The Curious Tale of Mandogi's Ghost

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A central work of postwar Japanese fiction, The Curious Tale of Mandogi's Ghost incorporates Korean folk tales, ghost stories, and myth into a phenomenal depiction of epic tragedy. Written by a zainichi, a permanent resident of Japan who is not of Japanese ancestry, the novel inventively imagines a long-supressed event in Japanese colonial history-the Cheju Uprising of 1948-and captures in style and substance the predicament of Koreans living under Japanese rule.Kim Sok-pom tells the story of Mandogi, a young priest living on the island of Cheju-do. Mandogi becomes unwittingly involved in the Four-Three Incident of 1948, in which the South Korean government brutally suppressed an armed peasant uprising and purged Cheju-do of communist sympathizers. Although Mandogi is sentenced to death for his part in the riot, he survives (in a sense) to take revenge on his enemies and fully commit himself to the resistance. Mandogi's indeterminate, shapeshifting character i...