Beasts of a Little Land is the debut novel of Korean-American author Juhea Kim, and the first historical novel set in Korea that I’ve read. Set in the first half of the 20th century during the decades of Japanese Occupation (1910-1945), the saga begins with a striking prologue in 1917. A starving hunter saves the life of a Japanese officer when a tiger attacks, in a setting remote from the contemporary images of South Korea that we see on TV.
The sky was white and the earth was black, like at the beginning of time before the first sunrise. Clouds left their realm and descended so low that they seemed to touch the ground. Giant pines loomed in and out of the ether. Nothing stirred or made a sound.
Hardly distinguishable in this obscure world, a speck of a man was walking alone. A hunter. Crouching over a raw paw print, still soft and almost warm, he sniffed in the direction of his prey. The sharp smell of snow filled his lungs, and he smiled. Soon, a light dusting would make it easier for him to track the animal—a large leopard, he guessed from the size of the print. (p.1)
Nam KyungSoo had set out hoping to catch a rabbit, but the skin of a big cat can be sold to the occupying Japanese for enough money to feed his family for a year. And as you can guess from the bookcover art, his prey is not a leopard, it’s a tiger, which is a motif throughout the novel.
The brutality of the Japanese and their contempt for their Korean subjects is vividly illustrated by the way Major Hayashi arbitrarily shoots their guide Baek in the back once they have KyungSoo to guide them instead. He would have shot KyungSoo too if not for the intervention of Captain Yamada—every bit as brutal as Hayashi but with a stronger (albeit warped) code of honour.
“…I have no love of filthy Josenjings, and have no doubt that I have killed enough of them on the field. But if you harm this man, you would be owing him a debt of life, and nothing is more dishonourable than owing something to an inferior.” (p.20)
The story proper begins in 1918 when the child Jade is sold to the courtesan Silver as an apprentice in Pyongyang. Unknown to her Japanese clients, Silver is supporting underground resistance, and when she learns that Baek, who was actually guiding the Japanese into an ambush, was buried by KyungSoo, she sends him a ring. This ring is inherited by his son Jung-ho, along with the cigarette case that Yamada gave to his father. These items turn out to be significant in the story too.
The narrative covers the lifetime of Jade, and the two men who mean most to her: Jung-ho and HanChol, both of whom come to Seoul to make their fortune. HanChol is a rickshaw driver aiming for university qualifications, and Jung-ho is the leader of a gang of beggars-turned-standover men. Although the Occupation and the Resistance is a strand that runs through the novel, it is more about the constrained relationships that were a feature of a stratified society. Courtesans are wealthy and they have a certain status, but they are washed up by their thirties and need to aim either for a strategic marriage as a second (inferior) wife, or a career as a singer or dancer, stashing away as much money as they can while they are still a commodity. No respectable family will allow a marriage to a courtesan… and as one of the courtesans finds out, it’s a misjudgement to think that her status makes her untouchable.
Other women represent these limited options. As a very young girl, one of Jade’s fellow apprentices is brutally raped by the Japanese in Pyongyang, necessitating her removal to Seoul. Jade goes with Lotus and Luna, where their new teacher is the courtesan Dani. Lotus and Jade both forge careers in the emerging film industry, but Jade fails to make the transition to the ‘talkies’. However, even their clothing labels them.
As they kept whispering to each other and smiling I noticed that they were both wearing their hair in the braided updo of married women. But based on their gold-embroidered blouses and skirts and white powder and rouge I put two and two together and figured out that she’d become a courtesan. It immediately led to a sort of sinking feeling which I brushed aside. (p.157)
Likewise, HanChol and Jung-ho are always constrained by their low-class origins in a world where family and social connections determine success.
Over the course of the story, the narration shifts from third person to first person, featuring both Jade and Jung-ho (who gives a vivid picture of street life). This is not a romanticised historical novel, not at all.
Occasionally overwritten, and at almost 400 pages a little long for itself, Beasts of a Little Land nevertheless offers a glimpse of Korea’s colonial history and goes some way towards explaining contemporary hostility between South Korea and Japan.
Author: Juhea Kim
Title: Beasts of a Little Land
Publisher: One World, 2022
ISBN: 9780861543236, pbk, 403 pages
Review copy courtesy of Bloomsbury Australia
ANZ LitLovers LitBlog 
Oh, I almost bought this yesterday but was put off by the size. It sounds intriguing, if a little long as you point out.
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By: kimbofo on January 17, 2022
at 2:29 pm
Have you been to Korea? The Spouse has, on a business trip, but not me.
TBH I was a little bit worried about him being so close to North Korea which was making threats at the time. (That was back when they only had the technology to attack the South, whereas now their missiles can reach almost anywhere including the US and Australia.)
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By: Lisa Hill on January 17, 2022
at 3:42 pm
No, not been to Korea but a colleague in London actually went to North Korea… not sure he saw much as the trip was heavily policed for want of a better word.
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By: kimbofo on January 17, 2022
at 4:04 pm
I bet!
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By: Lisa Hill on January 17, 2022
at 4:15 pm
I must make note of this one. I’ve read only one korean translation so far and that was a contemporary setting. The historical aspects o know next to nothing of and I assume these also determine the present equation with the Japanese
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By: mallikabooks15 on January 17, 2022
at 4:42 pm
Alas, this is not a translation; I would rather read a novel by a Korean author from Korea any day. This author left Korea when she was nine and was educated in the US.
But yes, the hostility to Japan is apparently still very strong.
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By: Lisa Hill on January 17, 2022
at 10:13 pm
Oh, I assumed it was one. Still I’d like to look it up
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By: mallikabooks15 on January 18, 2022
at 2:56 am
Help. What is a standover man?
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By: Anton on January 17, 2022
at 6:11 pm
Someone who extorts money with violence, usually from a business. Tired of the unreliability of begging, Jung-ho and his gang go round to the shops in the neighbourhood and demand money from the owner. Every now and again they smash up a shop or beat up an owner in order to demonstrate that it’s preferable to pay up than to resist.
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By: Lisa Hill on January 17, 2022
at 10:16 pm
we call this the protection racket,
a recurring species of shake-down,
often one aspect of organized crime
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By: Anton on January 18, 2022
at 1:50 am
Yes, like the Mafia, I think, except that the standover man is the one who actually ‘stands over’ the victim, rather than some Mafia-type boss orchestrating things from afar and keeping his hands clean. Though I have to say that what I know about this comes entirely from watching the occasional American gangster film…
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By: Lisa Hill on January 18, 2022
at 9:42 am
aren’t Edwidge Danticat and Gary Shteyngart childhood immigrants?
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By: Anton on January 18, 2022
at 1:53 am
I don’t know… I had to Google these names, they’re American writers, yes?
But my reasoning for preferring to read authors who actually live in the places they write about, is not about identity politics or appropriation issues, it’s that an author who leaves a country when very young tends to have a narrow view of it, based on childhood memories, parental story-telling (often with a political slant because people migrate because they are discontented with where they are) and then the same research that you or I could do. It can still be a very good book, but it doesn’t have the same authenticity.
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By: Lisa Hill on January 18, 2022
at 9:49 am
Danticat, I believe you will find, is wonderful. She was left behind in HAITI with her aunt & uncle when her parents went to USA. Later, she was sent for. Her story collection Krik? Krak! (1996) is heartbreaking. She totally humanizes her people who are otherwise one of the most “other” nationalities. Maybe almost as “alien” as the indigenous peoples of Australia and N.Z. although they do have their own elites and a large expat community in USA. [Breaking News! — A Florida, USA, Haitian daughter of immigrants was just elected to Congress, after graduating from law school.] Danticat lives in NYC and is also a novelist (Breath, Eyes, Memory, 1994, and more), memoirist, and editor of folk tales and modern short stories.
Shteyngart writes mostly about life in America or global perspective, fantasies, parodies, and futurist satire. But his immigrant roots are always showing, as he gets a lot of fun out of it.
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By: Anton on January 18, 2022
at 3:39 pm
They sound most interesting, and I love it when I get recommendations through the blog like this. Thank you!
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By: Lisa Hill on January 18, 2022
at 4:04 pm
Haiti and its neighbor the Spanish-speaking Republica Dominicana (Dominican Republic or DR) have a very fraught history. That bloody relationship is another theme in Danticat’s writing. Ironically, DR has produced terrific writers of its own! Junot Diaz, for one. Julia Alvarez. Both countries have struggled with periods of nasty dictatorships. So, read DR lit in Spanish & in English translation.
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By: Anton on January 18, 2022
at 7:29 pm
LOL Anton, I’m brushing up my tourist Spanish (in the hope of being able to travel again one day) but it would be a very long time before I could ever read in Spanish…
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By: Lisa Hill on January 18, 2022
at 7:35 pm
I don’t think I’ve read a historical novel set in Korea either or, at least, not THAT historical. I can see how this would leave you adding a bunch of books to your TBR rather than simply crossing off this one! Heheh
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By: Marcie McCauley on January 20, 2022
at 7:51 am
O you know me too well!
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By: Lisa Hill on January 21, 2022
at 3:20 pm
I have copy of this one for review, looking forward to it. I have actually read another historical fiction set in and about Korea, just can’t for the life of me remember the title even though I can remember the plot. I’m sure it will come to me later.
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By: Theresa Smith Writes on January 21, 2022
at 2:20 pm
How are you feeling? My neighbours have all got C-19, (all vaxxed except the children) and I’ve often heard him coughing his heart our on the back patio.
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By: Lisa Hill on January 21, 2022
at 3:21 pm
Nothing like that here. I’m feeling almost recovered apart from the lingering tiredness and a bit of coughing when I lay down. There’s some worrying reports about another illness showing up in children weeks after they’ve had Covid. I am very glad my kids are no longer young.
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By: Theresa Smith Writes on January 21, 2022
at 7:18 pm
That’s good. Very good:)
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By: Lisa Hill on January 21, 2022
at 9:09 pm
I don’t think I’ve read a Korean historical novel – at least one by a Korean, set in Korea. Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko stats in Korea in the early 1900s, but moves to Japan for the majority of the story. And of course, she’s Korean-American. This could be an interesting complement, but probably not top priority for me right now.
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By: Whispering Gums on January 25, 2022
at 5:28 pm
I’ve had that one on the TBR for far too long…
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By: Lisa Hill on January 25, 2022
at 8:47 pm