History & Criticism
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One Left: A Novel
During the Pacific War, more than 200,000 Korean girls were forced into sexual servitude for Japanese soldiers. They lived in horrific conditions in "comfort stations" across Japanese-occupied territories. Barely 10 percent survived to return to Korea, where they lived as social outcasts. Since then, self-declared comfort women have come forward only to have their testimonies and calls for compensation largely denied by the Japanese government.
Kim Soom tells the story of a woman who was kidnapped at the age of thirteen while gathering snails for her starving family. The horrors of her life as a sex slave follow her back to Korea, where she lives in isolation gripped by the fear that her past will be discovered. Yet, when she learns that the last known comfort woman is dying, she decides to tell her there will still be "one left" after her passing, and embarks on a painful journey.
One Left is a provocative, extensively researched novel constructed from the testimonies of dozens of comfort women. The first Korean novel devoted to this subject, it rekindled conversations about comfort women as well as the violent legacies of Japanese colonialism. This first-ever English translation recovers the overlooked and disavowed stories of Korea's most marginalized women.
Kim Soom tells the story of a woman who was kidnapped at the age of thirteen while gathering snails for her starving family. The horrors of her life as a sex slave follow her back to Korea, where she lives in isolation gripped by the fear that her past will be discovered. Yet, when she learns that the last known comfort woman is dying, she decides to tell her there will still be "one left" after her passing, and embarks on a painful journey.
One Left is a provocative, extensively researched novel constructed from the testimonies of dozens of comfort women. The first Korean novel devoted to this subject, it rekindled conversations about comfort women as well as the violent legacies of Japanese colonialism. This first-ever English translation recovers the overlooked and disavowed stories of Korea's most marginalized women.
Editorial Reviews
"Through this story the author restores a past that has been erased by history and emphasizes the historical memory of what must never be repeated or forgotten."―Daejon Ilbo
"The process of directly confronting the comfort women's hellish experiences is truly painful. However, because the novel is not a product of the author's imagination but in fact based on historical reality, we cannot turn our heads away. No, we must not."―Donga Ilbo
"[An] exceptional novel Soom captures the agonizing legacy of a dark chapter from the recent past."―Booklist
"Though it is fiction, Kim Soom's novel is steeped in fact. One Left dignifies its subjects as an authentic memorial that makes an indelible mark on history."―Foreword Reviews
"It may seem cliché to state that a novel is necessary. But this one really is."―Asian Review of Books
"This is a painful, powerful literary indictment of the systemic subjugation of Korean comfortwomen, whose own #MeToo movement has yet to be fully reckoned with, decades after the fact."―Bookmonger
"This Korean novel dramatizes, with indelible force, the utter dehumanization of women confined to authoritarian patriarchal imprisonment."―The Arts Fuse
"[A] landmark ― the first novel dedicated to depicting comfort women, a topic that invokes as much weariness as it does outrage among today's public. Though a work of fiction, Kim Soom's story is based on exhaustive research and testimonies given by actual comfort women...By rendering this topic in the form of a novel, Kim injects a new sense of emotional urgency in recognizing these very real and hauntingly painful experiences."―International Examiner
"[S]ynthesizes acute personal memories with painful history, straddling the line between fact and fiction. The result is a gut-wrenching narrative."―Korean Herald
"All credit then, to author, translators and publisher for bringing this important book to us."―London Korean Links
"In their even, experienced hands the translation avoids any temptation toward melodrama or obscenity, especially tricky and crucial given the raw, violent subject at hand... For English readers, one must note commensurate, masterful sensitivity to every word and nuance in the translation."―Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature (TSWL)<...
"The process of directly confronting the comfort women's hellish experiences is truly painful. However, because the novel is not a product of the author's imagination but in fact based on historical reality, we cannot turn our heads away. No, we must not."―Donga Ilbo
"[An] exceptional novel Soom captures the agonizing legacy of a dark chapter from the recent past."―Booklist
"Though it is fiction, Kim Soom's novel is steeped in fact. One Left dignifies its subjects as an authentic memorial that makes an indelible mark on history."―Foreword Reviews
"It may seem cliché to state that a novel is necessary. But this one really is."―Asian Review of Books
"This is a painful, powerful literary indictment of the systemic subjugation of Korean comfortwomen, whose own #MeToo movement has yet to be fully reckoned with, decades after the fact."―Bookmonger
"This Korean novel dramatizes, with indelible force, the utter dehumanization of women confined to authoritarian patriarchal imprisonment."―The Arts Fuse
"[A] landmark ― the first novel dedicated to depicting comfort women, a topic that invokes as much weariness as it does outrage among today's public. Though a work of fiction, Kim Soom's story is based on exhaustive research and testimonies given by actual comfort women...By rendering this topic in the form of a novel, Kim injects a new sense of emotional urgency in recognizing these very real and hauntingly painful experiences."―International Examiner
"[S]ynthesizes acute personal memories with painful history, straddling the line between fact and fiction. The result is a gut-wrenching narrative."―Korean Herald
"All credit then, to author, translators and publisher for bringing this important book to us."―London Korean Links
"In their even, experienced hands the translation avoids any temptation toward melodrama or obscenity, especially tricky and crucial given the raw, violent subject at hand... For English readers, one must note commensurate, masterful sensitivity to every word and nuance in the translation."―Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature (TSWL)<...
Readers Top Reviews
Edward
I know of the content of the book,the ordeal the women went through,without any compensation.
A Crucial Reckoning Some stories are too terrible to be told. Perhaps that is why it took seventy-five years for One Left, by Kim Soom, to be written. Hers is the first Korean novel about Korean women captured as sex slaves during the Pacific War. Of 200,000 women and girls, stolen and enslaved, only 20,000 returned alive. It took decades for the cruelties to be acknowledged and the victims remembered. And, as is often true in sexual abuse, the sufferers’ own guilt and shame also perpetuated the silence. As One Left begins, the 93-year-old protagonist hears a story on television introducing the only remaining comfort woman in Korea. The protagonist, called simply “she”, has never revealed her own survivor status. But now, if the woman on television dies, she will be the only one left. She lives with her cat Nabi in a house that belongs to her nephew. The house, with an outdoor faucet and latrine, sits on a mere fifty-nine square yards of land. In an opening scene, she discovers a dead magpie lying next to her shoes—two Korean symbols that reappear throughout the story. As she wanders the streets, interacting in her neighborhood, we meet a beauty parlour woman; convenience shop owners; and an old man who cares for his disabled son by selling copper junk and captured kittens. The kittens reappear too, serving as one of the story’s metaphors: “Just like the girls became the property of a haha, okusan, obason, or otosan after they were snatched and taken away while weeding the field, picking cotton, fetching water from the village well, returning home from washing laundry in the stream, heading to school or tending to their ailing father.” Each of the protagonist’s present-day interactions sparks a flashback to Manchuria, where she was forced to work. In these interludes, we meet her friends—other girls taken, as young as thirteen, to service Japanese soldiers. In the 1930s and 1940s, these Korean girls were promised factory jobs, or simply kidnapped. Transported via truck or train, once in Manchuria they were forced to have sex with soldiers, physically abused for breaking the rules, induced into opium addiction, surgically maimed, and required to wash and reuse condoms. Their superiors charged them for food, menstrual pads, hot water, and heat, until, buried in debt, the girls could never buy their way out. As a reader, I search novels for comparisons to my own life. In this case, my privileged circumstances bear no resemblance to the horrors exposed in the book. So, instead, I read to learn and empathize. There was much here to absorb about misogyny, cruelty, and hegemony. The novel unearths a litany of atrocities, documented by Kim Soom’s extensive research. Chapter by chapter, graphic details come directly from testimonies of real-life comfort women. Information is identified by a footnote with sour...
Sang-Bin Edw
I bought seveal translations by BJ Fulton, including this one. Their translation shows the beauty of Korean literature.
Adanna O.Sang-Bin
Well written story that makes you cry and understand the life of comfort women. It is really sad and beautiful.
