New Yorker Fiction Review #291: "Snowy Day" by Lee Chang-Dong

Review of the short story from the March 6, 2023 issue of The New Yorker...

This short story was originally published in 1987 in South Korea by Korean film director and writer Lee Chang-Dong. The story is loosely based on (or at least draws upon) the author's time in the South Korean military in the late 1970s.

In this tragic story, an unnamed woman comes to a small South Korean military outpost on the night of the first snow of the year to locate a Private named Kim Young-min. Why exactly, we do not know. Shortly after we are introduced to the young woman, we meet Private Kim and Corporal Choi who are on guard-duty at a nearby sentry outpost. Private Kim, we find out, is a former university student, a bit absent-minded, and poorly-suited to military life, having found himself at the butt of ridicule and punishment more than once. Corporal Choi, a working-class kid whose father was drunk and who worked in a bath house before his military service, seems to be the polar opposite of Private Kim. While Private Kim muses with elation on the first snow of the year, Corporal Choi verbally abuses him and puts him through kind of mental paces that seem to be specific only to superiors in the military (or so we've been given to understand from fiction, those of us who never served in the military). 

The pair is an awkward, uncomfortable match and at every turn we feel sorry for Private Kim, not merely because he is subject to mental abuse by his crass superior officer (who is his own age and probably younger), but because he is being forced to serve in the military at all. Though clearly intelligent, he is not made for military life, and his suffering will seem all too familiar to anyone who has ever found themselves stuck -- for any length of time -- in a living situation, a relationship, a job, or even a social gathering, in which one felt hopelessly, desperately, and even painfully out of place with nowhere run. For that reason alone, Private Kim is a sympathetic character, sympathetic to the point of being almost pitiful.

Through one of Private Kim's stories, we learn that he has recently met a girl that he likes, at a choir group gathering on base. Via some very innocent games that seem like something from another time, he and the girl interact and develop something like a crush on each other. We later learn, this is the young woman who has come to visit him at the base. 

That this story ends in tragedy for Private Kim is, I suppose, telegraphed to us in a number of ways, but it is still a shock the way it happens. Furthermore, for all of the ridicule and torment that he has suffered at the hands of Corporal Choi and others of his ilk, the way Private Kim meets his end only goes to show his inner strength and to prove the old saying: "Civility is not a sign of weakness."

What does the tragic story of Private Kim go to show us? Is this a story about class, wrapped up in a somewhat maudlin setup involving an overly-sensitive young man and a young woman whom he'll never get to love because his life gets cut short? Perhaps it is.

On one level, the struggle between Private Kim and Corporal Choi is the struggle within all of us; it is the struggle between the naïve, innocent child within -- the one that marvels at the first snow of the year -- and between the hardened, cynical adult who has been formed by an unforgiving world. In most cases -- in fact almost always -- like in "Snowy Day," the innocent child does not win out. Not only does the child within us not win out, but it is killed by the world and by our own need to survive. 

Perhaps if Private Kim had been able to harden himself to the ways of military life, he would have been able to survive and ultimately meet up with the girl. In the particular case of this story, and given the actual action, it is not so clear. But from a symbolic perspective, I believe the metaphor holds. 

Whether it is "right" or not to kill our inner child so that we can survive in the real world, that is precisely what happens. And then, perhaps, if we are lucky enough, we spend our lives trying to get that innocence and goodness back. That, however, is an opportunity that Private Kim will not get. 

Illustration by Anuj Shrestha