Author Jung Mi-kyung’s collection of short stories, “My Son’s Girlfriend,” is the fourth volume in the ten-book Library of Korean Literature series. It consists of seven short stories: I Love You, The Bison, In the Wind, My Son’s Girlfriend, Cicadas, Signal Red and, lastly, Night, Be Divided!

The title story, “My Son’s Girlfriend,” is about a rich housewife from Gangnam in Seoul, one of the most affluent areas of Korea. The story portrays the woman’s complicated feelings as she learns that her son is going out with a woman from a poor background who lives in a run-down, makeshift home.

The housewife, as told in the first person, gets to like the young woman for being courteous and strong-spirited, even under such harsh circumstances, but her poverty gets on the rich woman’s nerves. One day, the mother stumbles upon her son’s diary, reads it and finds out that the two have become estranged from each other. She feels sorry for what her son has to go through, but, honestly, has a sense of relief.

As the author says, her intention is to talk about, “the gap between the lowest and highest social classes,” a gap so prevalent in modern society. This rift looms large in another one of Jung’s stories, “I Love You.” This story presents the long-term relationship between the main character and his seven-year girlfriend as their relationship crumbles under the pressure of money.

Working as a money manager for a 60-or-so-year-old wealthy man, the main character, again told in the first person, fixes up his long-time girlfriend with the old man, pretending that she’s just a friend of his sister’s. He intends to make up for the losses incurred in the old man’s accounts. His goal is to make the gray-haired man become attracted to his girlfriend and shower her with high-priced gifts.

However, watching his girlfriend gradually grow feelings for the older man, and seeing the man’s constant favors showered upon her, makes him feel jealous and angry. He tries to get her back by saying “I love you,” but all he gets is a cold-hearted reply: “We’ve come a long way. If we turn around now, you and I will turn into pillars of salt,” meaning that their relationship would easily collapse.

The remaining five stories bring to readers’ minds, “mankind’s instinctive greed,” says the author. Among them, the third story, “In the Wind,” is about a childless married couple whose marriage is on the rocks. To save their marriage, they decide to have a baby through artificial insemination, but to no avail. The last story, “Night, Be Divided!”, depicts a genius doctor whose desire to develop new cures to improve the memory and to control extreme desires goes overboard and he himself ends up swirling down toward his downfall.

Jung includes in this collection of works characters from all walks of life including an asset manager, a teacher, a rich housewife, a sculptor, a movie director, a doctor, a stage director and others. As she takes a shrewd look at modern day society, she sheds light on the ordeals and agonies that face each character.

“When I was making the blueprint for this collection, I was planning to talk about the instinctive and uncontrollable greed and desires that are inside all of us and to decipher their complexity,” Jung said. “All combined, each story is dense with the everyday sorrow felt by trivial things, I mean, helpless human beings.”

Jung Mi-kyung, born in 1960 in Gyeongsangnam-do (South Gyeongsang Province), graduated from Ewha Womens University with a degree in English Literature. The author made her debut in the literature field in 1987 when she won the New Spring Literary Contest sponsored by the Chosun Ilbo newspaper with her play “Heavy Snowfall.” She won the Today’s Artist Award of Korea with her novel “La Vie en Rose” in 2002 and in 2006 she was awarded the prestigious Yi Sang Literature Award for her short novel “Night, Be Divided!” which also happens to be part of this collection.

Other works of hers include the short story collections “Bloodstained Lover” (2004) and “They Gave Me Balkan Roses” (2006) as well as the full-length novels “The Strange Sorrow of Wonderland” (2005) and “Starts of Africa” (2010).

By Sohn JiAe
Korea.net Staff Writer
jiae5853@korea.kr