Graphic Nonfiction by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim

Translated from the Korean by Janet Hong

Before and during World War II, the nation of Japan occupied Korea. The novel Grass tells the true story of a Korean girl's life during that era, in her own words. In the chapter that appears here, Lee Ok-sun's parents give her away for adoption, hoping she will have enough to eat and a chance to attend school.

However, later in the book, it turns out that Ok-sun's "new parents" treat her more like a servant than a daughter, and she doesn't get to go to school after all. Still later, the Japanese army kidnaps Ok-sun while she is out running an errand. Ok-sun is taken to a Japanese army base in occupied China, where she is forced into sexual slavery and must serve as a "comfort woman."

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Definitions

Ok-sun

Name of the narrator, the oldest daughter in the family.

Okja

Ok-sun's sister.

Aigo

"Oh, dear" or "Oh, my gosh" in Korean, pronounced something like "a-eeko." (See the Context tab for details.)

First published in English in Words Without Borders' February 2019 issue: International Graphic Novels: Volume XIII.

for Grass
https://wwb-campus.org/literature/grass

Keum Suk Gendry-Kim

Keum Suk Gendry-Kim was born in the town of Goheung in Jeolla Province, a town famous for its beautiful mountains and sea. Her graphic novels include The Song of My Father, Jiseul, and Kogaeyi, which have been translated and published in France. She also wrote and illustrated The Baby Hanyeo Okrang Goes to Dokdo, A Day with My Grandpa, and My Mother Kang Geumsun. She received the Best Creative Manhwa Award for her short manhwa “Sister Mija,” about a comfort woman. She has had exhibitions of her works in Korea and Europe since 2012, and her graphic novels and manhwa deal mostly with people who are outcasts or marginalized.

Image: Self-portrait by the author

Janet Hong (translator)

Janet Hong is a writer and translator based in Vancouver, Canada. Her translation of Han Yujoo's The Impossible Fairy Tale was a finalist for both the 2018 PEN Translation Prize and the 2018 National Translation Award. She has also translated Ha Seong-nan's Flowers of Mold and Ancco's Bad Friends.

Photo credit: Laura Pak

Links available online only

Meet Keum Suk Gendry-Kim

Watch a Korean-language video interview (subtitled in English) with Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, where the author discusses her beginnings as a graphic novelist, why she loves to illustrate by hand, and the challenges she encountered while researching and writing Grass.

Then, read an extended version of the interview, where she explains the significance of the title Grass:

Grass symbolizes the powerless, common people in history, who keep rising up despite the forces that beat them down. [. . .] I did not want to tell the story of women as flowers who must be “pure” and chaste and be tended to so that they might stay beautiful; I wanted to tell of women who rose and survived, despite all the agony and hardships.

Speak Korean? Watch a Korean-language interview (subtitled in Korean) with Kim.

Meet Translator Janet Hong

“I gravitate toward stories that feature broken, imperfect people, the unremarkable, the odd, the neglected, the marginalized and the disenfranchised.” Get to know Janet Hong in an interview with the Global and Mail, or read the Twitter feed of the self-described "translator, writer, mama bear."

Hear the Names

Listen to pronunciations of the Korean terms in this story, read aloud by WWB Campus graduate intern Olan Munson.

Words Without Borders Campus · Grass Audio

(Listen on Soundcloud.)

Meet the Subject—and Other Women Survivors

As a teenager, Lee Ok-sun (the narrator of "Grass") was kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese army.

Listen to a four-minute radio story featuring "Granny Ok-sun"—as she is now called—commenting on a California statue commemorating victims and survivors like herself.

Then, in the Emmy-nominated short documentary below, you'll see how Granny Ok-sun and other former "comfort women" responded to a recent deal between Japan and South Korea. (Trigger warning—describes sexual violence.)

And look through a photo essay that also includes photographs of Ok-sun: "70 years on, the 'comfort women' speak out so the truth won't die," published by Amnesty International. Photographer Paula Allen comments:

"I photographed them because they wanted me to. They were presenting evidence, remembering, both their voices and bodies speaking of the truth."

(The essay includes descriptions of sexual violence.)

Finally, look at a map of the so-called "comfort stations" where girls and women were imprisoned and raped.

A Scholar's Notes

Read what Brother Anthony of Taizé writes about "Grass" in his introduction to Korean literature:

In the section “Leaving Home,” the graphic oral history Grass opens with a rural family planning the adoption of the oldest daughter by another set of parents. In earlier times, farming families usually had many children: six, eight, or even more. Poverty often forced such families to put up children for adoption. Many Korean babies were sent abroad to affluent countries, but in Grass, the little girl will be living with a childless family in a large town. She thinks she will finally be able to go to school, but the drawings and text portend something much darker.

More of the Story

Cover of the graphic novel "Grass."

Find out why one reviewer of Grass believes it "should be read by the governments of all nations." The review, which includes pages from a later chapter of Grass that depicts Ok-sun's life as a forced laborer, appears in Pop Matters.

Then, read another excerpt of Grass on Korean Literature Now (Content warning: depicts sexual slavery).

Reading Oral Histories

Learn why oral histories matter and how to interpret them with these online resources:

Understanding oral history: Why do it? (PDF) from Baylor University's Institute for Oral History
Interpreting Oral History from History Matters, a joint project from George Mason University and the City University of New York.

A Korean Family under Japanese Occupation

Ok-sun's mother gives her up for adoption, saying, "At least you won't go hungry now." Why was life so hard for Ok-sun's family? One reason lies in the Japanese occupation of Korea, which lasted from 1910 to 1945.

Get the facts about the occupation from a Lumen Learning list of "key takeaways," or read an article from history.com.

The history.com article comments that the Japanese "view of Korea as backwards and primitive compared to Japan made it into textbooks, museums and even Koreans’ own perceptions of themselves." You'll see some of this attitude in the Japanese postcards of occupied Korea below. Yet, these postcards also give a sense of what life was like for families like Ok-sun's:

The Work Children. Publisher: Hinode shoko (Firm : Keijo, Chosen.) NYPL Digital Archive.

Background on Korea

New to learning about Korea?

Read a country profile from the Korean Ministry of Culture.

For a "lighting-fast compression of Korean history" beginning in ancient times, watch the video below. (Modern history begins around 3:40.)

Finally, take a look at a detailed map of South Korea and its neighbors, including Japan.

Links available online only

More from Keum Suk Gendry-Kim

Read the rest of Keum Suk Gendry-Kim's Grass.

Then, read more work from Keum Suk Gendry-Kim (translated by Janet Hong), including:

The Waiting, a graphic novel about a family separated by the Korean war, inspired by Gendry-Kim’s family history.
The Naked Tree, a graphic fiction adaptation of a classic Korean novel about a young woman during the Korean War.
Dog Days, her first work set in the 21st century, which follows a couple after they adopt a puppy and move to the countryside.

Know Korean? Read Keum Suk Gendry-Kim's book Alexandra Kim, Daughter of Siberia: Joseon’s First Bolshevik Revolutionary Who Dreamt of an Equal World for All. (Title translation from WWB Campus graduate intern Olan Munson.)

More about Translator Janet Hong

Find out how Janet Hong became a translator in this interview, where she comments, "It never even occurred to me that one could do [translation] as a profession."
Learn how Hong approaches graphic novel translation in the Chicago Review of Books
Finally, watch Hong read her translator’s note from The Impossible Fairytale, a "metafictional tale of murder."

More Korean Women Writers

Left to right: Lee Hyemi, Oh Jung-hee, and Koo Byung-mo. Photo of Oh Jung-hee courtesy of Korean Literature Now, the world's only free English-language quarterly of Korean literature.

For many more Korean women writers, see this list from smokingtigers.com.

Names in Korean

In "Grass," the narrator's name is Lee Ok-sun, and her mother calls her "Ok-sun." That's because in Korean, the second name is the given name. The first name is the family name—what would be a "last name" in English.

Learn more about Korean names in this article, which also shows you how to choose your own Korean name.

Today, Ok-sun is often called by the honorific "Granny," or Halmeoni Ok-sun. Learn more about Korean honorifics and family names in this blog post from lingodeer.com.

More Girls' Voices from Korea

Garden of My Childhood, also published on this site, is written from the point of view of a girl whose family of "wandering refugees" has fled the Korean War
Ascending Scales, a contemporary short story about a girl growing up in a family without much money
The fantastical film Okja is also centered around a Korean girl's difficult experiences (with a genetically-engineered super-pig.) Read a Vulture article about the film's "translation joke for Korean Americans" and watch the trailer.

Another Graphic Novel from Korea

The demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea. Photo by Driedprawns, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Read an excerpt of a graphic novel that tells the story of a different kind of Korean War refugee: a young communist.

Survivors, Statues, and Monuments

Watch the trailer for the 2019 documentary “My name is Kim Bok-dong,” about another woman survivor of the so-called "comfort stations," now a leading activist.

Then, look through pictures telling the previously "untold stories" of woman survivors from Indonesia.

Next, read about the controversy surrounding statues commemorating victims and survivors of slavery under the Japanese during World War II:

From Reuters, "'Comfort woman' statue pulled from Japan exhibit after threats"
From Artforum, "Aichi Triennale Will Reopen Exhibition with 'Comfort Woman' Statue" about the restoration of the same statue
From NPR, an article about "comfort woman" statues on Korean buses

Finally, read a BBC article asking "Why are so statues so powerful?" in the context of Black Lives Matter protests. Author Kelly Grovier writes, "From their earliest inception, statues were less about the individuals they depict than about how we see ourselves."

The "Lai Dai Han" of Vietnam**

St. James's Square, Mother & Child by Rebecca Hawkins. AndyScott / CC BY-SA

Read about the Lai Dai Han, children who were conceived as a result of rape by South Korean soldiers during the Vietnam War, in a report from the BBC.

**For Teaching Idea 1

Creating Oral Histories**

Interested in creating your own oral history? For guidance, you can use the following resources:

Judith Moyer's step-by-step guide
Six Rules for Creating an Oral History, from lithub.com
Tips and Tools for Oral History, from the Writing Center at the University of North Carolina
Resources recommended by NPR's StoryCorps

**For Teaching Idea 1

More Oral Histories**

On WWB Campus:

The Wondrous Deer of the Eternal Hunt, an account from the wife of a man who was sent to the Soviet gulag as a teenager.
An Interview with Wu Wenjian, a man's story of his participation in the Tiananmen Square uprising.

Elsewhere:

Edie: American Girl, by Jean Stein, a multi-perspective oral history of the life of Pop icon Edie Sedgewick
Audio oral histories of trauma from StoryCorps, a National Public Radio program.

**For Teaching Idea 1

More Graphic Literature**

On WWB Campus:

Slaves of Moscow, "graphic reportage," or illustrated journalism, about a contemporary slavery case
An Iranian Metamorphosis, a graphic memoir of a man's Kafkaesque experiences of interrogation and imprisonment
Crocodiles Are Everywhere, graphic fiction about women's experiences with sexual and street harassment in France, discussed in this blog post

Panel from "Heat Wave," by Juliette Boutant and Thomas Mathieu. Translated by Edward Gauvin, published in February 2020 issue of Words Without Borders as part of a series entitled "Crocodiles Are Everywhere."

Elsewhere: Maus, by Art Spiegelman, graphic oral history of the author's father's experience of the Holocaust

**For Teaching Idea 1

More Children on Their Own**

Literature on WWB Campus:

Salar Abdoh, author of "Hunger," at age 15 and today.

Hunger, a personal essay about coming to punk-era L.A. from Iran as a teenager
Sentimental Education, a story about a Japanese girl abandoned by her mother as an infant
Grandmother's Little Hut, a play about two runaway children in Stalin-era Russia
The Gringo Champion, a story about a young migrant worker on the U.S.–Mexico border (includes violence and explicit language)
Injeolmi Rice Cakes: a Korean poem in which the author remembers what it was like to be alone at home, missing his mother
Wizard Bakery: a contemporary Korean story in which a boy finds a new home in an unlikely place

Literature Elsewhere:

Fiction:

Homecoming, by Cynthia Voigt (YA)
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë

Nonfiction on Family Separation in Korea and the U.S.:

A television show that reunited thousands of families separated during WWII and the Korean War, including Ok-sun's own.

The Southern Poverty Law Center's timeline of the Trump administration's family separation policy, a New York Times article about children's daily lives in detention entitled Cleaning Toilets, Following Rules
3-minute Associated Press video about the risk of children who were taken from their families being permanently adopted away
Children's first-person accounts of family separation gathered by the Atlantic and Think Progress (may be triggering for some students)
A Vox article on a new wave of separations in summer 2020; the choice faced by families in detention—"Separate or risk Covid-19"—is somewhat similar to the choice facing the Lees in "Grass"
The book Tell Me How it Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions, by Valeria Luiselli.

**For Teaching Idea 2

More about Life During Wartime

For more stories about living through a war, check out Jane Ciabattari's list "Five Books about the Civilian Experience of War" on Literary Hub.

Reading Grade Level(s): 3, 4, 5 and up

Key Points
1. Oral History, Illustrated
2. Children Alone

To access these Teaching Ideas, please register or login to WWB-Campus.

Grass

1 panel fills the page.

(A man in the foreground, his back turned, looks at a one-story house in the background. The house has a thatched roof and a stone wall surrounding it.)
[Narration: One day a stranger came to our house.]

5 panels organized into 2 panels in the top row, 2 panels in the middle row, and 1 panel in the bottom row.

Panel 1
(Five shoes—three smaller slippers and a pair of larger, dark shoes—are set beside a wooden wall.)
[Narration: He looked like he was in his mid-forties.]

Panel 2
(A stone wall runs along the bottom of the frame. On the side of the wall closer to the viewer, Mom walks behind the stranger, her head bowed, as he glances back at her. Dad stands on the other side of the wall, his back turned.)
[Narration: My dad didn't seem too happy.]
Mom: Goodbye then.
Stranger: Alrighty, I’ll be in touch.

Panel 3
(Close-up of Dad’s face, cutting off one eye and his mouth, in the bottom left corner. Mom stands behind him in the background, shadows on her face.)
[Narration: My mom was walking on eggshells.]
Mom: Isn’t it a good thing she won’t starve?

Panel 4
(Ok-sun, her long hair in a braid, smiles at her younger sister, Okja, in the foreground. Mom stands a few steps from Dad in the background, their backs turned.)
[Narration: I had no idea what they were talking about . . . ]
Okja: Sis, can you make a nose for the snowman?
Ok-sun: Sure.

Panel 5
(On the left side of the panel, Ok-sun, Okja, and Okhui smile at each other while making the snowman. On the right side of the panel, Mom reaches an arm out to Dad, their backs turned.)
[Narration: Since I was busy looking after my sisters.]
Ok-sun: First you make the eyes. Then the nose. And then the arms.
Ohui: Gee, there’s nothing you can’t do!
Mom (to Dad): It’ll be better for her.

6 panels organized into 3 panels in the top row, 2 panels in the middle row, and 1 panel in the bottom row.

Panel 1
(Mom, viewed from the chest up, wearing a hanbok, speaks with snow swirling around her.)
Mom: Ok-sun.

Panel 2
(Ok-sun looks over her shoulder, snow swirling around her as well.)
Mom (out of frame): Come in here for a minute.

Panel 3
(View of Ok-sun walking, her back turned, as snow falls.)

Panel 4
(Exterior of the house, showing wooden walls and the thatched roof. A speech bubble extends from the house.)
Mom (from inside the house): How’d you like to be adopted?

Panel 5
(Ok-sun and Mom sit on the floor across from each other, Ok-sun looking up at Mom in profile and Mom facing the viewer. The walls of the house, and Dad, with his back toward Ok-sun and Mom, are visible in the background.)
Ok-sun: Adopted?
Mom: There’s an udon shop in Busan.

Panel 6
(Ok-sun and Mom sit on the floor across from each other, Ok-sun now facing the viewer and Mom in profile. They are drawn in outline, with no shading in their clothes or hair. Dad sits facing away, in shadow, and the background of the house has faded to shadows.)
Mom: The owners don’t have any children, and they’d like to adopt you. What do you think?

5 panels, organized into 2 panels in the top row, 2 panels in the middle row, and 1 panel in the bottom row.

Panel 1
(Flashback to playing outside: Ok-sun and Okja outside in the snow, both watching in distress as the head falls off their snowman.)
Mom (out of frame): They’ll even send you to school.
{THUD}
Ok-sun: Oh no!

Panel 2
(Ok-sun glares, hands on her hips, while Okja wipes at her nose. The snowman has collapsed in front of them, and snow continues to fall.)
Mom (out of frame): They have plenty of food, so you can eat every day.
Ok-sun: Okja! Because of you, we gotta do the face again!
Okja: I was trying to make another arm!

Panel 3
(Back in the house: The back of Mom’s head is in the foreground. In the background, Ok-sun, facing the viewer, looks up at Mom.)
Ok-sun: They’ll really send me to school? You mean I’ll finally get an education?
Mom: Yup.

Panel 4
(Dad in profile, bent forward, his face obscured by shadows. The background is dark around him.)
Ok-sun (out of frame): Fine, I’ll go.

Panel 5
(Image of tree branches, with a speech bubble among them.)
Ok-sun (out of frame): Wow! I can’t believe I’ll be going to school!

5 panels organized into 2 panels in the top row, 1 panel in the middle row, and 2 panels in the bottom row.

Panel 1
(Ok-sun’s head and shoulders in the foreground, facing the viewer. Dad’s legs, and the floors and walls of the house, are visible in the background as he pulls the door shut.)
{YANK}
Ok-sun: But can I come home if I want?

Panel 2
(Close-up of Mom’s face, looking concerned. The background is entirely white.)
Mom (out of frame): They have plenty of food, so you can eat every day.
Ok-sun (out of frame): This isn’t goodbye forever, right?

Panel 3
(Dad sits on the floor, facing the viewer, holding a long pipe in his mouth. The door and floorboards are visible in the background.)
Mom (out of frame): You come back any time. But don't waste this opportunity. Try to stick with it. Study hard and listen to your elders.

Panel 4
(Closer view of Dad as he lights his pipe. The background is entirely white.)
Ok-sun (out of frame): Am I dreaming?

Panel 5
(Ok-sun fills the frame, running toward the viewer with arms outstretched to the walls. Mom watches, concerned, in the background.)
Ok-sun: Papa! I'm finally gonna go to school! Okhui, Okja. I'm gonna go to school!

1 panel fills the page.

(View of a road lined by trees, with small houses in the background, as snow falls and forms piles across the landscape.)
[Narration: I never should have said yes.]

1 panel fills the page.

(View of the same snowy landscape, a few steps forward on the road.)
[Narration: I had no idea I wouldn't be coming back. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd be saying goodbye forever.]

3 panels organized into 1 panel in the top row, 1 panel in the middle row, and 1 panel in the bottom row.

Panel 1
(Mom and Ok-sun speak to the stranger. A dark sky and tall piles of snow are in the background.)
[Narration: Early in the morning, while everyone was still sleeping . . . ]
Mom: Please look after our Ok-sun.
Stranger: Humph, I told you there’s no need to worry.

Panel 2
(The stranger walks forward in the foreground. In the background, Ok-sun trails behind and looks back at Mom, who stands in front of their house with the stone wall surrounding it. Piles of snow fill the background.)
[Narration: I left home.]
Mom (waving): Take care of yourself.

Panel 3
(Closer view of Mom in profile in the foreground, while Ok-sun and the stranger walk into the snowy background, their backs turned.)
[Narration: If I looked back . . . ]
Mom (waving, leaning toward Ok-sun): Make sure you listen to your elders.
Ok-sun (waving above her head, not looking back): Don't worry about me. I'm your daughter, ain't I? Ma, you just worry about yourself.

6 panels organized into 2 panels in the top row, 2 panels in the middle row, and 2 panels in the bottom row.

Panel 1
(Shadowy sketch of Dad rushing through a doorway in pajamas.]
{CRASH}
[Narration: I was scared I would start crying,]

Panel 2
(Shadowy sketch of Dad standing in the doorway, eyes downcast.)
[Narration: So I didn’t look back.]

Panel 3
(Shadowy sketch of Mom crouching on the ground, looking distressed.)
Mom: Aigo! What mother's heart doesn't break to send her child away?

Panel 4
(Close-up of Mom’s legs, with a speech bubble below them.)
Mom: Ok-sun!

Panel 5
(Close-up of Mom’s legs, running through the snow.)

Panel 6
(View of Mom running, with snow on the ground beneath her and clouds of breath leaving her mouth.)
{HUFF HUFF}

1 panel fills the page.

(Close-up of Mom’s head and shoulders in profile in the foreground, a tear falling down her cheek, with trees and snow filling the background.)
Mom: Ok-sun, my baby girl. At least you won't go hungry now.

1 panel fills the page.

(Wide view of landscape extending from the previous panel, with woods on the right and a snowy hill in the middle of the page. The small figures of Ok-sun and the stranger, their backs turned, are visible on the hill.)

Related Reading

The Wondrous Deer of the Eternal Hunt - Nonfiction

Injeolmi Rice Cakes - Poetry

An Iranian Metamorphosis - Graphic Nonfiction