Hwang Sok Yong Quotes

Even if you are alive somewhere, the absence of the other person who used to be there beside you obliterates your presence. Everything in the room, even the stars in the sky, can disappear in a second, changing one scene for another, just like in a dream.

People hated and killed each other back then. Now even those who survived are dying, leaving this world one by one. Unless we find a way to forgive one another, none of us will ever be able to see each other again. (2007: 88)

Women are walking around on the streets. From her calf and the hem of her skirt to her hip, from her hair to the high heels on her feet, a young woman is freedom. Especially when you look at her from afar.

The scene [Bruegel's 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus'] is filled with a vast field, and a cow and a farmer plowing. In the left-hand corner is a tiny ocean the size of a palm, and there, I can barely make it out, the two legs of a man who fell headlong into the sea. This is called the Fall of Icarus. Compared to everyday life, the fall of an idealist who flew too high with candle-wax wings is an unremarkable tragedy.

They are like the handful of belongings saved from a burnt-down house. There should be a continuous challenge to authority for change and reform, and groups of ordinary people should form an alliance to reclaim what was taken by the state inch by inch, like a children's game, and enlarge the territory to the level of practical equality.

... but why does our family only ever side with the losers and never the winners? What, you don’t like siding with the weaker folk? Of course not. All we do is get hurt! The wrinkles around his grandmother’s eyes had grown even deeper as she smiled widely and said, ‘It always looks like you’re losing at first, but in the end, the weak are destined to win. It’s just frustrating that it takes so long, is all.’ Then she added, ‘If you live long enough, you figure this all out. Everyone else knows it, too. They just don’t like to show it.

He’s my hyung,’ Baldspot said. ‘I didn’t know you had an older brother.’ ‘He fell off a garbage truck!’ he said with a giggle. ‘Well now, what can’t you get from a garbage truck these days?’ the woman chuckled.

becoming a grown-up did not mean good things were waiting for you.

Plus. the feeling of sudden adulthood that came with getting drunk wasn't bad either.

They were happy to help someone, to succeed at something, even if they weren't to benefit. We'd been trying to touch the sky from the bottom of the ocean. I realised that if we boosted one another, maybe we'd get a little closer.

I realized that life means waiting, enduring the passage of time. Nothing ever quite meets our expectations, yet as long as we are alive, time flows on, and everything eventually comes to pass.

The purpose of life's good and bad is to teach us to be better people, which is why you have to overcome this and appreciate the beauty of life. That's what God wants from us.

We stopped telling our stories in detail, but whenever the subject of our home countries came up, it always seemed to end in fighting and starvation and disease and brutal, fearful generals seizing power. There were still so many people dying in every corner of the world, and people crossing endless borders in search of food, just so they could live without the constant threat of death.

They say we’re here because of desire. In our desire to live better than others, we are cruel to each other.

Later, when I travelled to other parts of the world and saw numerous cities and glittering lights and the vitality of those crowds of people, I was struck with disappointment and disgust at how they had all abandoned us and looked the other way.

Las gentes son iguales en todo el mundo: todas carecen de algo, todas caen enfermas, todas actúan con necedad, y todas sucumben a la ambición.

It suddenly occurred to me that the whole notion of this side, of us and them - it was all over. It was no longer the Lord's Crusade. We were no longer fighting to overthrow Satan. We have been tested, I thought to myself, and we have been found wanting. Our faith was corrupted. My comrades and I - we'd become the endless days, days without light. What does that mean, you ask? We were sick and tired of living. At the least provocation, we would spit out, Fuck it, and kill whoever happened to be involved. (2007: 222)

I suppose the time is ripe for them now, for the people who were there. They're ready now, I think. So... they appear before us as part of their redemption." "But you and I, we weren't to blame, were we?" Suddenly slamming his thick palm down on the table, Uncle Some shouted, "Show me one soul who wasn't to blame!" (2007: 162)

Back then, I think, both sides were just very young. They needed to grow up enough to realize that thing get quite complicated in the business of living, that a lot of things require mutual understanding and compromise. I mean, when you get right down to it, all business for us men on earth is based on material things - so we've just got to work hard and share the fruits of our labors with one another. Only when that is done righteously can we render our faith honorably to God. Within a generation of adopting a school of thought in the name of New Learning, be it Christianity or socialism, we all became such ardent followers that we forgot the way of life we'd led for so long. (2007: 163)

God too, has sinned, that's what I used to think. He looked down on this blazing hell, and he remained silent. (2007: 142)

The people your brother killed - well, they all had souls. They weren't Satan. Ryu Yohan wasn't Satan, either. His faith was twisted, that's all. I know now. I know that God is innocent. (2007: 143)

Their words flitted past, like short sentences typed out on a keyboard, typing away Yosop's past and future. They all said "American troops," but Yosop knew for a fact that the troops had simply been passing through. They were never stationed in Sinchon; they were in a rush to get further north. Both Yosop and his brother Yohan knew for a fact that during those forty-five days, before the arrival of the U.S. troops and after their departure, most of the military strength in the area had consisted of the security forces and the Youth Corps - all Korean. (2007: 99)

They say God is one and the same everywhere, in all countries. Well, I know everything, everything from the very beginning. Those big noses just came here with their books and spread them all over the place. Our ancestors, the founding father of our race, was Tangun. He came down from the heavens a long, long time ago. They say that's not so. They say that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior. People should worship their own ancestors properly if they want to be proper human beings. Our country has gone to the dogs because so many have started worshiping someone else's God. (2007: 40)

we left our home forty years ago. Despite the unhappy events we faced there, we left because our faith allowed it, because our belief in the Lord taught us that we would find a new place, a place to build a heaven on earth. War was waged in our home as we left. Many, many innocents dies. To live, people killed and were killed. In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses reminds his people of the promise made to their ancestors regarding the land of Canaan. He delivers the law, teaching them how to win a life of victory in the land of promise. They said, Jehovah, let all the enemies of the Lord face this same end. Do not pity them or offer them promises, only annihilate them all. And yet, Jesus taught love and peace. I say again - those left behind in our hometown had souls, just as we do. It is we who must repent first. (2007: 17)

As it turns out, the atrocities we suffered were committed by none other than ourselves, and the inner sense of guilt and fear sparked by this incident helped form the roots of the frantic hatred that thrives to this day. (2007: 9)

I can't say a thing. What is there to say? I have given birth to a son! What more can I possibly hope for? I hear his footsteps crossing the front yard and gradually fading away, off into the distance. As the silence grows, I suddenly realize that he"s gone. He's gone to someplace far away, and he's never coming back.(2007: 153)

[R]egardless of one's cause, one should always treat those close to him as well as humanly possible.

[A]ll business for us men on earth is based on material things -- so we've just got to work hard and share the fruits of our labors with one another.

If your heart isn't in the right place, you're no different from the beasts in the forest.

What kind of soldier carries music instead of guns?

No sooner did I start college than President Park Chung-hee’s Yushin dictatorship began. Everything was in turmoil, and not a day went by without riots and school closures. My classmates were being arrested left and right, and every time I went to class, there were fewer and fewer of them.

I sympathised with those who were fighting social injustices, but at the same time, by having the fortitude to just buckle down and get through it, I was able to forgive myself for not getting involved. Over time, this turned into a kind of habitual resignation, and it became second nature for me to regard everything around me with an air of cool indifference. I thought this meant I was mature. During the 1980s, when most people were finally getting a breather from the grinding poverty of before, this type of resignation became commonplace, and all of those small wounds calloused over.

Back then, rice was in short supply, and the government was waging a campaign to encourage people to eat more flour and mixed grains. At school, our lunchboxes were inspected daily, and anyone caught bringing white rice had their palms strapped. Flour, donated as food aid by the United States and stamped on each sack with a picture of a handshake, was distributed by the neighbourhood office and eventually found its way into the marketplace. Lunch in every home consisted of sujebi, knife-cut noodles, or banquet noodles — the extra-thin soup noodles that were extruded by machine and so insubstantial that you’d barely even chewed them before they were slipping down your throat. They were called banquet noodles because we used to eat them only on special days, but they were ubiquitous in our neighbourhood since you could prepare them many different ways, including in soup or tossed in a spicy sauce.

But I still believe that, no matter what kind of oppression or difficulty ensues, the social function of the artist must begin from a critical point of view. The relationship between the government and the arts must be that the former supports, but does not control, the latter. A society where artists have lost their faculty of criticism and submit unconditionally to power is well on its way to losing its democracy.

I felt like my body was slowly disappearing. First my arms and legs blurred at the edges and vanished, leaving only my trunk, then that, too, started to disappear from the bottom up. I stared at the reflection of my upper half floating in the window, transposed over the city lights, like a photo taken from overlapping negatives. Who are you? asked the man in the glass.