 Okay. Hello, everyone. Good evening. Thank you all for coming to this evening Center of Korean Studies book launch event. First, I would like to thank Kate Heacock from the University of Washington Press, who is the publishers of the book that Bruce and Juchan will be, has translated and will be introducing. But just wanted to thank Kate for reaching out to us on behalf of Bruce and Juchan to make this event possible. And I'd also like to thank, of course, Charles Sandir from our centers and institutes office, who has helped with all the logistical arrangements and who is in the background in case there are any sort of technical glitches. But without further ado, I would like to introduce, welcome, welcome and introduce our speakers for this evening. Bruce and Juchan Fulton, who are prolific and critically acclaimed team of translators of Korean fiction, whose translations have been published in numerous anthologies, literary and academic journals, as well as not only university but also mainstream publishers. And Bruce is also an associate professor and the young men chair in Korean literature and literary translation at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. It is our great honor and pleasure to have them at this evening's event where they will be talking about their recent translation publication. A novel by Kim Soon, one left, which tells the story of Korean comfort women. And so please join me in welcoming Bruce and Juchan this evening. So over to you. Thank you very much, Grace. It one of the, one of the few pleasures, I guess, in this lockdown COVID-19 era is that we get to reconnect with colleagues and friends, and I had to check my CV to to recall the first and only previous time I was privileged to visit SOAS and that was almost six years to the day. December 3, 2014, I guess it was so very, very timely indeed and we're very happy to be to be part of the SOAS family once again, if only briefly. And we also would like to thank the University of Washington Press, editor-in-chief Lauren McLaughlin, who, Juchan will talk about this, but after 32 failed proposals, the University of Washington Press made a decision in record time about two weeks or so. We're very grateful for their support and we would also like to thank two pioneering scholars of the Korean so-called comfort women, Sarah So and Bonnie Oh, Bonnie Oh in particular was kind enough to write a forward to the volume. So what we propose to do is for me to focus on the novel itself as a work of literature, the literary style that Kim Soong uses, and the importance of this novel. This is more than just a book launch, I would suggest. And then Juchan will talk more about Kim Soong, the author, and about the process, the very circuitous process that brought us from translation to publication because we think it kind of mirrors the very larger issue of the so-called comfort women. And then we will offer a short bilingual reading from the book, after which I understand we will be available for questions and answers, and this is always a part of a public event that we enjoy. So I'd like to start by relating an anecdote. About a month ago, I received, I'm on the mailing list of the IIAS, an Association of Asian Studies based in the Netherlands, and I noticed with interest a feature on human trafficking. And so I said, well, great. One left the very first Korean novel to focus exclusively on the Korean comfort women, women of World War II. Perhaps they would like a review copy. I understand that they have an extensive list of book reviews and publications, and it took a month for me to get an answer, but a couple of days ago, a message came in from a staff member saying, Oh, congratulations on your book, but I'm sorry to say we don't review novels. And so after my eyes and stopped rolling, I tried to compose a considered reply in which I suggested that, yes, indeed, one left is a novel, but it's much more than a novel. It's the very first novel written by a Korean about one of the most notorious examples of human trafficking in modern Korean history. So perhaps another way to suggest the significance of this novel is to consider its title. So our title is one left in Korean. The title is Han Myung, literally one person. And a couple of nights ago, the last meeting of my Asia 457 seminar course at the University of British Columbia. This is a course on the modern Korean novel. We read one novel a week. The very last novel we read was one left. And I asked the class about this. I usually assign them a comment paper to begin the three hour meeting. And the question I posed to them was this. Scholars estimate that some 200,000 girls and young women were taken from their ancestral homes to serve as sex slaves for the Japanese military during the Pacific War. Why then do you believe that author Kim Soom titled her novel one person. One of the answers I received, and this I should mention, this is the, this is the finest class of UBC students I've been blessed with in my 20 years at UBC. So one of the students said that one person could also be understood as one individual. And then he proceeded to remind me of the middle English and middle Latin and Latin roots of the word individual, which basically means indivisible. It means a person that cannot be cannot be taken apart. But being taken apart is precisely what happened to each and every one of these 200,000 girls and young women. And we emphasize girls because the protagonist of our novel was 13. This would be by the by the the traditional count, your one year old for every day for every year in which you've lived at least a day. We would understand 13 year old as perhaps 12 or even 11 years old when when she was taken away. So an individual suddenly dispossessed of her or his ancestral home, dispossessed of her identity as as as you will see, and basically dispossessed of her humanity and reduced to a body which is appropriated by by an institution called war. So, I go on to some length about this to mention that. Yes, this is this is a novel, but it is a novel in a very distinct stream of modern Korean fiction, commonly referred to as chamyonok engaged literature. This is literature that is engaged with the common buzzword is Henshu reality. But a work such as one left is engaged in the finest sense of the word in terms of reclamation, truth and reconciliation, social justice healing. We would suggest in the recovery of the lives of 200,000 plus individuals and their recovery and their return to historical memory into the historical record. That is, is what we consider to be the significance of the book. And we applaud author Kim soom for being the first author to take to take the step of writing a full length fictional work about this, this period of Korean history which still is little known. And it's especially significant when we consider that these 200,000 individuals only 15 or 16 remain alive. So it is, it is very appropriate that their story their legacy is being returned to historical memory. So, another reason that Ju Chan and I undertook this translation is that for the past 15 years or so, we have been involved with trauma literature. And our reasons for being involved with Korean trauma literature have to do not only with its reception in the English speaking world. And all of you have probably heard or perhaps voiced comments about the gloominess of much of modern Korean fiction. It's Odubda Oduwa, but not just as a, as a way of responding to, to the reception of modern Korean fiction in English translation, but also, and I hope this doesn't sound too presumptuous, but as a, as a, effort on our part to, to promote social justice, truth and reconciliation, healing in an increasingly fractured world. And so this impulse led us to, to gather the three stories that appear in our University of Hawaii press anthology, the red room stories of trauma contemporary Korea, which consists of a novella by O Chang Hee, a novella by Im Toru, and a story by Pagwan So. We also translated the very first literary work by Choi Yoon. There are pedals silently falls in our translation. Chogy. Sori up she hun jump koni be jigo and Korean. And more recently, we have translated a novel involving a torture operative. This is based on an actual visual who worked in the gender one administration. This was Sengong by by Chen and young in our translation to catch her in the loft. And also a novel by Kim so go on her first novel Mina by an author whom we believe has as the best understanding of the of what has come to be known as hell chosen and particularly as that is manifested in the metropolitan area of Seoul. So, especially in a, in a year, such as we have just finished which has been marked by calls for social justice on many fronts and in many parts of the world. It's fortuitous indeed that we were able to find a publisher for for this novel. It is a as a university instructor of courses in Korean literature and Korean English literary translation. I'm always interested in the style that an author brings to her or his subject matter. So, a logical question would be how do you write a novel about an event of historical trauma such as the, the fate of all of these young women who were inducted into sexual servitude. How do you, how do you legitimately responsibly adequately recreate what they experienced a couple of Korean American novelists attempted to treat the subject not not exclusively but as a flashback. And my impression of my almost immediate impression was that the, that the flashbacks overpowered the present day narrative and but what Kim Soom did and she likewise has created a narrative that is set in the present day, but involves considerable flashbacks to a comfort station on the plains of Manchuria. What she did was she rigorously researched the testimony of the former comfort women and recall those of you who have studied this topic. You'll know that it wasn't until 1991, more than almost 50 years after the end of the Pacific War, that Kim Hudson went public with her description of her experiences. And then in 1995, I believe it was a short-lived journal called Muay in New York City at that time published their first and perhaps only issue, but it included a feature, including an interview with Hong Kong Jewelman. So the, the, the period in which, in which the comfort women have been and become a subject of public debate and discussion has been, has been quite limited. But what Kim Soom did was to research the, the records that have become available, including the firsthand testimony of these women dating from the, from the time that Kim Soom went public in 1991. And the result you will see in the back of the book are about eight or nine pages of end notes over 300 and all. And these are, these end notes refer to the testimony of the women. They refer to media accounts. There's even, I think a couple of, of television documentaries about the women. And so what we have is a present tense narrative that is entirely the imagination of the author. And that the flashbacks are solely grounded in the historical record. What we're, the flashbacks are providing us with the voices of these girls and for many of them, that's what they were in the conference station, not, not out of their teens. And so this is allowed Kim Soom to present us with a with an account that we can think of as coming directly from the historical record, but she is contextualizing it in by setting by situating the limited third person narrative in a Western style home in a neighborhood of Seoul, I think we can understand the, the, the locale to be so and this neighborhood is undergoing redevelopment so most of the people have already lived out. So, just as the protagonist, who was nameless until the very end of the novel, has lived a shadow existence and she and a few others managed to escape from the Manchurian comfort station and make their way back across the Amnokong to what is now North Korea and then back to South Korea. And it should be remembered that of the 200,000 individuals who were taken away, it is thought that only about 15,000 made it back to Korea. So, the protagonist has made it back to Korea but has lived a shadow existence. No one knows. She is not registered. No one in her family or anyone else knows of her past. She, her shadow existence continues in this home in a basically an abandoned neighborhood where she is glued to the television set, looking at reports and accounts of the number of remaining how many. And at the beginning of the novel, or we are told that when she began doing this, there were 52 left. And by the present of the novel, their numbers are rapidly declining until at the very end, there is only one left. Now, the scenes of this neighborhood that we see and we should understand that the protagonist is a kind of placeholder in the sense that when a neighborhood is scheduled for demolition, many of you who are familiar with Jose, he's great linked story novel, the dwarf will know that the usual procedures that the residents, in this case legal residents in Jose, he's novel they were in squatters but the residents are notified that the structures will be demolished but in return for that they will get priority rights to a dwelling in the new housing that is to be is to be built. And so, the protagonist nephew as as least one of these abandoned dwellings in return for which he and his family will get priority rights for new housing in the city of so on. So, the protagonist is a kind of placeholder she will not. She will have no no no place waiting for her once the once the new housing comes up. And so, she is focusing on the, on the lives of the remaining comfort women and in her occasional outing she comes across a variety of characters and these characters several of them seem somehow to be marginalized or disabled, which seems to be author Kim soons suggestion that there are not just the comfort women but there are other individuals who in a sense live a kind of shadow existence and have lost some of their individuality. She sees, for example, a father and a son the father is a is a basically a rag picker who goes about the abandoned dwellings stripping copper for for resale, but his son has special needs is developmentally delayed. We also see a the local mini Mart which is operated by a husband and wife the good wife is is not ambulatory she's wheelchair bound. And there is also a girl who turns out to be pregnant as to this 13 years old, which is the same age at which the protagonist was taken away from her ancestral home. She was out with her sisters gathering gathering snails from the local stream when a truck came up out came some men they seized her they threw in the back of the truck. And she was taken to the city of taboo where she was loaded on a train with other girls and over a several day journey they were taken to this comfort station Manchuria. So the we see in the in the people in the lives of the people that the protagonist meets in the present day kind of glimpses and connections with what she herself went through 70 years earlier. And there's another scene in which she, the protagonist comes across some policemen around the local mini Mart and it turns out that the police have discovered some individuals squatting in a building in the neighborhood. And it's suggested that their Chinese and the implication is that they are also victims of human trafficking. So, in this way, the protagonist is reminded of the past. And finally at the end of the novel. She makes a fateful decision. There's only one of the how many is left. She is at a university hospital she is not expected to live much longer. And the protagonist decides that she will visit her and tell her that even after you have gone, there will be one left me. So she gets on the bus, she takes public transportation, and along the way she has an epiphany. She remembers her given name, the name that she was given at birth, and has not used for the last 70 years. And the last time it was used was precisely when she was at the comfort station with the other girls, the sisters, many of them referred to as on me in the narrative. And she and the other girls were being taken to a comfort station across the river and in the whale on the boat the boat encountered some rough water. So she, the protagonist was thrown overboard, and she recalls that when the other girls were rescuing her they were referring to her by her given name, which is Punggir. So she remembers them calling her Punggirah Punggirah. It's going to be okay. By doing this by reclaiming her name after 70 years time, Kim Soom is suggesting to us that this individual, Miss Han Young, reclaimed her identity. She reclaimed her individuality. And it was not just her. It was all we can see this as a symbolic reclamation of all of the other 200,000 girls that were taken from their homes. And in this way Kim Soom avoids the risk of Japan bashing and already in the English language, Japanese press. There have been many comments, as you can probably imagine, oh, when is Korea ever going to grow up and what this this again. But no, that's not at all what Kim Soom is involved in. She's involved in a reclamation project. She's involved in restoring the historical memory, the voices, the experiences, the lives of each and every one of these 200,000 girls and young women. And what could be a finer purpose for a creative writer. So with that. Now, you get to hear Ju Chan tell you all about the author Kim Soom and about the saga, finding a publisher. Hi, this is Ju Chan. Thank you for inviting us. And thank you for this opportunity. Kim Soom. Kim Soom is a new author for us means that we translate for the first time of her work. We've been translating over 40 years, over 4,000 of writers, number doesn't matter, but we, we really like to introduce good work, good stories, and share with the readers in English spoken word. Kim Soom. I learned that she is workhorse. And last decade means that maybe 2011 to this year. She's published 16 books. It's unbelievable. She is 46 years old. And she's published over 20 books. And also I learned it's all I learned is recent event. She is the most awarded. All this literary awards. Isam Hyundai, you know, Dong In this year, and Tessan and all that. But most important thing is that regardless how many she's published, she is most underrepresented writer. And we are very happy to introduce Kim Soom to you for Kim Soom. Her work started with me family, but one point with the work. Elle's sneaker. Elle is a student activist got killed by was it tear gas sharpener. And that's the turning point that she started looking at the society and her roots and, and history. And her interest about comfort women started back 2014. She published a short story called Puri Iyagi, which is a story about roots. And that earned her isam prize. There she mentioned glimpse of comfort women. I'm going to tell you comfort women as a harmony from now on, because they are all the ladies with affection, we can call her call them. And 2016. Ham Young, where is my book. Ham Young came out from Hyundai Mona. The reason she was thinking that what would it happen when all those ladies die. Who will talk about the history. And I want to write about them. And this is my duty. So, but then her imagination alone, one work, one do the job. So she tenaciously researched. And it was very painful project for her. And she waited till the time that she naturally, you know, with the possession possessed by kind of spirit, start writing. Her goal is that she want to tell their stories. And they she wanted to remove prejudice as much as possible. And she's telling you and us to everybody that think they are part of your family, maybe neighbors. And they are victims. And we really want to help her to spread her message. In fact, these ladies have money. They are working many of them working for the victim of sexual violence in Korea. I started reading Kim Soom for a long time. But 2017. I was reading a novel, which is about 400 pages. The background is conflict between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law happened to be in the afternoon for four hours long period. She wrote about 400 pages long stories. And I was thinking, how could a Korean writer with this kind of mentality. Is it possible and the research ship for Korean writers. It's not really, you know, it's not what is that common thing or very rare. And then I started reading more. And I also found that she wrote 800 pages for two girls, two sisters, who are traditional seamstresses. And her focus, her themes varies in depth and width is really vast. And I was also reading from the, you know, the seamstress and this mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. And then I was reading this super noir stories. And it's like a little child of waiting for Kodo. And I read three times. I still don't understand. That's called no longer. Which is, you know, disposing mongrel or something. And so I was very intrigued about this author. And then I came to one left. So when we start translating a new author. I try to read as much as possible of this writer's work to understand the writer and style. And I want to be in her world. And so Han Myeong, one left. First of all, it's the first novel written by a Korean author about comfort women and their legacy. There was a novella by Yoon Jung-mo before. But this is the first novel. And also the setting is in present Korea. And that also was one of our interests. We always want to know how people live in Korea, present setting, highly developed country. I'm sure there are people hidden in the darkness. And more than that, this is happy ending story. We like actually our goal is finding story or novel with humor. Koreans love humor. Actually, when you sit with them, Korean language, hangul is really fun to mix together and make new words. And the joke, it's unbelievable. Writing that down in the paper must be very difficult. Finding a novel with humor, it's very, very rare and hard to come in. But this is a happy ending story, story of triumph and liberation of human bandage. So we like that very much. And more than that, we wanted to help Kim Soom. We are therefore in the mission to spread words and I want to listen to the voices of these girls. I am going to read briefly and then we can enjoy very much of Kim Soom's writing. But meantime, finding a publisher was another story because I know Kim Soom and us, we have one goal to publish this book and let the world know their story, the girls' stories. We won very competitive American Pan-Heim translation grant. And at the same time, the timing of this work was when we were about to translate, there was a brewing of Me Too movement in U.S. And people's awareness about sexual violence, victims, human smuggling, their awareness was growing. And then we got very strong support from the author and publisher. However, when we actually translating, we already started translating and we already hit the first obstacle. The author gave someone else permission to translate. So we understand that kind of situation. So we told them we are not asking exclusively right, but let us do the work and whoever finds the publisher first and that they, you know, that person can publish will walk away, we said. So that was our journey. It was very, very highly motivated and full support, but then suddenly we plopped to the ground. So we started. And we had one, two, three publishers. We sent the proposal. The first one is biggest commercial publisher. And then second is the academic publisher that we've worked long time with published about five, six books. And there, one of the reviewer said, this is a voyeuristic book to graphic that really shocked us. And then publisher said that we don't need another sensational book. That really another like up, you know, we were stupefied. And so I was asking myself, why this is sensational? Why don't I know about this girls and I'm learning what I'm working on this book. So we protested to the publisher, that academic publisher. And told them that you think that this is sensational. But however, there are so many people don't know, they know the words of a comfort woman. That's it. What about it? Then they are just mom. Okay. And so, but then it didn't work. Number three publisher been waiting from the beginning. So we signed the contract at the end of nine 2018. However, Korea side refused to sign and last about five to six months. And they don't want to sign it because they don't want to pay us tax. Well, in order to avoid attacks, you have to file a form. They didn't want to do that. So we decided that maybe there was something else that we don't know. And they, by then, the Korea side, the publisher brought an agent to this agent. We are the bottom of the barrel, just translator. And we are very rude, pressing a couple of roofians, nothing but the last one for decision making that really crushed us. And we got really sick, physically, mentally, we practically gave up the project, and our passion and love for translating Korean literature was really crushed. So we didn't do anything till we were in Korea. 2019 May. We happen to see full page at about a letter, very brief letter written by a living harmony to that harmony. That made us really sad and we were raised. So we got regained, we regained our energy, and we start sending our proposals again. And going on and on, everybody said, oh, this is very important, important. But as Bruce mentioned, there were over 300 and notes. I think that was one of the obstacles for the publishers. And so we were thinking that maybe, maybe the end notes can be removed. Well, what does it mean? That means we are killing the soul of the book. Her goal is getting all this girls through testimony. And she wants to make sure that everybody knows that it was based on history. So we couldn't do that. So, on and on, we sent the proposals. And the number 32 happened to be University Washington Press, which is practically within a stone, you know, drone distance behind our backyard. And it was accepted. However, Korea site said no. This time, the money is too little. So we gave up for another three months. And then finally, I mean, it's between all this, we've been constantly writing emails to them, reminding them that our goal, our mission is this book come out as soon as possible before all this harmony dies. Remember that. So the, the length of emails we've written is about book length. And finally, last year in the fall, actually in October, we met them in Korea, about two hours, the writer and agent Kim Soom and the agent. And they realized that we are not bad people. We are not money hungry, old geezers, and bad manners. Rubians. So let's do it. So this book, we, even though it was published in September, we were so numb, we got really tired of this project. And I really tell you that no one should go through this process. When we have all good intentions and passion, and the love for spreading Korean literatures, and the business involves get things tangled on, and there is no results. And so it was really long coming, almost two years in negotiations. And I think that some of Korean authors or agent thinks that finding a publisher, especially the book is translated in different languages and finding a publisher. Somehow they misinformed that it will bring a bundle of gold. But that's not it, because going through this book, we never had this kind of experience, and brought us the feeling of we are really minority. And Korean literature in US, it's really, really minority, although there are some, you know, star of writers and translators, but majority of Korean authors, they're translated books. It's very, very difficult to find a publisher. And once again, we like to make sure that this book is novel based on the actual testimony based on the history. I want to share with you, this is my gift to you, and it shows that how masterful Kim Soom is, and she has imagination. And she, this, this piece, little piece, is how powerful, how imaginative, and how poetically beautiful her writing is. So here comes, and one of the girls, older girls, died from, you know, TV. And these girls, they try to dawn her as beautiful as possible in the most harrowing situations. And so, and then this one shows a little bit of the age of innocence. They are teenage girls. And here is my Korean. And so, and then this one shows a little bit of the age of innocence. And then this one shows a little bit of the age of innocence. Thank you. Thank you. I will read a slightly longer version of this. This scene takes place one winter day at the comfort station in Manchuria. The next day, Tung Suk Oni coughed up blood, the deep red color of wild strawberries. Her face turned ashen, and the next day knew she was having trouble walking. The girls whispered among themselves that she'd come down with lung disease. Tung Suk Oni's cough got worse, but still, Ha Ha, that is the Japanese madam at the comfort station, made her take soldiers. After she caught blood while taking a soldier, Ha Ha turned the name plate on her door backside out. And to make sure the other girls would not catch her ailment, Ha Ha prevented them from visiting her. Time to time the girls could hear Tung Suk Oni coughing her lungs out, and all day her room bore a somber chill along with a bloody stink. The girls would peep into Tung Suk Oni's room whenever Ha Ha was not looking. The frosts arrived and Tung Suk Oni's condition deteriorated rapidly. Tung Suk Oni stopped to see Ha Ha on her way to the wash area with a tin wash basin containing a bloody towel from Tung Suk Oni's room. Can't you send her home? I'm not sending her anywhere until she pays off her debt. Even while Tung Suk Oni was coughing the last of her life blood, her debt continued to swell like a cocoon spun by a silkworm. Can't I pay it off for her? Do you have any idea how much you owe us? You pay off your debt first and then I'll listen to you. Even with that, Ha Ha turned and disappeared. Even an imminent death would not make her any more generous. An officer on horseback arrived in the middle of the night to find her in bed weeping, her here referring to our protagonist, our unnamed protagonist. After he had fallen asleep, she left to go to the toilet. On her way and shivering with cold, she looked into Tung Suk Oni's room. Kumbak Oni was at Tung Suk Oni's bedside, watching over her. Eerie moonlight filtered through the ice glazed window. The station was tranquil as if everyone was gone, and only the three of them were left. The sound of breathing could be heard from Chun He Oni's room across the way where earlier around midnight a bestial whale had escaped as if she were being taken to a slaughterhouse. Rubbing the instep of her frozen foot against the back of her other leg, she gazed at Tung Suk Oni's brazier. Amid the white ash, a single coal glowed faintly. It looked to her like the heart of a dying hare, left unnoticed among the spent coals. The least she could do was give Tung Suk Oni some coal, but she had none. She had the elusive sensation that the air in the room was changing, along with the waning of the glow. Over Kumbak Oni's shoulder she could see Tung Suk Oni's face. It was devoid of expression. Kumbak Oni reached out and caressed the expressionless face. The bloody stench from the room was painfully nauseating, and forced her to stifle her breathing. You should get some sleep, Oni, she managed to say. You're right, but now she was combing Tung Suk Oni's hair with her fingers like a mother sending off a daughter at daybreak to her new in-laws in a far off place. Tung Suk Oni, who had just now dropped off to sleep, never woke up. Kumbak Oni dressed Tung Suk Oni in the best preserved of her garments. Tung Suk Oni's long eyelashes seemed to twitch faintly like the second hand of a clock. Maybe she's still alive? She herself wondered. No flowers were available, and so the girls opened their mouths and adorned Tung Suk Oni with a bouquet of vapor blossoms. Kumbak Oni opened her mouth and from between her buck teeth came tiny white flowers resembling those of chili pepper plants. Yonsun and Hegum mingled their breath to produce a peony. In perched above Tung Suk Oni's face, Kumbak Oni was painstakingly fashioning a huge flower that resembled a snowball by Burnham. And that is our reading from one left. Thank you very much, Bruce Sanjuchan. Sorry, if we were in a real live situation, then there would be claps, applause. But I guess I'll just make mention an applause sound, I'm sure. Thank you very much for your presentation of, you know, to talk about Kim Soong's work as well as your journey with the translation of her works. And I think it's great that, you know, it sounded like it was a harrowing journey, but, you know, it got there. We're really happy that it's out in the world and it's published. And so we thank you very much for sharing that with us and for doing the work so that the work, you know, is out in the world for us, for an audience, you know, beyond sort of those who don't know Korean. Thank you very much. So, I, for the, we'll start the Q&A session. And I'm advised that Q&A in this webinar will be available for audience members to put in the chat box. So I'm afraid it's not like some classes where, or some lectures where you raise your hand and where you get to speak. But if, please, we invite attendees to raise questions for Bruce and Chuten. And the questions will only be seen by us. So it won't be sort of seen by participants, for those of you who are shy. And what I will do is I will read out the questions so that Bruce and Chuten can address them. So maybe have any sort of questions from the audience, please, using the chat box. Charles, I'm guessing that the audience members can access the chat Q&A? Yes, I certainly can. Okay, thank you. Okay, so any questions from the audience, please. Okay, so one question is, do you have any plans for translating any other Kim Soom's novels? I need to answer. Okay. I am, we are actually involved with several projects. And we are waiting for a new book. She is, she sent it. And that's about the Korean Russians, their roots got uprooted by Stalin. Over 70,000 people were put in on a cattle car, train, and it just came out and she got Dongin Prize. And I'm very interested in reading it, because we also deal with this issue when we translated Cho Jung-ness, How in Heaven's Name, Oh Ha Neunim. And there one chapter is devoted for Goryeo Sarang. And Kim Soom wrote Han Myung, and after that she wrote three more books involved Comfort Woman. So she was very dedicated for Comfort Woman issue. And then now she is into Korean Russians, because of one person that she happened to see in a TV program, the eyes kept her. And there was the journey, writing the Goryeo Sarang. And she's going to write second book after extensive research about how they settled in the area, Kazakhstan and Uzbek area. And so we don't know yet, but we are, when we translate one writer, our interest never stopped in that writer. I think we have a longevity as a translator, probably, one last remaining, as a couple of course, but one last remaining independent translators, I hope not. But our interest in the authors that we invested, it's forever, as long as those writers invest themselves in good work, we are here to invest again. So thank you. Thank you, Tutan. So we have two questions actually. One is a bit longer, so I'll read that first. So they say, first of all, thank you very much for sharing the anecdote of your painful and grand journey to get your translation published. Since one left is a historical fiction that may have sociopolitical impact on society, as translators of this work, did you face any difficulties and obstacles when you were working on your translation? I don't think that we had obstacles. I think we enjoyed, well, it was painful, but we spaced that very well, and we were able to translate fine. But then we had that end notes. It's all the, you know, historical background and then also recordings. And so we had to double check. And that was really, that took a really long time. And we also found that some mistakes there too. And for example, there was a Kimbuk-dong, and there was a four different Kimbuk-dong by the different birth year. And according to the specialist, and there got to be only one Kimbuk-dong. So there was a lot of clearing some, you know, the issues and it took a long time. Yeah. Did I answer all? Yeah, I think there are several other questions. So I think yes. If not, then the person who asked the question could maybe do a follow-up later. But let me just get, there are some other questions that have come through in the meantime. So the other shorter question was, they said, I love the cover of the book. It is beautiful and simple, reflects some purity. Can you tell us why this bird has been selected? Oh, God. That's a very good question. Okay, we are very fussy about book cover. Very fussy. I think we are spoiled from the beginning. And our most successful book, Wars of Farewell, the cover was painted by my friend's sister. And we decided that we are going to use friend's work if it's available. So we've been doing that. And at the same time, we, our book, like four or five volumes of book from Columbia, we actually had kind of a personal designer, whose name is Jang Jae Lee from Seattle. It's very close to our house, his mother live. And they really tried to meet our demand. But when the University of Washington, France comes, this is the fourth cover. And we complained all three covers. But then this fourth one, they didn't even show us. But I think, I think we probably learned, and we should not be fussy anymore, but I don't know. However, I think, timing wise, timing wise, we are all suffering with COVID. And we need some kind of comfort. And this book actually is a very calm and soothing, and gives simple comfort. And we, it grows with us. And actually, it also reflects the, the family of the girl, the, you know, abducted the girl, mother kept telling other siblings that go check whether your sister is there because the gachi map pie is crying. So it's, it really symbol of news. It shows the cover is, and we are very happy with the cover now. So the, the cover that we originally wanted. This is the, this is the Sonya song, the, the sculpture that sits near the Somerset hotel and also across the alley from the Japanese embassy in Seoul. And the cover itself, as Ju Chun mentioned, is of a, of a magpie. And one of the details in the present narrative of the novel is that the protagonist has a, has a stray cat that she's developed a relationship with. She is in the habit of bringing her a magpie. So the magpie of course has this, this connection with when, when she was taken at the age of 13. And to the extent that once or twice the protagonist looks down at her slippers, which sit on the shoe ledge and imagines that they're magpies. So, if we, if we think of magpies as deliverers of news, then, and remember that this, this stage in the narrative, the protagonist is basically counting down the number of surviving how many then the cover makes, makes perfect sense. And several readers have, have commented on how, as Ju Chun mentioned, there's a, there's a kind of a sense of calmness that I think is very salutary considering the very disturbing graphic content of the flashbacks in the novel. So we're very happy about how the cover turned out. Thank you. Since you mentioned the statue, I'll actually ask a question that came in about the statue that you shared with us. So this question is the recently the comfort women statue has been erected in Germany, and especially many states of the United States. I am curious about your opinion about this. Well, again, I'm referring to my modern Korean novel seminar course that's just concluded at UBC, and one of my students is German, and she told me she has just returned to Germany for the, for the holidays. And she mentioned that it is a little known historical fact that inside the German concentration camps during World War Two, there was a comfort station. And again, this is something that she said that Germans have very little idea about what is happening. And so the, the, the erection of the recreation of the Sonyo song places outside of Korea. We regard again not as a an attempt to rekindle bad feelings between between one nation or one people another. But again, as a process of recovery is a process of truth and reconciliation as a process of returning to historical memory. The lives of so many people who have been affected in such traumatic ways by by the great workings of history which we tend to engage with in textbooks as a matter of institutions of countless groups of people. But all too rare are occasions for us to realize that, yes, somebody's mother, somebody's sister, somebody's daughter was taken away, never to be seen again, no news. And the empathy that in response to this state of affairs requires, I think is something that is increasingly short supply in this divided contested interrogated all these adjectives about the current state of Korean studies that makes me sick. And it's, it's time to focus on healing restoration and bringing people back together again and that's what I hope will be will be the purpose of the of the recreation of these images outside of Korea. Thank you. So we have several questions actually. So this one relates to, I suppose, the representations or understanding the Korean comfort women issue, and I'll read it is quite I'm sure they would have said it out loud so I'll just read it through. So thank you for sticking with this project. It is a very important novel to have in English, not least because there are several novels by Korean Americans that I suspect do not clarify and help our understanding of the issues. You mentioned the challenge of having a novel accepted as valid for an academic publisher. My question follows from this. There are three types of information we can access for traumatic issues like the comfort women. First is commentaries, such as those by Bonnie, oh, they should came etc. Second is testimonies, such as an edited collection by Keith Howard, known as truth, true stories of the comfort women from 1995 and thirdly from novels. So what do you think the role of each of these. So testimonies, commentaries and novels is for teaching or study. And how can the three be used together and promoting understanding of such an important issue. So it makes perfect sense in the point of view of a historian a sociologist and anthropologist to Marshall, all of the available resources. I feel qualified as a specialist in literature, literature, translation to comment on the testimony or the scholarly literature. We are very grateful to the scholarly literature and it's worth mentioning that that the scholars who have done the groundwork for understanding the legacy in the context of the comfort women have themselves been challenged and attacked for for daring to to engage in this research. So we have a great deal of respect for that. But our concern is literary translators is to find a narrative that in which the author has adapted an appropriate narrative style to to the subject matter. And this, I think, remains the fundamental reason that we decided to translate this novel. I mentioned earlier, the propensity in the green literature power structure the moon done to privilege works of social engagement. The, and we, if we look at Kim zooms novel in this light, then I think this is the finest, a kind of socially engaged novel, as opposed to a work by a less skilled writer who might end up knowingly or unknowingly beating her his readers over the head with a with a message. So it's, it's a, it's an approach that carries with us a certain amount of risks, but also I think a certain amount of rewards. Thank you. That comment by the way because it was signed by that person I can tell you was from Keith Howard himself so he put his name down. So thank you Keith for that question. And I have several more questions here. It relates to sort of comfort women novels in general so says I read one other novel about Korean comfort women written by a Korean or Chinese male author several years ago. It had a rather pro Japanese slant showing the friendship between Korean and Japanese comfort women working for a comfort station located in Burma, they think, or another location. Any other novels. Find it. Well, first of all, Nora Oaksa Keller comfort woman. And also there were two, two head of dragons. What was that? Yeah. There was a white Chris sentiment. And there is a Filipino Americans are writing about Lola's house. And Chang Le Chang Le's just your life. And there's one more. I read. And I think I'm not, I'm not good memorizing things. But, but then before I have to emphasize the before I started, you know, making decision to translate this book. Not to mention this is a first Korean novel written by Korean author, but I wanted to make sure that this got to be different. And so I read half dozen books about comfort women and also watch documentary and went to lectures and decided that this got to be translated and it really calls us to do it. And it's because that, because that setting was, you know, is present. And of course it's a happy ending, but same time, and written by Korean. And that's, that's instead of written by Americans or something. And it's also based on really extensive research by the author. And so I tried to do my job to make sure that it's not duplicating in a kind of same kind of work. Thank you. So we have another sort of three sets of questions to actually pertain to translation but the next one that I'll read out has more to do with the comfort women question. And it says, I understand Japan apologized for the comfort women some time ago that the surviving comfort women or the Korean families receive personal apologies and any financial compensation from Japan. Our understanding is that a private and non governmental foundation was commissioned by the Japanese government to extend the apology. But this. We are aware of the particulars of this. I will say though, and this came as a surprise to us but a couple of months ago, we gave a presentation to the Center for Korea Studies here at the University of Washington. And during the question and answer session. Professor Hayoung Chul was a professor of political science. He contextualize the question by saying that the Republic of Korea has not yet assured, not yet issued a formal apology to the comfort women. And I thought to myself, oh my gosh, how could he make a mistake like that he's obviously referring to the, to the Japanese government, but no to my surprise I didn't realize this. Apparently, the Republic of Korea, either either he was referring back a year or two ago. We're still not sure if our okay government has issued a formal apology, but he was referring to the Republic of Korea government as not having offered an official apology. And that that, of course, restored to our to our consciousness the issue of collective guilt and in complicity, which are, which are issues that Chung Yi-seo so researched for her Cornell volume, the comfort women and and for which she was attacked. And Bonnie all said that she or she was shunned by Korean friends, Korean families. When I was reading and I was working. It really bothered me that why I don't know more than just words comfort women. And looking back, I don't think we were taught Korean educational system did not teach this. And that I didn't know that I thought I've been in US so long. I'm getting old. I'm not paying attention to things, but during our lecture tours. I've learned that. Yes, that's true. We did not teach this period much, especially comfort women. And I think the younger generation, only 1990s, when this issue came public, I think they were more aware of this issue. But so this is very learning period for me. And we are, we are glad. And also when we took on this work. We're not thinking about politics. All the money things, just like the author intended to do and put back the this harmonies dignity and then prejudice. And get rid of the prejudice and the spread words that they can be your grandma and your neighbors. And you're somebody that you know. Well, after this book came out. We were very lucky to have a reporter from Godot news agency who followed us for two years after we just received you American Panheim translation grant. He interviewed us in New York over two hours. And his first question was, why took so long over 77 years for Korean writer to write a book like this. He's interest in us. And if this book really was life source for us to keep going on, because when we had a trouble of Korean side. I am emphasizing Korean side but the author and us I think we had the same goal, same goal with the book published as soon as possible. But then there is business issues. So the human relationship was really twisted. But I do believe that they are all good people. But I don't think that they don't know much about the publishing industry in us. And they were misinformed. A lot of times that Korean journalists or media talks about, you know, the big things like a word and money in all big things but then they don't, you know, really report much of other parts. And I think we were lacking with the trust from the beginning, and only business first. There's no human relationship. And so, and after this book out and because of that the Godot journalist Godot news agent journalist, he published a news article, and then two more news cycle in Japan times in Japan today came out. However, about three months still gone. There's none such no, no Korean media covered. So that Koreans, it's been so much publicity. And we've heard this word comfort, comfort, comfort women. I think in a way, we think we know, but we are numb. And we are very complacent. We don't really know about this issue. So that's what Kim Soon also believes and why she was doing research. And so we tried to reach out as much as possible. And that's why we are eagerly going for the everywhere we can go and let, you know, people know about this girls voices. And, you know, and so we also we want the Korean community involves to move on to next step. Thank you. Thank you. So there are three remaining questions but I think I'll read out to which I think relates to what just talked about first has to do with I guess translation or sort of the inside's response in the translation industry. The other one has more to do with the feedback from the from the victims themselves. So the first question is, and then you can choose to answer whichever order. So the first one is, thank you so much. I'm really surprised that you had so much difficulty from the Korean side, but thanks for persevering. I think you said they were expecting that publication abroad would be a big money spinner. Can I ask, do you know how many translated Korean titles genuinely are money spinners. So that's the first question. It's almost like a report questions perhaps. And then the second one was, have you received any feedback about the book from the victims themselves. How authentic have they found it. Thank you to the first question and say thank you Philip for that for that question and for all you do on behalf of Korean literature and Korean Korean culture in general. And I should warn you this is my this is my rant about about green English literary translation of fiction in the last 10 years. I mean, once upon a time, this could be a hold on you got don't be pure day back when tigers used to smoke translators and authors, basically were four partners in a joint effort to broaden the readership of a of a literary work that was deserving of a wider audience. The business part of it when it was very simple. We're half and half. We're partners in a in a creative enterprise. Basically, you could think of it as a handshake arrangement. We have the author's best interests in mind. And then about 10 years ago. We have the job which I guess is a polite way to put it other third parties, fourth parties, fifth parties got involved. Literary agents came along. Before long, there were rights representatives of publishing companies. It used to be in the Korean publishing industry, there were two kinds of rights, you want one and punt one punt one as you can imagine these are the sales of the work. Retained by the publisher young one, which we can think of as subsidiary rights. These are held by the author. Over the last 10 years the young one the subsidiary rights and often been transferred to a literary agent or in some cases to literary agents one on each side of the Pacific, and or to a Korean publishers representative. So, and last but not least, we have the presence of a quasi governmental organization that funds subsidizes enters into relationships with publishers to publish translations of translated mostly Korean fiction. In many cases works that have been commissioned. And again I use quotation marks basically paid translations that have been paid for the been accumulating dust for years and years and years. Unfortunately, there is no code of professional conduct to. No guidelines by which all the various players in this increasingly commercial and I would say mercenary enterprise. And perhaps inevitably, the more recent entrance into this process. And say, wow, look at Shin Young Su who look at Kim Young ha, you know he landed a good contract he's got a lot of visibility. I need to also do my best to make sure that my author. As an equal opportunity to thrive. And that mindset is understandable but it's also understandable that the translators would be dismissed as non players in the arrangement which is precisely what happened to us. Unfortunately, in the end we did something that we should have done from the very beginning. We should have got on an airplane and flown to Korea and met personally with the author and her agent, and we could have saved about a year of very unpleasant communications. And this is this is the reality of the trying to publish a translation of contemporary Korean fiction. Some publishers will not deal with translators they will deal only with agents. The communication process as devolved into a basically from the point of view of the publishers. Maybe if we don't answer them they'll go away and won't bother us anymore. There's very little effort to engage in the most basic of professional courtesy. When it comes to translators and in my mind is become a very sorted and I would almost say disgraceful enterprise. So, as you John mentioned, we had several very possible we had very, we had several very positive contacts I believe with publishers. The reality is that in the United States literature and translation has never fared well. In an average year in Korea, as much as 60% of the books being published are translations. In the US the comparable figure is 3%. It's a limited market and it has become increasingly difficult for translators such as ourselves who do not work with agents to find a home for what we believe are works of literature that demand an audience and some of us for mentioning this. I hope this doesn't come across as too self-serving, but some of you may be familiar with a novel by Congee Young. It was published about 10 years ago in Korea called Togani. The title comes from Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, which was about the Salem witch trials. And this novel is about an actual case of systemic sexual abuse of special needs children at an institution in southern Korea. The novel itself was mildly successful in Korea, but when it was made into a film, it caused such a stir that changes were made to the Korean legal system so that individuals convicted of such crimes no longer received a slap on the wrist. So this is a novel that I have used in my modern Korean novel course, and it consistently is rated by the students as one of the most compelling, most engaging works. And this work also has gone unpublished for 10 years. So the reality is if one does not work with an agent, then basically you're on your own. And sadly, the human relationship that once characterized our relationships with our authors has dissipated to a considerable extent. I think your rent should stop. But I think we also found the publisher for that book, however, it doesn't work for the agent for the deal or business kind of arrangement or something. So I think ultimately we need to learn that we have to work together, especially Korean literature in translation field is very, very small. It's a really small community. And then you look at the Korea, you know, selling authors, almost all of them over what, about 5,000 authors already engaged with agent, they were signed up with the agent. And it's very slim picking for any translators to find the work. And if the author agrees with translator, but then agent is not, and it's a disservice for the, you know, author. And we've had, we've had many, many good luck with working relationship, but same time when author involves with agent, then the relationship got suddenly like enemy like it doesn't have to be that way. In Korea, some reason agent believe that, well, the their royalty is 10 to 12%. So US, they should give what's the, the price actually printed on the book. They get 10 to 12% in Korea, whether that company publishing company is about to be bankrupt or not. They get that. So they stick with their belief. But in US, US very seldom they pay 10 to 12% of the printed price. And especially, especially, it's a new author. Nobody knows her who knows Kim Soon. There was only two, two short stories. One is in England, I think last year called divorce came out. And one was in Korea in Asia bilingual edition. And also that when we came all the way to number 32 publishers, and we do not have much choice of, you know, finding the publisher keep going. And they demanded 10 to 12% of royalty from the university publisher. And you've got to really adjust. And if you don't know, then listen to the people went through before, but there was no such thing. That's why it took so long. You finally realize what we talk about it when we say, that's makes sense. Some of authors get six figures are signing bonus, such as Kim Soon, the plotter. So lots of people probably think that oh, this author get this much. How come she doesn't get this much to that kind of mindset. It's not going to work. Okay, thank you. Thank you. So I'm mindful of the time now so we have just under 13 minutes left. So I'm just going to quickly maybe summarize the key three questions if you might be able to answer them it's in relation to the one left so the first one was one that I read out before so how you know have you received any feedback about the book and the victims themselves. The second question was in relation to the title. So they thought that the title was very powerful English title is very powerful and self explanatory yet that they were quite curious to know if why one left instead of one person maybe kind of remind us again because you did mention that but Finally, there was an afraid I don't have time to read it all out but it's someone who based on their own experiences teaching on Korean comfort women was met with hostility, you know, from from people and they were just wondering if you have, you know, you as translators of Kim's Novels has met has been met with hostility from Koreans or organizations. First, we have not gotten feedback from the victims. And we are someday we are willing to visit that foundation called Nabi Foundation, which is butterfly foundation. I like to give their give our book to them. And we have not gotten any hostility. However, as Bruce mentioned that when Japanese media published the article, and there was a lot of hostile hostile comments. Korean media has been really mom, which is big question mark for us. As for as for the title or a translation. We have all along wanted to focus on the fact that honey I'm literally one person is a is a representation of over 200,000 other victims. In a broader sense, it's a representation of all of those who have suffered who have been dis individualized in some way who've been removed from historical memory, not just in Korea, not just in East Asia but in the United States, all over the world. A couple of years ago, Ju Chan and I were privileged to take place in an international literary event. I think a lit quake that was centered one of the centers was in England. And the local sponsor of the event is African American and at some point in our discussions. A historical atrocity that took place about 100 years ago in the state of Oklahoma came up and this was a basically a race riot, which cost about 100 African Americans in the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma their lives and significant property damage as well. I remember hearing vaguely in a newspaper or magazine account about this. But just as in the case of much larger scale tragedies. I knew this only as hearsay is a vague historical event and never thought of it in terms of the individuals who were involved. So one left obviously resonates with the ending of the story in which only one of the registered how many remains alive. But it also registered very powerfully for us in the sense that each and every one of these 200,000 girls left home, left the ancestral home, left a family. And likewise think of all the individuals who left their ancestral homes in what is now North Korea to come south. Think of all the individuals, every one of them who left what is now South Korea to go north and recall that in the case of writers. It was not until the democratization of the political process in South Korea that these writers, these wall book writers these gone north wires were restored to to a public readership and to the attention of academics. So one left, obviously the protagonist leaving her home at the age of 13 being taken away, multiply that by by millions of people worldwide. And you have what one of the one of my Asia 457 students said a couple of nights ago in our final class that this novel is a call to arms. But not a call to arms in a combative adversary sense but I think a call to linking arms. A reminder that we need to we need to try to overcome these these historical differences that came in cultural and racial and ethnic differences that continue and political differences that continue to divide us. And to, and to remember that these are not some distant historical events that remain in the past but they continue to affect us today. So, that's the that's the thinking behind one left. Thank you very much. I think on that note, we will formally, and the Q&A sessions I think that was all the questions. There are lots of good questions and Bruce and you've provided some very, very good insight and responses so we very much appreciate any of those. So, there was one sort of chat comment, but I think that's I think Bruce and Jitann you can have a look it's in relation to thanking you for the event and sort of, you know, pointing out that publishing can brighten all of us in terms of the history and the realities and the like. And so I think we'll wrap up our event this evening. But before we do that I just wanted to make mention of a forthcoming book, a publisher, because it also relates to another one of our, you know, highly regarded writers, who sadly passed away in October and that was a Kevin or work, who was a Catholic missionary a Columban father who, who from Ireland went to Korea in the 1960s, when he was yet in his 20s and devoted his lifetime in Korea, you know, translating poetry fiction teaching at county university. And so, and Bruce told me that tells me that so Kevin or work and Bruce had planned a translation of collection of stories. This was a couple years ago I mean it wasn't a couple years ago so and so they put forth a proposal for penguin penguin UK, which was expected. So, the penguin book of Korean short stories is in the pipeline, and it will, it's forthcoming. Hopefully will be published next year, but also just to you know have this moment of commemorating Kevin or work. He was no longer with us, but he continues to live through his translated works, and I was especially happy to hear about this, this new translation that we very much look forward to. And Bruce mentioned that it's not sort of just, you know, pieces that are for the sake of canonical anthology but these are sort of personal pieces that between Bruce and Kevin felt, you know, deserved to be gathered in this collection so we very much look forward to that. And so, we thank you both Bruce and to turn very much for joining us and for sharing with us, you know, and for your translation, and, and also, they're joining us from nine hours time difference. We very much look forward to, you know, we've, we've been enjoying all your translation so far we enjoy to future works, and, and for that we are very grateful. So thank you very much again for joining us this evening. Thank you so much, Grace. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, everyone for joining this evening. Yeah. Thank you. Okay.