The Shadow of Arms

 

The

Shadow

of Arms

 

 

Copyright © 1985, 1988 by Hwang Sok-yong

English translation © 1994 by Cornell East Asia Program

First Seven Stories Press Edition 2014.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hwang, Sog-yong, 1943-

[Mugi ui kunul. English]

The shadow of arms / Hwang Sok-yong. -- A Seven Stories Press First Edition.

pages cm

Originally published in Korean as Mugi ui kunul.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-60980-507-4 (alk. paper)

1. Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Fiction. I. Title.

PL992.29.S6M86513 2013

895.7'34--dc23

2013017529

Printed in the United States

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

 

 

The

Shadow

of Arms

Hwang Sok-yong

Translated by Chun Kyung-Ja

Seven Stories Press

New York

 

FOREWORD

Hwang Sok-yong's
The Shadow of Arms
,
when first begun in 1983, was a courageous act of political witness. Under a ferocious dictatorship, the Vietnam War remained a taboo subject except as an anti-Communist crusade. Not only had “our boys” fought and died there in great numbers, but President Chun Doo Hwan himself, along with his closest aides, was a veteran of that war. And while the larger issue of anti-imperialism and national liberation was being hotly debated in the Korean radical movements, especially among students, in the wake of the Kwangju massacre of May 1980 when General Chun came to power, such debate met with frequent and harsh repression. And here was Hwang serializing in a well-known monthly magazine a novel of the Vietnam War which exposed the atrocities and corruption of the Allied war effort, clearly sympathizing with the cause of the National Liberation Front. Little wonder, then, that once the first half was finished and came out in book form in 1985, the project remained in abeyance until after the success of the nationwide election protest actions of June 1987.

That success of the democratic movement was only partial, however, and it still took considerable daring for the author to resume work on the novel under General Chun's successor and fellow Vietnam veteran Roh Tae Woo, bringing out the second and final volume in 1988. Freedom of expression continued to suffer severe restrictions, with any criticism of the US imperial role liable to be equated with subversiveness.

Today this particular aspect of the novel would seem to have lost much of its urgency even in South Korea, where the inauguration in early 1993 of the first civilian President in more than thirty years has brought a considerable improvement to the political and intellectual climate. To readers of the English version, especially in the United States, the almost exclusive denunciation of the latter's role—accompanied by little criticism of the atrocities committed by South Korean troops—would appear yet more dated and even self-indulgent. While partially granting these objections, I should like to remind such readers that, first of all, Hwang's offhand dismissal of any reason for the South Korean intervention other than the mercenary was in itself a pointed act of resistance and criticism—one, moreover, hardly matched by any subsequent South Korean work of more overt self-criticism. I may add, too, that the political issues Hwang raises have not wholly lost their relevance either: in the United States, not all the attempts to be cured of the “Vietnam syndrome” can be welcomed as moves toward true civic health.

Yet
The Shadow of Arms
lives today mainly as a gripping tale dealing with a fascinating aspect of the Vietnam War: the black markets of the South Vietnamese city of Da Nang. Hwang himself had some firsthand experience of them as a soldier in the South Korean Marine Corps. The main character, Corporal (later Sergeant) Ahn Yong Kyu of the Joint Investigations Headquarters in Da Nang, actually reflects a good deal of that experience and some of Hwang's own resourcefulness and aplomb as well. True, the addition of some fictive adventures and removal of most autobiographical features tend to make the resulting characterization somewhat unreal—especially to foreign readers, since even the most expert translation cannot do justice to the racy vividness of the dialogue when the Koreans in the novel talk among themselves.

But Ahn's character serves as the convenient—and on the whole adequate—focal point in the exciting detective work on the complicated moves by the US, NLF, South Korean, and South Vietnamese interests, with their mixtures of strategic and venal motives. And I believe a good deal of the power of this novel derives from its being more than just a realistic presentation of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War. For the black markets, with the PXs
1
of the US Military as their main fountainhead, also serve as a synecdoche of a war which, for all its irrational carnage and wastefulness, was meant to promote the interests of the hegemonic capitalist power, and hence could be terminated only when the capitalists at home finally came to object to its ultimate unprofitability.

Seen in this light, however, the various episodes and subplots supplementing the main drama of the black markets, such as the conflict in the Pham family or the reports on the atrocities by American soldiers, suffer not only from the relative thinness of the author's firsthand knowledge but from a certain simplicity in his vision of America's imperial role. This is not to say that the author ought to have actually depicted the more nuanced elements in the United States policy or performance. Rather, the crucial default, for a Korean novel of the 1980s, concerns the question of the nature and degree of the relevance of the anti-imperialist struggle in Vietnam to the aspirations of its Korean readers for their own reunification and genuine autonomy. The author no doubt was inspired by the similarities in the two struggles and powerfully brings some of them home. Yet given the at least equally weighty resemblances to the contrasting division of Germany, and indeed, the
sui generis
nature of what I have termed the “division system” on the Korean peninsula, some reflections on the differences between the national liberation struggle in Vietnam and a more complex endeavor to overcome Korea's division would seem to have been in order. Again, this is not to demand of the author any explicit treatment of the question. Yet some appropriate details on (say) the kind of person Ahn was before he came overseas could have put his experience in Vietnam in better perspective, as well as adding to the depth and credibility of the characterization.

At all events, Hwang Sok-yong's narrative skill manages to hold the reader's attention to the breathtaking final shootout and beyond. There is, moreover, a profound irony in Ahn Yong Kyu's being the man who kills Pham Minh, the NLF underground agent for whose cause and conduct the author had manifested the greatest sympathy. Perhaps the author himself does not sufficiently appreciate the irony, for in embarking for home in the last scene, Ahn does not seem to feel any particular remorse, nor does the author offer any criticism of his protagonist. But Ahn Yong Kyu's repeated claim that South Koreans are in Vietnam simply to make what money they can, and that he himself (who is not at all venal) does only the minimum necessary for survival and honorable discharge, is given the lie by the tale. South Korea's involvement stands condemned according to the values most passionately championed by the novel itself. While the novel's cold-eyed detachment from the US war endeavor leaves Korean readers with the task of a more complex moral reckoning, it will also disturb American readers by reminding them of the variety and pervasiveness of their involvement in the sufferings of other nations.

Paik Nak-chung

Seoul National University

Footnote:

 

 

PREFACE

from the French edition by editor
Cécile Wajsbrot

The Shadow of Arms
is set during the Vietnam War, and describes an aspect thereof about which little is known—Korea's participation, somewhat coerced, as an allied country alongside the American and South Vietnamese armies.

France had been out of the region for some time, following the defeat at Dien Bien Phu and in accordance with the Geneva Agreements of July 1954, which consecrated the division of the country into North and South Vietnam on either side of the Seventeenth Parallel. To the north, the Democratic Republic of Ho Chi Minh; to the south, the dictatorship of Diem and then the regime of general Thieu. The United States, which ever since the start of the Korean War in 1950 had underhandedly financed the Indochina War—the “free world's” fight against Communism, that era's Axis of Evil—progressively intensified its presence until undeniable engagement; August 1964, when North Vietnamese gunships attacked two American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. We know the rest, the growing opposition to the war, the draft, the profound losses, the Paris Accords in 1973, and The United States' withdrawal in 1975.

This novel takes place around the time of the Tet Offensive, launched by the Communists in January to February of 1968 at the height of US presence. Ahn Yong Kyu, a Korean corporal (later promoted to sergeant) is transferred from the front to the Department of Investigation, where he is to look into black market activities in Da Nang, South Vietnam's principal military port. And yet,
The
Shadow of Arms
is not a war novel. There are no combat scenes, save for the rare images that emerge from Yong Kyu's memory. Rather, there are the strands of dense black market intrigue that weave together every actor in the conflict—the Americans, Vietnamese Saigon partisans, the Viet Cong, Koreans—through characters who, though perhaps emblematic of ideologies, are not without emotional depth, the complexity of life. Such as the two brothers who align themselves with opposing sides, Pham Quyen and Pham Minh, one of whom experiences the thrill of strategy, and the other, the loneliness of souls enamored of an ideal. And Toi, Yong Kyu's Vietnamese friend; a mysterious man with a tragic fate. Also Hae Jong, the Korean seductress of questionable character. As for the character of Ahn Yong Kyu (in which we see Hwang Sok-yong's own experience), his position as a foreigner—sure that he'll forget everything upon his return—makes him at once both a part of the action and a distanced onlooker. Vietnam is a sinking ship, a shore you wash up on, wreck on, but not a harbor. Accounts of atrocities by the American army break up the narrative. There reigns a strange calm, the eye of the hurricane, perhaps. But this is also a world where people refuse to abandon their aspirations, to renounce dreams, deny emotion—a world brimming with humanity.

Back in Korea, Hwang Sok-yong was far from forgetting. He wrote several pieces (among them the story “Doe-Eyed,” which appeared in his collection
The Road to Sampo
) that show him grappling with the Vietnam War—a subject not usually written about in Korean literature; a war that generally escaped scrutiny. Then came the great work, this novel,
The
Shadow of Arms
, in which he shrugs off the shadows of time—the alchemy of transforming the realness of reality into the realness of literature.

First appearing as a series in a monthly journal in 1983, and later as a single volume in 1985, Hwang Sok-yong's novel was an act of courage in a Korea whose situation as a country divided is reminiscent of Vietnam's. What's more, the author's implicit sympathy for the Viet Cong offended the dictatorial regime of Chun Doo-hwan, so much so that the second volume (from Chapter 22 on) had to await publication until Chun stepped down in 1988 and the ensuing period of relative freedom. The following year it received the Manhae Award, one of the most prestigious in Korean literature.

The author revised the text in 1992—and this is the text that has been translated into English, following the French edition, which was the first available in Europe.

C. W.

 

 

MAIN CHARACTERS

The Koreans

Ahn Yong Kyu
,
a Korean soldier at the heart of the investigation division of the American army.

Captain Kim,
leader of the Korean unit.

T
he Staff
S
ergeant
,
member of the unit lead by Captain Kim. His trafficking of Korean beer angers the Americans army.

O
h Hae Jong
, also called Mimi. She was an office employee in an American PX in Uijeongbu, in Korea, and lived successively with three American soldiers. She had a child with one of them. In Vietnam, she was fired from the post exchange (PX) where she worked, for dealing heroin. Through her relationship with Pham Quyen, she obtains Vietnamese nationality, her last chance to start her life over. They dream of saving enough money to move to Singapore or Hong Kong.

T
he Hong Kong Group
, the most influential group among Korean civilians dealing in the black market in Da Nang.

The Vietnamese

Pham Minh
,
a medical student at the University of Hue. He joins the National Liberation Front (NLF) and becomes a secret agent of the 434
th
special action group based in Da Nang.

Pham Quyen
, Pham Minh's older brother. Commander in the Vietnamese government's army. Aide-de-camp of General Liam (governor of the Quang Nam province), he wields all the administrative power of the local government.

Chan Ti Shoan
, the daughter of a civil servant. She is Pham Minh's friend and a student in her final year at Pascal High School.

Lei
, Pham Minh and Pham Quyen's younger sister. She attends the same high school as Shoan, but is in her second-to-last year.

Mi
, Pham Minh and Pham Quyen's older sister. Following the death of her husband, a member of the NFL killed in combat, she lives at her mother's house with her two children and depends financially on her brother, Pham Quyen.

Uncle Trinh
, the former director of the Da Nang primary school. He exercised huge influence over the youngsters, teaching them the history of Vietnam. But having lost hope, he is now addicted to opium.

Nguyen Cuong
, an important trader in the Le Loi market in Da Nang. He is a local government representative in all commercial transactions. With Pham Quyen, he plans to collect cinnamon on the high plateaus of central Vietnam and to market it.

Nguyen Thatch
, Cuong's younger brother. He studied at the University of Hue. He is a secret agent for the urban guerilla fighter movement of one of the NLF's district commissions in Da Nang. His car repair shop is a front for his secret activity of supplying the NLF with weaponry.

Doctor Tran
, the director of the Red Cross hospital. As a surgeon, he is used to comfort and luxury. He lives with his wife, Madame Hue, and their son Huan and daughter Phuoc, who is a friend of Shoan.

Old Man Hien
, the owner of the Puohung House. He has a trading partnership with the Americans. He holds precious information on the rates of exchange of army currency and dollars, as well as on the different markets.

Lieutenant Kiem
, Commander Pham's aide-de-camp. He works in the administration of the local government. He is originally from the countryside, but is ambitious; he enlisted in the state army and was appointed officer.

Toi
, originally from Da Nang. After having finished his military service in the state army, he started working for the Korean branch of the investigation division. He is a friend of Yong Kyu for whom he serves as a driver, interpreter, and assistant.

Madame Lin
, from China, owner of the Sports Club. The wife of an Englishman born in Hong Kong, she is a close friend of Oh Hae Jong and knows how to treat American officers tactfully.

The Americans

Stapley
, a sergeant at the Turen supply warehouse. Originally from New York, he dreams of writing comic books. After having been insubordinate, he chooses to go to Vietnam to avoid prison but he ends up deserting.

Leon
, originally from Chicago, son of Italian immigrants, and obsessed with motorcycle racing. Employed at the Turen warehouse, he is the main supplier to Ahn Yong Kyu.

Krapensky
, a commander in the Marines, leader of the investigation division. He previously served in Korea.

Lucas
, a corporal in the Marines and a member of the investigation division. He studied at the center for Korean studies in Washington and Hawaii.