others.
...
Another option for you to make headway in this life is for you to master the ways of this world...that's why I'm giving you this money.
Why don't you try buying newspapers with that money and selling them in the street. It doesn't matter how much money you can make. The important thing is for you to realise the value of earning money. That will give you a good sense of the hardships of making your way in the world."
She is a hard task master, regularly beating him if she perceives him as being lazy and telling him to refuse charity and help from others in favour of self-reliance.
When a fellow mother goes back to her street vendor job just 2 days after giving birth "she said as she stepped out of the middle gate with her bloodless face, that she must work harder as there was one more mouth to feed. My mother said to me, 'Take note of that, Gilnam. That's how people can overcome poverty. That family will some day be rich.'"
Later someone volunteers to help Gilnam with the tough job of splitting the families logs for winter firewood. "Mother would have snubbed him with: 'Why are you trying to take away from my son work that will build up his muscles, foster a spirit of independence, and fulfil his part as a pillar of the family?'"
The novels end is at first a little unsatisfying as there is no neat conclusion, and we don't find out for sure the fate of all the characters (e.g. "As the tenants of the house with the sunken courtyard all had to disperse in mid-April of [1955], I don't know if the Gyeonggi woman realised her dream of going to America.") The 1980s Gilnam instead relays patchy rumours and possible sightings since those days. But on reflection that better fits the realistic, rather than omniscient narrator - and the real story is how each of the families emerged from those squalid days.
In that regard, I found the novel a fascinating counterpoint to much modern Korean literature, where criticism of the South's pressurised education system, and hard-working get-ahead culture seem a dominant theme. This is a useful reminder that this very same will to prosper and better themselves dragged South Koreans out of the extreme poverty of those post war years to their current position as one of the world's most prosperous economies.
"간난스럽던 지난 시절을 이야기할 적이면, 으레 '그 마당 깊은집 에 살 적에 ... ' 란 말을 곧잘 쓰곤 했다".
The House with a Sunken Courtyard (마당깊은 집) by Kim Won-il (김원일) was published in 1988 and translated into English as part of the Daley Kilt series by Suh Ji-Moon in 2013.
The story is set over a year in the city of Daegu from April 1954, 9 months after the July 1953 armistice that ended fighting in the 1950-3 Korean war, to the following spring.
The story is narrated by Gilnam (길남), a middle-school age boy at that time, although the novel is written as his reminiscences ("more than thirty years have passed since then") prompted, in part, by a TV campaign in 1983 "to reunite sauntered families" still separated by the aftermath of the war.
Daegu is in the southeast of Korea and although the fighting came very close, the city remained in Southern hands throughout the war, and hence was a place for relative refuge for people from other parts of the war-torn country.
As the story opens, Gilnam's mother has been working as a seamstress and built up a reasonable client base amongst the local gisaeng ("entertainment ladies"). She has been able to rent a room in the sunken courtyard of a house owned by a more prosperous family. A tiny room (13m2), but that still puts them in a much better position than many families with no permanent shelter, enabling her to summon Gilnam and his siblings to join her, from where they had been living with other family members.
The dwelling in the sunken courtyard was designed in olden times ("those days of class distinctions"), as servants quarters, for "the lower classes to occupy physically lower terrain", but now has been split into several rooms, each housing a refugee family.
Gilnam, as first person narrator, introduces us in detail to each of these, mostly fractured, families, and their respective travails. All of them lack a dominant male figure: Gilnam's father is lost in the North, one father was killed in the war, one absent and another a crippled war veteran. There is plenty of tension, living at such close quarters and in such difficult conditions, but also mutual support:
"There was gossiping, inevitably, and a little hypocrisy, but we all understood what hard work it was for refugees to keep alive, and did not withhold emotional support from one another"
The novel paints a stark picture of the aftermath of the conflict: men wearing sandwich boards are advertising not products for sale, but rather appeals for information on families split asunder by the war, living conditions are basic, and political repression and anti-communist reprisals are already in force.
But there is also an element of hope, almost sentimentality, about Gilnam's tale. In particular he makes it clear that these formative experiences set him up for later life.
And in that regard, the most memorable character in the novel is Gilnam's mother, constantly exhorting her son to better himself, through study, hard work and also developing.
After ten days she gives him some of her savings and tells him to set himself up in business. The passage is worth quoting in detail:
"Listen, Gilnam. You are the eldest son in this family with no father. You have seen how the world treats people whose only crime is their poverty. I'm sure that, young as you were, you have experienced through grinding hunger what sorrowness and bitterness poverty causes. As you know, those who have nothing but their brawn to rely on must work twice as hard just to put food in their mouths. You must realise you are very differently situated from our landlords' sons. Those boys have wealthy parents, an imposing house, and plenty to eat. So, they can go to college if they study hard, and can get good jobs after graduating from college. And they can get on in the world easily. It's true that if even if you study twice as hard as those boys until you come of age there may still be exactly the same gap between you and them. But you can't just stand by and leave everything to fate. That'd be like a farmer doing nothing but pray in a severe drought. Rice doesn't grow of it's own accord. But you must try as best you can to improve your lot. As for me, my mission in life is to support the four of you until you can become independent.
...
You must make up your mind very firmly to get out of this poverty. As I see it, there are only two options for you. One is for you to study very hard and become twice as able as the others.
...
Another option for you to make headway in this life is for you to master the ways of this world...that's why I'm giving you this money.
Why don't you try buying newspapers with that money and selling them in the street. It doesn't matter how much money you can make. The important thing is for you to realise the value of earning money. That will give you a good sense of the hardships of making your way in the world."
She is a hard task master, regularly beating him if she perceives him as being lazy and telling him to refuse charity and help from others in favour of self-reliance.
When a fellow mother goes back to her street vendor job just 2 days after giving birth "she said as she stepped out of the middle gate with her bloodless face, that she must work harder as there was one more mouth to feed. My mother said to me, 'Take note of that, Gilnam. That's how people can overcome poverty. That family will some day be rich.'"
Later someone volunteers to help Gilnam with the tough job of splitting the families logs for winter firewood. "Mother would have snubbed him with: 'Why are you trying to take away from my son work that will build up his muscles, foster a spirit of independence, and fulfil his part as a pillar of the family?'"
The novels end is at first a little unsatisfying as there is no neat conclusion, and we don't find out for sure the fate of all the characters (e.g. "As the tenants of the house with the sunken courtyard all had to disperse in mid-April of [1955], I don't know if the Gyeonggi woman realised her dream of going to America.") The 1980s Gilnam instead relays patchy rumours and possible sightings since those days. But on reflection that better fits the realistic, rather than omniscient narrator - and the real story is how each of the families emerged from those squalid days.
In that regard, I found the novel a fascinating counterpoint to much modern Korean literature, where criticism of the South's pressurised education system, and hard-working get-ahead culture seem a dominant theme. This is a useful reminder that this very same will to prosper and better themselves dragged South Koreans out of the extreme poverty of those post war years to their current position as one of the world's most prosperous economies.
July 26, 2020
I found this book to be deeply moving and an interesting insight into 1950s Korea.
The book does not have much of a linear structure and appears to focus on particular moments throughout the authors childhood. However, it is deeply immersive and you really get a sense of the immense hardships that many Korean families had to go through after the Korean war.
The book also gives great insight into the social inequalities plaguing Korea at this time as well as providing information about dissenting opinions among some South Koreans who idolised communism and Koreans who idolised American culture.
I would highly recommend this book if you want to learn more about Korean culture and history. It is a great read.
The book does not have much of a linear structure and appears to focus on particular moments throughout the authors childhood. However, it is deeply immersive and you really get a sense of the immense hardships that many Korean families had to go through after the Korean war.
The book also gives great insight into the social inequalities plaguing Korea at this time as well as providing information about dissenting opinions among some South Koreans who idolised communism and Koreans who idolised American culture.
I would highly recommend this book if you want to learn more about Korean culture and history. It is a great read.
November 25, 2014
Kim Won-il's The House with a Sunken Courtyard (translated by Suh Ji-Moon) is set in 1954, shortly after the armistice brings an uneasy end to the conflict in Korea. After spending some time apart from his family, twelve-year-old Gilsam is summoned to the southern city of Daegu to rejoin the rest of his family - two younger brothers, an elder sister and his hard-working, over-bearing mother.
While the war is finally over, times are still tough, and the five of them are cramped together in a room they rent in a large, sprawling house (the titular house with a sunken courtyard), sharing close quarters with other refugees. As 1954 turns into 1955, we see the relationships between the residents of the house unfold, and the six families, including that of the landlord, living in such close proximity give us a representative cross-section of the Korean people of the time.
Kim lets the reader know from the first page that the setting is far from salubrious:
"Janggwan-dong was a small district of about two hundred and fifty houses, and the street, that stretched for only three hundred meters, was narrow and winding, too narrow for automobile traffic and only wide enough for hand-drawn carts, and was bordered by other administrative districts on either side. Along both sides of the street ran open sewers, so it stank except during the winter, and in the summer pink mosquito larvae swarmed in them."
pp.5/6 (Dalkey Archive Press, 2013)
This squalor continues when we get to see where Gilnam's family lives, as despite the splendour of the landlord's main house, the refugees' quarters are dirty, cramped rooms in another building, right next to the sewage trench. The sad thing is that, by the standards of the day, these families are actually the lucky ones.
Having arrived too late to try to get into a middle school, Gilnam is persuaded to go out onto the streets of Daegu to try to make a living, taking the role of the head of the family in place of his father (possibly dead, possibly living in the North). While he would prefer to study, he realises that the family needs money to supplement his mother's income from sewing, so he pounds the streets selling newspapers, hoping one day to be able to share in the delights he sees richer people enjoying.
While The House with a Sunken Courtyard mainly focuses on the struggles of day-to-day life, there are some political elements. One of the sub-plots is centred on a family from the North who are frequently harassed by a detective, and there is plenty of talk about the way society has changed since the war:
"This war has corrupted everyone," Jeongtae argued. "Everyone has become money-mad and would grovel before the worst of thieves if they had money. Everyone thinks of nothing but making money fast and escaping poverty, and won't stop at anything, even stealing. But under this system only the capitalist thieves can make more and more money, and the honest poor folk remain poor no matter how hard they work." (p.115)
True or not, this is dangerous talk in post-war South Korea. When even the mere fact of praising Communism can land you in prison, it's sometimes best to keep as quiet as possible...
In reality, though, the book concentrates on Gilnam's family, and the figure who presides over them is the mother, that quasi-mythical Korean creature. Deserted by her husband, she will go to any lengths to support her family, even if that calls for some (very) tough love at times (it's no coincidence that Gilnam is recalled to Daegu too late to try out for Middle School). In order to help everyone survive in the long-term, she is quite prepared to inflict short-term pain and hunger on her unwitting children. For a Westerner like myself, she's a very ambiguous character, but I suspect that a Korean reader would see her in a much more positive light, even when she's whipping her children and making them go without dinner.
You'd be forgiven for assuming that The House with a Sunken Courtyard is a rather depressing novel, but that's not entirely true. It's actually a nostalgic look back at the narrator's youth, a time when things were very different and, despite the poverty, not always worse. There's more than a hint of The Wonder Years about it, and I could easily imagine the narrator's voice taking us back through the decades to a poorer, simpler time (in fact, there are a couple of connections here, with that show starting around the time this novel appeared in Korea - and featuring a veteran of the Korean War as the father!).
The sepia-tinged air is created, in part, by Suh Ji-moon's translation. While it's very well written and highly effective, there is a deliberate choice of old-fashioned vocabulary and syntax. I was a little dubious at the start, but as the novel progressed, I could see how it was a deliberate stylistic choice, distancing the reader (and narrator) from the action and fixing the setting as a very different time and place. It won't be to everyone's tastes, but I suspect that it reflects the intentions of the original very well.
In The House with a Sunken Courtyard, Kim has recreated a slice of history, a photographic record (in black and white, of course) of a fascinating period in his country's history. Anyone with an interest in Korea will enjoy reading about the struggles people faced after the war and the way in which they began to come to terms with the new world order of living in a state separated by ideology. While it's not the best of the Library of Korean Literature books I've read so far, it's a certainly one I'd recommend, a sombre reminder that the country wasn't always a high-tech marvel...
*****
This review first appeared on my blog, Tony's Reading List :)
While the war is finally over, times are still tough, and the five of them are cramped together in a room they rent in a large, sprawling house (the titular house with a sunken courtyard), sharing close quarters with other refugees. As 1954 turns into 1955, we see the relationships between the residents of the house unfold, and the six families, including that of the landlord, living in such close proximity give us a representative cross-section of the Korean people of the time.
Kim lets the reader know from the first page that the setting is far from salubrious:
"Janggwan-dong was a small district of about two hundred and fifty houses, and the street, that stretched for only three hundred meters, was narrow and winding, too narrow for automobile traffic and only wide enough for hand-drawn carts, and was bordered by other administrative districts on either side. Along both sides of the street ran open sewers, so it stank except during the winter, and in the summer pink mosquito larvae swarmed in them."
pp.5/6 (Dalkey Archive Press, 2013)
This squalor continues when we get to see where Gilnam's family lives, as despite the splendour of the landlord's main house, the refugees' quarters are dirty, cramped rooms in another building, right next to the sewage trench. The sad thing is that, by the standards of the day, these families are actually the lucky ones.
Having arrived too late to try to get into a middle school, Gilnam is persuaded to go out onto the streets of Daegu to try to make a living, taking the role of the head of the family in place of his father (possibly dead, possibly living in the North). While he would prefer to study, he realises that the family needs money to supplement his mother's income from sewing, so he pounds the streets selling newspapers, hoping one day to be able to share in the delights he sees richer people enjoying.
While The House with a Sunken Courtyard mainly focuses on the struggles of day-to-day life, there are some political elements. One of the sub-plots is centred on a family from the North who are frequently harassed by a detective, and there is plenty of talk about the way society has changed since the war:
"This war has corrupted everyone," Jeongtae argued. "Everyone has become money-mad and would grovel before the worst of thieves if they had money. Everyone thinks of nothing but making money fast and escaping poverty, and won't stop at anything, even stealing. But under this system only the capitalist thieves can make more and more money, and the honest poor folk remain poor no matter how hard they work." (p.115)
True or not, this is dangerous talk in post-war South Korea. When even the mere fact of praising Communism can land you in prison, it's sometimes best to keep as quiet as possible...
In reality, though, the book concentrates on Gilnam's family, and the figure who presides over them is the mother, that quasi-mythical Korean creature. Deserted by her husband, she will go to any lengths to support her family, even if that calls for some (very) tough love at times (it's no coincidence that Gilnam is recalled to Daegu too late to try out for Middle School). In order to help everyone survive in the long-term, she is quite prepared to inflict short-term pain and hunger on her unwitting children. For a Westerner like myself, she's a very ambiguous character, but I suspect that a Korean reader would see her in a much more positive light, even when she's whipping her children and making them go without dinner.
You'd be forgiven for assuming that The House with a Sunken Courtyard is a rather depressing novel, but that's not entirely true. It's actually a nostalgic look back at the narrator's youth, a time when things were very different and, despite the poverty, not always worse. There's more than a hint of The Wonder Years about it, and I could easily imagine the narrator's voice taking us back through the decades to a poorer, simpler time (in fact, there are a couple of connections here, with that show starting around the time this novel appeared in Korea - and featuring a veteran of the Korean War as the father!).
The sepia-tinged air is created, in part, by Suh Ji-moon's translation. While it's very well written and highly effective, there is a deliberate choice of old-fashioned vocabulary and syntax. I was a little dubious at the start, but as the novel progressed, I could see how it was a deliberate stylistic choice, distancing the reader (and narrator) from the action and fixing the setting as a very different time and place. It won't be to everyone's tastes, but I suspect that it reflects the intentions of the original very well.
In The House with a Sunken Courtyard, Kim has recreated a slice of history, a photographic record (in black and white, of course) of a fascinating period in his country's history. Anyone with an interest in Korea will enjoy reading about the struggles people faced after the war and the way in which they began to come to terms with the new world order of living in a state separated by ideology. While it's not the best of the Library of Korean Literature books I've read so far, it's a certainly one I'd recommend, a sombre reminder that the country wasn't always a high-tech marvel...
*****
This review first appeared on my blog, Tony's Reading List :)
January 30, 2022
Set in Daegu in 1954, this novel offers a vivid picture of life after the Korean War. The first chapter gives an inventory of characters, so it was hard to keep everyone straight, but I felt the book was informative, if not especially well crafted.
September 21, 2025
Gilsu my goat 💔💔
July 20, 2024
What a great book this is. The story is told in the first person by a young boy, I think he was about 12 years of age, as he lives in Daegu, South Korea’s third city, in the years just after the Korean was of 1950 to 1953. It follows his life over about a year, 1954, although the last chapter takes us up to when the protagonist is in his 40’s or 50’s.
A Korean friend of mine, Seonsam Na, tells me that Kim Won-il is very famous and well thought of in his homeland, and having read this book I can see why.
The book weaves an intricate tale of a young boy living in a couple of rooms with his mother. I think it was 5 families who have rooms that abut onto a sunken garden which is part of a main house that belongs to a well to do family. The main character’s family are in poverty as are his neighbours. Husbands have been killed and severely injured in the war, the country is in a terrible state and needs reconstructing, and there are tensions with the North. I learnt a lot about the psychology of the Koreans and their history from reading this book. The book also acts as a history book and I felt that Won-il was telling us about his personal grief in respect to the Korean War and its aftermath, and also the way that Korea has been subjugated and ruled by the Japanese and the US during the last century. This read like a cry from his heart.
Won-il is a real master of written prose, who includes balanced proportions of historical fact and personal life narratives in order to accurately position the reader in the story.
I found the characters totally convincing as were the life events they found themselves embroiled in.
I will read more by Kim Won-il if I can get hold of this, but this appears to be tricky.
June 29, 2014
Deathly dull novel about people living in desperate circumstances immediately after the Korean War. My fifth book read of the first ten books from the Dalkey Archives series on modern Korean literature, and it's looking like a disappointing series so far, with one really good novel and two quite boring ones. The novel disappoints in that it is more a series of subdued incidents that don't really cohere to anything interesting:narrator sells newspapers, fights with his mom, deals with flooding, the landlords are jerks etc than an interesting narrative. The translator does the author no favors either with some horrible translated dialogue, and not realizing that sometimes its best in translation it's best to stick with one name for someone, especially when it's a short book with over a dozen characters. I could see how it could be an emotional read for an older Korean individual, but honestly it felt very flat in all respects.
March 13, 2024
The House with a Sunken Courtyard by Kim Won-Il is a semi autobiographical account of the author’s experiences in 1954 Daegu, South Korea.
I found the book doing searches for Korean War novels. I appreciated a Korean account of the war that fleshed out some of the psychological and material damage UN forces visited on Korea. There are some interesting discussions between characters which are hugely critical of U.S. involvement in the war. Such accounts are not likely to be found in literature of the war by U.S. authors.
I found the book doing searches for Korean War novels. I appreciated a Korean account of the war that fleshed out some of the psychological and material damage UN forces visited on Korea. There are some interesting discussions between characters which are hugely critical of U.S. involvement in the war. Such accounts are not likely to be found in literature of the war by U.S. authors.
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