Review of "One Left" by Kim Soom

The following is an edited version of a piece written as an entry to the 2021 IKSU Korean Literature Review Contest, hosted by The International Institute of Korean Studies (IKSU) at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), in November 2021. I wasn't then and still am not very familiar with Korean literature. Even so, since I was quite proud of myself for finishing this, I decided to post it for posterity.

In One Left (2016), Kim Soom uses a tapestry on mundane domestic activities and horrendous flashbacks to paint a vivid picture of the suffering of a Korean comfort woman, both before and after the end of the war.

    The protagonist of One Left is a former comfort woman who remains nameless for the majority of the novel, referred to simply as “she” or “she herself” (in scenes when more than one “she” is present). She is watching TV when she learns that there is only one known surviving comfort woman left. Following this, the novel details the protagonist’s daily activities in the rundown neighbourhood she lives in, 15-bonji, and her interactions with its residents: a small girl who reminds the protagonist of her younger self, the owners of the local shop, the lady at the alteration shop, the beautician, an old man who makes money by catching stray kittens and selling them, and his intellectually disabled son. These episodes in the protagonist’s daily life are interspersed with vivid and horrific flashbacks of her time spent as a comfort woman in Manchuria, both of her own experiences, and the stories of the other captive girls alongside her. Other than the protagonist and the aforementioned handful of other residents, the neighbourhood is filled with empty houses, having been condemned for demolition and redevelopment. The protagonist lives in the neighbourhood on behalf of her nephew, so he can get priority to own one of the new properties planned to be built, and lives in constant fear of being kicked out of her home. At one point in the novel, she states that her one wish is to “remain in the western-style house living quietly till she dies”. It seems her plans will not come to pass since the plans to redevelop the neighbourhood have fallen through and her nephew decides to move her to a nursing home. Following this, the protagonist leaves on a journey to visit the official last surviving comfort woman, who is barely hanging on to life at a nearby hospital, to reveal to her that even after she is gone there will still be one left. The reader never gets to witness the protagonist reaching her destination, the action and its results don’t matter, the decision to go is what matters. It is only upon making this decision that the protagonist’s given name, P’unggil, is revealed to the reader.

    One left is Kim Soom’s most recent novel and is credited as the first South Korean novel about comfort women, despite being published more than 70 years after the end of the war. Before discussing the novel in detail, it is necessary to consider the historical events which inspired it. “Comfort woman” is a euphemistic term used to describe women (mostly Korean) who were abused as sex slaves by the Japanese military during their campaigns across Asia during the Asia-Pacific War. They were girls and women, usually aged 11-25, who were brought (by deception or force) to “comfort stations”, or wartime brothels, where they were kept under terrible conditions. The statistic given in One Left is that 200,000 women left Korea in this way, and only 20,000 made it back. Following the war, many former comfort women hid their pasts, for fear of the social ramifications of such a background. It wasn’t until 1991 when Kim Hak-sun became the first Korean woman to officially come forward and give testimony as a former comfort woman. Since then 240 women have officially registered as former comfort women with the South Korean government, and only a handful of them survive to this day. The issue of former comfort women has become a significant issue in modern Japan-Korea relations, as well as a source of controversy. At several points in the novel, the comfort women’s wait for an official apology from Japan is mentioned, and even in the ambiguous future time in which the novel is set, this issue has still not reached a conclusion.

The novel presents a harrowing view of the protagonist’s life at the comfort station. The vividness and frequency of her flashbacks suggest that she suffers from severe PTSD, though this is never directly confirmed in the narrative. These flashbacks are painstakingly researched with regards to the details of the girls’ experiences, with most of the events being sourced from the testimonies of real former comfort women, with sources provided in footnotes. This meticulous sourcing, despite being atypical in a work of fiction, is necessary since some of the events described in the book are so horrifying that it is difficult for the modern reader to fully believe at first glance. The footnotes serve as a reminder to the reader that these things really did happen, which makes the novel all the more emotionally affecting. Not all the stories told in the novel are of the protagonist herself, many of them are her memories of other girls at the same comfort station. This allows Soom to present a variety of different experiences in the novel. The different ways the girls respond to their situation stands out, with one girl purposely not washing her face to appear less appealing to soldiers, and another building a relationship with one of her abusers, in order to get a message sent home to her family. Despite the novel largely being the story of a survivor of the comfort stations, this structure also allows Soom to present stories of girls who didn’t make it home, reminding the reader that this was the case with the majority of girls brought to comfort stations.

    The imagery invoked in the novel often compares the protagonist to defenceless animals and she is often presented displaying intense empathy with these creatures, seeming more connected to them than the humans around her. A particularly evocative example was the image of “an army of ants swarming a dead moth”, in which the protagonist identifies with the moth, and compares the ants to the soldiers at the comfort station. Other examples are the kittens caught and sold by the old man in 15-bonji, the magpies killed and brought to her by the stray cat, Nabi, and the dog owned by the woman in the alteration shop, which she is trying to get rid of now it can no longer have puppies (and so is no longer a source of profit). The protagonist’s empathy for these creatures is often the trigger for her flashbacks to her time at the comfort station, drawing a parallel between the people around her and the animals they exploit, and her abusers and herself. Despite feeling such strong empathy for these creatures, the protagonist does not take any actions to help them during the novel. She does not release the kittens when she finds them hung up in bags around the neighbourhood, nor does she accept the offer of the alteration shop woman to take the dog, despite worrying about what will become of it if she doesn’t. This sympathy for the victims but unwillingness to take action on their behalf is again comparable to the protagonist’s own experience as a victim. Even after escaping from the comfort station and returning home, the protagonist was not recognized by her own family and did not receive any help or understanding dealing with what had been done to her.  In both of these ways, the use of animals in the novel can be read as an allegory for how the victims of sexual slavery following the Asia-Pacific War had been treated like animals by their abusers and ignored by society as a whole. Furthermore, Soom uses the protagonist’s empathy for animals to accentuate the difficulty she faces in connecting with other people, demonstrating the isolation from the rest of society her trauma has caused her.

    The fate of the protagonist is left uncertain at the end of the novel, but her act of beginning the journey to meet the “last one” suggests that she is in some way breaking through the walls that her trauma and isolation have built up around her. It can’t be called a happy ending, but the protagonist’s decision to get on the bus and the reveal of her original name leaves the reader with a bittersweet sense of hope. The name reveal doesn’t solve any of the protagonist’s problems, but it does give the reader the impression that she has regained her sense of identity through the act of beginning the journey. This kind of ending reminds the reader how distant the prospect of reconciliation regarding the comfort women issue is, even more than 75 years on. One left details the protagonist’s journey to making her firsts steps to acknowledge and share her victimhood with another person, and in a similar way, capturing the stories of Korean comfort women in the form of a Korean language novel for the first time can be seen as a first step to sharing and immortalizing the narratives of the real victims. Therefore, the ending could be read as an invitation for future writers to take up these narratives as well, as well as for readers who may be several generations removed from the atrocities at the centre of the novel, to understand and empathize with the victims.  

    In conclusion, One left should be recommended to anyone curious about the histories of comfort women, and South Korean history in general. Furthermore, the depth and intensity of Soom’s depiction of sexual trauma will make the novel helpful to anyone interested in that topic also, though that intensity might make the novel too emotionally overwhelming for some readers. The English translations by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton are moving and easy to follow even for someone not well versed in Korean culture. One Left is a moving and often disturbing portrayal of trauma. Soom’s use of a fractured narrative, jumping between the past and present, illustrates how the horrors of the protagonist’s past follow her into the present. The protagonist’s isolation is demonstrated by Soom's use of animal imagery throughout the novel. Finally, the ending leaves the reader without the catharsis of seeing the protagonist finally have her suffering recognised by another person. Instead, the ending leaves the reader with a sense of hope that catharsis could happen in the future, and with the understanding that even by making the journey, the protagonist has recovered enough of her sense of identity to finally recall her real name. Upon completing One Left, one is left with the question of what the next novel dealing with the comfort women issue will be, and how works of art inspired by these women can help generations to come to understand the horrors of what they experienced.