"The Salary Man" by Krys Lee (from Drifting House, 2012)

Krys Lee is a new to be writer that I am thrilled to have found.   Most of her stories focus on residents of North or South Korea or immigrants to the USA.   The stories I have so far posted on deal with the mind numbing hardship of life in North Korea and the struggles to survive of those in the South or in the USA.    Older immigrants stay totally in the boundaries of Korean communities.  

"The Salary Man" shows in a painfully real and vivid fashion what happened to 1000s of people who thought they had life time employment locked in when the South Korean economy collapsed in the mid  1990s.   At one time if you got a job at a major Korean corporation you were almost guaranteed life time employment.   Managers were revered, at least to their face, and corporations were paternalistic.  In bailing out the Korean economy, the International Monetary Fund put such strict requirements on the government that businesses were forced to lay off large numbers of workers.  Many workers, including the central figure in this story was so shamed they waited long periods before telling their families, often getting dressed for work and then sitting in the park all day.  We witness the terrible decline and hardship of the salary man.  He sends his wife and kids to live with her parents, saying once he is back working he will set up a home for them again.    His life becomes worse and worse every day.  Soon he is among many 1000s of homeless ex-salary men.  His wife divorces him.  He learns to survive on the street though his mental state degenerates sadly. ,

I hope to read a lot more of the work of Krys Lee.  

Krys Lee was born in Seoul in The Republic of Korea and raised in England and the United States.  Her debut collection of short storiesDrifting House (2012) is drawing great praise from all over the world, with the exception of North Korea where I suspect being caught with a copy would get you in very serious trouble

"At The Edge of The World by Krys Lee (from Drifting House).

"At The Edge of The World" is the third short story by Krys Lee on which I have posted.  Her stories are perfectly structured works of art, beautifully written, incredibly insightful as regards her characters and a joy to read.  Most of her stories are about life in North Korea or about Korean immigrants to America.

There are three central characters in the story.   A married couple and their ten year old son.   At sixteen the mother, while living in North Korea, had been sold to a Chinese man who got her pregnant,  she met her husband while walking across China to gain entrance to a special refugee program for the USA.

When we meet them they are in Los Angeles.   There son is a super achiever in school, at ten he is already determined to go to medical school.   Most in the Korean community have become devout Christians.  In one very telling line we learn the husband is an atheist, he got enough of region when he was forced to treat the Korean dictator as God. The parents drift apart, the boy has his first crush.

The beauty in this wonderful story is in the amazing details.  I loved the subplot involving the Korean shaman who moved in next door.

I endorse this story to all lovers of the form.  

Krys Lee was born in Seoul in The Republic of Korea and raised in England and the United States.  Her debut collection of short storiesDrifting House (2012) is drawing great praise from all over the world, with the exception of North Korea where I suspect being caught with a copy would get you in very serious trouble

"Girl On a Leash" by Krys Lee (2013, 5 pages)

Krys Lee was born in Seoul in The Republic of Korea and raised in England and the United States.  Her debut collection of short stories Drifting  House (2012) is drawing great praise from all over the world, with the exception of North Korea where I suspect being caught with a copy would get you in very serious trouble..  

I posted last year on the title story in her collection, "Drifting Home".   I was very happy to find a new story by Lee in a recent issue of Guernica.  Lee focuses on Koreans.   Some of her stories are about life in North Korea, some in Seoul, and some deal with first and second generation Korean immigrants to the USA.  

"Girl on a Leash" has three main characters, a married couple.  The father mops the floors at an American college at night.  He graduated from the University of Seoul, he resents the barbarians, as he and his wife call Americans.  They save to open a laundry. 

They also have a late teenage daughter. They keep her,not sure if we are to take this literarily or metaphorically, on a leash.

"She had always been latched to a leash. Had grown up with a handsome pink leather collar encircling her neck, a leather strap holding her at rigid attention. Everywhere she walked, her father and mother trailed behind, slackening or tightening it.

They worried. If she fell asleep, the downbeat of the leash shuddered her alert. When she was slow, her father snapped it against her clavicle. But when shadows scudded along the lintels, they drew the leash in and harbored her in the cove of their arms."

There biggest fear is that American college boys will sexually prey on their developing into a beauty daughter.   They fear her sexuality will be her downfall.  They repeatedly warn her to trust no American men.  They constantly search her room for signs of trouble.  When they find love letters, they tighten the leash so if she resists she will fall over.

This kind of parental tyranny often leads to trouble and can produce the very results parents fear.

This is a very powerful story.  I recommend it to all.   It is an excellent introduction to what most may find a wonderful new writer.

Mel u

Read "Girl On a Leash" here

"Drifting House" by Krys Lee Project 196 Korea

"Drifting House" by Krys Lee   (2012, 21 pages)

Project 196

The Republic of Korea

4 of 196 Countries

My Introductory Post on Project 196

1. Georgia 
2. Canada
3. U. S. A.
4. The Republic of Korea

 "The younger brother Choecheol ran ahead. Like a child, Woncheol thought, frowning, though he too was still a child, an eleven-year-old with a body withering on two years of boiled tree bark, mashed roots, the occasional grilled rat and fried crickets on a stick. He picked across the public square, afraid to step where last month, the town had watched two men dragged in necklaces of bones and then hung for cannibalizing their parents. They passed a vendor and woman haggling as if on the frontier of madness. On the straw mat between them one frozen flank of beef? Pork? Or human? No one knew any more, though they pretended to."

If you are an author and want to represent your country, please contact me.  If you want to do a guest post on your favorite story for the feature please contact me also.

If you are a publisher that has an anthology that is done in the 196 spirit, please contact me as I will be spotlighting appropriate collections.  

At first I thought I was setting myself an impossible task but a bit of research has made me optimistic  that I can find a short story from all 196 countries in the world.   I feel this part of the project will be completed.

I also want, and maybe this is crazy, to publish a short story, over the next 196 weeks from a writer in each 196 countries.  

As I reflected on my project and all the hate and conflicts among the countries of the world I wondered who were the haters.   Somehow I do not imagine Russian readers of Ernest Hemingway or American lovers of Chekhov among those who hate people just because they seem a bit different.

Krys Lee was born in Seoul in The Republic of Korea and raised in England and the United States.  Her debut collection of short stories Drifting House (2012) is drawing great praise from all over the world, with the exception of North Korea where I suspect being caught with a copy would get you in very serious trouble..  Today I will post on the title story in the collection.  I choose this story as it brings to life the horror of life in contemporary North Korea as seen through the eyes of children who see no fault in how their society is run.

Life is so bad in North Korea that people dream of escaping into China and see it as a paradise.  This  alone is shocking to older people from Europe or the USA as they imagine China a place one escapes from, not to.  

The plot action is about a family of siblings leaving their home to find their mother, who they think may  have left for China.   As the children go through the countryside things comfortable people would think are horrible seem wonderful and beautiful to them.   There is so much pain compressed in some of the lines in this amazing story that it was almost hard to read.   It takes a great writer to writer so beautifully about something so ugly.

"The acorn’s meat, wrinkled and gray. The size of a rat’s brain. He broke it into nearly perfect thirds, and into her waiting, open mouth fed Gukhwa the largest chunk. His hands were shaking. It was good, without insects."

The government had completely stopped food rations in their village, as a lesson of some kind.  The children deeply revere the countries leader, they have never heard anything but worship of his greatness.  All of the troubles of the country are blamed on America.  

" But Woncheol believed they would find her, the way he believed in the sky and the snow, the American imperialists that the Dear Leader said were starving the country out of existence."

Here is a song they learned while being taught the basics of math

"He sang, ‘One dead American plus one dead American equals two dead Americans"

The North Korea countryside is full of very young soldiers who will shoot any citizen traveling without pass or one who attempts to steal food. 

"Drifting House" is an amazing very disturbing story.  I know this is the cliche of all times, but it made me be very happy for what I have and feel ashamed of myself for being annoyed because there was not enough dressing on my salad yesterday.  

You can read the story here and I strongly urge all lovers of the short story to do so.  I think Krys Lee might one day be one of the great short story writers of all time.  

You can learn more about her and her work on her webpage.

I hope to read her entire collection in 2013.

Author Bio

Krys Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea, raised in California and Washington, and studied in the United States and England. She was a finalist for Best New American Voices, received a special mention in the 2012 Pushcart Prize XXXVI, and her work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, Narrative magazine, Granta (New Voices), California Quarterly, Asia Weekly, the Guardian, the New Statesman, and Conde Nast Traveller, UK (forthcoming). She lives in Seoul with intervals in San Francisco.


Mel u