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Nobody around her still wore the multicolored wool gloves that had been in fashion a few years back. 

Gloves were not the only ones old-fashioned. A coat with worn-out, frayed cuffs, crimped flats she wore regardless of season, wide-legged and short gray pants that fell way above her ankles, and thick socks layered with fuzzy lint. 

Moon-ja’s such appearance made her status, a spinster nearing forty, even more pitiful.

몇 년전 이미 한 차례 유행이 지나간 알록달록한 털장갑을

여태 끼고 다니는 사람은 그녀 주위에 아무도 없었다.

장갑만 구식인 게 아니었다.

소매 끝이 날깃날깃 닳아 빠진 외투며,

통은 넓고 기장은 짧아 발목이 껑충해 보이는 쥐똥색 바지,

보푸라기가 한 켜나 앉은 투박한 양말.

문자의 이런 차림새는 사십 고개를 바라보면서

노처녀로 알려진 그녀의 입장을 더 한층 측은해 보이게 했다.

Interview by literary critic Jeon So-yeong

If you think of Moon-ja as an ordinary woman, you may find her behaviors hard to understand, because she let people around her bully and use her. People around Moon-ja represent such ordeals. She doesn’t try to avoid them, but instead faces them head-on to become the only person in this corrupt world with psychological purity. 

Moon-ja has known a man named Han-soo for ten years. He had a wife and two children, a boy and a girl.       

Moon-ja took money out of her purse and handed it over to him. As soon as he got it, he put out the cigarette on the corner of a newspaper and stood up. 

“Dinner’s almost ready.” (Moon-ja)

“It’s too late for dinner. You came back too late.” (Han-soo)

Every time she got a glimpse into his mean and selfish nature, Moon-ja cried in her heart yet smiled with her lips.

While he was buttoning up his jacket, Moon-ja came out to the kitchen and placed his shoes neatly and slightly apart so that they would be easy for him to put on. 

Although he knew that Moon-ja was standing by the door to see him off, Han-soo loudly climbed down the stairs.

          

문자는 가방에서 돈을 꺼내 그에게 내밀었다.

그는 돈을 받는 즉시 담배를 신문지 귀퉁이에 눌러 끄고 벌떡 일어났다.

“저녁 다 됐어요” 

“지금 몇 신데 저녁 타령이야. 다 늦게 들어와 가지구“ 

순간순간 그의 모질고 이기적인 성격을 엿볼 때마다 

문자는 맘속으로 울고 입술로는 웃었다.

그가 단추를 채우는 동안 문자는 먼저 부엌으로 나와서

그가 신기 좋게 구두를 가지런히, 그리고 약간 벌려 놓아 주었다.

한수는 문자가 문밖에서 배웅하고 있다는 걸 알면서도

곧장 뚜걱뚜걱 계단 아래로 내려갔다.

                    

                        

It took only a few minutes for Han-soo to disappear from Moon-ja’s sight. She felt that his presence was forever distancing itself from her. At that moment, he was not a man, but God’s lamp that went higher up to make her life more miserable. And her whole body flapped like a mane with the passionate desire to reach that place of god.

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Seo Young-eun (Born on May 18, 1943 in Gangneung, Gangwon-do Prov.)

: Won New Writer’s Award from Sasanggye with “Bridge” in 1968

Published “You who Are Far Away” in Korean Literature and won the Yi Sang Literary Award in 1983