#love in the big city book club

[wen-kexing-apologist]

Love in the Big City: Part Four- Regret, Rain, Love, and Loss

Well, it’s official. Love in the Big City, Part Four may have been short but it cemented itself as my favorite portion of the book. I asked @antonhur when he was so graciously answering questions what his favorite scene in the book was, and I can see why he said when they were lying in the rain in Bangkok; Late Rainy Season Vacation indeed. When I first started this book, I was talking with a few mutuals like @bengiyo and @lurkingshan wondering how I would feel about Young by the end of this book, because I was not a huge fan of his character in Part One. But I have very much enjoyed seeing his progress across these parts. I said already in my post about Part One that my biggest struggle with Young and the thing I think primarily contributes to the change in his friendship with Jaehee is that he cannot be serious, he cannot, does not allow himself to feel. And in Part Four, he’s finally admitting to it. 

“I was too late to put things back the way they’d been” “That is how my memories of him are preserved under glass, safe and pristine, forever apart from me” “I’ve no choice but to stand at arm’s length”

Part Four is my favorite part of this novel because Part Four is full of ghosts. Not only the ghost of Gyu-ho, but the ghost of all that came before. The rooftop party with Gyu-ho where he got plastered on whatever alcohol he could, where now he sits and drinks champagne, a ghost of both his relationship and the way he spent his college years. Going through Habibi’s wallet, a ghost of when he snuck a look at Hyung’s secrets all those years before. The text messages Young saw on Habibi’s phone about a family member with cancer, a ghost of his mother’s own diagnosis. Habibi himself, getting unexpectedly deep for only a moment before forcing the conversation away from anything real, a ghost of Young himself, and all the times he just could not bring himself to be open and honest with the people around him. 

Just like learning about the HIV diagnosis recontextualizes everything that came before it (see a wonderful essay about that by @twig-tea here) ending this book with the admission that his only wish a year ago was for Gyu-ho recontextualizes my understanding of how aware Young was about his own modus operandi. I operated under a much different assumption that Young didn’t know what he had until it was gone, that Young was not aware of how far his fears ran, of how distant he had made himself. I assumed Part Four was where Young starts to realize himself the way he’d behaved in the past and how that contributed to the downfall of his relationship to Gyu-ho. But now I think he knew it all along and he just didn’t trust us enough to say it until the end. Because I’m not quite sure even by the end of this book Young trusts us enough to be completely honest. 

I talked in my post for Part Three about HIV treatments and prevention methods, and mentioned Truvada, (generic name: emtricitabine-tenofovir) which is a pre-exposure prophylaxis medication that can be taken to prevent someone without HIV from getting HIV should they have an exposure. I mentioned there that at the time of Young’s relationship with Gyu-ho, Truvada was not available on the market in South Korea. But as it turns out, Teno-Em (tenofovir-emtricitibine), a generic PrEP medication, was available in Bangkok by 2015. In Part Four, Young describes going to a pharmacy and getting a generic medication, and he writes the errand in such a way as to make the whole thing seem shady. And maybe it was. But maybe he was just afraid, and that fear colored his own perceptions of what was going down: 

My expectation had been that the place would be hidden away in some seedy alley, but it was right there on the main street. The interior was almost the same as any other pharmacy. I showed the pharmacist a picture of the generic version of what I needed. The pharmacist, if he really was a pharmacist, took out a bottle of pills and explained to us, in English, how they worked. He said that taking just one a day at a set time was enough to perfectly prevent the disease. He really said the word “perfectly.” How could he be so confident? He added that taking two of the pills before risky intercourse and then a pill every twenty-four hours for two more doses was enough to prevent transmission. 

The facts are these: the pharmacy was on a main street, the pharmacy looked like a pharmacy, the pharmacist was able to explain how the medication worked, and the pill regimen for prevention was accurate to the pill regimen for PrEP. 

Could they have still been shady? Sure. But I think it is far more likely that Young and his historically terrible experiences with medicine have colored his perception of healthcare and placed doubt in his head over the legitimacy of this medication. Which, learning that Young and Gyu-ho have unprotected sex in Bangkok, makes me wonder if Young’s doubts about the pharmacy added another reason for him to let Gyu-ho go to Shanghai alone, if the meds they got in Bangkok weren’t real, if they didn’t work, then he likely gave Gyu-ho HV. 

Young talked about stains in this part, about permanency- the soy sauce on the mattress, the crack in the toilet and he talked about fleeting things- immediately losing the shape of Habibi’s face when he stepped outside the door, the lantern burning up and turning to ash with all the dreams, all the wishes Young had, or just the one. Regret seems to hold a permanent place in Young’s spirit, as does loss. Love is something I think he thought did not exist, or if it did then it was fleeting. He loved Jaehee and lost her, his first boyfriend died, the obsession he had over Hyung could only be described as dickmatized. But when he gave away Gyu-ho’s love, when he let Gyu-ho go to Shanghai alone, it was one of the few times in the entire novel we saw Young grieve. He fully collapsed under the weight of it all, barely leaving bed, not having the energy to maintain his typical routines, trying to root out the memories of Gyu-ho in his head by writing him out, and killing him over and over and over again. 

I find myself stuck, thinking about what is perhaps my favorite line in the book: 

“Sometimes his very existence to me is the existence of love itself”

Gyu-ho’s existence is Young’s idea of love; to kill Gyu-ho, to remove him from existence is to kill Young’s idea of love. “The made-up Gyu-ho in my writing got hurt or died many times, and is always resurrected, as if love saves his life- whereas the real Gyu-ho lives and breathes and keeps moving on.” Young’s regret is a permanency in his life, just as his love for Gyu-ho is a permanency. All he wished for was Gyu-ho, but Young’s inability to be honest, deeply, emotionally honest, all the fear, all the emptiness, all the pain got in the way. I am not a person who minds a melancholy end, regret, remorse, grief, love. These are all a part of life. The only thing I hope is that one day Young can lay down in the pouring rain and feel peace the way Gyu-ho did that day in Bangkok.

[emotionallychargedtowel]

Love in the Big City, part 1

Love in the Big City, part 1

Well, I started out trying to answer @bengiyo’s discussion questions, and my answer to the first one got so long that it’s its own post. I may follow up with others or I may not, but here’s what I have so far. If I was going to answer just one of the questions, this would have been it, so I feel OK about this post.

The relationship between Jaehee and our narrator grounds most of the narrative. What aspects of their relationship stuck out to you the most?

The things that stuck out to me the most were the interplay of honesty and acceptance in their relationship and the sometimes indirect ways that they showed how much they cared for one another (until they didn't). Both of these highlight how the unconventional nature of their relationship was intrinsically related to how well it met their needs–at least, during the period of time where it was working for both of them. 

I find it so interesting that the reason the narrator becomes friends with Jaehee is that she happens upon him kissing a man in the street and is cool about it. He didn’t choose to disclose anything to her, but once she knew this private thing about him, she had an opportunity to show that she was trustworthy, and she did. And then she opened up to him in a corresponding way about her sex life. 

Both characters are not only flouting more general societal norms about sexual behavior but also breaking gender norms more specifically. As a man, the narrator isn’t supposed to have sex with men. As a woman, Jaehee is supposed to have sex with men, but she isn’t supposed to have sex with as many as she does. Does Jaehee realize, once she knows that the narrator is breaking these types of rules, that this means that it’s probably safe for her to let him know that she’s breaking them too? It’s possible. 

Whether they knew it from the start or not, it turns out that they‘re able to be themselves with each other without fear of judgment. In fact, it goes further than that. They’re truly accepted in a way that makes a profound kind of support possible. Their flouting of normative standards puts them in danger of becoming isolated, ostracized. Which makes it even more important that they have this sort of unspoken pledge to be there for each other. They can be themselves in part because they know that if worst comes to worst, they’ll at least have each other. 

I think it helps that each of them knows that the other person is vulnerable in much the same way they are. I’ve never been in a relationship quite like theirs. You know that joke people make sometimes about being a “non-practicing slut”? In other words, they're referring to the idea of being pro-slut but not actually engaging in slutty behavior themselves. That’s how I’ve always been. At times in my past I attempted to put sluttiness into practice but I never quite pulled it off (unless the standard I was judged by was pretty puritanical). It’s easy to end up being accidentally monogamous, especially if you’re on the shy side like I am. People I tried to have casual relationships with always seemed to end up wanting to get serious, whether I did or not. So I never did anything that would court societal disapproval that intensely, even if I might have liked to.

I’ve had quite a few friends over the years who were more on the practicing side. I sincerely didn’t have any judgment toward those friends. Sometimes I admired their self-assurance or boldness. Sometimes I was a bit jealous of the fun they were having, in a good-natured way. But I truly didn’t think badly of them. But no matter how sincere I was about not judging them, I don’t think it would ever have been possible for those friends to feel quite as relaxed about their sex lives with me as they could with someone who had just as much on the line as they did in terms of potential disapproval. The narrator and Jaehee have a pretty equal amount on the line in this way, and I think it helps them let their guards down. 

And then Jaehee starts to change. It’s hard to tell whether she’s still being herself and that self just shifted or she’s making a choice to compromise who she is. Well, it seems like it has to be at least a little bit of both. And that makes sense. These things usually aren’t that clear cut in real life. Even just by wanting to try to have a steady monogamous relationship, Jaehee is already showing she has changed inwardly, and she clearly is changing some things outwardly to please her boyfriend that haven’t changed inwardly (at least, not yet). Whatever the reason for her stepping back from her previous habits, this shift means that the narrator is no longer irreplaceable for her. At the same time, she’s already investing more in her relationship with her boyfriend. 

There’s always a chance that friendships will change or even end when one party changes a lot on an individual level, as Jaehee does. But there’s more to this shift than just Jaehee having a different perspective or different priorities. She doesn’t have the same stake in her relationship with the narrator once she starts to adhere more to societal rules. She doesn’t need him as badly, because she has more options for sources of support now that she isn’t flouting societal rules. 

I think it’s also interesting that after they’ve drifted apart, the narrator finds out that Jaehee has (seemingly) been hiding the fact that her socioeconomic status is a lot higher than that of her middle-class peers. It’s one more thing that contradicts the narrator’s assumption that they were always–and would always be–honest with each other.

I'm curious to see where he goes from here. Will he look for someone who can fill a similar role in his life to Jaehee? Grow cynical and assume that any close friend will leave him, so that he doesn't bond with anyone? Something else? Will he ever end up being monogamous for an extended period like Jaehee? I'm sure if he did it would be different--the inevitable gender of his partner ensures that he still won't be viewed as acceptable by many people. But I still wonder if he will.

[antonhur]

I translated Sang Young Park's LOVE IN THE BIG CITY into English and got nominated for an International Booker Prize and the Dublin Literary Award for it.

Ask me anything.

[lurkingshan]

Love in the Big City Book Club Meta Round Up

Already so many great essays and we’re just getting started! If you haven’t had the chance to read and share everyone’s thoughts, here is your weekly round up. Any additional essays that post after today will be added to the list next week, and I'll add on a new section for each part every week as we progress.

So let's see what our book clubbers had to say!

Background

AMA with Anton Hur, LITBC Translator

Translator’s note by @stuffnonsenseandotherthings

Part 1

Blueberries and Cigarettes: Universalities and Differences when reading Love in the Big City by @brifrischu

Jaehee: a good distraction–until she wasn’t by @serfergs

LITBC: Jaehee, and why she matters so much to me by @starryalpacasstuff

LitBC Part 1 – Timeline by @dylogpenchester

Love in the Big City Book Club: Part 1 by @fiction-is-queer

Love in the Big City: Reflections on Part 1 by @becomingabeing

Love in the Big City Part 1 Check in by @bengiyo

Love in the Big City, Part 1 by @emotionallychargedtowel

Love in the Big City Part 1: Jaehee by @sorry-bonebag

Love in the Big City Part 1: On Friendship by @lurkingshan

Love in the Big City Part 1: Reliable and Unreliable Narration by @twig-tea

On expectations by @hyeoni-comb

Part I: The unacknowledged relationship by @doyou000me

Rose Reads Love in the Big City by @my-rose-tinted-glasses

Two Friends Diverged in Emotional Sincerity: Reflections on Love in the Big City–Part 1 by @wen-kexing-apologist

Young’s world is small and private by @colourme-feral

Part 2

Finding Familiarity Despite Cultural Differences: Love in the Big City Part 2 by @fiction-is-queer

Hyung’s internalized homophobia and hatred for the US by @stuffnonsenseandotherthings

libtc part 2 by @hyeoni-comb

LitBC Part 2: A bit of rockfish, taste the universe by @dylogpenchester

Love in the Big City - A bite of rockfish, tase the universe by @littleragondin

Love in the Big City Book Club: Part 2 by @profiterole-reads

Love in the Big City: Part 2 by @wen-kexing-apologist

Love in the Big City: Reflections on Part 2 by @becomingabeing

Love in the Big City Part 2: Emotional Distance by @twig-tea

Love in the Big City Part 2 Check In by @bengiyo 

Love in the Big City The Playlist by @brifrischu

On Parents and Apologies Never Received by @lurkingshan

Part II: Historical Context and Hyung’s Background by @doyou000me

Rose Reads Love in the Big City (Part II) by @my-rose-tinted-glasses

Part 3

LITBC Part Three: Now Introducing, Kylie by @wen-kexing-apologist

Love in the Big City Book Club: Part 3 by @profiterole-reads

Love in the Big City Part 3 Check In by @bengiyo

Love in the Big City Part 3: Kylie Recontextualizes Everything by @twig-tea

Love in The Big City Part 3 - Notes from A Reader by @stuffnonsenseandotherthings

Love in The Big City Part 3 - Notes from A Reader 2 by @stuffnonsenseandotherthings

Love In The Big City Part 3: Words and Miscellaneous Context by @doyou000me

On Gyu-ho, the Mundanity of Great Love, and the Destructive Nature of Shame by @lurkingshan

Part 3: No Disappointment Without Expectations by @doyou000me

Rose Reads Love in the Big City (Part III) by @my-rose-tinted-glasses

Part 4

Adaptation Concerns by @doyou000me

Anticipating the LITBC Adaptations by @lurkingshan

Depictions of physical intimacy by @stuffnonsenseandotherthings 

LitBC - The Structure of Change @dylogpenchester

Love in the Big City Book Club: Part 4 by @profiterole-reads

Love in the Big City Part 4 Check In by @bengiyo

Love in the Big City Part 4: Having Trouble Letting Go by @twig-tea

Love in the Big City: Part Four- Regret, Rain, Love, and Loss by @wen-kexing-apologist

the story | relationships + Young by @hyeoni-comb

Young and Imperfect Character Growth by @lurkingshan

Young asking himself meaningful questions by @hyeoni-comb

And that's all for now, folks! Thanks to everyone who participated; it was such a fun experience discussing this book with you. Excited to get the chance to talk more about this story with all of you when the adaptations arrive later this year.

[doyou000me]

Part II: Historical Context and Hyung's Background

So… this is not what I was going to write for Part II. I was going to write about shame and the way we perceive/react to how society sees us. I was going to loop it back to Part I; “An excess of self-awareness was a disease in itself.” I was going to compare how the narrator, his mother and his boyfriend are all affected by it in similar and/or different ways. 

And then I got to thinking about the boyfriend, mainly referred to as Hyung. 

About two thirds into part II, we get Hyung's backstory and, without spoiling anything, it’s basically a chunk where the narrator name-drops a bunch of movements and incidents that are part of recent history in Korea. Most of it meant next to nothing to me, and I felt like I was missing out on a whole lot of context. So I did some preliminary google searching, realised I needed more historical context, and went to the library to borrow a book on Korean history. Then I started making a timeline. Then I went online and started googling specific movements and incidents. Then I got a headache. 

[This is long, so I’m putting the rest of it under the cut. Also, this is about Hyung's backstory so, you know, spoilers about that.] 

The chunk of a paragraph that started all this is this one:

“He had been part of the leftover student activist generation of the mid-nineties and after graduation had dipped his toes in the labor movement. The Misun-Hyosun incident demonstrations had also been during his time, as well as protests against the abolishment of the National Security Act and the anti-Chosun Daily movement…” 

Student Activism in the mid nineties

Labour Movement

Misun-Hyosun Incident

The National Security Act

Anti-Chosun Daily Movement

That’s 5 historical events, all named in one paragraph without further explanation - likely because a Korean reader is expected to know what this all means. I am not a Korean reader and I have no idea what most of it means. It’s a lot. When I started reading about it, I realised it’s even more. As is often the case with history, a whole lot of things are connected, and many of these things connect all the way back to the Japanese occupation. 

There are academic papers written on these things. There are books. I am a pyjama-clad person curled up on my couch with a book and an internet connection. Of course I decided to attempt to summarise and explain it all. What could possibly go wrong? 

Disclaimer time: I am not a historian or, in any way, an expert on the subject. I’ve spent about a day and a half on this, and it’s not nearly enough. Also, I am paraphrasing to the extreme to make sure I don’t end up writing half a book. I hope it’ll serve as context for anyone reading part II who feels as context-less as I did, but if you actually want to know about any of these topics, I’d recommend doing some reading of your own. I’ll leave references at the bottom. 

Also: content warning. This is really dark and really heavy history. Be warned, and take care of yourselves. Now:

Some massively paraphrased Korean history 

Japanese Protectorate and Occupation (1907-1945)

Starting out as a protectorate treaty to challenge China’s power on the Korean peninsula and give Japan access to Korean ports, Japan took control of Korea in 1910. What followed was 35 years of repression and Koreans living under systemic racism as second class citizens in their own country. This included institutionalised erasure of the Korean identity. 85% of the Korean population lost their Korean names and were forced to take Japanese names. Many never learnt to write in Korean, only Japanese. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans were killed for protesting against the occupation. All higher positions within the country were given to the Japanese, and the Korean workers were paid half of what Japanese workers got. Towards the end (1931-1945) when Japan went to war with China and needed resources, 3,5 million Koreans were displaced, both within Korea and abroad to Japan and China. Many were forced into slave labour in mines where unsafe working conditions and 17-hour work days killed many. Women, many just teenagers, were made “comfort women” and forced into filthy, violent brothels to serve the Japanese soldiers. 

Then WWII ended. Japan surrendered to the allied forces in 1945, packed up and left Korea. Korea was suddenly free. 

Just as suddenly, there was no government and no regime. There was no leadership, and not just on the government level. Industries ground to a halt. Production stood still. Displaced Koreans moved back, leading to sudden overpopulation of urban areas. Nationwide unemployment was at 50% and criminal activity, homelessness and alcoholism rose. 

American Occupation (1945-1949)

The US stepped in. Due to global tensions after WWII, they did not want Korea to fall into the wrong hands, and made a deal with the Soviet Union: they split Korea in two along the 38th parallel, and the US would get the south part while the Soviet would get the north part. The plan was for Korea to eventually regain independence. The split along the 38th parallel was not grounded in any social or geographical conditions. Farmland and manufacturing in the south was divided from fertiliser production, natural resources and energy production in the north. Families living on different sides of the border were divided. 

The American leadership that was put in place had next to no time to prepare, barely any prior knowledge of the Korean history, culture or people and very limited interest in learning. The US leader, General Hodge, had little political or administrative experience, and initially tried to cooperate with the Japanese to help with the occupation (this, as you can imagine, did not go over well). Labour demonstrations born from the terrible conditions Korean workers had lived with were brutally repressed and seen as pro-communist. Racism led to the assumptions that the Koreans were incapable of organising and governing themselves. The National Security Law was established in 1948 with the purpose of arresting North Korean sympathisers and infiltrators. 

In 1949, the US withdrew from South Korea, and South Korea was declared the independent nation of the Republic of Korea. The Soviet Union (officially) withdrew from the North - while also helping North Korea, along with China, to build up their military. In June, 1950, the North Korean army marched over the border on the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea. 

The Korean War (1950-1953) 

On one level, the Korean war was about North Korea invading and trying to take over South Korea, turning all of the Korean peninsula into one Korea. On another, global level, it was a cold war power play between the US and the Soviet Union with South Korea, the US and the UN on one side and North Korea, the Soviet Union and China on the other. Both sides tried to take all of the Korean peninsula. Both sides failed. After three years of war, where foreign soldiers fought in a foreign land and Koreans fought Koreans, nothing was gained. In 1953, the border on the 38th parallel was reestablished. The entirety of the Korean peninsula had been bombarded and razed to the ground. Everything needed to be rebuilt. North and South Korea were among the poorest countries in the world and millions were still separated from their families by the border. 

34 000 American soldiers were killed. 140 000 South Korean soldiers were killed. More than 640 000 North Korean soldiers were killed.  Over one million Chinese soldiers were killed.  Some 3 million Korean civilians were killed.  And nothing was gained. 

South Korea Under Military Dictatorship (1953-1960, 1961-1987)

So, with hunger, spreading disease and homelessness, with cities in ruin, orphaned children on the streets and widows left to fend for themselves in a country where women were not seen as independent citizens at the time, President Rhee and the Liberal Party won the elections in May 1954, making Rhee the first Korean president. They worked to turn the economy around through the use of five year plans as well as grants and loans from the US and secured national safety with an agreement with the US to place troops in Korea indefinitely - troops that are still present today. 

They also turned the democracy into a dictatorship when Rhee risked being voted out of office. Elections were rigged and political opponents silenced. The National Security Law (according to which anti-state groups and those who disturb the national order can be imprisoned) was used to silence and root out opponents. Student protests were regularly held against the violations on democracy and corruption in the Rhee administration. After Rhee’s fourth presidential reelection in 1960, the opposing party rejected the results and student-led protests erupted in Masan, quickly spreading to the rest of the country. This became the April 19 Revolution, which led to Rhee going into exile. 

An election was held and a new president was chosen. 

The next year, in 1961, General Park led a military coup and took power, claiming that South Korea - amidst strikes, protests and student and left-wing groups discussing immediate reunification with North Korea - was not yet ready for democracy. They focused on economic growth, successfully turning South Korea’s economy around and, on the way, making the chaebol into some of the wealthy conglomerates we know from kdramas. They also focused on improving the relationship with Japan, leading to major protests. 

They also cracked down on all opposition. Less than a month after the coup, the KCIA was established - for decades, the KCIA investigated, arrested, tortured and assassinated South Koreans who were accused of being North Korean sympathisers, suspected of supporting communism or seen as a threat to the regime. Gradually, the dictatorship became more and more repressive, with crackdowns on freedom of speech, increased power for the KCIA and martial law being imposed. Student activist protested, demanding a return to democracy, and workers protested with them, demanding better wages and working conditions. 

In 1979, Park was assassinated. 

General Chun took over, appointing himself director of the KCIA and continuing the military dictatorship, but by this point the people had had enough. Starting with university students in Gwangju, thousands of people in the city gathered to demand a return to democracy. The protest lasted from May 18 to May 27 of 1980, and became known as the Gwangju Uprising. It ended in violence, when the Chun regime isolated the city and went in with tanks and paratroopers. 150 were killed, over 4 000 wounded, thousands arrested - both protesters and citizens simply living their lives in the city. After that the relationship between the regime and the people was strained, to say the least, and anti-American sentiment sky-rocketed as people associated the US forces with the violent crackdown in Gwangju. 

It was during this time that “Hyung” was born, in 1979, because yes, this post is still about LitBC Part II, and this all started because I wanted to understand his background better.  Hyung lived his first years under a military dictatorship, where the people were under constant threat from the KCIA, student activist groups continuously struggled to regain democracy and anti-American sentiment was on the rise. 

In 1987, as the next presidential election approached and with the Gwangju Uprising still fresh in memory, people doubled down on their protests. Led by students and workers, the June Democratic Struggle broke out on June 10 with people demonstrating across the country. It lasted until June 29 - in success, as the new president pledged that South Korea would have free, direct presidential elections. Democracy, for the first time in about 20 years. 

Many changes were still needed in the country, but now the population could take to the streets and protest without fear of violent repercussions - and the regime listened. Wages doubled over a span of five years. 

In 1997, the Asian Financial Crisis hit South Korea. Several Chaebols went bankrupt and 1988 became the worst year in the history of South Korean economy since the Korean War. (Go watch Reborn Ritch if you’re interested) Today, this is spoken of as the IMF crisis. Fortunately,  South Korea recovered relatively quickly. To balance the country’s over-reliance on manufacturing, the government launched a campaign to support the entertainment industry, thus laying the ground for the Hallyu wave that would spread globally in the 2000s.  

The 2000s

“Hyung” entered university in 1995, and would have graduated somewhere around the shift of the millennia, right as South Korea was recovering from the IMF crisis. Shortly after his graduation, the Misun-Hyosun Incident, Anti-Chosun Daily Movement and Protests against the abolishment of the National Security Act all happened within quick succession. 

The Misun-Hyosun Incident, also known as the Yangju Highway Incident, occurred on June 13, 2002, in Yangju. Two South Korean schoolgirls, 14 year old Shim Misun and Shin Hyosun, were struck and killed by a US army vehicle on the way to a training exercise. Apologies were issued, but the drivers of the army vehicle were ultimately found not guilty by the US MIlitary court, sparking demonstrations across the country and fuelling the anti-American sentiment in South Korea. 

The Anti-Chosun Daily Movement can be traced back to the early 1990s. The Chosun Daily, or Chosun Ilbo, is one of the main newspapers in Korea. It is a conservative newspaper and has historically had a very close relationship with the ruling regime, military dictatorships included, which brings into question its role in a democratic country of free speech. With the rise of more progressive online journalism, the criticism against the Chosun Ilbo has increased and people have gathered online to raise their voices, leading to boycotts and an anti-Chosun manifesto being written. In 2002 the movement became an important part in Korea’s development as a progressive country and was a contributing factor to the media reform that followed. 

Protests against the abolishment of the National Security Act broke out in 2004, when the then leading political party called for its repeal. This National Security Act/Law is the same one that was established in 1948 to catch communists and North Korean sympathisers, and was then used by the Rhee regime to silence political opponents (are you still with me?). When the law was about to be repealed, a newspaper poll found that 66% wanted the law revised but not repealed, while a majority would rather keep the law as was than have it abolished on grounds that it helps keep the country’s economic stability. The constant threat of North Korea is a very real factor to why people see the law as necessary. Amnesty International has called for the law to be fundamentally reformed or abolished, as it challenges freedom of speech. 

Ok. Deep breath.

If you’re still reading, I applaud you. If I lost you somewhere along the way, you won’t see this but I do understand you. As I hope you understand, this is all very condensed. The history of Korea is very complex and much of what I have written about are still sensitive issues today. I’ve tried to keep close to my sources to avoid getting anything wrong, but I am sure there are many, many more movements and issues that would need to be covered to present anything close to the full picture. Still, I hope this has given some insight into the background of “Hyung” and the past that has shaped him into the character that he is. 

When I read part II, I did not understand his character. I dismissed him as some conspiracy-reading guy living in a basement keeping a tinfoil hat somewhere, and when our narrator dismisses and downplays his story, I was fully onboard. Now, after a full day of reading up on the historical context and political climate that “Hyung” must have grown up in, I understand his paranoia and reluctance to interact with anything American far more. It leaves marks, having lived in a time when the KCIA could drag you off the street for speaking up against the government, never to be seen again.

Times have changed in South Korea and they’ve come a long way, but the recent past is still very recent and they still have a long way to go before old wounds can be healed and damage done can be cleared up. All it takes is watching a few kdramas, and it’s clear that general distrust in politicians and the legal system is still around. Apart from a better understanding of a character in a book, it’s shed some light on my own naive ignorance and lack of understanding when it comes to some Korean attitudes and reactions I’ve encountered in the past. Some things I frowned at then, I now understand. 

Apart from Reborn Rich, which plays out between 1987 and today with its main focus on the financial crisis, I have not watched dramas depicting this part of Korean history (I have avoided them, because the subject matter was very heavy simply to read about. I do not think I could handle watching it dramatised). Neither have I found any good documentaries covering it. If you have recommendations that you’d like to share, please do. 

Now, as promised: sources!

Historical background and context: Korea; A New History of South and North by Victor D. Cha and Ramon Pacheco Pardo (2023)

Most of this post is based on this book, and if you’re interested in 20th century Korean history, I’d really recommend it. It’s a surprisingly easy read. 

Misun-Hyosun Incident/Yangju Highway Incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangju_highway_incident

National Security Act: https://wilj.law.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1270/2012/02/kraft.pdf 

Anti-American Sentiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-American_sentiment_in_Korea 

Anti-Chosun Movement: https://www.academia.edu/86931794/The_Anti_Chosun_Movement_Journalism_Activism_Politics_and_Historical_Memory_in_Post_Authoritarian_South_Korea_1998_2002 

Student movements in Korea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_movements_in_Korea 

Internet activism in South Korea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_activism_in_South_Korea 

National Intelligence Service: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Intelligence_Service_(South_Korea) 

@lurkingshan I'm not sure if this counts as meta or goes as a context-post, so I hope it's okay I'm tagging you

[archiveofmystuff]

Jin Ho-eun for W Korea magazine: on filming Love in the Big City

Actor Jin Ho-eun was part of a feature on a few young male Korean actors for the magazine W Korea. For one part of the interview he talked about filming Love in the Big City.

Here is the feature. Below is a screenshot of the relevant part of the article. **DISCLAIMER** This is just through autotranslation on the webpage, it is not an official translation nor a fan translation and could very easily contain some errors. I don't know Korean so I can't vouch for its accuracy lol.

He does confirm he's playing Gyu-ho, which we already knew but I'm not sure if it had been "officially" confirmed by the production or him/his team. He's been posting regularly on his instagram about filming Love in the Big City, so between that and this interview he seems really excited!

He seemingly calls it a queer drama so it's safe to assume it's not going to be "straightwashed" as some people evidently feared. I never really had any doubt about that since I heard the author was involved and also bc....what story is there without it being gay...but some people on other social medias (cough tik tok cough) seemed worried it would be turned into a "bromance" (again not sure how that would be possible), so there you go. Obviously doesn't necessarily confirm they'll depict everything that was in the book, but still! A queer drama with fairly established actors and apparently pretty good budget! From Korea! That's a pretty big deal imo.

Also, I didn't realize he was only 23! He's younger than Gyu-ho in the book but Kdramas (based on my slightly limited experience) don't shy away from having younger actors play slightly older characters so I don't think anyone should assume they're like aging down the characters or anything. Nam Yoon-su is 26 and obviously the book basically spans the main character's entire 20s into his early 30s so it makes sense to choose people kind of in the middle!

Have some pics from the shoot of our future Gyu-ho!

[my-rose-tinted-glasses]

Rose Reads Love In The Big City

Part I

So as I finished reading Part I and went to look at the questions that @bengiyo provided , I felt that I couldn’t really talk about this chapter from any other place than my own experience. I usually have a hard time writing from a non personal view point which is why I don’t write that much on here. But I wanted to be part of this event and it felt disingenuous to not write from a personal place. With that said.

I moved to London when I was 24 with one of my best friends. Let’s call him P. We shared a flat for almost 4 years. And our lives were not that different from Young and Jaehee. The major difference here was that I was single for all that time and didn’t sleep with anyone. I was ace but didn’t call it that at the time.

But I saw a lot of ourselves in this chapter. When we weren’t working and he wasn’t getting laid, we would spend most of our time together. We would talk about the boy du jour, and why I hated him, except when I didn’t and in that case P was the one that didn’t like him. We would visit gay clubs after work and I was drunk by 8pm and by that time, he had a companion for the rest of the night so I would go home. Of course I would wake up at some point when he staggered back home alone or not. If alone we would talk about the night, and if not alone I would save the conversations till morning. Except for the few times when I was actually still awake and would quickly be put in charge of brewing coffee and providing food to soak up all the alcohol.

This went on for almost 4 years. He had some longer relationships, and by that I mean, maybe six months, and I abstained from all that. Although in the beginning P was relentless about my need to meet someone and get laid, eventually he got the message that that wasn’t me.

We also smoked way too much, drank way too much and I had way too much fun with his sex life. I got very familiar with the local clinic where he would get tested and got to laugh about his poor life choices when something didn’t go well.

One of the my clearest memories of that time was one time where he had a boyfriend, going on like 3 months, the one I liked and apparently he didn’t, and he brought another guy home, and after he left, I was being a judgemental bitch just has P gets a message from a former hook up saying he needs to get tested. My immediate reply was – instant karma. Obviously every time I made a joke about him being a slut I could always expect one in return asking when would I join the convent.

All this to say I saw a lot of myself and P in Part I. However, I ended up relating more to Young than to Jaehee which is interesting but makes perfect sense.

So now for the questions. I don’t think I can answer one at a time so I’ll just go through questions 1, 3 and 4 for now.

Well most things stuck out to me just because I could so clearly picture it in my head almost as a memory. The whole dynamic felt very familiar to me. Just like Young and Jaehee, we were each other’s home. The one we always returned too.

I read the fight the same way as the author did in a way. I saw it as a betrayal. But I don’t think it was about outing him, as he himself is not sure about that. It was the first time that Jaehee put someone else before Young. She told the fiancé the truth, because in that moment he was more important than Young. And that was what felt like a betrayal. Because although they shared their bodies with a number of different people, and even momentary feelings, emotionally Young had an expectation that he came first.

And now tying it with the fourth question. Me and P never had any sort of problems regarding optics. Perhaps this is a cultural nuance that I miss.

But as I was reading it, I kept waiting for the break. For when one of them was no longer happy with this arrangement. This is not to say that there needs to be a break. But in my experience, there was a break. First in the form of long distance when I returned home. We would talk everyday and have video chats more than once a week at first. Eventually the distance in geography translated into a distance in the relationship. However whenever he came back home and we were together there was still a semblance of what we shared before.

But eventually the real break came in the form of a new relationship. Eventually he met someone, and now they’ve been together for years and that person and I never really got along. There was no hostility and it’s not that I didn’t like him. We just didn’t mesh.

After they’d been together for a while, he started having a problem with our relationship. Mostly with the fact that I was an influence in his life, and for some reason he thought that meant that his influence was diminished. And apparently I was a bad influence. I will not speak to that because it really doesn’t matter.

So P made a choice. And he chose his boyfriend. I haven’t talked to P in almost two years. Because as much as we wanted to believe that our relationship was important, and bro’s before hoes and all that crap, the reality is that in this amatonormativity we live in, there really isn’t any space for that. Sharing your life with someone that doesn’t involve romance has an expiration date. And more often than not, eventually you will find a “real” partner and that will not leave space for anyone else.

And the thing is normally this would happen just like in the novel. I, the woman, would be the one that would “move on”, perhaps get married and have no space for any other significant relationship in my life.

Because it’s what’s expected. Eventually you will find your “actual” person and be normal. Move in together, get married and whatever you had with someone else was youth inspired and not for the long haul. Because who would be happy with that? I mean, Jaehee certainly didn’t seem like she was ready to get married any time soon, and although I can only guess at some of the pressures she was feeling in the context of her culture, it’s not like that doesn’t translate to my own.

Me and P never had anyone look at us weird because of our closeness. Not my family or his, or any of our friends. The only person that had a problem with that was his last partner. And of course P made the natural choice. Because let’s be real. At the end of the day, who would actually choose a friend over a relationship? I mean, I would but I’m not what anyone would call “normal” and that is just one of the many reasons why.

I don’t know what’s gonna happen with Young and Jaehee. I haven’t read past the first part. I hope they find their way to each other. But that ending – “that Jaehee didn’t live here anymore” hit me like a ton of bricks.

Thanks to @twig-tea for being my editor.

[twig-tea]

Love in the Big City Part 3: Kylie Recontextualizes Everything

I have waffled all week about what to write about this chapter. There have been some great essays about HIV and the stigma in Korea by @stuffnonsenseandotherthings here, as well as how antiretrovirals and pre-exposure prophylactics work and when they were available from @wen-kexing-apologist here. This context was all critical to understand everything Young doesn’t talk about in this section of the book. 

I’ve been stuck on so many parts of this section of the book. The way stigma holds people back from care, from maintenance, from life-saving treatment and knowledge, from understanding their condition and preventing them unnecessarily from living a full life, which @doyou000me had me thinking about with their comments about Young’s coping mechanisms of minimization and emotional distance that possibly worked in conjunction with the Korean government healthcare policies and social stigma to keep Young from being informed about his own condition. The way Young holds himself back from happiness, and how it’s so heartbreaking to watch him open up to it slowly in this section and then, as @my-rose-tinted-glasses wrote , he let the shame and self-loathing take control again. The way this relationship feels so real; @lurkingshan wrote so eloquently on how this section describes the details of a relationship as it started to settle. The relationship with Hyung was entirely ephemeral, in the liminal period of time between when Young was visiting his mother in hospital and before everything opened again for the day. There is so much that Young and Hyung never talked about–more than was obvious in chapter 2, because he never told Hyung about Kylie. In contrast, as @bengiyo pointed out, his relationship with Gyu-Ho started with honesty and was rooted in the physical presence of their apartment, which as a beautiful metaphor was grounded and improved slowly over time through the work they put into it but was also too small for them. 

I keep thinking about how Part 3 is bookended by Young disappointing Gyu-Ho with his absence. How he leaves him at the airport both times, thinking he’s doing Gyu-Ho a favour actually–he characterizes Gyu-Ho’s trip to Japan without him as much more fun, and he imagines Gyu-Ho’s future in Singapore will be better. In both cases, Gyu-Ho was only going because of Young, because Young wanted to, and Young planned it. But our narrator cannot get past seeing himself as something that brings Gyu-Ho down, and so he sabotages his own future. I feel for Gyu-Ho, being shepherded onto a plane alone when he was envisioning his future with the man he loved. It must have been devastating to be pushed away. 

This is not related to anything but I just love the detail of Young’s split lip and how he tastes blood when he kisses Gyu-Ho while drunk at the club and not yet knowing his name, and then panics, and we as readers don’t yet know why. Brilliant storytelling. 

I can’t stop thinking about how this reveal recontextualizes everything in parts 1 and 2. How the “incident that earned me a medical discharge” means Kylie was already in Young’s life as he took the engineering student he was seeing with him to get an STD check; as he was screamed at by an ex who prophesied that Young would get sick from being promiscuous and called him a ‘dirty rag that could never be cleaned’, which Young took with stoicism. I loved @bengiyo ‘s observation in his post linked above that Kylie’s presence likely coloured his reaction to Jaehee outing him to her fiance. 

Kylie was present as he watched his coffee be stolen by Hyung, when he thought about introducing Hyung to his mother, while he was wrestling with how Hyung (and, I think the narration makes clear, how he) was ashamed at how Young couldn’t ‘pass’ and was ‘obviously gay’, when he choked Hyung in his mother’s kitchen and it was seeing his tears on Hyung’s face that made Young let go. Kylie was part of him when he drank pesticide and tried to die, while he sat by his mother’s sickbed and had her head in his lap in the park, when he said “disease can turn anyone into a completely different person”, when he said he would “hope that she would die without having known.” 

Mostly, my brain keeps getting stuck on how familiar Young is to me. His choices, his self-loathing, his refusal to take anything seriously because at his core he’s terrified of facing what his reality means. And that fear ironically gets in the way of him understanding that his reality is not as scary as he thinks it is. He functions like he has to be alone, and so much of that comes from his internalized homophobia and his HIV diagnosis. He’s been told he’s dirty, something to be cleaned but irreparable, by so many people in different ways through his life. The man he claims as his greatest love barely even liked him as a person, and didn’t fully know him. I think that’s why he was able to feel more fully with Hyung, because in a way that relationship felt safer..Gyu-Ho, the person who knew all of him, and who wanted to build a life together with that complete and full knowledge of him, must have been terrifying, and I’m not surprised it felt easier to push him away than to fight for their future together. But it breaks my heart. 

There’s something rattling in my head about the T-aras that I don’t really know how to get out onto the page. In this chapter it’s revealed that the T-aras have been around the whole time, but they weren’t mentioned in parts 1 and 2. I think the fact that Young’s life feels more rounded, filled in with other people, and rich, than in parts 1 and 2 speaks to his emotional state in this part, as well as to how his time with Gyu-Ho wasn’t obsession but was more grounded in the mundane and the everyday. The T-aras themselves feel like familiar friends. Like with Hyung and JaeHee (at first), Young is drawn to people who he can remain emotionally distant from and who remain emotionally distant from him. People who will buy the story of “ruptured disc” for why he left military service early. People who joke about being poz and won’t ask questions and who hear the news about his new boyfriend as an ‘in’ to their favourite club. People who don’t take things seriously (or in Hyung’s case take things so seriously that Young can’t take him seriously). I was so glad to find out they existed because up to this point Young felt so isolated most of the time, with his world circling around one obsession in each part. But he had the T-aras the whole time; I’m choosing to read this as he just didn’t hold their importance to him in the same way in parts 1 and 2. As was already clear in the narrative but this makes even more obvious, Young’s isolation is not only self-inflicted but it’s in some ways a lie he tells himself to feel safer. He has friends, he just refuses to acknowledge their presence or importance, or to let them in to be more important, because he is so braced for being rejected for core parts of him that cannot be excised.

[bengiyo]

LITBC Part 4 Check In

I’ve been mulling over this book for the entire week, and even as I sit here to get my thoughts down I am still fighting back an intense melancholy that grips me. I know Young. I have loved Young. He is a beloved friend. He is a pain in the ass. He is someone I will always miss. He is someone I wish I could have been closer to. I am still thinking about that balloon.

I think what I’m happiest about is that Young seems to genuinely regret failing with Gyu-ho. I like that most of our time thinking about Gyu-ho is not spent on the mean things he wrote in his fictionalized version of Gyu-ho in his stories, and instead we’re hit constantly with small memories of their time together. There’s a passage from this section that continues to linger with me:

“Using all kinds of other methods to create Gyu-ho and write him as other characters, I’ve tried to show the relationship we had and the time we spent together as complete as they were, but the more I try, the further I get from him and the emotions I had back then. My efforts become something fainter and more distanced from the truth.”

I can’t stop thinking about the sadness of grief and what it means when we no longer have someone around. They stop being a person who interacts with us and shapes us, and they become only this memory in us, and the quirks left behind. It makes me sad because truly most relationships fail. A lot of us are going to have many loves, and a lot of them won’t work out. I love that Young is so bad about all of his relationships and we can see where he messed up with Gyu-ho. I hope that the next time I fall for someone I do a better job at recognizing what he needs.

I hope that all the other queers reading this book were able to find parts of Young they could connect to, and I hope that listening to his stories helps them.

I will be chatting about this book with others, and I hope Young’s sass comes through for them. He’s been one of the most engaging narrators I’ve gotten to read in a while. I love listening to him talk and the way he thinks. I just know he would get on my nerves in person, and I couldn’t deal with him all the time, but I do love him.

As for the adaptation, I am really looking forward to the sequence when Young and Hyung meet up with Hyung’s fake activist friends, and also the scene where he tries to strangle that man. I think I’m also really looking forward to the final scene where Young sort of collapses on a random porch in Bangkok. I feel like that shot is going to be incredible.

This book club has been a great experience. I want to thank all of you for sharing so much of yourselves and your experiences over the last month. I appreciate how everyone has taken to the spirit of the book club and kept up with the reading and adding on to everyone else’s posts. I can’t wait to react to the show and movies with you all, and I hope we find another good book in the future.

[starryalpacasstuff]

LITBC: Jaehee, and why she matters so much to me

Ok, I don't have a lot of time, so this is going to be messy, apologies in advance

When you're queer and living in a country that is generally homophobic, the default expectation one has is for people to be homophobic, hence Young's shock when Jaehee doesn't seem surprised or disgusted when she finds him kissing a guy. The two of them bond quickly due to their mutual status as social piranhas, and I can't stop thinking about why Jaehee matters so much. To be honest, Jaehee is everything one could want from a straight friend in a conservative country. Not only is she completely fine with Young being gay, I want to stress how important it is that Young can talk to her about his flings and one night stands openly. In asian society, it's typical for queerness to be something that people know about but never acknowledge, and for openly discussing it to be taboo. I've had experiences where friends that know I'm queer simply don't acknowledge the fact, choosing to act as though I'd never come out to them. That's the standard for 'acceptance' in asian society; tolerance. People don't stop associating with you, they simply act as though your queerness doesn't exist (and get visibility uncomfortable when you bring it up). That's why Jaehee is so important. Jaehee talks with Young about sex, his flings, and sizes up his dates from behind a coffee shop counter. She doesn't treat Young's queerness as something she has to tolerate and ignore.

It's not to say that Jaehee is the perfect ally. She still doesn't fully understand Young's queerness, and she outs him to her fiance, saying that he's basically a girl because he likes men (there's a whole host of issues to unpack with that, but as much as i'd like to, I don't have the time). But it remains a fact of the matter that Jaehee is incredibly progressive by asian standards, for the simple reason that she doesn't treat queerness as a hush-hush topic. And, I think, that's part of the reason that Jaehee outing him to her fiancé hurt Young so much. Young says it himself, his anger and feeling of betrayal was funny if he thought about it, because he'd never really cared about being outed before. He says it himself, the only explanation that he has is, "Because she was Jaehee". He says that he wasn't used to feeling betrayed because he expected so little of others. But his situation with Jaehee was different because Jaehee was different, and unlike the others, he'd come to expect her to understand him, to stand with him no matter what. Because Jaehee wasn't like the others, so Jaehee shouldn't have done what others would have. It hurt him when he realized that Jaehee was choosing to fit fit into society's expectation of her over him.

But that's something I can relate to so much; expecting people to understand you, especially those you hold close, until reality hits. Mistaking tolerance for acceptance, acceptance for understanding. I mentioned that the default expectation for I have when meeting people is that they will be homophobic, and I learned that through finding out, over and over again, that people I held close to me simply did not accept me, or understand me. And even if you do your best to not care about it, once you've figured it out, the crack in the relationship only widens with time, because you simply can't bring yourself to think of the person the same way as before. And that's what happened with Young and Jaehee. Because Jaehee accepted Young, he expected her to stand with him no matter what. But she didn't, and that's what hurt him. Jaehee accepted Young, yes. But she also chose to fit in with society's expectations over him, which ultimately caused the two to drift apart.

To me, Jaehee is a bittersweet character. She's loud and unapologetic, and she accepts Young in a way that seems almost too good to be true; because it sort of is. Because she also represents how people in asian societies have a long way to go before they understand queerness, and how queer people lose friendships because of it, which is something I know painfully well.

[wen-kexing-apologist]

Two Friends Diverged in Emotional Sincerity: Reflections on Love in the Big City- Part 1

After a very busy week I have finally managed to catch up on the reading schedule and finished Part 1 of Love in the Big City. Thanks @bengiyo for the discussion questions because I have a lot of disparate thoughts that I don’t think I can really condense in to something articulate, so I’ll start with these.  

I guess I will start by saying that I am curious where my relationship to Young will go because I am not in love with his character so far, and to be honest, I love that. Coming from the BL world, we have too many perfect characters, or those that have a single flaw. It is fascinating to me how having access to Young’s private thoughts is really a major contributor to how I am feeling about his character. He is incredibly flaws, Jaehee is incredibly flawed, but they are human characters in a way a lot of the queer characters I have been engaging with lately are not. And Young and Jaehee’s flaws speak to each other. 

@doyou000me, @my-rose-tinted-glasses, and others called the relationship between Jaehee and Young a queer platonic relationship and I wholeheartedly agree. I am in a QPR right now, I cannot imagine what my future looks like without my QPR but there is part of me that knows this cannot last forever. My friend and I live together, we support each other through everything, we tell each other too much, the thought of being far away is odd. But they have a partner now, who I love dearly and who I am so happy they are with, but it has changed the way we interact with each other, because now they have someone else to spend time with and I’m still left alone trying to figure out how to nurture the other real-life friendships I have. I love that I have my QPR because of how legible it makes the relationship between Jaehee and Young to me. I get where they are coming from, I understand how important that relationship is to both of them. I see the small ways they care for one another. 

But life is all about change, and that relationship cannot continue the way it once did. I think that change truly starts around the time of Jaehee’s pregnancy and subsequent abortion. Something I think Jaehee and Young have in common is their strength of character. Even if who they are changes over time they know who they are, they might not like who they are but they know themselves. I am thinking here about Jaehee and Young’s experiences with healthcare, and my own experiences working in healthcare. The way Young is treated face to face with some respect or politeness, and then overhears the prejudice and homophobia that is ingrained in these providers. And he tries to blow it off, he uses his laughter like armor until K, who does not have the same hang ups comes to his defense, shows him that it is okay to feel angry, reads the clinic the riot act. Jaehee does not get the same treatment. Like Young she goes in to her appointment alone, but where Young was harmed passively through an overheard comment, Jaehee is berated, actively, intentionally, in her face for half an hour until she can do nothing but scream. Scream in the face of shame, scream in the face of societal expectations and conservative values, scream for herself because she has no one there to scream for her. Even the nurse, who agrees with her in private that the doctor is being ridiculous and rude and that he was way out of line does not say a word about it when Jaehee is being actively harmed. 

Jaehee and Young make their jokes, and with that I understand an unspoken arrangement between the two to never take anything seriously. We can see it in the way Young processes, or rather doesn’t process his emotions. How in the face of homophobia his instincts are to blow it off with a laugh. How in the face of misogyny and slut shaming Jaehee swipes their stupid fucking uterus model on the way out the door. How they joke about the Fellowship of the Abortion. How Young just so casually in the middle of a sentence references his suicidality and then never speaks of it again. But this unspoken rule between them is what I think is their undoing. 

Because Jaehee gets an abortion, and suddenly things are serious. Suddenly Jaehee is quiet and in intense amounts of pain. Suddenly Jaehee is not responding to Young’s jokes. Suddenly Jaehee is asking Young if he really, truly wants to know the pain she is in…and he says no. And I am not quite convinced that their relationship can be the same after that. Because after her abortion, Jaehee starts to get serious, she gets good grades, she looks for a job, she starts a serious relationship that is important enough to her that she wants Young to meet him. 

And it has me thinking about the fact that Young and K had been together for about as long as Jaehee and her boyfriend had when Young gets the invitation, but Young can’t call K his boyfriend, Young can’t fathom introducing K to a stranger, Young can’t bring himself to really even believe he is in a relationship because he refuses to emotionally connect the way he would really need to for a relationship to last. And the longer Jaehee is in the relationship with her boyfriend, the more serious she gets, she stops partying as hard, you can see these little steps she is taking towards a more calm and mild life. And I’m not sure Young knows what to do with that knowledge. But he doesn’t have to worry about it for long because Jaehee outs him, and he feels betrayed, and he runs. 

Because running is easier than staying and talking through what he is feeling. Running, ghosting, dumping is easier than having to admit his pain, his sadness, his fears. Again, Young’s detachment from his emotions and his nonchalance about his life experiences means he just gives us these brief, off-handed mentions of the shit that he has been through. I do not think Young had any intention of being out in college, but he stood up for Jaehee, his cohort figured it out, and he spent the rest of his college career a social outcast for it. He went in to his military service knowing what could happen to him if people realized he was gay, and so he put himself back in the closet for it. These are things he mentions essentially in passing, and he never really talks about the way those impacted him. But Young knows the punishment for being gay and Jaehee opens a doorway to potential active physical and emotional harm when she tells her boyfriend the truth about Jieun. 

I think I have seen a lot of conversation around the outing, the way that it shows Young that Jaehee is shifting her alignment away from him and towards her boyfriend. Young says he doesn’t understand why he is angry, because all Jaehee had done was tell the truth. But for queer people, the truth can be dangerous and Young does not know Jaehee’s boyfriend like that. We saw from the clinic Jaehee can’t lie to protect herself, and we see from this moment that Jaehee can’t lie to protect Young either. That feels earth shattering to me to someone who used Jaehee’s name as a safety blanket during his time in national service. That feels earth shattering to me to someone who already lost his safety once because of Jaehee. 

But there was something I haven’t really seen anything mentioned about something that definitely hit me hard in what she said:

“-so oppa he’s basically like a girl.”

Jaehee came home and told Young about it. Now, I guess I can’t know for sure that she recounted verbatim what she told her boyfriend. But let’s assume for a moment she did. I fucking hate this line. I know the queer community will frequently feminize their language, gay men referring to each other as girl, using she/her pronouns for each other, etc. but this is different. Young is a gay man he suffers for being a gay man and to see Jaehee’s, I guess, internal perception of Young as “basically a girl” just rubs me the wrong fucking way. 

Especially because I liked what @lurkingshan (and I think others) said about Young and Jaehee bucking tradition in a lot of ways. They were living together as a man and a woman, and their relationship was queer platonic, and that was going against the grain. But, Jaehee still has options to reintegrate herself into the expectations of society, where Young cannot. Jaehee can be wild in her youth, and she can become tamed, and that can be a personal choice or could be from pressure. My impression is that Jaehee changed her outlook on life after she got her abortion, becoming more serious and that Young was just not ready to move past brushing off or otherwise pushing away the serious shit. Not even after K dies. That is, until Jaehee gets married. Until Jaehee voices her fears about the wild parts of her ruining the safety and security she has built in her life. Until Jaehee has literally made a commitment to embrace love, to accept a genuine emotion and she leaves Young in the dust right at the same time he finally lets his emotions stay for a bit.

[antonhur]

Bonus content! Sang Young Park and me at the British Centre for Literary Translation right after the LITBC UK tour last year. Yes, he's much taller than I am lol

[lurkingshan]

Love in the Big City: Book Club Schedule

Okay, besties, here we go! Turns out a lot of you are into this nerd project so we will in fact be doing a little tumblr book club for LITBC! Here's how it will work:

We will begin on Sunday, February 4, and discuss a different section of the book each week.

On Sundays, @bengiyo will post a list of discussion questions for whatever part we're reading that week. You can use these as prompts for thinking, actually write and post responses to them, or just ignore them and do your own thing.

We will all write or share whatever we like during the week, using the hashtag [#litbc book club]. Everything from simple reaction commentary to full on essays is welcome. It's also fine not to post anything yourself if that's not your thing, you can participate by reading and sharing other people's posts.

Each following Sunday, I will post a roundup of everything people wrote during the week so we'll have them all collated in one place, and Ben will then post the next round of discussion questions.

This means we are going to be on the following schedule for reading and discussing:

Part 1: Sun, February 4 to Sat, February 10

Part 2: Sun, February 11 to Sat, February 17

Part 3: Sun, February 18 to Sat, February 24

Part 4: Sun, February 25 to Sat, March 2

With the final round up posted on Sunday, March 3. Of course, this is Not That Serious and if you fall behind you should still join in whenever you can and I will add your posts in later! Also, please note for your own planning that Part 2 of the novel is the longest, nearly double the length of the other parts.

For those who asked about where to acquire the book, the good news is it's very popular and generally easy to find translated in English. A lot of libraries carry it, and you can also find it at local bookstores, on Everand, on bookshop.org, and of course, Amazon.

For those who are seeing this for the first time and wondering what the heck I'm on about: go here for background on why we're doing this book club ahead of a couple upcoming drama and film adaptations. And if you want to be tagged into future posts please comment in tags or replies so we can add you to the list! We will also use the tag [#litbc book club] for all posts related to this going forward, so you can just track that tag if you prefer. [Note: if you want to be tagged please check your settings to see if other blogs are allowed to tag you. If you asked to be tagged on the first post and you're not in the list below, it's because tumblr wouldn't allow me to do it.]

Tagging here those who have signed up so far: @alwaysthepessimist @belladonna-and-the-sweetpeas @blalltheway @brifrischu @colourme-feral @dekaydk @dramacraycray @emotionallychargedtowel @fiction-is-queer @hakusupernova @hyeoni-comb @infinitelyprecious @littleragondin @literally-a-five-headed-dragon @loveable-sea-lemon @my-rose-tinted-glasses @neuroticbookworm @poetry-protest-pornography @profiterole-reads @serfergs @so-much-yet-to-learn @starryalpacasstuff @stuffnonsenseandotherthings @sunshinechay @thewayofsubtext @troubled-mind @twig-tea @waitmyturtles @wen-kexing-apologist

Excited to get started with y’all in a few weeks!

[doyou000me]

Love In The Big City Part I and II: Words and Foods (spoiler free)

I know we're not supposed to start this until tomorrow, but I did my reading yesterday and got sucked into it and ended up staying up late to read part I and II, and being a korean book there's a few words and such that are not translated.

Now, I am assuming that people who chose to partake in this blook club have some prior knowledge of Korea, korean culture and the korean language. I also realise I might be wrong, so with my limited knowledge scraped together over years of series, reading, studying and general interest in all things Korean, I put this together and decided to share it early, thinking it might be of help to someone while reading.

Words

Umma/Eomma [엄마]: Mom (informal)

Hyung [형]: "older brother" (informal), used by a man adressing a (slightly) older man, regardless if they're siblings or not. Can signal some level of closeness.

Hyungnim [형님]: "older brother" (formal/respectful), same as 형, but with the added honorific of ~님 to show respect. Often used jokingly.

Oppa [오빠]: "older brother" (informal), used by a woman adressing a (slightly) older man, regardless if they're siblings or not. Common way to adress an older boyfriend.

Nuna/Noona [누나]: "older sister" (informal), used by a man adressing a (slightly) older woman, regardless if they're siblings or not. Can signal some level of closeness.

Nunim [누님]: "older sister" (formal/respectful), same as 누나, but with the added honorific ~님 to show respect.

Unni [언니]: "older sister" (informal), used by a woman adressing a (slightly) older woman, regardless if they're siblings or not. Can signal some level of closeness.

Sunbae/Seonbae [선배]: senior. A gender-nautral way to adress a senior within your school/workplace/field of expertise.

Young/Young-ah [영 / 영아]: adding the suffix -ah [~아] to someone's name signals closeness and friendliness. It can be used for someone of the same age or younger. Often used when speaking to children. Gender-neutral.

Ajussi/Ahjussi [아저씨]: "uncle", used to adress an older man. Can be used both politely and inpolitely, depending on context. (also an action movie from 2010 that awoke my interest in Korea)

Jeonse [전세]: a common way to pay rent in Korea where you pay in a lump sum rather than monthly, usually for a laese of 2 years.

Goshitel [고시텔]: A combination of the words Goshiwon [고시원] and Hotel, a goshitel is a hotel with tiny rooms, often offering the bare minimum. It's (comparatively) cheap accomodation. (I recommend watching Strangers from Hell, a series from 2019 that largely plays out at a very run down goshiwon)

Hagwon [학원]: evening school/cram school, privately operated, places for extra study outside of school hours to offer students an "edge" in the unhealthily competitive climate that is the Korean school system (Yes, I have opinions about this. No, I do not ever want to study in Korea. I believe Sky Castle from 2018 could give a look into this, but I haven't seen it on the assumption that it would make me too bloody angry)

Hanbok [한복]: traditional Korean clothing.

Foods

Naengmyeon [냉면]: cold noodles! Litterally cold (냉) and noodles (면) - and it's deliscious! I can recommend the soup version on a hot summer day, with ice, chicken and pear.

Seaweed soup [미역국]: said to be nourishing, it is traditionally served to women after childbirth to help them recover. It is also a traditional birthday dish.

Banchan [반찬]: side dishes, of which there are many in Korea! Often vegetable based.

Hwe/Hoe [회]: thinly sliced raw fish. (The Korean version of japanese sashimi, if you happen to know that that is.)

Other

Mandatory military service: Korea has mandatory military service which applies to all men and which women can apply to. It's about 1,5 - 2 years long. Excemptions can be made, but it's frowned upon. It's complicated. (I have opinions about this, too, that I shan't be getting into here. The series D.P. from 2021 digs into the dark side of it, but I haven't seen it yet, again because I think it'll make me mad.)

Itaewon [이태원]: area/neghbourhood in Seoul, known for it's vibrant and multicultural nightlife. Lots of bars and clubs, and a hub for gay people, but I've heard it's lost some of its popularity after Covid and the Halloween tragedy of 2022. (another series recommendation: Itaewon class.)

[stuffnonsenseandotherthings]

Love in The Big City Part 3 - Notes from A Reader

Note 1: What's in a Name?

Names play a big role in Part 3 of Love in the Big City, in no small part because Part 3 is the section which gives its own name, "Love in the Big City", to the book itself.

Immediately this marks Part 3 out as important, as the potential birthplace of this whole story, as the potential reason Young picked up his pen to spill his whole story to the world, as the potential reason the fictional Love in the Big City exists in the first place.

Something in this section is important, something in this section holds weight, something in this section holds the heart of the book in its hands.

And that something is Gyu-Ho.

Gyu-Ho and the love Young finally found with him in the big city of Seoul.

And here we have another name. Gyu-Ho is the second named character in the book, with the first being Jae-Hee, and that certainly doesn't read as a coincidence.

It could be argued that Gyu-Ho and Jae-Hee are the only 2 named characters because they are the only ones in the story who aren't smothered in some form of guilt or self-loathing, the only ones who are openly themselves but, for me, that doesn't quite fit (the T-ara's are given nicknames and it certainly seems like they are more openly themselves than anyone else in the book). Instead to me, feels like a sign of significance, a sign of just how important they were to the Young that is written about and how important they still are to the Young that did the writing.

Everyone else is either replaceable (Young's flings and acquaintances) or the source of a relationship that brought pain he'd rather leave behind (Eomma and Hyung). But Jae-Hee was the first person in who he found a home and Gyu-Ho was the second, and in naming them he affords them more significance than he affords himself in his own story. These are the two people who shaped him for the better, so they deserve to be acknowledged as such.

Note 1.5: You

Alongside the fact that Gyu-Ho one of the only named characters in the book, there is another reason I think his character is the impetus for the entire story that came before and that is the moments when Young doesn't call him by his name but instead calls him... you.

The majority of Love in the Big City is written in the first person with Young occasionally addressing us, the reader, directly as he comments on the events of his life. The tone is conversational and intimate, as one would address a friend or a diary.

And then, at the start of Part 3 something slips.

The "you" Young is addressing isn't us, the reader, any more. It's Gyu-Ho:

"But you, your sideburns curved into your beard...." p 133.

"Your tongue, which was as warm as your gaze...." p 133.

"Yes. to tell you the truth now, after all that has happened since. I wasn't that drunk that night." p. 133.

The tone changes from conversational to reverent, from lightly personal to intimate, from wryly removed to loaded with shared history. It doesn't happen every time, it doesn't happen consistently, but it happens and, quite frankly, I love it.

"Ah, this is who Young is writing for."

That's what those moments felt like to me, like Young had slipped as he revisited moments loaded with emotions and they had spilled onto the page, no longer a story for faceless readers but a love letter to a lost love, an attempt to speak to him once more.

It's one of the most loaded writing decisions I've come across in quite some time and the layers it adds to the section, to the book are amazing for something so seemingly inconsequentially small.

So what's in a name? A whole damn lot, but there's even more in that small word you.

[my-rose-tinted-glasses]

Rose Reads Love In The Big City

Part II

For now I'm only focusing of question 3.

The narrator has an emotionally difficult relationship with his mother. Why do you think the narrator intercut the relationship with his mother with the relationship with this boyfriend?

My brain is all over the place so I apologize if this doesn't make as much sense as it should.

I think there are a lot of parallels between these 2 relationships in the mind of the narrator. The biggest thing I found in common in these two relationships are the conflicting feelings the narrator seems to have.

I think the passage “was old enough to know that my mother did not exist solely to hinder my existence, but was a person in her own right who had fought hard making her way through life” is a good representation of this dichotomy. He resents her in many ways and yet he chooses to also represent both sides of her. This is his story, and so many times I wonder if I, as a reader, am getting an accurate representation of events. And yet, with his Umma and also his boyfriend he feels the need to at times, defend them right after he attacks them with his words.

With Hyung this internal conflict seems even less nuanced, as he insults him in the middle of grandiose love declarations. The way he immediately put Hyung on a pedestal and himself several steps below ground, was a big neon sign for me. And as the love obsession grew, so did the internal conflict. Because after the physical attraction, the more he knew about Hyung the harsher his words to describe him became. My own thoughts about Hyung were definitely put into a different perspective when I read @doyou000me post giving me the historical context that he talked about. But honestly I could relate to the author whenever Hyung said something really “deep” about the universe or, you know, fish, because I found myself rolling my eyes. And yet, as much as the author seems to detest him at times, calling him a bastard he was also, in his own words “ready to change my entire belief system for him”.

I kept thinking, why are you so obsessed with this guy? He seems like a dick honestly and granted I can’t see him, but is he really that pretty? That it’s worth all this? But given how this relationship started, I don’t think it was so much about Hyung’s looks, as it was about the narrator’s lack of self esteem and his loneliness. Like the cliché, he’s not in love with him, he’s in love with love. He’s in love with the idea of belonging to someone else. Of being in a relationship. This becomes even more obvious just before the break up when he writes “I was enamored by this image of myself cooking for him”.

I could argue that both the relationships are about being wanted/needed, more than about his feelings towards either person.

There’s another parallel that I found that’s been rattling in my brain but I still can’t articulate well enough to write about it. Maybe someone else can give it a go. Or maybe I'll came back to it later.

Something something about Hyungs obssession with American Imperialism and being watched, and something about his mother’s religious beliefs. The contempt he feels about both of these things is similar.

I mean, he calls her church “ the source of all evil rumour in this world” and mocks Hyung’s fear of being monitored. Even before all this talk about his past, just the way Hyung speaks makes the narrator think cult at one point. And then with the discovery of his browser history relating homosexuality with disease, there’s a parallel to the Leviticus passage that his mum passes to him in a note.

Anyway these are my first thoughts about this chapter.