CLAY WALLS
by Ronyoung Kim
published by U of Washington P, 1987
"Precious possessions hidden": a cultural background to Ronyoung Kim's Clay Walls. by Sae-a Oh.
Critical Essay, MELUS, Fall 2001 v26 i3 p31(21)
COPYRIGHT 2001 The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnics Literature of the United States
In the middle of the twentieth century Korea was officially divided into two countries. (1) This was done without input from a legitimate Korean government and without consent of the Korean people. The halving of Korea was the cataclysmic finale to decades of imperialist aggression early in the twentieth century which profoundly altered the political establishment and cultural traditions of Korea and resulted in the displacement of thousands of Koreans to Manchuria, China, the United States, and even Japan. The Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910 triggered the first great wave of Korean emigration. (2) Some of these emigrants who went to the United States hoped to return someday to a restored independent Korea, but the defeat of the Japanese empire in World War II proved only to be the prologue to a more protracted drama. In its opening round, the Cold War mined Korea into a tragic arena for the exercise of imperialist territorial and ideological ambitions and indefinitely suspended the hope for an independent, united Korea. Ronyoung Kim's autobiographical novel, Clay Walls (1987), is placed within the context of this traumatic upheaval. The book is not better known, perhaps, because it brings to a subject that has been the established purview of historians the unmediated intensity of a personal fictionalized narrative. In her perceptive critique of the novel, Jane Phillips points out that "Clay Walls has received little attention in either the discourse of Asian American literature or that of ethnic women writers" (174). She attributes its "current marginal position" to the fact that "it neither appeals to certain current white American aesthetic expectations of Asian American literature, i.e. exoticism, nor advances any polemics with regard to the political issues of the time" (174). Phillips goes on to criticize Kim for "inadvertently" privileging Korean culture at the expense of Chinese and Japanese culture and for the elitist attitudes of her yangba (3) Korean heroine, Haesu (177, 184). Whether these ostensible failings are more justifiably attributed to the author Kim or her characters is a moot point which ultimately depends upon a critic's take on the always sketchy relationships between art and polemic, text and author, art and reality. But Phillips also concludes that "Kim has not revealed Korean customs, myths or other ethnic characteristics which might provide us with a more intimate understanding of her `other' culture which would enable us to more deeply appreciate and value Korean culture" (186). At a glance this statement looks true because most of the story literally takes place in the United States, inside the large Korean immigrant community that settled in Los Angeles. But in fact, Kim includes a great deal of Korean culture and traditions within the story because it is reflected and refracted through the eyes of Haesu. Its setting really is Korea. It is not a physical or real Korea, but the Korea of Haesu's mind, the Korea to which she hopes to return. Because Haesu is the psychic center of the story, her traditional Korean values rest at the heart of the narrative. To appreciate fully Kim's book, it is necessary to understand how the often subtle inflections of Confucian thinking and Korean heritage shape the narrative's two chief discursive interests. But like the imperialist history that underlies the story, these details are not emphasized at the expense of the narrative. As a Korean scholar whose lifelong interest has been English literature, yet who nevertheless has been raised within a cultural framework similar to that represented by Kim, I hope to clarify the fundamentally Korean aspects of Clay Walls which I propose are essential to Haesu's story. (4)
Clay Walls is three individual narratives, those of Haesu, Chun, and Faye, brought together in a sweeping personal history. Each is told from the perspective of a member of a family directly or indirectly impacted by the imperialist legacies of Korea. Kim illustrates the traumatic impact of the Japanese and Cold War interventions through the metaphor of gambling by depicting Chun (one of the three narrators of the book and husband to the character who is the focal point of the book, Haesu) as a gambling maniac who purchases land for his family in Korea with money earned from gambling, and by highlighting the marriage of Chun to Haesu, a marriage possible through the matching done under the influence of an American missionary, in spite of the fact that Haesu and Chun belong to different social classes. The fact that Haesu's parents cannot refuse the matchmaking role of the American missionary also reveals the power of imperialists in those days. Because of exigencies associated with the Japanese occupation, Haesu's parents reluctantly permitted Haesu to marry a tenant's son. Without these two forces at work, Haesu would never have had to marry Chun, much less leave Korea.
Kim also equates imperialism with the notion of expansionism as consistent with the theory articulated by William L. Langer: "imperialism hinges upon the idea of the [expansion of land], its adherents holding that imperialism is nothing more or less than the last stage in the development of capitalism" (13). In Kim's formulation, Chun's acquisition of land with the money he won gambling is similar to the imperialists' obsession with expansion, namely taking over the land of weaker countries. To demonstrate that among imperialist players, land is a powerful bargaining chip, (5) Kim uses the figure of Chun as a gambler, and through Chun's gambling saga, she creates a collective history of loss and suffering. Although the consequences of one man's gambling are confined to a relatively narrow social domain, that depiction allows Kim to poignantly portray the human implications of innumerable acts of recklessness and cruelty that characterized the imperialist assault on Korea.
Kim also presents the stigma attached to the loss of land in Haesu's ordeal. Haesu is a Korean woman of yangban status who is forced to abandon her homeland in the wake of the Japanese take-over and emigrates to America against her will. She is sent off to America quite abruptly to marry Chun, who had escaped from the Japanese secret police after the March First Movement of 1919, a campaign of resistance against the Japanese. (6) Once united in America, Haesu and Chun are immediately confronted by the poverty and discrimination so common to refugees. They face a difficult period of adjustment, not only to their new country, but also to each other. For Haesu, adjustment, however, does not mean abandoning her sense of identity as a Korean member of the yangban class. Though her yangbanism is profoundly challenged by her experience, she preserves that pride which is one of the principal features of yangbanism. At both a conscious and a subconscious level, it supports her in her struggle to transcend the historical consequences of imperialism.
Haesu's perspective is filtered through the lens of Confucianism. (7) The cultural incompatibility between Confucian doctrine and Western values which Kim takes as a central theme of her novel finds its academic parallel in feminist critiques of the principle of Hyun mo yang chu, the self-sacrifice and lifelong submission expected by women in order to preserve the family honor. Confucianism hinged upon the pivotal role of the yangban, the literate class in Korean culture who comprised the civil administration. Membership within the yangban class was determined by the rigorous examination standards of the classical Confucian educational system. Ironically, it was this endurance and stability of the yangban that ultimately proved so costly to Korea in the face of imperialists' aggression at the beginning of this century. The inwardly focused emphasis on order and stability fostered by yangbanism left Korea unprepared to confront the external threat of foreign armies. In that sense, it is also a source of Haesu's hardships.
But it is also a source of Haesu's perseverance in the face of those hardships. In dealing with her status as a perpetual foreigner in America, Haesu draws strength from Confucianism and the pride of her yangban ancestry. Despite the fact that she attends a Christian church in America, it is really these two cultural orientations which give Haesu the spiritual support necessary to face her hardships. They are a source of conflict in her relationship with her husband, and they appear stubborn and old-fashioned to her daughter, Faye. But they provide the framework for the two primary discursive interests of the novel: her struggle to return to Korea and her upbringing of her children.
By trying to unpack some of the essentially Korean elements within Haesu's character and explain their uniquely situated cultural significance and by examining Haesu's despair and frustrations after the division of Korea, I wish to demonstrate how Kim connects themes of gambling to imperialists' intervention in Korea. In depicting Haesu's struggles, Kim encourages the reader to acknowledge the painful legacy of imperialism and to rethink its implications. Like many Koreans forced to flee imperialist aggression, Haesu dreams of one day returning home to Korea. Her tenacious determination to get back to her homeland (Mang Hyang) finely dramatizes the larger struggle Korea faced, and still faces today, in trying to reclaim an identity fractured by a history of displacement. The continuing failure, despite some current moves toward change, of those imperialist powers to acknowledge fully the impact of their interference deepens the stigma that has been attached to the victims of their gambling. Almost a century has passed since the imperialists began their gambling, and Ronyoung Kim, like Haesu, died without ever achieving a return to Korea.
In my lifetime I have heard promises of trust from China and Japan while they helped themselves to our land. Germans and Frenchmen were on our soil digging out our gold. Americans looked the other way when we asked for recognition, and Russia considered us her legitimate spoil of war. All we wanted from them was to be left alone. (115)This simple complaint uttered by Haesu's mother, an old woman who has neither political education nor concern for politics, indicates the personal impact of the imperialists' intervention in Korea and the depth of Koreans' resentment towards it. Kim expresses this frustration with imperialist intervention throughout the novel. It is a key factor in the nihilistic perspective of the Captain of the ship whom Haesu meets on her only trip back to Korea, in Haesu's purchase of the land in Qwaksan, in Haesu's struggle to keep alive the Confucian and yangban traditions of her own upbringing in raising her children in a capitalistic society, and in Chun's desire to construct clay walls around the family's Los Angeles home.
Kim illustrates Koreans' resentment of imperialists' intervention in her use of the land as a metaphor for imperialism. She demonstrates it in the hatred of the land of the Korean Captain employed on the Japanese ship:
I hate being on land. Entanglement, unresolvable commitment, [and] a web of illogical complications. Because of what happens on land I am forced to be an impersonator at sea.... The sea swallows everything. It is impossible to plant a flag on water. Not so on land. Men plant their flags in the ground and begin the battle. We are born to our nationality by fate. Why should one be considered better than another? (76-77)The Captain's hatred of the land and reverence for the sea are reactions to the power struggles he has witnessed among imperialists over Korea. He signals the precarious state of Korean national identity as the country found itself caught between imperialist bids from dominant Eastern neighbors such as China, Japan, and Russia, and from empire-hungry Western countries like the United States, France, and Germany. As Haesu's mother points out, "all [Koreans] wanted from them was to be left alone" (115). But the hegemonic nature of imperialism creates "entanglement," "commitment," and "complications." For the imperialist, land becomes the object of acquisition, the stakes of the game in politics. But for the Captain, the stakes themselves become despicable as the projected source of oppression. The Captain sums up the transformation wrought by imperialism in people's lives: "because of what happens on land, [he is] forced to be an impersonator at sea."
The image of "the flag planted in the ground" used by the Captain can be also equated with the Korean's loss of their land to the imperialists. For him, it marks the irrevocable beginning of forced diasporic life. This mode of thinking leads to the assumption that people who are born in weak countries should accept their diasporic life as inevitable and simply "become traitors" like the Captain. Haesu's thinking differs on this matter. Although she frequently mentions luck, she never accepts it as fate. Rather, she blames the imperialists for their gambling, and she condemns the Captain for not blaming them.
Kim shows the way in which Korea has been physically and socially altered by Japanese colonialism. But the physical and social alteration is only one level of the total cultural disruption. Kim illustrates a deeper psychic alteration among Koreans in the character of the captain of the ship with reference to the topic of cultural identity. The Captain praises the sea for its egalitarianism. It represents to him a kind of tabula rasa where all nationalist allegiances are erased. Deprived of any context, the Captain's words seem nobly idealistic. They are the words of a man who sees the artifice and pettiness of politically and institutionally defined identities. But, in fact, the Captain dissembles his own allegiances. He works for the Japanese. He has even taken a Japanese wife. Perhaps he has acted merely in accordance with his convictions. But the fact that he has benefited by this rejection of his Korean identity inevitably casts doubt upon the integrity of his character.
The Captain has betrayed his country. He has also betrayed his culture in renouncing the land and the sense of identity and pride with which it is invested. It is easy to confuse the Captain's sentiments with those of other apolitical characters. But to wish as Haesu's mother does to be left alone does not entail a desire to be absolved of all entanglements, commitments, and complications as the Captain wishes. Within the traditional philosophy of Haesu and her mother there is the underlying human-centered belief in the values of entanglements, commitments, and complications. They are an irrevocable part of personal relationships in the Confucian sense. The Captain's desire to escape the land and escape commitment signals, too, a rejection of humanity. The equivocal state of his character is paralleled in his fate. In the end he is murdered by Korean nationalists who target him because of his complicity with the Japanese.
Haesu's refusal to accept the situation imposed on her by imperialism is a reminder of Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist ethos, in the sense that she vigilantly exercises her willpower to try to correct her ill fate. (8) While the Captain changes his nationality by taking a Japanese wife, Haesu emigrates and participates in the nationalist movement abroad, "blaming the Japanese for taking [her] country, and making [her] an exile ... [and] for every atrocity they've committed against her people" (77). The fact that the Captain works for Japan implies that he recognizes the Japanese annexation as a force that cannot be resisted through individual efforts. The difference between the two stems from their perception of the land, which conditions their posture towards imperialism. For Haesu, land is a place to which to return. It is a source of hope. For the Captain, land is property that leads to competition and war. Thus the Captain hates the land and discards it while all of Haesu's hopes are involved in it. Haesu's attachment to land, regardless of the resistance she faces, is a sympathetic one. It becomes more than an investment for her. It is a quasi-sacred possession. This explains why she never sells her land in Korea, not even when she receives the news of Chun's admission to the hospital and when her financial state is perilous after Chun's death. For Haesu, the land in Qwaksan, a village in the North Korea, means a nation beyond land itself and is irreducibly connected to her hope to live again as a yangban in Korea.
Kim also ties the notion of land into the story of Chun. As I already mentioned, Kim describes Chun as a gambler to demonstrate the damage gambling inflicts on the lives of those involved. Chun, like the imperialists, sees land as capital. For this reason, he is persuaded by Haesu to buy land in Qwaksan. When Chun's business begins to fail, he attempts to compensate by gambling and falls in with a treacherous professional gambler. Haesu, recognizing the grave stakes in Chun's gambling, tries to warn him. Sensitive both to his inferior class origins and frustrated by his business failures, he chafes at the restraint. "What the hell does she know," he complains bitterly to himself, "[I] fight to stay awake while she sleeps" (149).
Because they come from different social classes within Korean society, there is always friction between yangban Haesu and commoner Chun, as Shin explains. These differences are evident in their reactions at both an idealistic and a practical level. She exhorts Chun to take control of his life. Her insistence that he "be a boss," not a servant, persuades him to sell fruit on the street. Chun does not approach his role with the same yangban imperatives as Haesu and in his quest for employment he is more flexible. He worked initially as a servant for a missionary in Korea until he was forced to flee from the secret police. When he arrives in America, he turns to increasingly lowly forms of labor and ends up as a bellboy in a Reno hotel.
But Haesu follows the Confucian principle which grants men predominance in outdoor affairs and dictates that a wife not interfere in her husband's business. The same restraint does not apply indoors, and Chun resents her consciousness of her higher-class . standing in freely criticizing his gambling habit. Eventually his late-night gambling proves fatal when he pledges his own business. His loss of the business brings him to the edge of collapse so that he must part from his family. He is a reckless speculator and his gambling is the ultimate extension of imperialist capitalist logic. He ends up homeless and exiled, an echo of the diaspora that imperialism produced in Korea. Haesu is likewise doubly affected: first, as a victim of imperialists' gambling and again because of her husband's gambling.
In looking at the intersection between her Confucian worldview and the Christian capitalist world in which Haesu finds herself, I now want to focus on this new role which Haesu assumes after Chun's death. As I noted, the ideal image of a Korean woman in the Confucian social order is one who limits her role to the domestic sphere; she quite literally circumscribes herself within the walls of her house as a submissive wife and a sacrificial mother. This is the very sense in which the word "walls" of the book's title resonates throughout the early parts of the novel as part of the Confucian and yangban culture of "seclusion" and "concealment."
In yangban culture, women do not work outside the home and do no work for money. Haesu enforces among her children the gender roles customary to Confucian and yangban culture. Despite the financial desperation that follows the failure of Chun's business and his death, she refuses to allow Faye to work. Instead Haesu takes on sewing as a means to support her family. But she negotiates to do the work at home in compliance with the yangban structure that women do not work outside the home. Haesu's adherence to this traditional Confucian construction of women exasperates her daughter Faye. "I need extra money to buy clothes. I can work, get a part-time job, or help you sew" (231). Faye cannot fathom the meaning of her mother's sacrifice. "Never. If necessary, I'll stay up all night to give you what you want" (231).
It is this stubborn adherence to her traditional values in the middle of a profoundly alien cultural setting that creates tension between Haesu and her children. Within the ideal Confucian family unit all property responsibilities belong to the male head. With Chun's death that responsibility is placed upon the sons. While Haesu effectively remains in control of the household, she allows her sons to deliver newspapers and sell magazine subscriptions. Faye, on the other hand, becomes a part of the family property, "a precious possession hidden." Haesu uses the Korean term of endearment nae dari with her daughter. This translates literally as "my leg," a part of her mother, demonstrating the relationship between loving tenderness and possession characteristic of traditional Korean parental affection. In order to preserve her daughter's value, her preciousness, Haesu sacrifices herself in taking on extra work so that her daughter will not have to move outside the walled circle of the home. Faye, who identifies with the less rigid gender codes of her Western surroundings, struggles against this circumscription.
Faye recalls that her mother "stayed up to sew while I went to sleep. In the morning when I woke up, she was already at the table" (195). Faye's remark is an ironic reversal of Chun's earlier complaint that he fights "to stay awake while she sleeps." It perfectly encapsulates the nature of Haesu's burden since she now bears responsibility not only in her role as a mother to her children but in the role as a breadwinner and a parent. Her ability to do this without breaching the clay walls of the domestic sphere testifies to her dedication to the principles of Confucianism. She teaches her daughter to cook so that she can devote more time to her sewing. Even on the night of Chun's funeral she returns to her sewing. When her son John is summoned to court for the theft of a bicycle she brings her sewing with her.
Because of the subordinate role imposed on women, Confucianism and yangbanism have frequently been targets of feminist criticism. Ironically, however, in Kim's story these values become Haesu's underlying source of strength after all the other props of custom and family are knocked out from under her as an immigrant. It is her devotion to Confucianism that keeps Haesu from falling into depression despite the overwhelming economic and social burdens she faces in America.
Her marriage to Chun exemplified the rigid Confucian code. Western concepts of love and affection had very little bearing within the parameters of their marriage. In a scene early in the book Chun puts money on the table after they have had intercourse. Chun's gesture signifies his satisfaction while Haesu feels only disgust that she is united with a man for whom she feels no respect. Appropriately, Haesu donates the money to the nationalist cause. Her honor is tied to the appearance of Chun's name on the donor's list. This is the reward that sexual intercourse brings for her.
When Haesu learns that her best friend Clara, whose husband has also died, wishes to remarry, she is deeply scandalized. She feels that Clara compromises the primary Confucian female virtue of chastity. Within the Confucian ethical framework, a virtuous and honorable wife is one who lives with her husband until he dies, never takes another partner, and commits herself after his death to the upbringing of their children. A virtuous and honorable woman is forever a virtuous and honorable wife. For Haesu, the role of a submissive wife leads to the role of a sacrificing mother.
By the Western standards of her children, Haesu's extravagance in arranging Chun's funeral seems arbitrary and excessive. In order to pay for the ceremony she borrows money, more money than she will ever be able to pay back. During the funeral procession she asks her children how many cars are following them. "About twenty," responds her son. "Your papa's having a nice funeral," she concludes (225). The number of guests, the expenditure for the ceremony, and the plot chosen for Chun's grave are important to Haesu because they signal respect and reflect positively on the family's reputation. To Haesu's daughter, Faye, her mother's bravura performance of the wife's role suggests only an empty adherence to form. She does not understand, at this point, the yangban spirit that defines her mother and helps to bear up "the poor immigrant widow" against her misfortunes. These seemingly superficial gestures are deeply meaningful for Haesu because they are public gestures. It is in the preservation of public dignity that the individual finds private self-consolation within the Confucian ethical scheme.
Haesu's response to her son's court appearance is representative of the barrier between her own sense of justice and social decorum and American legal procedure. Haesu remains oblivious to the fact that her son John is involved in illegal activity until he is picked up by the police. When she receives the notice to appear in juvenile court, she decides that the whole family will appear in court:
We are all going because whatever happens to John happens to this family. I am going to tell the judge that [he] did it for me, for his family. I am going to tell the judge that if he sends John to jail, he will bring disgrace upon our family. (205-206)It is evident that Haesu possesses little sense of the American system of jurisprudence. She reflexively assumes that the same Confucian logic that has operated in her home will carry into the public realm. In Korean culture, in a case like John's, the discreet appeal of an elder on behalf of someone in the family often serves an effective resolution to a dispute. The degree to which the elder humbles himself or herself in making the appeal completes the retribution. She believes that the explanation that John did it for the sake of his family with a promise to make restitution for the stolen goods will suffice in John's defense. She is annoyed that John has told the judge that his father has left home.
Harold, who assumes his father's role as an eldest son, recognizes the impersonal nature of the legal proceedings and cuts her short before she has an opportunity to make her appeal to the judge's sense of family honor. She angrily reminds him of his Confucian manners: "Don't ever forget that I'm your mother. Under no circumstances are you to tell me what to say" (207). Haesu's rebuke reflects her Confucian sensitivity to her public image as an ideal parent. She feels humiliated that her son has ignored her in front of the judge. The irony is that Harold has not forgotten his manners. His reluctance reflects his impulse to spare his mother public humiliation. She does not appreciate the bind in which Harold finds himself. On the one hand, he is expected to defer to his mother. On the other hand, he realizes that his mother misunderstands the nature of court procedure and tries to conclude matters as quickly as possible.
The only condition for which Haesu breaks her yangban principle, dictating that women do not work outside the home and for money, is when she senses that those principles ultimately must be rooted in the soil of her homeland. Thus, she allows Faye to work in an American military factory. As Faye observes, Haesu believes that the war "had given Koreans hope for regaining their country" (262). "My mom can't refuse to let me work," she correctly calculates, "if it means I am helping to win the war" (265). Haesu's compromise also speaks to the level of her animosity toward the Japanese: "They will get what they deserve. At last, Korea will have her independence" (261).
Haesu enthusiastically supports the war against Japan, but her enthusiasm runs up against the wall of white American prejudice and discrimination. She supports her son Harold's decision to apply for officers' training with the Air Force and celebrates when he places within the top ten percent on the entrance examination. But he is ultimately rejected because he is "Oriental" (270). Harold's rejection comes as a tremendous shock. Haesu does not work or eat for three days.
When Harold finally joins the Signal Corps, she simply says, "`Good,' then crie[s]" (271). These are the only tears we see her shed throughout the book in responding to discrimination. It is not the pain of being discriminated against which wrings them out of her, though her pride surely intensifies the blow. She has confronted and proudly faced down other discriminations. When she and Chun wished to purchase their house, they had to do so under an American name. When her American-born sons are denied entrance into a private high school, Haesu simply buys the school's uniforms and takes a picture of her sons wearing them. Later, during a trip to Korea, she gives the uniforms to a beggar who approaches her on the street. The Army's rejection of her son as an officer, however, admits no such creative circumvention. Her son, in fact, manages to get into uniform in the Signal Corps. But it is not an officer's uniform (surely a blow to her yangban sensibilities) and it will not permit him to fight to restore Korea, and tat is why she cries. Her tears are for her homeland. That her son cannot serve as an officer in a war in which she fervently believes as a war of independence underscores her sense of exile
It is worth noting that Haesu is not categorically prevented from moving back home to Korea during the Japanese occupation. She does make a trip there, after all. We may wonder then, if her identity is as deeply invested in her homeland as she believes it to be, why she does not simply move back home to Korea and await its liberation from there. This question is answered by her visit.
Haesu travels with her family to Korea by Japanese ship in a journey which is a microcosm of the oppressive realities that prevail under the Japanese. As she leaves on her trip, she has an inkling of the humiliations and atrocities that Koreans are suffering. On the ship she runs the gamut of war-time experience: affection/hatred, patriotism/disloyalty, oppressor/oppressed, danger, surveillance, suspense, intrigue, espionage, and murder. She also discovers the existence of a subversive underground nationalist organization. During the few hours that the ship is anchored in Hawaii, she learns that this underground has stretched across the ocean and that Koreans like herself serve as invaluable links in sustaining a network of active resistance. Samsung, a relative and fellow expatriate, had recounted for her the horrors of Japanese colonialism. Having barely escaped the persecution and fled the country, he incisively summarized the situation for Haesu in saying to her, "Korea is no longer Koreans" (43). Her hope is sustained, however, by the reports she has heard in her nationalist organization about the numerous resistance movements that have formed among exiled Koreans in abroad.
Without realizing the danger presented by Japanese inspectors at Korean ports and train stations, Haesu carries with her on her journey messages, money, and goods for friends and relatives of Koreans living in Los Angeles. To her amazement, however, none of the intended recipients of these gifts welcome her and her family as they arrive at Pusan, Seoul, and Peiyang. Instead, she is met only by child beggars who shows her that their parents could not take care of them, whether because they had died or had been coercively relocated under the Japanese occupation. She comes to discover that the relatives and friends she had expected did not come for the very reason that they feared awakening suspicions among the Japanese police.
The surrealism of the situation is highlighted by Harold's reaction to an incident involving Korean members of the Japanese police:
This little kid called Yun [a Korean working for the Japanese police ] `wae nora,' pulled out the Korean flag, and yelled `Mansei'.... told Yun he was worse than `wae nora,' a disgrace to his family and to his country. Then he started to run like hell. I was laughing at the whole thing. Yun ordered the kid to stop, then ran after him. Then I heard a shot. (124)Haesu and her children share a sense of shock at the repression they witness. It is a land unfamiliar to all of them. With the exception of some collaborators, every Korean, even the children, participates in resistance against the Japanese. For Harold, the tragic incident he witnesses helps to define the distinction between the liberties to which he is accustomed in America and the brutality of life under military occupation. For Haesu, the opposition falls between the Korea she once knew and the Korea she now experiences. The land has been transformed and tradition disrupted. The exchange of letters is dangerous, and family reunions are impossible. The only positive action Haesu can take against all this is to arrange matters relating to her purchase of the land in Qwaksan. She still retains hope for a future restoration, but to live in this estranged Korea is farther from her dream of return even than living in America. In fact, Haesu could have moved back to Korea and taken possession of her land in Qwaksan. But she prefers liberty and poverty in America.
It is the defeat of the Japanese that proves cruelly ironic for Haesu. Although she is unable to move back home to Korea and Qwaksan during the Japanese occupation, she can finalize her purchase of the land in anticipation of the eviction of the Japanese. But it is the eviction of the Japanese from Korea that seals the fate of her land in Qwaksan. In the multilateral agreement that follows the defeat of the Axis powers and the Korea War, Korea is divided into two countries. Haesu's land is in Northern Korea. She loses it.
Qwaksan is Haesu's only holding in the homeland. It is, quite literally, the only thing holding her to her homeland. Its loss shatters the dream upon which she had initially sustained her dignity and her will in the United States. Considering Haesu's perseverance in holding onto that land in Quaksan even during her financial desperation, and considering Haesu's friction with Faye who thinks that the land is readily convertible as a form of capital into money that can be used for more immediate material needs, it is a tremendous blow for Haesu. The land is an entity which no amount of wealth, in its typical abstract Western conception as money, could equal. Haesu's eyes flare up when Faye insists upon selling the land. More than a generation gap, what Kim demonstrates here is a cultural gap: "I hope that someday you will know why I keep the land. Until you do, don't talk to me about it" (244). Haesu's resignation evokes Faye's sympathy: "Qwaksan was gone and there was no money to show for it. The land was Momma's only holding in her homeland and it had been taken away from her: her only holding in the world. Suddenly, I felt as if I had been stamped with stupidity. That was what I was supposed to understand.... I wanted to cry (300).
Due to other imperialists' gambling, Haesu loses not only the parcel of land which she owns, but also the land, the country, to which she expected to return. In this ordeal Haesu finds herself in America twice disempowered: first, politically, as a member of a ruling class which no longer has a nation to rule; second, socially, as a Korean immigrant at the bottom of the social hierarchy in America. Ironically, the land she acquires in Qwaksan with the money won by Chun's gambling is eventually lost with the political gambling that divides Korea into two. The repeated political gambling of the imperialists concerning the land of Korea without consideration for the Korean people not only destroys Haesu's dream of returning to Korea but also prolongs her life as an immigrant in America.
Kim embodies these repeated interventions in the symbol of the clay walls from which the book takes its title. When Chun buys their first house in Los Angeles, he wishes to build a clay wall around it. Although Haesu is used to the clay walls surrounding the houses in Korea, she does not understand why Chun would do such a thing in the United States. The custom is actually deeply rooted within Confucian and yangban culture. Yangban custom mandates that "everything inside the gate [be] hidden from the street. Secluded.... Korean seclusion was intended to keep precious possessions hidden" (105). The clay wall around the house symbolizes for Chun a sense of protection and security that has eluded him his entire life. Although he does not belong by birth to the yangban class and has been baptized as a Presbyterian by American missionaries, the wall suggests the vestigial remnant of an essential Korean sense of identity. Kim writes:
[His] country had fought for its own seclusion, struggling against the penetration of eastern invasion and western ideology. A futile struggle.... Korean walls were made of clay, crumbling under repeated blows, leaving nothing as it was before. (105)With the wall, Chun unconsciously tries to secure himself from the colonizing forces of "eastern invasion and western ideology." But the eastern invasion, by the Japanese, has already driven him from his homeland. Western ideology divides his country into two. As Chun never builds the clay walls around his Los Angeles home, so Haesu never returns to Qwaksan. The collapse of his fortunes through his gambling suggests that the clay walls around his home, family, and homeland have already collapsed.
The loss provides its own compensation. Faye finally appreciates her mother's strength and sacrifice. Haesu never accepts charity but works until her back "screamed with pain" (279). Faye notices that, nevertheless, she has not bowed to her hardships: "I looked at Momma while she sewed. Her silky black hair was streaked with gray.... She had spent years bent over the table, but her back was straight"(300). The Korean term "ggojang ggojang" best captures the significance of Faye's attention to Haesu's straight back. Meaning "humanistic dignity," it describes the spiritual strength which keeps Haesu from bending before the wrongs, the injustice, and the sheer physical strain she faces as an immigrant. Her straight back is one mark of her triumph. Her children are another:
"It's hard to be a Korean living in the United States [says Haesu]. Especially for you children".... Love swelled in my heart for Momma .... I walked over and put my arms around her. She patted my hands. (300)Haesu has lost her original dream. She will never have the home with clay walls back in Korea of which she has dreamed. But with the disintegration of her fantasy home, Haesu discovers standing in its place one that supplies her with as much pride and satisfaction. Her vigilance in the upbringing of Faye pays off in the end. Faye receives a letter from Daniel, a young man from a successful Korean immigrant family in Connecticut to whom her mother's friend Mr. Yang had introduced her.
Faye's embracing her mother and Haesu's patting her daughter on the hands are small gestures. But they signal the remarkable reconciliation that has taken place. The fissure has been mended, and, with it, a part of the history of Korea has been repaired. It is not only a reconciliation between mother and daughter which is symbolized in the gesture. It is a restoration of the family order which had crumbled with Chun's failure and death. It is a reconciliation of those two cultures that have been dramatically polarized through the rest of the story. Daniel's letter to Faye, with its promise of courtship, fulfills the dream for which Haesu has struggled so stoically. She has not made it home to Korea. But she has affianced her daughter to a promising young man in a prosperous Korean family. The solid economic standing of Daniel's family is the American translation of yangban. Of course, it does not translate perfectly, but then there is really not a word in English that perfectly embodies the full sense of the Korean word. That Haesu has contentedly settled in America is as close as she can get and must be close enough.
Notes
(1.) Japan surrendered to the Allied Nations on August 15, 1945. By mutual agreement, the Soviet Union and the United States partitioned Korea at the 38th parallel. The Soviet Union accepted Japan's surrender, took the north of the parallel, and established a communist government. The United States accepted Japan's surrender, took the south of the parallel, and established a democratic government. The Korea War ensued when a Soviet-trained and armed North Korean army invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950
(2.) The Japanese annexation of Korea had its roots in the nineteenth century and was connected with European imperialism. Treaties signed by England, France, the United States, and Japan greatly facilitated the activity of merchants, missionaries, and diplomats in Korea. Just as the American military occupation of Cuba in 1898 made Latinos begin to emigrate to America, the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910 made Koreans begin their political exile to Manchuria, China, Japan, and America. For more information, see Patterson.
(3.) Yangban refers to an elite literate class within the Confucian social order of the Yi Dynasty (1392-1910). Yangban play a vital social role as officials within the national administration if they pass a rigorous examination system.
(4.) The narrative is an indignant outcry against an alienated existence in mainstream America. As explained by Ronyoung Kim in her interview with Kichung Kim, her objective as a writer was to "use" her novel as a strategy to protest against imperialist gambling vis-a-vis the acute frustration experienced by immigrants.
(5.) In 1905 US President Theodore Roosevelt agreed to respect Japan's hegemony in Korea in exchange for Japan's noninterference in America's interests in the Philippines. "England and Japan also signed an alliance for the protection of England's interests in India and Japan's interests in Korea, while the treaty of Portsmouth was being negotiated" (Latane 118). These treaties create a crucial moment for Japan's annexation and are at the foundation of the historical background of works written about this period.
(6.) A campaign of resistance against the Japanese occupation organized by Koreans in 1919. It was violently quelled by the Japanese colonial government. For more information, see Lee.
(7.) Confucianism is a system of beliefs and conventions founded on the writings of the classical Chinese philosopher Confucius (551-479 BCE). It was an invaluable cultural force in providing stability and longevity to the Yi Dynasty (1392-1910). It established an ethical system by which to govern social relations at all levels of society, from family to the nation. It stresses hierarchical social structures built on dichotomies such as ruler and subject, man and woman, husband and wife, father and son, and old and young. The stability of the hierarchy rests on the principle of reciprocal duties and obligations. The son obeys the father with filial devotion, while the father rears and educates the son. Family ties, filial devotion, respect for one's elders and ancestors are central tenants of Confucian ethics. Its fundamental guidelines are keeping an orderly home, acting as a responsible parent, and exercising self-initiative in being a model citizen and devoted family member. In Korean, the concept is summed up in the expression su-sin-jae-ga-hu-chi-gook-pyong-chon, which means, literally, "to govern a nation one must govern his family; to govern his family, one must govern himself."
(8.) Many modern Korean writers are influenced by Jean Paul Sartre's existentialism.
Works Cited
Kim, Ronyoung. Clay Walls. Seattle: U of Washington P, 1987.
--. "Coming to Terms With a New Life." Interview with Kichung Kim. San Francisco Chronicle 2 Aug. 1987:1
Langer, William L. "A Critique of Imperialism." American Imperialism in 1898. Ed. Theodore P. Greene. Boston: Heath, 1955. 13-20.
Latane, John Holladay. America as a Worm Power 1897-1907. New York: Harper, 1907.
Lee, Mary Paik. Quiet Odyssey. Seattle: U of Washington P, 1990.
Patterson, Wayne. The Korean Frontier in America: Immigration to Hawaii, 1896-1910. Honolulu: U of Hawaii P, 1988.
Phillips, Jane. "We'd Be Rich in Korea: Value and Contingency in Clay Walls by Ronyoung Kim." MELUS 23.2. (1998): 175-87.
Shin, Duckhee. "Class and Self-Identity in Clay Walls." MELUS 24.4 (1999): 125-36.
Sae-a Oh is a Professor of English Language and Literature at Chongju University in Seoul, Korea where she teaches drama and American literature. She wrote the article published in this issue during her stay at the University of California at San Diego as a visiting scholar.
Named Works: Clay Walls (Book) - Criticism, interpretation, etc.
