A Visual Guide to The Seed of Joy - Part 1

Permit me to indulge in a little bit of shameless self-promotion for my recently-published novel, The Seed of Joy. In the e-publishing world of today, without the backing of big publishers, it's expected of authors to be vocal advocates of their own work. What better way to do that than to highlight the factual underpinnings of the book? If you're presently reading the book, I hope these pictures will help you visualize the scenes that I wrote about. If you haven't bought the book, may the pictures pique your interest and nudge you toward checking it out.

The Seed of Joy is the story of two young people caught up in the chaos of rebellion. South Korea in 1979 was a country ruled by a dictator, Pak Chong Hui. After his assassination, a new, worse junta took his place. The nation's college students, especially those in the southern provinces, grew increasingly restive until the provincial capital Kwangju erupted into a violent clash known as the Kwangju Massacre. More than 2,000 students and average citizens were killed by government troops. Against this backdrop the two protagonists, Paul and Mi Jin, find meaning in their lives.

The places and events in The Seed of Joy are real. Much of the book is based on my own experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer in South Korea.

Here is what The Seed of Joy looks like:

The story begins and ends in Mokpo, South Cholla Province, South Korea. As described in the book, it’s “the black sheep of the family of South Korean cities: a snot-nosed brat of a place on the south-west corner of the Korean Peninsula, the subject of countless folk songs in which a woman weeps because her lover has been exiled there.”

Mokpo has a mountain: a 750-foot double peak called Mount Yudal against which the city seems backed into a corner. The other side of the mountain fronts onto the sea. If you take the winding steps up the main ridge to the top of the mountain, you’re alternately treated to spectacular views of the city on one side and the sea on the other.

The main character, Paul, is a US Peace Corps volunteer assigned to the Mokpo City Health Center. This is the building as it appeared in 1979. The health center has since been relocated to a much bigger, more modern building.

The Tuberculosis Control Office was primitive by today's standards, but good work was done there. The public health workers (all women) spent most of their days going out and about through the city looking for new patients and tracking down those who were not taking their meds; interruptions in the lengthy drug regimen could result in drug-resistant infections, a huge problem in Mokpo. I went out home-visiting whenever I could.

Mrs. An was one of my favorite co-workers. She served as the model for Mrs. Mun, Paul's main co-worker. "Mrs Mun spoke no English and had no interest in learning any. Her best attribute, the one that had smoothed Paul’s way at the health center from the beginning, was something like a sixth sense, an uncanny ability to penetrate his atrocious Korean grammar and limited vocabulary and understand almost anything he tried to say. She continually gauged his level of skill and chose her words and structured her sentences at a level that he could understand."

A "kwajang" is an administrative chief. At the Mokpo City Health Center, Kwajang-nim did little work that I could see. From the book: "Kwajang-nim was a solid, well-fed, self-satisfied man in his fifties. He was, in Paul’s opinion, peculiar and a little spoiled, but not a bad sort after all. He could be much worse. Paul had heard stories from his Peace Corps colleagues, most of them probably exaggerated, about the antics of other kwajangs at health centres across the country: some of them went on violent rampages at the slightest departure from routine. Others never came to work at all, and still others demanded sexual favours from their female employees. Kwajang-nim’s own eccentricities were not outlandish enough to inspire such stories. He did come to work every morning, though late and chauffeured by the ambulance driver. He raged occasionally about small matters, but Paul suspected he did so only to keep his workers from ignoring him. He seemed to take little notice of the women who worked for him. His most annoying traits, in Paul’s eyes, were his utter lack of interest in the work of public health and his assumption that Paul’s function at the health centre was to be his personal language tutor."

Apart from the main avenues that traveled the length and width of the city, Mokpo's streets were somewhat ramshackle by modern standards.

What face did I see in my mind's eye when I wrote about Mi Jin, the main female character in The Seed of Joy? This is a pretty good approximation. Her name is Lee Yo-won, and she played the female lead in the Korean film May 18. Interestingly, May 18, like the book, is about the Kwangju Uprising; I recommend it, even though the romantic parts are a bit sappy.

Come back to this blog again soon - there's more to come with more pictures from The Seed of Joy. Please leave a comment to tell me what you think.

And most importantly, buy the book! It's available from Amazon.