They were stuck in Korea, and were treated really badly.

Japanese people were governing Korea but when they lost the war and they had to go back home, but they had no means to leave. In the story you see Japanese people are still living in the mother’s hometown. In 1945 Japan surrendered, so that’s when we were supposedly freed, though it didn’t really happen right away. The mother in the story, her hometown was very close to Russia in the north, in what is now North Korea. The book begins at the tail end of that occupation. In the beginning of the 1900s Japan occupied Korea for about 39 years, and we were only freed by their defeat at the end of WWII. We often suffered under occupations by those larger countries. S: Korea is a small country on a peninsula between Russia, China, and Japan. G: Can you explain the context a bit, for people who don’t know a lot of Korean history? It’s about her lifelong wait to see her family again.

Silver: It’s the story of a mother who came to what is now South Korea from the North when the Korean War started, after the Japanese occupation ended. Gene: Can you give a short pitch for The Waiting? In place of a normal book review the two of us talked about the book and Silver’s father, in a conversation I’ve edited for clarity. Silver was incredibly moved by this book, and couldn’t stop crying as she read it. He left behind a wife and at least one son in addition to the other members of his family. Their father fled the North at about the same same time as the author’s mother. It’s based on the life of Gendry-Kim’s mother and the lives of others she interviewed.Īs soon as I heard this book would be published in English, my wife, Silver, who was born in Busan, South Korea, had her sister send her a copy in Korean. Part of the narrative takes place in the present, which involves the woman (now old) and one of her daughters, a writer, and part of it in the past to tell the story of the mother’s life. The woman finds safety and makes a new life in the South but, like many, continues to wait to be reunited with her lost loved ones. (If you haven’t read the first, Grass, which is the story of a Korean comfort woman, it, too!) This is the story of a woman separated from her husband and son as they flee the fighting in what is now North Korea, at the start of the Korean War. The Waiting is the second of Gendry-Kim’s graphic novels to be translated into English.

Keum suk gendry kim the waiting