A Gyopo Reads East III - ‘At Least We Can Apologize’ (II)

By Injae Lee

Korean cover of At Least We Can Apologize, published by Hyundae Munhak (Image via London Korea Links)

This article is the second half of a two-part article. The first half can be found here.

In this column, Injae Lee lays out his own experience reading a translated edition of a novel by Korean writer Lee Ki-ho. He points out how the dark humor utilized by Lee throughout the novel—which is written from the perspective of a mentally disabled individual—underscores the severe socio-economic challenges Korea is facing that have led many to deem the country “Hell Joseon.”

In the first part of this column, I discussed how At Least We Can Apologize carries strong undertones of the “Hell Joseon” narrative. Hell Joseon, as I explained, is a critique of how South Koera’s prosperity has stagnated, and the nation is facing social and economic despondency. Signs of this socio-economic malaise are everywhere in At Least We Can Apologize. At the start of the novel, a man is brought to the brutal institution and roomed with Si-bong and the narrator; rather than accept his situation, the man quickly leaks out word of the abuse inside of the institution to the outside world and gets the place shut down. As he cheerfully regains his freedom, he offers to let the two protagonists live with him, only for them to discover later that he is a homeless alcoholic. Other characters manifest the socio-economic suffering and inequality of Hell Joseon; after liberation, the two friends move in with Si-bong’s sister Si-yeon, who (although they fail to realize) is a prostitute barely making ends meet, while her alcoholic husband gambles away what little they have on horse races. And amidst this portrayal of people feeling the squeeze in modern Korea, Lee Ki-ho situates a stinging satire of noryeok culture. The narrator and Si-bong, concluding that they have no professionally useful skills, are encouraged by Si-yeon’s vice-ridden spouse into starting a “business.” The only service this business offers is making apologies for people, and indeed, the customers courted by Si-bong and the narrator—and the manner in which they conduct their business—show the moral bankruptcy of Korea. One child comes to his mother after stealing her money and spending the night out asking them to apologize in his place because “my mom’s such a bitch!” Another customer requests that the two friends apologize to his ex-wife and son for abandoning them when it emerged his child would have a deformity in his leg. Lee Ki-ho paints a bleak picture of the world that Si-bong and the narrator, with their limited cognitive ability, enter after leaving the institute. And the small details of the characters’ personal Hell Joseon are the paint strokes through which we understand the absurdity of modern-day Korea. Until 2013, adultery in South Korea was illegal, meaning that Si-yeon risked imprisonment everytime she performed sex work. Lee makes the ironic observation that the government would prosecute citizens for adultery instead of failing to provide fair living conditions for them. And of course, her spouse—the “man in the glasses”—is a drunkard gambler who lives off his wife’s professional adultery, a tragicomic spurning of the masculine ideal of Korean men as hard workers and morally-upright. Such observations underscore how in contemporary Korea, like Joseon before it, stiff sociocultural norms and values are obstructing the curing of real social ills. 

One of Lee Ki-ho’s deeper commentaries on Korean culture in At Least We Can Apologize prominently focuses on the outsized role of guilt in the national psyche. Guilt is deeply woven into Korean cultural behavior: people are often chided for not working hard enough, and failure to surpass certain cultural-economic benchmarks and adhere to social norms are internalized by individuals as their own failings, a common way that Hell Joseon continues to societally reproduce itself. And Lee characteristically satirizes the ridiculous extent to which guilt can go in Korean society through Si-bong and the narrator’s behavior. At the institute, Si-bong and the narrator never protested their innocence during beatings. Instead, they provided justification for such beatings, making up, purposefully committing, and apologizing for the “wrongs” of other patients. And when they begin their business of “apologizing” for others’ “wrongs,” the two also try to instill a sense of guilt in potential clients. One poor butcher is constantly pestered by Si-bong and the narrator, being told that he constantly perpetuates wrongs against his friend the fruit stand owner by eating too much banchan or drinking beer too quickly. Finally, the butcher, overwhelmed with a cultivated sense of guilt, flies into a rage and assaults the fruit stand owner so he has something to really apologize for. The ridiculous nature in which Si-bong and the narrator procure wrongs to be apologized for, and the even more outrageous nature in which they “apologize”—at one point breaking each others’ limbs to demonstrate their clients’ penance—underscores Lee’s argument that Korea is preposterously obsessed with guilt and hard work, to the point that it cannot move beyond said guilt and put it in the necessary work to solve social issues. At the novel’s end, the narrator and Si-yeon are walking back home with a neon-lit cross visible in the distance; the narrator muses that “we’d gotten pretty far, but that still, the cross, from someplace high up… was still looking down at us.” 

With these last words, Lee Ki-ho ends his novel with one last reminder of his message: as Korea has rapidly developed and globalised, it has failed to reconcile its social heritage and cultural traditions with Western culture and modern societal challenges. This challenge has left the country a Hell Joseon: Koreans may laugh when reading about the state of their country, but living in it will make them cry, because what good does apologizing do?