Invincible and Righteous Outlaw: The Korean Hero Hong Gildong in Literature, History, and Culture by Minsoo Kang

Abstract

Reviewed by: Invincible and Righteous Outlaw: The Korean Hero Hong Gildong in Literature, History, and Culture by Minsoo Kang Charles La Shure, Associate Professor Invincible and Righteous Outlaw: The Korean Hero Hong Gildong in Literature, History, and Culture by Minsoo Kang. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2019. xxiii, 235 pp. On the heels of his new translation of The Story of Hong Gildong,1 which brings the longest extant manuscript of the work to English readers, Minsoo Kang delves deeper into this classic tale with Invincible and Righteous Outlaw. As a historian, Kang brings a critical eye to "a set of cultural and historical myths surrounding The Story of Hong Gildong" (xiii) in what is to date the only book-length treatment of the character and the tale available in English. The book is divided into two disparate parts, the first being a literary and historical analysis of the work and the scholarship surrounding it, and the second being an examination of the "afterlives" lived by Hong Gildong in modern times. These two parts, as the author admits, "read like two different types of scholarship" (xxii), but they come together to paint a more complete picture of the classical novel; either part without the other might have felt lacking. The chapter titles of the first part—which mention "phantom," "fog of myth," "elusive traces," and "the imagined Hong Gildong"—make the author's project clear: brushing away the accumulated dust of myth to find the truth hidden beneath. In the first chapter, Kang outlines four persistent ideas that will become the focus of his investigation: that The Story of Hong Gildong is the first work of vernacular Korean (that is, authored in hangeul) fiction; that it was [End Page 339] written in the seventeenth century by the Joseon official and literary figure Heo Gyun; that it draws attention to the plight of secondary sons (seoja; sons of concubines); and that Heo Gyun was an idealistic reformer executed for treason. Kang lays out the historical evidence, including a discussion of the invention and use of hangeul and the circumstances surrounding Heo Gyun's arrest. Mainly, though, he focuses on demonstrating that there is little historical evidence outside of a single claim by a contemporary of Heo that Heo Gyun actually wrote such a work, or that—even if he did write a tale of Hong Gildong—the manuscripts we possess today are that same work. This is not an unreasonable assertion, seeing as how none of the extant manuscripts can be dated to any earlier than the nineteenth century. Kang also shows that it was not until 1948 that a claim was made that The Story of Hong Gildong was the first work of hangeul fiction, as opposed to being written in classical Chinese as was standard for the yangban of Heo Gyun's time. Having examined the historical evidence, in the second chapter Kang explores how Kim Taejun's The History of Joseon Fiction created the image of Hong Gildong as a socialist reformer and hero of the people that is commonly accepted among the public today.2 Then, in the last chapter of the first part, he argues that attempting to fit the novel into subversive or conservative frames colors our perception of the work, leading us to see things that might not have been present in the original. Freeing ourselves of these misconceptions, Kang argues, allows us to see that The Story of Hong Gildong is a "prime example of the popular heroic martial narratives that began to appear in the late 18th century" (84). He then compares it to other such narratives, showing how it fits much more naturally into the literary environment of the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries than the early seventeenth century. Yet, he bemoans, modern interpretations cling to the "notion of Hong Gildong as a moral exemplar" (89) and are thus forced to alter or supplement the text. The second part of the book begins with an examination of representations of Hong Gildong during the colonial period, contrasting perception of him among Koreans as a "symbol of the indomitable spirit of the Korean people in the face of powerful enemies" (112...