The Dwarf (Modern Korean Fiction)

The dark side of South Korea's economic miracle emerges in The Dwarf, Cho Se-hui's enormously popular and critically acclaimed work. First published in 1978, it speaks to the painful social costs of reckless industrialization, even as it tellingly portrays the spiritual malaise of the newly rich and powerful and a working class subject to forces beyond its control. Cho's lean, clipped, deceptively simple style, the rapidly shifting points of view, terse dialogue, and subtle irony evoke the particularities of life in 1970s South Korea in the presence of global economic forces. The desperate realities of life for the dwarf, the proverbial little guy upon whose back Korea's economic transformation largely took place, are emotively rendered in twelve linked stories examining the lives of a laboring family, a family of the newly emerging middle class, and that of a wealthy industrialist.

Literature & Fiction

Cho, Se-hŭi

Se-Hui, Cho

Literary

University of Hawaii Press

The dark side of South Korea’s "economic miracle" emerges in The Dwarf, Cho Se-hui’s enormously popular and critically acclaimed work. First published in 1978, it speaks to the painful social costs of reckless industrialization, even as it tellingly portrays the spiritual malaise of the newly rich and powerful and a working class subject to forces beyond its control. Cho’s lean, clipped, deceptively simple style, the rapidly shifting points of view, terse dialogue, and subtle irony evoke the particularities of life in 1970s South Korea in the presence of global economic forces. The desperate realities of life for the dwarf, the proverbial little guy upon whose back Korea’s economic transformation largely took place, are emotively rendered in twelve linked stories examining the lives of a laboring family, a family of the newly emerging middle class, and that of a wealthy industrialist. The stories have overlapping characters and situations: the murder of a swindler, a family’s eviction from a squatter settlement, the assassination of an important executive, the dwarf ’s fantasy of a planet where life is easier, his later suicide and the subsequent fate of his dispersed friends and family members.

From the children of a dwarf whose house is torn down by the government to a young man selling his blood for money, the first-person narrators of the stories collected in The Voice of the Governor-General and Other Stories of Modern Korea take us into the heart of turbulent twentieth-century Korean history. This history includes colonization by the Japanese, the devastation of the Korean War, and a program of rapid industrialization that exacted the heaviest sacrifice from those already at the economic and political margins of society. 
The title story, chillingly told in the voice of the former Japanese governor-general of Korea who dreams of the day when the Japanese empire will flourish again, is a disturbingly acute diagnosis of a society in transition. Throughout these stories we witness the reality of division in Korea and the alienation of man in a society of machines in parallel tales of displaced old men. We experience powerful accounts, from the inside, of people whose lives have been overlooked in the drive for progress. A sense of aloofness in one story contrasts with the bitter humor of another, highlighting the despair of the survivors. This volume is a startling blend of satire, realism, and comedy in the twentieth century. 
"The works [of these authors], as expressions of society in the pangs of modernization and industrialism, are indispensable for understanding modern Korean literature as well as modern Korean history, and also present exemplary case studies for many other societies under the compounded pressure of dictatorship, capital industrialism and imperialism throughout the world.

The Voice of the Governor-General and Other Stories of Modern Korea

Hwang, Suk-Young

Chun, Kyung-Ja

Yoon Hueng-Gil

Choi In-Hoon

EastBridge, a nonprofit corporation

A dwarf named Kim Bu-ri lives with his family in a poor neighborhood of Seoul. When the neighborhood is redeveloped by the government, Kim's house is demolished. Author Cho Se-hui writes about the tragedies the family members face through the points of view of the dwarf's three children. The work depicts the political oppression and economic contradictions of 1970s South Korea. 88 pages.

The Portable Library of Korean Literature Short Fiction 2 A Dwarf Launches a Little Ball

Jimoondang Publishing Company

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