Three Generations

by Yeom Sang-seop, Yu Young-nan (Translator)

Touted as one of Korea’s most important works of fiction, Three Generations (published in 1931 as a serial in Chosun Ilbo) charts the tensions in the Jo family in 1930s Japanese occupied Seoul. Yom’s keenly observant eye reveals family tensions withprofound insight. Delving deeply into each character’s history and beliefs, he illuminates the diverse pressures and impulses driving each. This Korean classic, often compared to Junichiro Tanizaki’s The Makioka Sisters, reveals the country’s situation under Japanese rule, the traditional Korean familial structure, and the battle between the modern and the traditional. The long-awaited publication of this masterpiece is a vital addition to Korean literature in English.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction

476 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1932

Reviews

[Alwynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yom Sang-seop’s novel was first serialised in the early 1930s in a popular Korean newspaper. Yom later revised and then published this in book form after WW2. It’s a claustrophobic portrait of colonial-era Seoul centred on three generations of a middle-class, Korean family. Jo Deok-gi is caught between his grandfather and father’s values, his grandfather’s traditional neo-Confucianism clashing with his father’s apparent embrace of Christianity. Deok-gi splits his time between his grandfather’s house in Korea, where Deok-gi’s wife and child also live, and his studies in Japan. When in Korea Deok-gi spends his spare hours with Byeong-hwa, a now-impoverished radical with close ties to Korea’s underground resistance movement. Their circle extends to factory girl Pil-sun and fiercely independent Gyeong-ae, Deok-gi’s peer and his father, Jo Sang-hun’s former lover.

Through his tight-knit cast of characters Yom charts emerging tensions and shifts in Korean society as the Jo family gradually become embroiled in a vicious inheritance battle. Yom’s Seoul is a place of sharp divides: between wealthy and poor Koreans, between Koreans and Japanese occupiers, between radicals and conservatives, between men and women. It’s an isolated, segregated city but it’s one in which appearances matter, strongly influenced by the growing consumer culture deliberately promoted by Japan - Yom devotes a surprising amount of space to describing his characters’ adoption or rejection of clothing styles and fashions. I found Yom’s contradictory portrayal of women particularly striking. One group’s embedded in the Korean family system, often unnamed other than as mothers, aunts or sisters, spending most of their time confined to domestic spaces. They seem to have little or no agency, other than in relation to men, condemned to the role of virtuous wife or, like the grandfather’s new partner known only as the "Suwon woman", grasping harridan. Then there are the ‘modern girls’ like Gyeong-ae reminiscent of the outsider women featured in Irmgard Keun’s novels of 1930s Germany. Korea’s ‘modern girls’ were liminal but conspicuous figures, ditching the hanbok for Western-inspired outfits copied from Hollywood movies and fashion magazines, cutting their hair and wearing make-up, scandalous to some, iconic to others. Like many real-life ‘modern girls’, Gyeong-ae has very little money but uses what she has to frequent cinemas and bars. But although she may seem to reinforce the stereotype, her subsequent actions go against it.

Surveillance in various forms is key to Yom’s narrative. His version of the Korean middle-class is one invested in appearances, apparently devoted to upholding a rigid set of social conventions yet happy to flout them when nobody’s looking. Jo Sang-hun is a prime example of this type of hypocrisy, “passing” as an upstanding church member but actually addicted to alcohol and the pursuit of vulnerable, younger women. A more sinister form of surveillance stems from Japan’s attempts to control Korean culture and thought, Yom’s is a world in which informants may be anywhere or anyone, and police are omnipresent, threatening figures lurking outside houses and bars, ready to round up anyone suspected of nationalist tendencies. Yom’s novel’s riddled with cliffhangers that betray its episodic origins and it can be dry in places but I found it incredibly compelling. The closing scenes in which police finally catch up with Yom’s main characters were close to devastating. As this unfolded, I was increasingly invested in a number of Yom’s characters so the abrupt ending was a definite blow. Most of Yom's plotlines are tied up but others are left unresolved - possibly because the likely fate of those involved would mar Yom’s attempt to provide 1940s’ readers with an optimistic ending. Translated by Yu Young-nan.

Rating: 3 to 3.5

[Luke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nearing the tail end of my experiment of taking on a full load of longer works in an effort to clean out the remaining challenge reads ahead, I have to admit it wasn't the wisest decision. It certainly played a role in my increasing fatigue with regard to the plot, characters, and climactic choice this narrative put forward. Now, I've read my fair share of serially published works, and I understand the effect such a publishing style can have on the shape that the overall piece, especially when read in translation. However, this piece had too many flat caricatures that were especially clownish in the case of villains; never-ending, overwrought domestic trials; and a shoehorned-in plot that may have technically put the pieces together, but not in any way that smoothed over the chinks. I haven't read a lot of works translated from Korean, but I've felt favorably about enough of them in the past, including one that I was reading alongside this, that there's only so much self reflexivity I can indulge in regarding my evaluations. Perhaps the older publication history had an effect, seeing as how all of the other works I've read were either latter half of the 20th c. or the 21st, but honestly, I'm sure I can find something from the era that goes a lot better with me. It's just a matter of being as open to taking a chance on a work that comes my way, as I was with this one.

Having learned of the work's complicated publication history through the afterword, I thought it was a shame that the author decided to cut the political material in favor of more family drama, and not simply for the sake of my personal reading biases. I'm not kidding when I say that the book would have been three quarters to two thirds in length if the author had held off on explaining character interior states 60% of the time, and the discussion of intricacies of social activism as executed in the real world is one of those topics wherein I don't mind more tell versus show. Altogether, this work comes off as one that is exhaustively taught in schools, as its extremely impressive author credentials and intent, coupled with a broad spectrum social analysis of a society caught between foreign occupation, foreign religion, and foreign politics, makes it ripe for a whole host of assigned essays. However, such a combination of authorial context and choice in composition doesn't guarantee a great read. The fact I missed out on the Jungin/traditional middle class jargon that the afterword rhapsodized on as being the author's specialty, amongst a number of other linguistic elements, due to reading in translation is a caveat. Still, near the end, I felt like I was reading the trials and tribulations of an authorial self insert who just wanted everyone to get along and couldn't understand why money causes so many problems and why the Korean communists under Japanese imperialism are so angry and how the artificially cramped social status of women is destined to lead to tortuous conflict and eventual disaster. I get the author didn't want to write a proletarian novel, but as it is in many a bildungsroman, setting up an interesting narrative situation and trapping us (despite the play at authorial omniscience) in the mind of the least interesting, by virtue of privilege, character is certainly a safe way of playing it, but hardly a great one.

So, taking a chance on an intriguingly unique looking edition didn't bear fruit. Still, I appreciate any publishing line that looks out for the translations beyond the pale, especially the older kinds of works, and Archipelago Books is one that I really haven't explored in any kind of satisfactory sense. The afterword mentioned the other author's works being a great deal more invested in the social independence scene, and so if Archipelago comes out with one of those, I'd probably be able to overcome my one-bitten-twice-shy status long enough to snag it. Well, I'll have to flip through some of it before I commit, as while I say that I'd be able to put up with the intricacies of negotiation and double crossing and secret intrigues in regards to revolutionary work, it's another thing to commit to it, especially if it's another near 500 page piece. I've read and enjoyed the more domestic kinds of works, and indeed, some of my favorite parts of this work involved the opening and successful running of a small grocery store, but when it goes on and on and on and on in such a predictably patriarchal fashion, it's nothing I haven't read/lived and found extremely tedious. So, needless to say, I did not find the comparison of this to The Makioka Sisters apt. It's true that it's been a while, but it was an early enough read to be formative, and I would prefer to not be led astray by comparative promises that would probably be better spent on a rare reread.

[Yasemin Macar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yom Sang-Seop'un Üç Nesil kitabını okudum; bu tarz aile hikayelerini okumayı seviyorum. Hem dönemi hem de tarihi olguları zamanın nasıl değiştiğini karşılaştırmalı olarak okuyabiliyorsunuz. Umarım bu kitabında Türkçesi gelir.
Tanizaki'nin Makioka Kızkardeşler (Nazlı Kar) kitabına benzetilmiş. Nazlı Kar kitabını okumamıştım öne çekmek gerek gibi duruyor😊

[Houselions · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read some of the other reviews for this book when I had almost finished it. I agree that since it's a serialized, episodic novel of the Dickens/Brothers Karamazov type, you probably won't enjoy it if you don't enjoy that type of literature. Also, it's very much a product of its time and place, so if you're not interested in Korea or Korean history, you probably won't like it.

That said, I really liked this book.

I did feel that there was a lot of information missing, which may have been a problem with the translation, or maybe too much has been cut out for this edition. Or it may be that the nature of the way the book was originally published contributes to that feeling. There are several characters that make sudden, unexplained appearances, and some events that are referred to but not fully explained, and the ending leaves the reader with some unanswered questions. However, I don't feel like any of these issues took away from my enjoyment of the book.

The book takes place during the Japanese occupation of Korea in the early part of the 20th century. It was written and published during the same period, which becomes evident during the last part of the book when most of the main characters are hauled in for police questioning. The book doesn't dwell on the horrific brutality of the police, but it does gloss over it in a way that implies "you already know the details," which gives one the impression that being hauled in and tortured by the police was not such an out-of-the-ordinary occurence for the readers of this book. It's an interesting window on this time period, about which not much has been written in English.

The main action focuses on the wealthy Jo family, and on a group of political activists who are friends of the son, Jo Deok-gi. Besides the political themes, there is plenty of human drama here: greed, lust, infidelity, murder. Deok-gi's struggles to makes sense of the messes he inherited from his father and grandfather have a kind of timeless appeal as the struggle of the younger generation taking on the burdens of their elders before they feel they are ready. The latter half of the book especially is really gripping, and I could hardly put it down. I was quite surprised when I found myself at the end, because I felt that there was a lot more that could have been said. I read that the author changed the ending somewhat for the publication in book form in 1948, after the Japanese occupation had ended, to make it a bit more optimistic, and I don't know if this contributed to the feeling that the story was left unfinished, or if it was always that way. But novels that tie things up too neatly at the end, while satisfying, don't really leave the reader with anything to think about, so I don't really think this ending is a problem with the book.

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three Generations was written and published in the 1930s, when Korea was suffering under the Japanese Occupation (1910-1945). Yom Sang-seop, who was privileged to receive an education in Japan, is often praised for his ability to portray Koreans and their Koreanness, freely in his own style, without being influenced by society or the literary movement of his time (to write of the oppressed breaking out of all kinds of oppressions).

Personally I enjoyed the story as well for the Koreanness (and the familiarity) of the characters. What I didn't really like was the style of writing; too much was told rather than shown. The narrator role was not just describing visuals, but also thoughts, and emotions through thought, rather than body language description. Anyhow, this was a great read! :)

[James F · Rating 3 out of 5]

An influential Korean novel, though perhaps more as popular fiction than as a literary work like the other Korean novels I have read for the same Goodreads group. While the Japanese occupation and the discrimination against Koreans by the Japanese are always present as background, and the conflicts of traditional Confucian culture with the (even more negatively presented) Christians are of major importance, the book concentrates on domestic and romantic crises -- in fact the crises in every chapter gave it almost the feel of being the novelization of a television soap opera. (Like much Korean fiction it was originally serialized in the press.) The writing seems very awkward, although probably some of that is the fault of the translator rather than the author; I had the impression that some of the information was originally expressed by the social level of the language and the verbal endings of words which the translator has to make explicit. Since the novel was described as a "family saga", I thought it would be a chronicle tracing a family through three generations, but instead it is a novel about the conflict between the three generations of the Jo family at one particular point in time. (The action lasts for a few months at most, and the earlier events are narrated by the author rather than being shown in actual memory flashbooks.) The author is very discursive, constantly telling us all about the characters and how we should be reacting to them rather than allowing us to discover their personalities from their own actions and dialogue. The characters do spend a lot of time speculating about each others' motivations, which is somewhat ironic because they don't actually seem to have motivations; rather they bounce around from one emotional situation to another without any sort of plan in advance.

The younger generation is represented by the more "positive" character Jo Deok-gi (and his unnamed wife who plays little role in the book), his poor activist friend Byeong-hwa, and their friend Gyeong-ae, who is the abandoned former mistress of Deok-gi's father. (While a more literary novel would have probably held this information back until the other characters discovered it, this book tells the reader everything before the characters learn about it.) These three, together with another young woman, Pil-sun, are the main characters. The middle generation is made up mainly of Deok-gi's hypocritical Christian father Jo Sang-hun and his mother (never named), and the parents of Gyeong-ae and Pil-sun, while the older generation is represented by his wealthy Confucian grandfather (who has a much younger second wife called only "the Suwon woman"). Most of the female characters apart from the younger generation are referred to by the author with phrases like "step-grandaughter-in-law" and we don't ever learn their names; perhaps this is part of the culture of the times, but it helps to give the writing an awkward feel to a non-Korean reader.

About half-way through, the novel begins to incorporate some episodes about the political struggle for independence. There were previous allusions to Byeong-hwa as an activist, but we were never shown him in that capacity until a mysterious visitor shows up briefly from abroad and decides to entrust Byeong-hwa -- a complete stranger -- with a sensitive (but never really described) mission and a good deal of money. Although the author apparently was involved in the independence struggle and spent some time in jail, the politics never actually makes sense or seems credible, and the groups seem less like socialist organizations than like apolitical warring gangs. According to the Afterword, the novel was revised at the time of the book publication to cut down the political material and focus more exclusively on the family conflicts, so this may somewhat explain the unclear references in the political chapters. In any case, as the novel now stands I would have preferred it without those chapters. (The Afterword also explains that Yom's other novels were more political, and that he was consciously part of a literary conflict against a more politicized "proletarian" tendency in the literature of the time.)

I don't want to give the impression that this was not an interesting and worthwhile read, because it was; it just wasn't at the same level as for instance the novels I have read recently by Hwang Sok-yong.

[Kata Bitowt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nu, dramatycznie. I w końcu, jak już zaczynasz followić główna intryga, główne personaży intrygi przepadają i do końca nie pojawiają się. Dużo mnie pewnie brakuje wiedzy o Korei pod zaborem Japońskim i przed, ale still.
I jednak fajnie porównać książka z 1930-ych z innego końca świata z jakim Altorių Šešėly, z tych samych czasów.

[Pat · Rating 2 out of 5]

Picks up a bit in the last third, and I can imagine that in the original Korean it’s more engaging (other reviews suggest the author has a particular knack for working-class dialogue, which seems totally lost in this translation), but on the whole this version was a slog. I’ve seen some reviews that say it’s better if you have additional grounding in Korean culture and history (whereas this was the first Korean novel I’d ever read), which sounds plausible.

[Miles Huh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read it for a research paper that was over ambitious. Interesting book, would recommend to people interested in Korean literature

[Argene Clasara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel portrays the colonial period of Korea.

[Alisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

A Korean classic, serialized in a Seoul newspaper in 1931 during the Japanese occupation. It was translated into English in 2005. The story is of Deok-gi, his father, and his grandfather. The grandfather grew up a Confucianist during Korea's Joseon Dynasty. The father grew up during the Enlightenment, and became a Christian pastor (an adulterous, hypocritical one). Deok-gi grew up during Japan's ruthless colonial rule of Korea. He is caught between the arguments of his father & grandfather over religion and ideology, and he is troubled by all the bickering women in his family. He witnesses the imprisonment and maltreatment of those forming movements in favor of Korea's independence.

I read this book for book club. It was a very long and unpleasant read. The writing was awkward, probably because of translation. And none of the characters are very likeable. It is like a soap opera of petty arguments, adulterous men who have many ideological disagreements with one another, and women with no rights so they had to compete like vicious cats to be provided for. No book has ever made me more grateful for the women's rights movement, or for living in a free country where each person can work to provide for themselves and enjoys the right of freedom of speech.

[Clytee · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a Korean novel translated (sometimes poorly) from Korean. It did help me understand more Korean history and Korean culture, but one would need to have a fair amount of background about Korea to follow it. It went well with our Korea trip, but if we hadn't been visiting Korea, I would never have finished it. It is set in the time of the Japanese occupation of Korea (which was from 1910 to the end of WW II - very recent history), and it's effect on people and families. I didn't like the infidelity. Not one I'd recommend to someone that doesn't have some sort of connection to Korea.

[Noreen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Possibly lost in translation or possibly just not a very good book.

[!Tæmbuŝu]

KOBOBOOKS

[Giada Da Ros]

I didn't go crazy for it, but I liked it, and I understand why it's in Korean literary canon.