Memories of an ash tree

Adapted from a short story, unpublished in French, by Korean writer Choi Yong-tak, Memoirs of an Ash depicts a dramatic and violent moment in contemporary Korean history, known as "the Bodo League Massacre". . During the summer of 1950, at the very beginning of the Korean War, the authorities organized the physical liquidation of tens of thousands of civilians, declared political opponents or simple sympathizers, for fear of communist contagion. This mass massacre, carried out by the Korean army and police, killed between 100,000 and 200,000 people, including women and children. Subsequently, it was deliberately obscured from South Korea's official history. It was not until the 1990s that mass graves were found and that certain executors of the massacre were brought to testify. A virtuoso and committed author, Park Kun-woong continues here a long-term task aimed at exorcising the mistakes of Korean governments since independence in 1945. In this story, whose narrator is a tree populating one of the valleys where the massacres took place, he mobilizes exceptional graphic means, through a set of images of a dark and striking beauty. Fired from his business in Hong Kong, a single 30-something, Butt, gives in to laziness and procrastination. To occupy his languid days, he strings together the most absurd activities and fads: pretending to go to the office, orienting himself in his city according to the reactions of onlookers, creating a group "I don't work" on Facebook, redrawing the plans of the city to make it his ideal city… How to best use a moment of break in a professional life? And in the end, is it so important to work? Here is the logbook of a young man of today confronted with an increasingly common situation, unemployment, conducted with a salutary sense of self-mockery. Using digital imagery in a bold and often funny way , Justin Wong acutely poses the universal question of commitment to work. Beyond the evocation of a certain form of urban solitude, it also chronicles modernity in the great international city that is Hong Kong, with its excesses as well as its endearing sides. Translated from Korean by Kette Amoruso Book published with the support of the Île-de-France region and the Center National du Livre. A virtuoso Korean author, Park Kun-Wong evokes a tragic episode in the contemporary history of Korea: by making a tree the silent witness of a mass massacre, he gives his story a universal scope.