Writers Read – Jade Bunny – A translation by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton

Kim Yujǒng:

A Writer Who Lives On Almost a Century After His Death

Bruce Fulton

Kim Yujǒng (1908-1937) is one of several Korean writers who lived abbreviated lives but whose works helped cement the role of Korean short fiction as the foundation of modern Korean literature. The latest edition of his collected works (2012) lists 32 stories (in addition to a dozen personal essays—sup’il—and a handful of other prose writings). Of these stories, 27 were published during his lifetime, almost all between mid-1935 and mid-1937—one of the most productive bursts of creativity in modern Korean literary history.

Kim lives on today in the Kim Yujǒng Munhakch’on (Kim Yujǒng literature village), adjacent to a station so named on the light-rail line between Seoul and the city of Ch’unch’ǒn, Kangwǒn Province, the latter area where Kim drew the inspiration for many of his stories. As well, he appears on the all-important University Entrance Exam, established by the Republic of Korea Ministry of Education in 1994. On this exam, perhaps the most influential determinant of a high school senior’s life prospects, Kim’s writing is used to test students’ grasp of native Korean vocabulary, which constitutes about half of the Korean lexicon (the remainder consisting of Sino-Korean vocabulary, loan words from Chinese). This is ironic in that Kim, like the son of any self-respecting clan, was educated in his earliest years in classical Chinese). But ultimately he developed a command of native Korean such that 47 pages of the volume of his collected works are devoted to a glossary. In the new millennium his works continue to generate scholarly essays, theses, and dissertations, and the year 2008, the hundredth anniversary of his birth, was marked by a meeting at the aforementioned Munhakch’on of writers from Japan and China as well as Korea.

What is it about his stories that perpetuate this legacy? One signal element–salutary in the context of commentary over the decades by both Korean and international readers that modern Korean fiction tends to be gloomy and depressing–is his knack for clothing in humor the calculation and chicanery exhibited by the characters in his stories, whether they be husband or wife, peasant or landlord, farmer or gold digger, youth or elder. In “Tongbaek kkot” (“Spicebush Blossoms”), one of his best-known stories, a girl takes to task a boy who is oblivious to her feelings for him. In “Anhae” (“Wife”), a diatribe by an illiterate farmer and woodcutter toward the wife he considers uppity, he ultimately realizes she is capable of bearing him enough boys whose work will ultimately sustain them for life. “Ok tokki” (“Jade Bunny”) likewise blends a budding relationship with the “windfall” offered by the discovery of an abandoned bunny.

In all of these stories the author shows himself to be possessed of empathy, even for putative villains such as a future father-in-law who recruits youth of marriageable age to help with the farm work in exchange for promising them a wife among his daughters. One of the most striking examples of this human-heartedness, commonly referred to in Korean as chǒng, is the portrayal of the gruff and demanding husband in “Ttaengbyǒt” (“Seething Sun”). He and his wife have moved to Seoul to make a living, as so many rural denizens in Korea past and present have done, but unable to sustain themselves, the husband seizes on a rumor that the university hospital in Seoul will feed, clothe, and, most important, pay a patient with a rare disease that might ultimately result in a research study that will bring credit to the doctor. His wife, though found by the hospital doctor to be near death, refuses surgery, and the husband, sorely disappointed at this anticipated golden opportunity, manages to suppress his anger toward his wife with the belated realization of his own shortcomings, and the story ends with his aching regret at the fate of his wife.

Leave it to Ch’ae Manshik (1908-50), one of the most distinctive writers of modern Korea to encapsulate Kim Yujǒng the individual. Learning of Kim’s premature death, Ch’ae offered this eulogy in a prominent Seoul daily: “I didn’t respect his works, I loved them…. But I loved Yujǒng the person even more. Or perhaps I should say I wanted to love him but couldn’t, because I wasn’t as sincere a man as he…. Yujǒng died a miserable death. What a waste. If only I could trade in a dozen hacks like me and bring him back.”

Suggestions for Further Reading

Ch’ae Manshik, “Yujǒng kwa na” (1937), trans. Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton “Yujǒng and I,” pp. 101-2 in Sunset: A Ch’ae Manshik Reader, ed. and trans. Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017.

Kim Yujǒng, “Anhae” (1935), trans. Kim Chong-un and Bruce Fulton “Wife,” pp. 121-32 in A Ready-Made Life: Early Masters of Modern Korean Fiction, trans. Kim Chong-un and Bruce Fulton. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1998.

—–, “Tongbaek kkot” (1936), trans. Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton “Spicebush Blossoms,” pp. 137-42 in The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories, ed. Bruce Fulton. London: Penguin Random House UK, 2023.

***

It’s been on my mind night and day. How fast can I get it grown so it’ll produce bunnies of its own?

          That little rabbit is God’s gift to me.

          One chilly morning I was frolicking half in dreamland when Mother shakes me by the arm. I tend to sleep in, so if someone wakes me I get a hair across my butt. “Ai, stop that!” I thrashed out with my elbow and rolled away from her.

          “What—you don’t want this bunny?” Was this some kind of game? Still half asleep, I wondered if she was feeding Father some meat for the first time in a long while and didn’t want to leave me out. I opened my crusty eyes. What the…?! That feeble-looking fist-sized white thing wrapped in her skirt, was that a bunny?

          I sat up and rubbed my eyes. “Where’d you get that?”

          “Cute, isn’t it?”

          “Come on, where’d you get it?”

          “I went out to rinse the rice, then went down to the kitchen and found the little thing huddled on the counter next to the firebox. Must have sneaked off from one of the neighbors?”

          She rubbed her hands quickly over the brazier—she was so excited. And out came the tale of woe: It’s been one hardship after another since we landed here in Shindang-ni. But now, among the four families beneath this roof, this jade bunny makes its way to us. Isn’t it a good sign–all our troubles get smoothed out this year? And she heaved a sigh.

          But what about me–can’t I have some hopes of my own? That jade bunny has come to us, no one else, doesn’t that make me a lucky boy? I freed it from Mother’s skirt, placed it against my mouth, rubbed it against my cheek, then propped it beneath my chin.

          What a cute, lovely animal.

          I got up and bolted for the door–breakfast could wait. But Mother took me by the arm. “What do you think you’re doing? Giving it to Sugi? Oh no–you don’t pass on a gift that lands on our doorstep—give it to me, give it!”

          I ignored her and hotfooted it out the door and down the alley. I called out softly for Sugi, even though the two of us would end up just standing there shivering in the cold—I dared not go inside because of her fearsome parents. Out she came and I produced the little thing from my coat and handed it to her. “You take good care of it, all right?”

          Her eyes widened at the sight of the bunny and she snatched it. And guess what, she gave it a kiss and placed it against her cheek just like I had.

My heart jumped. “Hey, hey, don’t do that, you’re gonna squash it—you gotta take it by the ears, like this.” She did as I instructed, with me looking on quietly and wishing her house was mine and she was my wife. But–it’s been a month since she asked me to buy her a pair of socks and I said okay, but I still haven’t done it. I stood there feeling like a sad sack.

          “After it’s grown we’ll get it a mate and then the little ones will start popping out. Then we sell ‘em here, we sell ‘em there, and make ourselves a pile of money….”

          I took the bunny back from her and held it up—male or female? I got all hot and bothered. “We need to figure this out before we find it a mate.”

          “Well,” she said. Her face turned red and she produced an awkward smile. “We won’t know until it grows up.”

           “Right! So take good care of it.” I went back home and from then on made daily visits to give my regards to the bunny.

          It was getting bigger every day, Sugi reported. Music to my ears!

          “How’s it eating?” I asked her one day.

          “I’ve been feeding it radish scraps,” she proudly reported. “And today I gave it some paech’u, which it really liked.”

          If it’s eating that well and hasn’t gotten sick, then everything’s going to work out, I told myself.

          “It’s hopping all over and it knows when to go outside to poop,” she said, her dark eyes flitting about in delight.

Sure enough, it was all grown up. Back home I went, wondering how we could afford to buy it a mate. Darned if I could think of a way to get the money. Pawn my coat? For five days I went back and forth, yes or no, and didn’t visit the rabbit.

And then one day at supper Mother barks at me: “I heard from Kǔmch’ǒl’s mom that Sugi ate the bunny.”

What?! I should explain that Mother is stillupset that she caved in to my pestering and made Sugi’s family a marriage proposal, but she got turned down. Their excuse was that Sugi was too young, but actually they were scheming to set her up with a rich family. Knowing this, Mother felt humiliated and absolutely hated them.

“Just like I thought—the likes of them don’t know how to care for an animal.”

“What, she ate it?” I felt like my eyes were on fire and I ran outside. I just couldn’t understand it–no way she could have eaten that bunny. I mean, she’d made a little multicolored vest for it.

But when I went to see her and asked to have a look at the bunny, she got all red in the face and didn’t say a word. So, she really had eaten it. The bitch must have changed her mind about me. Unless she’d forgotten our promise to each other to live together some day, there was no way she could have gobbled up that bunny I adored. I glared at her the way rabbits do with their huge eyes. “I came here for the rabbit—give it to me!”

“I don’t have it!” she said, looking like she was about to cry. Her head dropped. “Without letting me know, Father….” She was too embarrassed to finish.

It turned out she’d been laid up sick for several days and hadn’t eaten. The girl was the family breadwinner, working at a tobacco warehouse, and her father was scared shitless that she was too sick to eat. He couldn’t afford to buy meat to nourish her back to health, so he’d slaughtered the bunny and fed it to her without letting on.

All I was thinking as I watched her standing there like a bump on a log was how much I hated her. Why the rabbit?

“I told you, give me my jade bunny.”

“I can’t—I ate it.”

Finally she broke down and out came big fat teardrops. And then she fumbled inside her waistband and produced the money pouch I’d bought for her at the night market, desperate that I hadn’t bought her a gold ring as a keepsake of our secret engagement. And then she looked away, all prim and proper.

The damnable bitch eats my jade bunny and then gives me the cold shoulder—what am I supposed to do? If I stand there babbling any longer, I’ll only be shooting myself in the foot. So I lifted her jacket and stuck the pouch in her waistband, then ran back home.

And I got to thinking. Okay, let’s suppose her daddy doesn’t want her marrying me, and she’s lost interest in me. But–she went and ate my jade bunny, and she’s got to pay for that. How? She has to marry me!

As I lay beneath my quilt I realized for the first time that my jade bunny really was a blessing.

Now you’re mine, Sugi—no question about it!

Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton

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