Patterns of the heart : and other stories
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references.

"Korean writer Ch'oe Myongik (1902/03-1972?) lived his whole life in Pyongyang, experiencing the Japanese colonial era; the second Sino-Japanese, Asia-Pacific, and Korean wars; the U.S. bombing and Soviet occupation; and the early years of the DRPK from that vantage. His cinematic, modernist prose pays close attention to the gritty realities of the city, and he remained throughout his career a meticulous and creative detailer of the lives of the marginalized and the disaffected. Patterns of the Heart and Other Stories presents a selection of Ch'oe's short fiction, including later works from hard-to-find North Korean publications. In the title story, a listless drifter confronts a former revolutionary leader dying of heroin addiction in the Manchurian city of Harbin, while "Ordinary People" narrates the shocking scene of a sex worker being trafficked across the border under the largely indifferent gaze of her fellow train passengers. In "Voices of the Fatherland," U.S. fighter jets open fire on a column of refugees fleeing the city of Pyongyang, perhaps based upon Ch'oe's own experience of having to flee his city as the front line advanced. These stories reveal new perspectives of the Korean peninsula in the twentieth century, across political divides still in place today"-- Provided by publisher.