Young-Hee and the Pullocho
Mark James Russell has already published two books on Korea, and he’s not done yet — in early 2015 he will publish his first novel, a fantasy tale titled Young-hee and the Pullocho. His first book, Pop Goes Korea: Behind the Revolution in Movies, Music and Internet Culture focused on the amazing changes that transformed Korea’s popular culture and entertainment industry from the 1990s to the 2000s. His second book, K-Pop Now! The Korean Music Revolution looked at Korean pop music and the culture that created it. In this new book debut, Mr. Russell puts a Korean spin on an evergreen fantasy trope, interweaving Korean folktales with the story of a young girl who, without realizing it, is in search of herself. Readers follow Young-hee as she finds herself on an epic quest, encountering dragons, ghosts, tigers and all sorts of creatures from out of fairytales.
Mark has lived in South Korea since 1996 writing about Korean culture, economics, society, and other fun topics for such publications as the New York Times, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal. He also spent many years as Korea correspondent for The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, and Television Asia. Asia Society Korea Center's Contributing Writer Matthew Fennell met up with Mark to discuss the books.
Tell us about your way into Korea and what prompted you to write your books on K-Pop and relevant culture?
I came into Korea mostly by accident; I was in my twenties and was trying to figure out what to do with my life. I had worked in publishing and in finance but I didn’t really like it, so I decided to travel and I ended up in Korea. It was here that I encountered a whole lot of good luck, meeting some amazing people, like musicians and actors, all of whom were totally unlike the stereotype of the boring, business-minded salaryman. So I stuck around and eventually I realized that I knew a lot of people in the entertainment industry, so I was able to start writing about it. I ended up writing for the Wall Street Journal, Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter, but the thing with writing news it that it is very disposable so that is when the idea of writing a book came about. After finding a publisher, my first book was released in December 2008 and the second in April 2014.
Your new book, Young-hee and the Pullochois is something very different from you previous books. What made you want to write a fantasy novel?
Like a lot of people, I had always wanted to write fiction and had tried my hand at a few short stories. Working in and around the film industry, I was always surrounded by creative people and it got to the point where I wanted to stop writing about them and to join them in creating. I had a few ideas, one was a horror script that I had been working on for a while, and others were focused around movie ideas. But producing movies can be quite challenging, so I decided to put my ideas into a book and to just get the book written. I spent the next year writing the book, received a lot of good feedback and advice, got a publisher and after many rewrites the book was finally complete.
Where did the inspiration come from for the character Young-hee??
I think it is a combination of people that I have met, when I look at the story it is very much an evergreen story. It’s from Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, and Chronicles of Narnia; you have a young adolescent dealing with personal issues in a fantasy setting and I wanted to be a part of that. I think a lot about what stories are Koreans not telling; there are a lot of Korean stories about gangsters and such, but I haven’t come across many stories that center on young women, and not much in a fantasy domain. It seemed that it was something that hadn’t been done at the time so I wanted to give a voice to a part of Korea that I had not encountered in the media often.
You intertwine the story of Young-hee with Korean folktales. Did you already know of these folktales or did you have to go out and research?
There was a lot of research involved. I had studied a lot of folktales when I was in college and I really liked the idea of the same stories existing out there, from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to One Thousand and One Nights, and when I read the Korean folktales I saw certain similarities and certain differences, and thought it was a good way at getting at Korea. So there was a lot of research and it was interesting because these stories have been published many times over the years and you could see different filters happening on them at certain periods of times, depending on who was recording them. For example, early American missionaries might write them very differently European academics.
Did you write the book for a more Korean audience or for an international one?
The book was certainly written for an international audience. There are a lot more people outside of Korea than there are here in Korea so that is what I tailored the book to. Koreans always have a lot of media about Korea, so they’re probably not so curious about their own country, but Korea is quite hot around the world these days.
Do you have any future plans for more novels?
I have already written a long short story than is kind of related to the novel, which hopefully I will find a publisher for that. And I am also a third of the way through a sequel to Young-hee. There is also the horror script that failed, and I wouldn’t mind turning that into a novel. I have a whole bunch of ideas but ideas are easy, it’s getting them down on paper that is the challenge. If there is interest then I would love to keep writing more.