The Shadow of Arms

by Hwang Sok-yong

A novel of the black markets of the South Vietnamese city of Danang during the Vietnam War, based on the author’s experiences as a self-described South Korean mercenary on the side of the South Vietnamese, this is a Vietnam War novel like no other, truly one that sees the war from all sides. Scenes of battle are breathtakingly well told. The plot is thick with intrigue and complex subplots. But ultimately The Shadow of Arms is a novel of the human condition rather than of the exploits and losses of one side or the other in war.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Genres: Fiction, Ebooks, Historical Fiction

576 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 1994

About the author

Hwang Sok-yong (황석영) was born in Hsinking (today Changchun), Manchukuo, during the period of Japanese rule. His family returned to Korea after liberation in 1945. He later obtained a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Dongguk University (동국대학교).

In 1964 he was jailed for political reasons and met labor activists. Upon his release he worked at a cigarette factory and at several construction sites around the country.

In 1966–1969 he was part of Korea's military corps during the Vietnam War, reluctantly fighting for the American cause that he saw as an attack on a liberation struggle.

Reviews

[Barry Welsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read my review on Substack here - https://open.substack.com/pub/barrywe...

Novelist Hwang Sok-yong, legendary author of several award-winning & best-selling books including 'The Shadow of Arms', 'The Old Garden', 'The Guest' & 'The Road to Sampo' visited The Seoul Book and Culture Club, hosted by Barry Welsh, on Saturday, 27th September 2014.
The event was moderated by Professor Charles Montgomery, a lecturer at Dongguk University and creator of the www.ktlit.com website.
The event interpreter was Ji Seun.
The venue was Seoul Global Cultural Center.

Part 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_WXP...
part 2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld_or...

Hwang Sok-yong is among the most celebrated of Korean authors. He won the prestigious Daesan Prize in 2001 for his novel “The Guest”, an unflinching portrayal of a North Korean massacre during the Korean War, and has won most of the significant literary prizes this country has to offer at one time or another. An outspoken critic of several Korean governments and a prominent dissident, he is also one of Korea’s most politically engaged writers. In 1964, he was jailed for labour activism. In 1989, he violated the National Security Law by travelling to North Korea, where he met with Kim Il-sung. After this, Hwang spent several years in exile in New York and later Germany before returning to South Korea to face a seven-year prison sentence.

Now in his mid-seventies, he continues to criticise the Korean government, recently attacking Park Geun-hye’s administration over its handling of the Sewol ferry incident. Throughout his long career, Hwang has regularly drawn on his personal experiences and political beliefs for his fiction. Such is the case with the new English translation of “The Shadow of Arms,” which draws on his experiences as one of the 300,000 Korean soldiers sent to fight alongside American troops in Vietnam. “The Shadow of Arms” is both an atypical war novel and an unconventional exploration of Korea’s involvement in the conflict.

There is very little combat in this almost 600-page novel set entirely in a war zone. Instead, the focus is on the black market dealings that occur in Da Nang as a result of the conflict – the thriving black market being the dark economic shadow cast by the war - and the intersecting lives of several Korean, American, and Vietnamese characters who seek to profit from it.

The novel focuses on three key characters; Ahn Yong Kyu, a young Korean sergeant taken from the front lines to work with the Criminal Investigation Division and tasked with investigating backstreet dealings; Pham Minh, a young Vietnamese man who joins the National Liberation Front and fights against the American army; and Pham Quyen, Minh’s older brother and a commander in the Vietnamese army fighting alongside the Americans. The other main “character” is Da Nang itself, with Hwang bringing the sights, sounds, and smells of the coastal city to vivid, evocative life. Hwang creates an intricate, richly detailed world of shady backstreet deals and dubious characters trying to exploit one another, revealing the cutthroat economic consequences of war in a foreign land.

[Paul Ataua · Rating 3 out of 5]

A young Korean soldier serving in Vietnam during the war who is assigned to keep an eye on the black market that is flourishing there, two Vietnamese brothers fighting on different sides in the war, and a writer who sets out to bring the nature of war and people in war, promised much. Despite all the positives about it, “The Shadows of Arms” really doesn’t succeed for me. The point the writer is making about the black market and people in war is good, but the whole black market thing is dragged out and developed in so much detail that you are no longer clear who is who, and feel like screaming “I got it. I know what you are saying. Now get on with the story!”. The story between the two brothers is also interesting, but it is never allowed to pick up pace because of the insertion of whole reports on atrocities, or parts of Ho Chi Minh speeches and the like. It’s not that those things are not interesting. They are fascinating, but they stop the story in its tracks.

I loved Hwang Sok-yong’s “Familiar Things”, I am glad I read this one, and will certainly read more of his work in the future, but this one was just a bit disappointing.

[Philipp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Source of this picture: Chicago Tribune, 7/7/1965

I got interested in this book because here in Perth, every few weeks when waiting for my morning bus I bump into an older South Korean gentleman. We got to talking and turns out, he's a veteran of the Vietnam war! Until then I didn't even know that South Korea was involved there (as were other unexpected countries: Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and the Philippines). He doesn't really talk about his time there (obviously, it was the same with my Wehrmacht grandfathers), but I thought I might have a look at books from the South Korean perspective in Vietnam, in order to perhaps learn more about him (he's fun - he takes the bus to study English in the city library, his wife dresses him exclusively in H&M clothes, imagine a student-hipster in his mid-70s).

So here's a book about the Vietnam War from a South Korean!

What a complicated book! Is it a novel? It doesn't really have the structure of one, there's no real story arch, no main characters but several interwoven and connected characters, a lot of it is infodump... Is it autobiography? Is it a documentary? I guess all of that. It's almost non-fiction.

Set mostly in and around Da Nang during the Vietnam War and (in the beginning) following a South Korean soldier who has been assigned to an investigative branch, tasked with keeping tabs of dealing of arms and food rations . Since the US army had (and still has) practically unlimited money their base exchanges are full to the brim - the exchanges are staffed by bored young men looking to have a good time, from there it follows that these things are leaky sieves. You first think it's only the South Korean Ahn Yong Kyu who's the main character, but the book soon branches out - other 'branches' of the story concern a young Vietnamese man who joins the Viet Cong and becomes their weapons buyer in the markets, another branch concerns a general's aide-de-camp who uses his power to stuff his pockets with money, yet another (short) branch concerns an AWOL American soldier who's trying to leave the country... all these branches are interconnected. The 'main characters' pages at the start of the book lists 22 main characters.

It's not a typical war book since most of the book is concerned with the power struggles and the flow of information in the Da Nang markets - but there are a few tremendously dark and depressing 'war interludes', I guess you could call them. They are interview protocols from the US army concerning war atrocities committed by US soldiers on civilians (a young girl raped and murdered, the My Lai massacre, a young boy tortured to death, all perpetrated by US soldiers), the interviews are preceded by recommendations of what should happen to the perpetrating soldiers (usually: 'demote by one rank'), these parts are short gut punches out of nowhere. Then it goes back to the markets, there is rarely any 'action'. Only towards the last 100 pages or so do things start to happen.

I think Hwang Sok-yong used this book to document his memory from the time in Vietnam, and since the book is very much concerned with documenting what happened in the Vietnamese underground market a whole lot of writing is dry (is it the translation? I don't think so!), example, from a conversation of two Vietcong agents:

“But what we have our hearts set on are the new carbines, M1s and M2s, to be supplied to arm the militias in the new hamlets.” “My brother would never get involved in such risky business. He’s a very cautious man, sir.” “I’m not saying you should talk to your brother about this. Make friends with Lieutenant Kiem on the adjutant’s staff at the provincial government office. I’m certain he’s now scheming to find a way to develop some business of his own. The money that falls into his lap for helping Major Pham is chicken feed. As far as I know, militia matters are under the jurisdiction of the ARVN Second Division, but since their headquarters are up in Hue, the commander who should be in charge has no practical control. A captain dispatched from First Division Headquarters, along with Colonel Cao, superintendent of military police in Da Nang, will be delegated power to conduct the training and take command of the militias. Lieutenant Kiem, I think, will be responsible for liaison between those concerned.”

As you can see, very political, and I didn't cherry-pick, large parts of the book are like this. But that's the situation it described - not only did you have several political factions, each faction has their own subfactions (for example, South Vietnamese traders selling arms to the Viet Cong) with their own goals, all of them scrambling for money, and with capturing that Hwank Sok-yong succeeded. It's just not much fun to read, but you learn so much! Except about my South Korean friends' experiences, chances are he wasn't involved in black market dealings.

Recommended for: ????????

[Kaelah · Rating 4 out of 5]

My goal with this book was to understand my patients better (PT). We always have at least a few Vietnamese patients in clinic , who rarely seem to fully rehabilitate. We also often at least one Vietnam War veteran (American) at a time, who usually seems like their coping skills are hanging on by a thread. I definitely understand both parties better, so if nothing else, I feel accomplished in that. I didn’t expect any information in this book to directly affect my treatment, although I hoped for an indirect effect of better understanding the traumas my patients and their families may have endured. I still need to stew over some pain science concepts in the context of the glimpse of the Vietnam War this book gave me, but I’m getting there.

The book gave a unique perspective to the Vietnam War from a Korean soldier hired by the US military to monitor the black market in Vietnam. While it’s a historical fiction, the beginning notes mostly tell you fact from fiction, and even includes a character list to reference so you can keep the double agents straight! I learned a ton and while my history teachers were phenomenal, I do think US education about the Vietnam War is minimal at best. Didn’t know the French were the first to colonize Vietnam, definitely didn’t know Koreans were involved in the Vietnam War, and I didn’t realize until halfway through the book that the Korean soldier was more or less using the Vietnam War on communism to cope with the fact that his own country was still recovering from its own war on communism! The non-fiction reader in me was trying to learn as much as possible and often getting lost in it all due to my own lack of background knowledge. The fiction reader in me was waiting for all the characters to collide and wished the major collision was more than just the last couple chapters. There’s not too much blood and gore for a war book, but what was included was skillfully chosen to show different types of atrocities that were committed. Overall, a very educational and well crafted book.

[James F · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another novel by Korean author Hwang Sok-yong, The Shadow of Arms is based on his experiences as a South Korean "ally" during the Vietnam War. The main character, Ahn Yong Kyu, is a South Korean soldier who becomes an agent for the CID, part of the Korean military intelligence service, investigating (and participating in) black market dealings. The black market dealings are complicated and occasionally difficult to follow, which is the one shortcoming of the novel, but the general lines are clear enough. Among the other major characters are members of the Vietnamese Pham family: the older brother, Pham Quyen, who is also involved in black market dealings, is a major in the South Vietnamese army and the adjutant to General Liam, the military governor of Quang Nam province, while the younger brother, Pham Minh, becomes a member of a special urban guerilla group of the NLF. There are no important American characters, so the novel offers a very different perspective on the war from American war novels. In fact, there is very little in the way of combat; the novel is set mainly in Da Nang, in 1968 when the U.S. and allied intervention was at its height, around the time the Tet offensive. At the time, the U.S. and South Vietnamese were still on the ascendant, and yet the novel shows very clearly why they would eventually lose -- only the NLF actually cared about the war effort, while the South Vietnamese officers and the allies were concerned mainly about making money to go home or escape to some neutral country.

If I had realized that this book was translated from the French translation rather than directly from the Korean, I would probably have gotten it in French, as I did with Monsieur Han. It was originally published in two volumes, and previously serialized in a newspaper. The author ran a certain risk in publishing it under the Korean dictatorship of the time, given the resemblances of Korea and Vietnam as countries which were both divided between a Communist north and a capitalist, U.S. supported south. The introduction has a few spoilers and should probably not be read first.

[Jason Makansi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this novel. It's almost 600 pages and I made it to page 250 or so. The role of mercenary (or conscription by different means) Korean soldiers in America's war with Vietnam is a subject that keenly interested me, and I looked forward to a completely different perspective on a war that, in my mind, has little left to offer in terms of a subject for fiction. The Korean author was persecuted in his home country for his writings but subsequently won high literary honors there. I had never heard of him.

The length of the novel was my main, but significant, issue. The novel's subject, the black market in arms, materiel, and wartime and consumer goods during the war is unique but the plot bogged down and I found it impossible to continue understanding who is doing what to whom. Although that could have been a fine characteristic (loyalty knows no bounds in the black market), it proved confusing instead. No single character stood out to grab my sympathy or empathy. I could not anchor myself in the story, nor did it carry me to parts known or unknown.

Other issues were in translation, or seemingly so. Whole paragraphs read like non-fiction. Some of the history of the conflict and the Korean role was repetitive. A book half the length of the one before me seemed more appropriate.

Still, I respect the publisher for taking on The Shadow of Arms. The subject is a very important one even if it, in my mind, did not translate to the novel form all that well. Bringing these perspectives to English-reading audiences is vital.

[Andreas Pohl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having spent the best part of the last fifteen years in Hanoi, I am always keen to get my hands on books dealing with my chosen home. Yet, after a while a certain sameness tends to creep into the reading experience with many books dealing with the Vietnam War, or as it is known here, the American War, from the US perspective.

The sheer volume of movies and books produced in the United States about the war and its aftermath (most recently Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes and The Sympathizer by Viet Thang Nguyen) decades after the famous evacuation of the last US troops from Saigon, illustrates the still unresolved trauma of having been beaten by a Third World opponent. It also tends to drown out other interesting voices. One such voice is author Hwang Sok-Yong whose war novel The Shadow of Arms was published to great acclaim in his native Korea in the 1980s and without much fanfare a couple of years ago in the United States.

You can read the full review on www.thetranslatedworld.wordpress.com

[!Tæmbuŝu]

KOBOBOOKS

Reviewed by Asian Review of Books

[World Literature Today]

This book was featured in the Nota Benes section of the January/February 2015 issue of World Literature Today Magazine.

http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2...

[Marine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lecture difficile. Je pense que c'est parce que je manque de culture militaire (qui connaît les grades dans l'ordre hiérarchique ? Pas moi) et de connaissances historiques sur la guerre du Vietnam mais aussi celle de Corée.
Dommage, je continue de penser que ce livre a beaucoup de potentiel. Peut-être trop pour moi... 🤷‍♀️
Si le sujet vous plaît, allez-y, lisez ce livre !