I've been reading White Badge by Ahn Junghyo (reviewed here), which is a novel about Korean soldiers fighting (alongside the United States) in the Vietnam War. 312,853 Korean soldiers fought in Vietnam, an astounding number and the second largest number of troops after the US.

I thought it would be especially interesting to read this book before discussing the Americans in Vietnam in my course. I gather there has been a movie made about it as well, but I haven't seen it sold on the street (my sole source of films) so am still looking for it.

The novel is quite bleak and has a dry, detached tone that I like, and I tend to devour books on that conflict, so I have been enjoying reading it.

It was written in Korean but Ahn translated it himself. He is a graduate of Sogang University, incidentally, and now teaches at Ewha.

Clearly someone studying English read the book I checked out from the library since they heavily annotated the text and underlined words that I am guessing they didn't know. Since they are underlined, the words jump off the page and the feeling of seeing these pulled into prominence struck me.

Perhaps the person stopped reading after 40 pages or so, since the underlining stops. (Before they have even gotten to Vietnam!)

Here are a few of those words just from the start of the book:

shingled, archery, cordoned, wonderous, pure, innocent, fonts, summoned, elaborate, jiggled, inquisitive, hectically, quotient, vicious, enamored, corporal, fart, anonymous, sedective, trudged sperm, tuberculosis, perplexing.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

CHAOS WASHING MACHINES

My apartment comes with a washing machine called, imposingly, a Goldstar Chaos Hi Tech Washing Machine. I thought it was a dryer too but that doesn't seem to be the case. Korean apartments have these alleys between the living areas and the outside wall in which clothes are dried. There are sliding doors between the apartment and the alley, and large windows between the bedrooms and the alley. I thought I wouldn't have to use it but if the washing machine is also a "hi tech" drier I sure can't find the right combination of buttons. Not that I haven't looked. I tried to decipher everything with the help of my dictionary and limited knowledge of the hangul alphabet (which includes only a dim understanding of the actual letter order--still working on that). The word pronounced (I think) "saw" is a simple two letter word. But according to my dictionary, it means, "a cow, a bull, an ox" or "dressing, stuffing," "little, few,
Read more
Image
In case you didn't see that county map indicating increased Republican voting between 2004 and 2008 before they took it off of the NYTimes page, here is an image of it: This is a fascinating document that I think will be the focus of many studies. Explaining increases only in these areas in the entire country could be very instructive. Andrew Sullivan notes dryly: "Ah, yes, Appalachia and Arkansas. Obviously concerned about marginal tax rates for those earning over $250,000 a year, I suppose."
Read more
Image
Americans don't get riled up to protest. Give away billions in taxpayer money to financial fatcats with no accountability--no worries. Refuse to punish war criminal torturers--no problem. The battle cry is...moo. Koreans, on the other hand, live in a vibrant democracy and their political action is a bit more direct. Here is a striking photo of union protesters in Daejeon using sharpened bamboo spears to attack riot police. (an article about the current state of rioting in Korea, quoting a Sogang professor, is here )
Read more