Jang Sun-Woo (1993): ‘I liked the fact that Park’s novel was about ordinary, suburban people and based on first-hand experience and observation. Woomuk-Baemi, in the outer suburbs of Seoul, is a place of transition, where the values of the countryside and the city meet and intersect.’Jang’s first unqualified success is a tragi-comedy about an illicit sexual affair and its socially embarrassing repercussions. A sewing-workshop supervisor lives with a bar-girl but one night finds himself in bed with one of the women in the workshop, the wife of an impotent and abusive husband. But how can the affair proceed? Discretion is impossible in a small community full of gossip, and neither existing partner will give up without a fight. The story’s underlying dynamics are sexual, emotional and economic, but Jang anchors it in a warm and humorous engagement with the characters and their raw, human needs. Tony Rayns
