Sukhyang's Tale & Sugyŏng's Tale: Two Romantic Novels from Old Korea

Sukhyang's Tale, known as one of the masterpiece women's narratives in the 17th century of old Korea, evolves around the love story of Sukhyang and Yi Sŏn, which takes place in heaven and again on earth. It deals with stories from Sukhyang's ordeals of being separated from her parents during a bandit riot to her reunion with, and marriage to, Yi Sŏn before ascending to heaven together. A dualistic world-view, in which the real and the surreal elements coexist, is portrayed through the close bond between the lovers under the context of predestined ordeals and happiness.

Sugyŏng's Tale, a love story between Sugyŏng and Sŏn'gun - being categorized as a romance novel with features and basic plots similar to Sukhyang's Tale - has a tragic twist. Sugyŏng's Tale does not formalize romantic love of happy ending but portrays more the anguish of the times while taking the form of a fantasy. Nevertheless, the two novels commonly explore the difficulty of finding true love and how a woman, left at a disadvantage in society, faces severer ordeals as she has to face the absurdities of a medieval Chosŏn society defined by gender discrimination and Neo-Confucian ethics.

Sohn Tae-soo, who is teaching translation at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, is a Korean-to-English translator, specializing in the sector of the Korean studies and academic papers, among others. Won-Chung Kim is a professor of English Literature at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, Korea, where he teaches contemporary American poetry, ecological literature, and translation. Christopher Merrill has published seven collections of poetry, including Watch Fire, for which he received the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets.