Eastern Sentiments

Book excerpt: Yi T'aejun was a prolific and influential writer of colonial Korea, and an acknowledged master of the short story and essay. Born in northern Korea in 1904, Yi T'aejun settled in Seoul after a restless youth that included several years of study in Japan. In 1946, he moved to Soviet-occupied North Korea, but was caught up in a purge of southern communists and forced into internal exile a decade later. It is believed Yi T'aejun passed away sometime between 1960 and 1980. His works were banned in South Korea until 1988, when censorship laws concerning authors who had sided with the north were eased. The essays in this collection reflect Yi's distinct voice and lyrical expression, revealing his thoughts on a variety of subjects, ranging from gardens to immigrant villages in Manchuria, from antiques to colonial assimilation, and from fishing to the recovery of Korea's past. Written when fascism threatened the absorption of every Korean into Japan's wartime regime, Yi's essays explore the arts and daily life of precolonial times and attempt to bring that past back to life in his present. A final long essay takes the reader through Manchuria, where Yi laments the scattering of Koreans throughout the Japanese empire while celebrating human perseverance in the face of loss and change.