Spring, Spring
About this story
A simple-hearted farmhand has toiled for over three years without a single coin of pay, living as a son-in-law-to-be in the house of the crafty old landlord Bongpil — all on the promise that he may marry the daughter, Jeomsun, «once she has grown tall enough». But the girl never seems to grow, the wedding never comes, and the narrator slowly begins to suspect he is being played for a fool. Kim Yu-jeong's 1935 story, told in the earthy, comic voice of its none-too-bright hero, is one of the best-loved Korean short stories of the colonial era — a warm, slyly satirical portrait of country life that turns the exploitation of a poor labourer into pure slapstick, climaxing in an unforgettable brawl in which Jeomsun takes a surprising side.
By the numbers
About the author
Kim Yu-jeong (1908–1937) was a Korean short-story writer born in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province, into a once-wealthy landowning family whose fortunes collapsed, leaving him in lifelong poverty. He debuted in 1933 and in 1935 joined the celebrated «Circle of Nine» (Guinhoe) alongside writers such as Yi Sang. In barely two years of prolific work he produced roughly thirty stories before dying of tuberculosis in 1937 at age 29. His fiction is prized for its earthy humor, lively onomatopoeia, and rustic Gangwon dialect — warm yet unsparing portraits of impoverished peasants under Japanese colonial rule. «Bombom» (1935) is his best-loved comic tale.
Recognition
Kim Yu-jeong's stories portray, with a unique, folksy sense of humor, everyday people living out hardscrabble lives against the bleak backdrop of rural Korea. His prose, with its liberal use of lively onomatopoeia, rustic dialect, and homespun colloquialisms, provides vitality-filled sketches of the impoverished lives of the lowest classes under Japanese colonial rule.
The particular significance of Kim's stories within Korean literature comes from the consistent sensitivity of feeling which they evince in their telling.
His literary world is essentially caricatural, and so it is characterized less by a cold, rational sense of reality or tragic seriousness than by an overflowing warmth of comic humanity.
The caricatured human relationships can be called the crowning glory of Kim Yu-jeong's literature.
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