Jung Mikyung

Jung Mi-Kyung (Hangul: 정미경; 4 February 1960 – 18 January 2017) was a modern South Korean novelist. ^[1]

Life

Jung Mi-Kyung was born on February 4, 1960, in Masan, South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea.^[2] Jung graduated from Ewha Womans University with a degree in English literature and in 1987 made her literary debut by winning the drama category of the JoongAng Literary Award. After this, however, she withdrew from literary work for over a decade, re-entering the scene as a novelist, debuting with the short story "The Woman With Arsenic" in the Fall volume of World Literature. Thereafter, she has concentrated on her literary career with great success.^[1]

Work

Korean critic Kim Kyung-Yeon has referred to Jung's work as, "(portraying) a deceptive society full of absurd spectacles, where truth and falseness are intertwined, appearances define nature, and values are destroyed. She shows us the dark side of post-capitalist society through those who struggle to live amidst these absurd spectacles.^[3]

The Korea Literature Translation Institute summarizes Jung's work:

(She) has proven herself to be a master of the traditional novel form as well as possessing the social awareness that befits a 21st century writer. The latter is noted in her microscopic descriptions of the norms of consumerist society, where signified value takes precedence to actual usefulness or exchange value. In her first novel La Vie en Rose, for instance, she writes: “They don’t wear jeans, they wear the carefree spirit of Levi’s, and they don’t smoke cigarettes, they’re smoking the rugged macho image of Marlboro Man.” Here Jung is focusing on the temptation falseness poses, not falseness itself. In other words, she does not stop at criticizing the falseness of signs and images prevalent in capitalist society but goes one step further, presenting a dramatic narrative of how we knowingly and willingly succumb to the desire for those false signs and images, and become frustrated by it.^[1]

Such critical reflection is more pronounced in her second novel, The Strange Sorrow of Wonderland. The protagonist Lee Jung-Ho confesses, “Money is green blood made of paper, the God who rules over me with a strength far greater than the thick, red blood running through my veins.” Jung-Ho is a derivatives trader who likes to “drive only with the gas pedal, never braking until he reached his destination.” He is a striking representation of the era overwhelmed by the terminal velocity of materialistic desire. Jung dubs this materialistic empire founded by out-of-control materialism “the strange sorrow of Wonderland,” a world that reflects the stark reality of the 21st century where people struggle with consumption, not production, excess, not deficiency, and pleasure, not pain.^[1]

In her work Jung likes to use Seoul, more specifically Gangnam, a space engulfed by consumerism, as the backdrop of her stories filled with consumerist desire and extravagance. The Gangnam that serves as the backdrop of so many of her stories is the very definition of a “Wonderland of strange sorrow.” One of her better known works, “My Son’s Girlfriend,” tells a story of class and economic divide that is even more intense than the ideological conflict between the two Koreas. The protagonist of the story is a mother from Gangnam (South of the Han River), is rattled by her son seeing a girl from the wrong side of the town, Gangbuk (North of the Han River), but her hypocritical sense of refinement prevents her from voicing her concerns. Once she recognizes this she says to herself, “Even my vices are trivial, petty and ignoble.” Her self-disgust exquisitely conveys Jeong’s criticism on the empty morality of 21st century bourgeoisie. Rarely seen before in Korean literature, Jeong’s careful study of the life and thoughts of the bourgeoisie is grouped into a subgenre called “Gangnam Novella” along with the works of Jung Yi-Hyun and Seo Ha-Jin, a relatively new literary branch of Korean literature.^[1]

Works in Korean (Partial)^[1]

Short Stories

• “The Woman with Arsenic”

Novels

• La Vie en Rose.
• The Strange Sorrow of Wonderland (2005)
• Stars of Africa (2010)

Short Story Collections

• Bloodstained Lover (2004)
• They Gave Me Balkan Roses (2006)
• My Son’s Girlfriend (2008)

Awards^[2]

• Yi Sang Literature Award (2006)
• Today's Artist Award (2002)

References