Short stories
When Buckwheat Flowers Bloom
메밀꽃 필 무렵
Yi Hyo-seok · 1936
Synopsis
One summer evening, on leaving the Bongpyeong market, the old peddler Heo, who has no family, takes the road by night with his companion Jo and the young Dong-i, also a peddler. The mountain path crosses fields of buckwheat in flower under the moon. Heo tells there, once again, the one memory he cherishes, a night spent long ago in Bongpyeong with a woman. Dong-i, in his turn, speaks of his mother and of the childhood he lived without a father.
Context
The story appeared in 1936 in the magazine Jogwang, published by the Chosun Ilbo. It belongs to its author's turn towards a lyrical, rural prose, after committed beginnings. The Korean translation library reads in it the love between man and woman, the chance of lives and the harmony of man with nature. Lee Seong-gu made a film of it in 1967; there were also television versions in 1982 and 2005, an animated film in 2014 and a collective rewriting in 2018.
Who it is for
A short story, carried by the landscape and the night walk; translated into English, Spanish, Arabic and Vietnamese.
Prizes and reception
The Korean story most often reprinted in English, in nine publications, according to the London Korean Links survey.
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