Mater 2-10

"Undoubtedly the most powerful voice in Asia today." — Kenzaburō Ōe, Nobel Laureate

Hwang Sok-yong, the most iconic contemporary Korean writer, completed From Station to Station at the age of eighty. Behind him, the author already carries the turbulent history of the Korean Peninsula—a history in which he was a direct participant. Looking back from a nearly autobiographical perspective, he narrates the eras of Japanese colonial rule, the American military regime, the division of the peninsula, the Korean War, and the subsequent bloody struggle for democracy in the South. The hope for independence and freedom drives the characters forward along a thorny, blood-soaked path, only for them to realize at the end of each historical period that the old yoke has simply been replaced by a new one.

One of the characters in the book remarks: "Korea is a country of so many vicissitudes that one year here is equivalent to ten years in another nation. Ten years correspond to an entire century. All of us have aged by several hundred years."

Indeed, when the reader closes the book, they are left with the profound sense that the entire history of East Asia has unfolded before their very eyes. It is as if they themselves were riding the train from Seoul to the capital of Manchuria, watching through the window as thousands of kilometers of land zipped by—land ruthlessly divided in the global struggle for supremacy.