Snowy Day and Other Stories

by Lee Chang-dong

Genres: General Fiction; Historical Fiction; Short Stories

Synopsis

The first story collection published in English by Lee Chang-dong, one of South Korea’s most celebrated and influential literary and cinematic figures

Much like Lee Chang-dong’s internationally renowned films (Burning, Secret Sunshine, and Poetry), these brilliant, unsettling tales, originally published in Korea in the 1980s and now translated into English for the first time, investigate themes of injustice, betrayal, and terror—on both an intimate and national scale. Lee writes deeply and hauntingly about conflicts between family, the powerful and the vulnerable, conformists and rebels.

In the title story, drawn from the author’s own memories of serving in the South Korean military, the class divide between a university-educated private and a working-class corporal serving sentry duty together one snowy night leads to tragic consequences. In “There’s a Lot of Shit in Nokcheon,” the psychological violence that two brothers enact on each other over the course of a lifetime captures the darkness and paranoia that pervaded Korea in the 1980s, as the country struggled toward democratic rule. And in the novella-length “A Lamp in the Sky,” a young woman’s brutal interrogation at the hands of the police reveals the series of increasingly troubling decisions that led her to this moment. Is she innocent or guilty? In the end, even she cannot say.

Snowy Day and Other Stories introduces English readers to a master storyteller.

Release date: February 18, 2025

Publisher: Penguin Press

Print pages: 368

Sample

FIRE & DUST

Saturday. The sky was clear for the first time in a while. The weather was typical for May and tear gas still swirled in the streets. At Jamsil Baseball Stadium the weekend match was
on between the Haetae and OB corporate teams and—despite the risk of clashes with the police—it was the day the opposition party had chosen to press on with their constitutional amendment rally in Incheon. It was also the fifth day that two Seoul National University students—who had attempted suicide by self-immolation—were hovering between life and death with burns over their entire bodies. That was the day I finished my morning classes and headed to the market to buy flowers.

When I stepped into the dim and narrow market alley lined with shabby food stalls, my eyes were assaulted by the sight of pigs’ feet, neatly arranged and fully extended to show off their toenails; boiled pigs’ heads, their pale, skinny faces smiling as if they had just bathed; and dark, glistening intestines. The nauseating smell of boiled pork and the intense odor of frying oil agitated my empty stomach, and I struggled against dry heaves that nearly turned my guts inside out. It was past three and I hadn’t had lunch. All I’d had that day was a glass of orange juice I forced myself to gulp down while I was jammed in among the kids at the school cafeteria. For two days, my throat had swollen up for no reason, making me unable to swallow food. And it wasn’t just my throat that ailed me—my eyes were bloodshot from some infection, but I was bearing it all without the thought of getting checked out at the hospital, as if the bodily pain was something I was supposed to suffer through like a seasonal allergy.

The flower shop was deep within the market alley, bookended on one side by a shop that sold rice cakes and a side-dish store on the other. Because the natural light was bad, the fluorescents were on even though it was afternoon, and the flowers all seemed to lack vitality, like wreaths that had been laid out for too long at a funeral.
“What did you have in mind?” the shop owner asked.

I looked around at the variety of flowers that filled the cramped store, but I was a bit embarrassed, realizing that I barely knew the names of any. I had never bought flowers myself, let alone learned what they were called. Maybe it was because I was unaware of what use flowers were in people’s lives.

I pointed to each kind of flower and asked what it was called.

The owner answered, one by one: baby’s breath, China pink, hydrangea, canna, hyacinth.

Then she said, apologetically, “Prices have gone up quite a bit these days. It must be because of the fallout.”

“Fallout?”

“You know, the radiation that turns to ashes and falls from the sky.”

Oh, fallout. I looked at the shop owner’s face—she seemed sickly behind her thick glasses. In the newspapers and on broadcasts they were continuously going on about the accident at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl. They said it was possible that the deadly radiation leaking from that place could even reach the skies above the Korean peninsula, but I had a hard time understanding why that would cause flower prices to rise in Korea.

“Prices were already high because of the holidays,” the woman added. “Parents’ Day is next week, you know.”

What jumped out at me in the store were the red carnations. At least I could recognize carnations without asking the owner. I pulled out one red flower from a bundle. The bulb was still closed tightly like a tiny, clenched fist, but a faint fragrance—like a gentle breath— brushed past the tip of my nose, and suddenly I felt a sharp stab of pain in my chest.

It was exactly one year ago, today. The last thing he did was hold a carnation. He held his mother’s hand to tag along to the market, and he must have begged her to buy a carnation from a street vendor. And on their way home, until a 2.5-ton Titan truck ran him over in the alley, he held that flower in his tiny hand. When I ran into the emergency room after getting the call, what my wife desperately clung to— like something that could not be lost—was that single flower.

“Would you like the carnations?” the woman said.

I asked her to wrap them up together with a bundle of baby’s breath and some China pinks.

“Give me ones in full bloom,” I said when I saw her picking out only ones that hadn’t opened.

“This is better, if you’re going to put them in a vase. Open ones will wilt quickly.”

“They aren’t going in a vase. It’s fine.”

I watched the woman’s hands—so pale they appeared almost blue—as she meticulously wrapped the flowers in thin, white paper.

“What if all the flowers die from the fallout?” she said as she passed them to me.

“Then I guess you won’t be able to sell flowers anymore,” I said.
My answer must have sounded rude. Until I settled the bill and left the shop, the owner maintained an expression of betrayal. With the flowers in hand, I waded through the bustling crowd of people and escaped that repulsive smell of fried food and boiled pork.

The woman worried about all the flowers on Earth dying from radioactive fallout, but she didn’t know about the cruelty of the single flower that bloomed without fail with the coming of spring. And it wasn’t just the flower—all things with life were cruel. That’s the thought that had engulfed me for the past year. A child had died and the world no longer showed a trace of him. Seasons changed as usual, and spring returned, and the sun was warm enough to feel like a mild fever. Outside the classroom window, pollen floated pale over the athletic field like dust from a cotton gin; and as I breathed the stinging air that pricked at the eyes—the spicy air mixed with tear gas that made one sneeze uncontrollably—I trembled at the thought of that tiresome season, the return of yet another May.

I walked out to the main road and waited for a taxi, but I saw nothing vacant in the busy stream of cars sweeping by. Even as I stepped one foot off the curb, trying to flag down one of the passing taxis, I debated whether or not I should call home. There wouldn’t have been anything to say even if I did. My wife had surely invited church people over for the memorial service, or whatever. They would already be at the house right about now.

“Please come home early today,” my wife had said to me as I walked out the apartment door. “The pastor from church said he was coming. The service starts at five, so don’t be late.” She spoke in a low, parched voice, avoiding my eyes, as usual. I raised my voice. “I told you not to do that.” She looked straight at me then, and I saw that her eyes were red.

“Why, exactly?” she said. “I just can’t understand why you’re so against it.”

“Let’s just treat it like any other day,” I said. “Service or whatever . . .

It’s all useless and foolish.”

“That’s not true,” she said. “I believe in our child’s eternal life and resurrection. As long as we don’t forget and keep praying.” Her voice was trembling, but my wife was looking at me defiantly.

“Call them,” I spat. “And tell them it’s been canceled. I won’t be home anyway.” I heard the heavy door slam behind me as I left. And as I descended the five long flights of stairs, from the very top to very bottom, I despaired, wondering how long these parched and interminable days must go on.

Eternal life. Resurrection. I couldn’t control my anger whenever I heard such words. I just could not accept how they tried to explain and console away the death of a two-year-old child. If eternal life and resurrection awaited after his death, how could he have been allowed to die in the first place? How on Earth could any kind of providence or meaning be hidden in the sudden death of an innocent child who had only just begun to see the world and explore it? But my wife persistently clung to those words. She had suddenly started going to church—which she had never attended before—more zealously than any fanatic, trying to overcome her pain through prayer and hymns. As for me, I could not believe that those things could really save my wife. And yet, I did not know of any other way for her to overcome her pain. For the past year, we’d tried hard not to touch each other, even in bed. As if the slightest contact of skin would transmit each other’s pain. With her body turned away, my wife often prayed by herself or wept quietly in the dark, and I would pretend not to notice.

“Take me to the Han River,” I said.