by Yun Ko-Eun
EPILOGUE
MANGROVE FOREST
Northbound: High atmospheric pressure, cherry blossoms, news of deaths
Southbound: Strikes, debris, stories
STORIES.
News of the deaths had moved fast over the past week. Though initially high, interest in the deaths would inevitably dissipate quickly, especially once all the coffins had been carried away.
Before the news hit, most people had never heard of Mui. People were riveted by the story of the enormous tsunami, and the trash island it carried in its wake, which had smashed into Mui and then scattered into millions of pieces.
The trash island, larger than when it left Korea’s southern coast, had departed from its expected course overnight and gone to Mui. People who’d been predicting the trash’s path now began to retrace its movements. But they didn’t see any human connection to the unexpected divergence. The only explanation was a powerful wind current formed by the Earth itself, an enormous flow that had pushed the trash island off kilter.
Diligent investigators discovered remnants of the sinkholes in the desert. The experts said the following: it looked like the tower’s construction had overtaxed the foundation of the red sand desert, weakening the desert’s stability. That, along with rain and drought, had caused the sinkholes. This was exactly the reaction the writer had expected. But thanks to the rage of an enormous tsunami, so massive that it had dwarfed the sinkholes, the writer wasn’t around to witness the reactions. He was one of more than five hundred casualties. His drowned body had been discovered in front of an ashtray on Mui’s dock. One last cigarette had likely divided life and death for him.
A surprisingly intact bundle of papers was found inside the writer’s bag. Junmo Hwang’s script caught people’s attention because of its setting: Mui in August. The only difference between the script and reality was that one only had a sinkhole, and the other a tsunami too. People couldn’t tell if the script was fiction or truth. A surprising record of survival and death, or a goosebump-inducing horror story.
•
The public interest focused on the Korean woman in the script, Yona Ko. A travel company employee, swept up and killed by disaster in a foreign land. When some of the woman’s belongings were discovered in the demolished resort, curiosity grew. Her body still hadn’t been found, but eager adventurers got hold of the script and began to look for its other characters.
At Jungle, increasing numbers of people called to ask about Yona. Most of the calls came from the press. Yona’s replacement was too busy to remember the hazy face of her predecessor, and she didn’t know how to answer these callers. The people on the other end of the line asked for personal information about Yona. But Yona’s replacement knew nothing about her personal life. Clearly, Yona Ko hated leaving footprints behind. Co-workers with anecdotes about Yona offered up what they remembered, and a few of the stories were made public. In one, Yona lost her pair and a half of shoes; in another, she was ousted from a project she’d dedicated herself to. There was also the story where she lost her way at a travel destination, and another where she decided to extend her stay. No one would have remembered these anecdotes if Yona had survived, and some of the stories weren’t even true.
Yona’s replacement dealt with the Mui project speedily, like it was an obituary for someone at risk of fading from memory. She accessed Yona’s emails and the plans for Yona’s most ambitious programme yet were delivered to Seoul. Of course, the itinerary needed a little bit of editing. The volcano, hot springs and original sinkhole were all completely devastated, so Jungle had to fill the schedule with new attractions. One such attraction was the red sand desert’s dismembered tower. Paul’s tower had broken in two during the tsunami, and now an enormous tree was anchored between the fragments, like a bird’s nest. A lot of strangler fig trees grew in the area. This one had wrapped its roots around the tower, creating a distressing scene. The tower was like the tree’s new host. Jungle plastered its promotional materials with the image of these two intertwined structures.
Although the picture of the tower and the tree was shared widely as a depiction of Mui’s disaster, disagreement bubbled up about whether Mui would tear the tower down or not. Mui received the disaster recovery funding that the manager had wanted, but no one could agree on the tower. Some said that it was a visual reminder of history, while others argued that it brought up painful memories and needed to be cleared away. Throughout several months of debates, the tower and tree continued an uneasy coexistence.
The new Jungle programme began before Mui was completely forgotten, while the two-piece tower still stood. Travellers arrived just as Mui entered the dry season, the best time to visit. They ventured to Mui for moral lessons and shock, volunteering and relief. On the third page of the information booklets they received, they saw the story and name of the travel programmer who’d met her end on a prior Jungle trip. Yona’s name was enough of an advertisement that it couldn’t be omitted. Yona’s former guide, Lou, had written tributes not only for Yona, but also for Junmo Hwang.
In early morning, cameras appeared in the mangrove forest before the sun did. The tenacity of these trees that had withstood an enormous tsunami filled the travellers with wonder. The homes that had been transported there no longer migrated with the seasons and took root permanently in the forest. Someone carrying an enormous book sat down in front of one of the houses on stilts. The book shielded his face; the name Yona Ko was written on its cover. Travellers could walk behind this seated figure to see the contents of the book. A large picture of a camera covered one of the open pages, with a dollar sign on the other. Some tourists gave the man a dollar to take pictures of him.
Luck was one of the survivors. Because he’d been travelling, he had avoided the first Sunday of August. But when he returned to Mui and learned that Yona hadn’t made it safely back to Korea, he collapsed. Tourists sometimes recognised Luck and came up to him in the hope of hearing his story. They wanted to take photos. Some pointed cameras or recorders without asking permission.
‘The hem of a woman’s skirt was fluttering in the wind. A red skirt. As she climbed the tower, each window she passed turned into a flickering traffic light. Once she reached the middle of the tower, the windows disappeared, and so did the lights. Dizziness overpowered me. That was our beginning.’
Jungmo Hwang had written these lines for Luck. Perhaps the tourists hoped that Luck would recite them, but he didn’t say anything. Despite his silence, the visitors wouldn’t leave Luck alone. They’d seen the photos recovered from Yona’s camera. One had been an unfocused portrait of Luck, another a picture of Luck and Yona reclining in a boat. Those two photos gave birth to the suspicion that Junmo Hwang’s screenplay wasn’t fiction. Luck couldn’t stand to look at them.
‘What kind of relationship did you have with Yona Ko?’ people asked him. ‘Were you lovers?’
‘When was the last time you saw Yona before the incident?’
‘Do you know where Yona’s body might be?’
‘According to that screenplay, you were Yona Ko’s boyfriend, right?’
They attacked him with questions, rudely and transparently. But gradually, the questions became more infrequent, and increasingly vague. Eventually, when a group of tourists asked:
‘Did you know Yona Ko?’
Luck simply answered no, and turned away.
Luck stood with his back to the group. Nothing but lies could save him.
He remembered the last words he’d heard Yona say. ‘The crocodiles can hide in the forest. The mangrove forest.’
This sanctuary was now the only place for Yona to hide in death.
Luck walked towards the ocean, its waves creeping closer to land. Debris carried by the waves from Yona’s mother country lay strewn across the beach. Luck could read some of the words on the scattered wrappers and bits of plastic, and couldn’t read others. Next he headed deep into the mangrove forest. So deep that no one could follow him. Down a road so narrow that no
camera shutters, no newspapers, no news of any kind could chase after him. As he walked, unseeable stars in Luck’s head flickered on and off and on.
Behind him came the sound of the tower falling. The tree’s roots had been wavering like a pendulum in the wind; if not for the instability, perhaps the tower and tree would have remained conjoined forever. But for safety reasons, it was decided to remove the tree from the tower, and then the tower, too, was plucked out of the earth. People had spent months arguing about the odd structure, but the tree was removed in less than ten minutes. As the tower and the tree came apart, several bodies that had been stuck between them fell like ripe fruits. Yona wasn’t among them.
AFTERWORD
SOMETIMES, I IMAGINE SCENES so euphoric that they grow absurd. Like riding a crowded subway and being pushed into someone reading a book that I wrote; out of joy, I’d scramble away. Or seeing a passage I’ve written, one that I’ve forgotten, carefully hung on the wall in some family home. Maybe that will be the start of another novel, the mystery of how a forgotten passage traveled to an unknown wall. Other times, I envision people ordering my books as Christmas presents, although I don’t know if this novel really brings Christmas to mind. I even contemplate scenarios in which my books are flying off the shelves with such speed—one every thirty seconds—that the publisher shouts in frustration, “Can’t we just stop this madness?”
Now one of these absurdities has come to pass. The Disaster Tourist is my first novel to be translated into English, and I find myself writing its afterword. For years, I daydreamed that my novels might be translated into another language, showcased on the shelves of unfamiliar bookstores. I invented some distant person who might, by chance, pick up one of my stories, marking the beginning to an unforeseen voyage.
I am grateful to Lizzie Buehler. If she hadn’t, by chance, picked up and translated this book, it might not have left Korea. The many happenstances that brought us together are the kinds of things that only come around once, if at all. This moment, that moment: perfectly aligned temporal paths crossed. If Lizzie and The Disaster Tourist hadn’t exchanged cosmic winks with one another, I wouldn’t be writing these words, and you wouldn’t be reading them. Without Barbara Zitwer’s devotion, without the drive of Counterpoint Press, this book wouldn’t exist in English; not now, not ever. And if you, the reader, hadn’t picked this book, the narrative would be different still. When I think of the trajectory created by these converging choices, I hallucinate a constellation of coincidences floating in front of my eyes. I’m a speck of dust, you’re a speck of dust; we float around in space until we meet by chance and pull each other closer. And then we swirl together, growing hotter and hotter, until we combine into a single sun.
Summer 2020. From that tranquil, single sun.
Yun Ko-eun
© Lee Sang-min
YUN KO-EUN is the author of several novels and short story collections published in South Korea. She is a recipient of the Hankyoreh Literary Award, the Lee Hyoseok Literary Award, and the Kim Yong-ik Literary Award. The Disaster Tourist is her first book to be published in English. She lives in Seoul, South Korea.
© Benjamin Lindquist
LIZZIE BUEHLER studied comparative literature at Princeton University and holds an MFA in literary translation from the University of Iowa. Her writing and short translations appear in Asymptote, Azalea Magazine, Litro, The Massachusetts Review, and Translation Review.