What to Read After Pachinko?
Sonju by Wondra Chang — a historical novel set in South Korea
Several years ago, I had the opportunity to interview Korean American Min Jin Lee, the author of the best-selling novel Pachinko. She remarked that Koreans “have historically suffered and been humiliated, but they are very proud.” Those words often popped up in my mind while I was reading Sonju, the recently published novel by Wondra Chang, who emigrated from South Korea to the United States in 1970.
While Pachinko starts out in Japan-occupied Korea, Chang’s elegant debut begins in Seoul in 1946, and is less about the suffering inflicted upon the Koreans by the Japanese than about the harm done to Korean women by patriarchal Confucianism.
In fact, at the start of the story, Yu Sonju recalls, “A month after America dropped atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, one of her Japanese classmates in high school came to her house to say good-bye and they had cried together.”
Now, at nearly twenty, Sonju is expected to marry, so that her younger sister will be able to wed in turn. She is in love with her former classmate Kungu, but her parents don’t consider him a good match since he is poor and his father has died.
Against her will, her mother arranges a marriage for her. Although she had found ways to subvert the authority of her Japanese teachers and classmates, “disproving Japanese superiority was easier than finding a way to defy her mother.”
At first Sonju makes an effort to be a good wife, giving birth to a daughter and obeying her mother-in-law. She even pursues her youthful ambitions of becoming a teacher through setting up a reading group for the illiterate women in her husband’s village, the fictional Maari. But when she discovers that he has been unfaithful, she decides to push for a divorce.
Although her wish is granted, there are severe consequences; Sonju is disowned by her parents, separated from her daughter, and shunned by her former classmates. Against the background of Korea’s growing pains involving war with North Korea, and later, political scandals, Sonju struggles to make a new life for herself — and for the daughter with whom she hopes to reconnect.
The events of this novel span twenty-three years, ending in 1969, at a time when Western influence was increasing, and when relations between Korea and Japan were normalizing. However, some protested against the government’s stance toward its former colonizer:
“Never trust the Japanese. Remember what they did to us,” people young and old said. Many were born after the Japanese occupation had ended and hadn’t experience what Sonju and others had, but to most Koreans, distrust and animosity toward Japan were a national inheritance, a collective attitude, and they aimed to remember that wounded national pride.
Nevertheless, in this novel, Sonju’s suffering is caused not by the Japanese, but her Korean family and friends and their rigid attitudes regarding the behavior of women. She ultimately persists without sacrificing her values and unites with kindred spirits. In the end, her journey to independence and self-hood is an uplifting and inspiring one.
Sonju by Wondra Chang, Madville Publishing, Lake Dallas, Texas, 282 pages, $19.95
Suzanne Kamata is an American living in Japan. Her most recent novel is The Baseball Widow.
