Less than a year since the end of the Korean War, the peninsula is about to be thrown into chaos again as another bombshell targets it. This bombshell, though, is of the blonde variety: Marilyn Monroe is scheduled to visit for a four-day tour of U.S. military bases in South Korea. While nearly all the men in the story predictably lose their minds whenever she appears, the protagonist – a woman named Alice J. Kim, who is tasked with being Marilyn’s interpreter – struggles with a different kind of insanity.
Alice works for the U.S. military as a translator in the Public Information Office, a position that might at first seem enviable for the stability it offers in the uncertainty of post-war Korea. But she finds herself caught between worlds, haunted by a wartime past that turned her hair prematurely gray and marked her as broken. She tries to forget this past and put it behind her, like the women in the dance hall who have survived the war and are determined to live their lives as boldly as possible. But she cannot escape its grip. Indeed, the very first words she utters in the novel are “I go to work thinking of death,” setting the tone for the rest of the story.
Alice’s encounter with Marilyn and her experience as the star’s interpreter serve as a frame for reminiscences and flashbacks to the war and the years leading up to it. Then, as now, she is caught between worlds, between a relationship with a married writer and a Japanese-American missionary who teaches her English and gives her a new name. And yet perhaps the only man who ever truly understood her – an artist like her who also studied in Japan and was creating propaganda with her in North Korea before the war – is the one man whose affections she rejects.
As the story unfolds, we learn more about Alice’s past and her experiences during the war. She fled the North during the Hungnam Evacuation, but cannot escape the memories of the horror she endured. Back in the present, Alice strives to maintain her composure at Marilyn’s side, buffeted by the crush of humanity wherever the star goes. Behind the scenes, though, when Marilyn has left the stage and the crowds of clamoring soldiers behind, Alice sees a woman tired and exhausted, who is fated to “love all men while not receiving a single man’s love,” sharing Alice’s need for the sweet embrace of oblivion. Marilyn will survive her whirlwind tour of Korea, and will later say that it was the first time she felt like a real star, but will Alice survive the memories of her past, memories of fateful decisions that plunged her life into tragedy?
Lee’s prose flows smoothly, and the desperateness of the story as it hurtles toward its conclusion keeps the pages turning. Many novels have of course dealt with the horror of the Korean War previously; “Marylin and Me” (the title of the U.S. edition: “The Starlet and the Spy”) avoids any discussion of ideology or the grander issues of history, instead choosing to focus with intensity on one woman whose life was shattered during that horrible time. Yet within her pain and suffering there is perhaps a glimmer of hope, shining like the smile of the most beautiful woman in the world.
A Timeless Guidebook on Meditation
‘A Bird in Flight Leaves No Trace: The Zen Teachings of Huangbo with a Modern Commentary’
By Seon Master Subul, Translated by Robert E. Buswell, Jr. and Seong-Uk Kim, 360 pages, $29.95, Massachusetts: Wisdom Publications [2019]
This volume offers a multied text: a ninth-century Chinese treatise by the Chan Master Huangbo Xiyun interwoven with modern commentary from Korean Seon Master Subul, all of which has now been translated into English for the first time.
Chan or Seon Buddhism, more commonly known in the West as Zen Buddhism, focuses primarily on meditation as a means to enlightenment, as opposed to doctrinal schools, which draw from the sutras. Seon Master Subul has spent many years leading others in the practice of ganhwa Seon, or “the Seon of examining meditative topics.” The idea is that a practitioner concentrates on a key topic that eventually gives rise to a sense of questioning or doubt. Our usual ways of thinking will only lead us into a dead end if we apply them in an attempt to dispel this doubt. Instead, the practitioner must abandon these old ways of thinking in order to experience a breakthrough. However, after having helped many lay practitioners to arrive at such an experience through the practice of ganhwa Seon, Master Subul discovered that they often yearned for more; beyond the breakthrough, they wanted to deepen their spiritual experience even further.
Master Subul unfailingly tells such students that there is, in fact, nothing more to achieve, and that chasing after new experiences is only another form of attachment. His commentary on Huangbo Xiyun’s “The Essentials of Transmitting the Mind-Dharma” was written as a guidebook on what to do after achieving that initial breakthrough. This ancient text, which is written in the form of a series of exchanges between Pei Xiu, a Confucian scholar who also practiced Buddhism, and Master Huangbo, proves surprisingly modern, as the questions that Pei Xiu asked Master Huangbo were the same questions that Master Subul receives from his students.
While this book was originally intended for practitioners who have already achieved their breakthrough and will most benefit such readers, it will also be of interest to any student of Buddhism.
Cooking channels are especially popular on YouTube these days, with people from countries and cultures around the world sharing their culinary experiences and knowledge. This is one such channel, featuring a variety of recipes sorted into playlists such as “Main Dish,” “Appetizers,” “Desserts” and “Korean Food.” The last playlist in particular will be of interest to those looking for some quick and easy takes on Korean cooking.
Most of the videos are only a few minutes long, making them ideal for watching during quick breaks (or even binge-watching, if that’s your thing). The top-down camerawork and captions make the recipes easy to follow, and the ingredients and instructions are reprinted below each video for those who want to follow along at a slower pace. Your waistline would suffer if you were to try everything they have on offer, but you might also be inspired to try something new or incorporate a little Korean into your own cooking.
한국국제교류재단
