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"Even if you have to think about what your father did, never set your eyes on politics."
Growing up with the stigma of being the eldest son of a defector to North Korea, Kim Won-il had to listen to such advice from his mother constantly. Half a century and books such as "Winter Valley" and "The House with the Deep Yard" later, Kim has established himself as a prominent writer. He has now produced a serial novel featuring as its heroes eight people executed in 1975 for alleged membership in the pro-North Korean People's Revolutionary Party during President Park Chung-hee's ¡°Yushin¡± regime.
"It¡¯s the same thing that made Emile Zola cry out for justice, truth and protection of human rights in ¡®J¡¯accuse¡¯, his open letter to the president of France over the Dreyfus Affair, where accusations were manufactured by the French military command. If writers don¡¯t point out history that has been hidden, it will be buried and lost."
Why did you do a book about the People's Revolutionary Party Incident?
I was 33 at the time. That incident provided a sort of objective correlative to the sense of national division that I had been experiencing, and I came to be very critical of Korea's harsh political situation. I thought we needed to face the reality before us head-on.
What aspect of the incident did you pay most attention to?
More than the politics, I focused on human rights issues like torture and the fabrication of the charges. I reflected on the dreams of young people that would not come to fruition, the longings of their families and the feelings of a wife who lost her husband. I traced some records of the birth places, education and friends of those who were executed, but since I created and recreated a lot of material at my own discretion, I didn't use real names."
Do you feel a certain bond with those victims?
About half of the eight who were executed lived in Daegu, where I spent my youth, and the spice market where they used to meet and share their thoughts was the neighborhood where my family struggled to survive after the Korean War. As I wrote the novel, I cried thinking of their suffering. On a slope of Mt. Palgong (in Daegu), there are four graves because of the People's Revolutionary Party incident."
Have memories of your father, who was a South Korean Communist Party official after liberation and fled to North Korea during the Korean War, influenced your novels?
My father has been a major motivation for my writing novels about national division. The People's Revolutionary Party incident, however, arose out of the experience of acute poverty that followed liberation and the war. I thought I should help those struggling more than I have done."
How did you track their lives?
From 2002, I looked at material like court records and appeal statements and met the families. People who were jailed in the People's Revolutionary Party incident have asked me to now reveal the truth."
You dedicate most of one episode of the serial, "A Clear Blue Face", to an execution scene - something not common in Korean literature.
Some 180 of the 220 pages are set in the execution ground. The poet Lee Shi-yeong, quoting testimony from the Rev. Pak Jeong-il, an army chaplain at the time, wrote a poem that went, 'Not realizing they were going to die, they were led away. The image of them looking around confused and wide-eyed under the white incandescent light is still vivid.'"
How do you evaluate Park Chung-hee?
This novel highlights the worst part of the Park Chung-hee administration. These days, Park is getting a mostly bad press, but he wasn't all bad. We have to take his good and bad points and discuss his merits and demerits. To judge a person according to a double standard because you find him disagreeable is not right. When evaluating a person, too, etiquette is important. One mustn't look at history from only one perspective."
What do you think of the historical re-evaluation the government is pushing?
We have to talk about history eventually. But we must deal with the issue with the help of objective specialists who are free from political pressure.
(Choi Hong-ryeol, hrchoi@chosun.com )
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