Kim Yoon-Shik's Literary Trip

It is wrong to think that this book is one of the common literary travel diaries because it contains wide and deep thinking, introspection on history, and passion and agony on literature. The author is Prof. Kim Yoon-Shik of Seoul National University, who is also a literary critic and historian. It is an account of a literary trip and a historical travel description at the same time, and also contains philosophical travel sketches. It puts readers into a religious and existential frame of mind.

The author`s travels took him to Mongolia, Nepal, Japan and China. However, the writer describes the traces and fragrance of our literature, and the joys and sorrows of Korean history in his elaborate style of writing.

In his Mongolian travel account, Kim sketches images of primitive propeller planes and the landscape of parts of this poor country where Genghis Khan (1167-1227) reportedly conducted military exercises. At Genghis Khan`s burial site, the authors notes that Western wine is sold instead of Mongolian soju or liquor made from horse milk.

Then he goes to Katmandu. At an old book store, he discovered a novel by the Japanese writer Toshiyuki Kajiyama, ``Yi Dynasty`s Waning Shadow.`` It was a pocket edition with a Choson-style tiled roof as the cover picture. The author who bought the book roams about the streets where ancient and modern times are mixed and describes the sight of ascetics with long hair, smoke from a crematorium and a river that runs gray.

But his wandering was brief. He gets a real taste of ``Yi Dynasty`s Waning Shadow,`` the novel that depicts the love between a Japanese painter and a Choson-era ``kisaeng (geisha)`` in Kyongsong (Seoul) in 1940. Kim recalls that ``to the hero of the novel the beauty of Choson was just the `beauty of woman.```

251 Pages, Priced at 8,000 won, Published by Munhak Sasang Co.

Lee Kwawg-Pyo kplee@donga.com