One Left: A Novel

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.

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One Left: A Novel

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.

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One Left: A Novel

One Left: A Novel

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780295747675
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Publication date: 09/15/2020
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 224
File size: 5 MB
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Kim Soom is the prize-winning author of six story collections and nine novels. One Left is her first novel translated into English. Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton have received awards and critical acclaim for their translations of Korean fiction, including Words of Farewell: Stories by Korean Women Writers.


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.
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).
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.
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).

What People are Saying About This

Ji-Yeon Yuh

"Reading One Left is a journey marked by grief, outrage, and the power of a voice carefully kept silent. The use of quotations from survivors—gleaned from oral histories, media reports, and all manner of sources—is at once surreal and solid. It grounds readers in documented history, while pulling them into the imagined solitary musings of a fictional survivor. This is a must read."

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History
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General & Miscellaneous Korean History
History
Asian History
Korean History
General & Miscellaneous Korean History

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