One Left

Kim Soom

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A powerful tale of trauma and endurance that transformed a nation's understanding of Korean comfort women

During the Pacific War, more than 200,000 Korean girls were forced into sexual servitude for Japanese soldiers. They lived in horrific conditions in "comfort stations" across Japanese-occupied territories. Barely 10 percent survived to return to Korea, where they lived as social outcasts. Since then, self-declared comfort women have come forward only to have their testimonies and calls for compensation largely denied by the Japanese government.

Kim Soom tells the story of a woman who was kidnapped at the age of thirteen while gathering snails for her starving family. The horrors of her life as a sex slave follow her back to Korea, where she lives in isolation gripped by the fear that her past will be discovered. Yet, when she learns that the last known comfort woman is dying, she decides to tell her there will still be "one left" after her passing, and embarks on a painful journey.

One Left is a provocative, extensively researched novel constructed from the testimonies of dozens of comfort women. The first Korean novel devoted to this subject, it rekindled conversations about comfort women as well as the violent legacies of Japanese colonialism. This first-ever English translation recovers the overlooked and disavowed stories of Korea's most marginalized women.

Book Details

Publisher: University of Washington Press
Publish Date: Sep 15th, 2020
Pages: 224
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 8.40in - 5.40in - 0.60in - 0.65lb
EAN: 9780295747668
Categories: • Asia - Korea• Women's Studies• Wars & Conflicts - World War II - General

About the Author

Soom, Kim: - Kim Soom was born in 1974 in the city of Ulsan, South Kyŏngsang Province, and earned a degree in Social Welfare from Taejŏn University. She first appeared in print in 1997 and has since published six story collections and nine novels. She is the recipient of the Hŏ Kyun (2012), Hyundae munhak (2013), Daesan (2013), Yi Sang (2015), and Tongni-Mogwŏl (2017) literary prizes as well as the 2017 Special Reunification Prize. One Left is her first novel to appear in English translation.

Fulton, Bruce: - Bruce Fulton is the inaugural holder of the Young-Bin Min Chair in Korean Literature and Literary Translation, Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia. For their translation of One Left, Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton received an America PEN Heim Translation Grant, only the second such award for a Korean project. The Fultons have translated numerous volumes of modern Korean fiction, including the award-winning women's anthology Words of Farewell: Stories by Korean Women Writers (Seal Press, 1989), with Marshall R. Pihl, Land of Exile: Contemporary Korean Fiction, rev. and exp. ed. (M.E. Sharpe, 2007) Sunset: A Ch'ae Manshik Reader (Columbia University Press, 2017). Bruce Fulton is also co-translator (with Kim Chong-un) of A Ready-Made Life: Early Masters of Modern Korean Fiction (University of Hawai'i Press, 1998), co-editor (with Youngmin Kwon) of Modern Korean Fiction: An Anthology (Columbia University Press, 2005).

Fulton, Ju-Chan: - For their translation of One Left, Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton received an America PEN Heim Translation Grant, only the second such award for a Korean project. The Fultons have translated numerous volumes of modern Korean fiction, including the award-winning women's anthology Words of Farewell: Stories by Korean Women Writers (Seal Press, 1989) and, with Marshall R. Pihl, Land of Exile: Contemporary Korean Fiction, rev. and exp. ed. (M.E. Sharpe, 2007). The Fultons have received several awards and fellowships for their translations, including two National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowships and a residency at the Banff International Literary Translation Centre, the first ever awarded for translators from any Asian language.

Oh, Bonnie: - Bonnie Oh is Distinguished Professor of Korean Studies (retired) and former Director of Women's Studies at Georgetown University. She has authored, coauthored or edited several books including, with coeditor Margaret Stetz, Legacies of Comfort Women of WWII (Routledge, 2000).

Praise for this book

Through this story the author restores a past that has been erased by history and emphasizes the historical memory of what must never be repeated or forgotten.

-- "Daejon Ilbo"

The process of directly confronting the comfort women's hellish experiences is truly painful. However, because the novel is not a product of the author's imagination but in fact based on historical reality, we cannot turn our heads away. No, we must not.

-- "Donga Ilbo"

[An] exceptional novel... Soom captures the agonizing legacy of a dark chapter from the recent past.

-- "Booklist"

Though it is fiction, Kim Soom's novel is steeped in fact. One Left dignifies its subjects as an authentic memorial that makes an indelible mark on history.

-- "Foreword Reviews"

It may seem cliché to state that a novel is necessary. But this one really is.

-- "Asian Review of Books"

This is a painful, powerful literary indictment of the systemic subjugation of Korean comfortwomen, whose own #MeToo movement has yet to be fully reckoned with, decades after the fact.

-- "Bookmonger"

This Korean novel dramatizes, with indelible force, the utter dehumanization of women confined to authoritarian patriarchal imprisonment.

-- "The Arts Fuse"

[A] landmark -- the first novel dedicated to depicting comfort women, a topic that invokes as much weariness as it does outrage among today's public. Though a work of fiction, Kim Soom's story is based on exhaustive research and testimonies given by actual comfort women...By rendering this topic in the form of a novel, Kim injects a new sense of emotional urgency in recognizing these very real and hauntingly painful experiences.

-- "International Examiner"

[S]ynthesizes acute personal memories with painful history, straddling the line between fact and fiction. The result is a gut-wrenching narrative.

-- "Korean Herald"

All credit then, to author, translators and publisher for bringing this important book to us.

-- "London Korean Links"

In their even, experienced hands the translation avoids any temptation toward melodrama or obscenity, especially tricky and crucial given the raw, violent subject at hand... For English readers, one must note commensurate, masterful sensitivity to every word and nuance in the translation.

-- "Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature (TSWL)"

[T]he first Korean novel devoted exclusively to the subject of the "comfort women." In direct opposition to the Japanese government's efforts to suppress the memory of its sex slave camps, Kim chooses to deploy language like a scalpel, crafting her narrative from the testimonies of dozens of Korean survivors... Granting dignity to the few living survivors is a matter of urgency, as highlighted by the fictional construct of One Left.

-- "Ploughshares"

In this a telling of a tragic history from the perspective of one elderly former sex slave who sees herself as "the last one," Kim revitalizes energy for this irreconcilable injustice in a new generation of readers.

-- "Korean Quarterly"