The ¡®Yi Munyeol Book Returning and Funeral Ceremony¡¯ held in front of novelist Yi Munyeol¡¯s house in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province was not so much a ¡®funeral¡¯ for Yi¡¯s books as it was a funeral for the whole of the Korean literary world, and it will be remembered as a shameful event in literary history. What Yi thinks about the world, his political views, and what he may write or say in the media from time to time is of secondary importance. If people don¡¯t like what Yi writes they can write right back. If people don¡¯t like the things he says they can use the same media to say so themselves.
When instead people choose to call his books ¡®corpses¡¯ and carry them up to his doorstep while shouting slogans then reading a traditional funeral address, they are going beyond fair expression of differing opinion, and are making people heavy in heart while giving them a sense of frustration about how freedom of expression is being trampled on. To top things off, a little girl looking around ten years old was made to carry a ¡®funeral portrait (yeongjeong)¡¯ made of covers from Yi¡¯s books. This was not only something a young girl should not be made to do, it was a frightful example of how behavior is getting out of hand as this kind of ¡®organized stalking¡¯ shows no respect for time and place.
It is difficult to understand how people can try to ruin an author in such a manner in a country that likes to take pride in supposedly showing so much respect for literature. It is hard enough for any author to overcome an inhospitable market and publishing climate as it is. When one sees how some people take to going after an author with a ¡®funeral,¡¯ an author who has been the greatest publishing success so far and brought literature to the people, one gets this sinking feeling that freedom of expression is on its way to prison.
They say the ¡®protesters¡¯ took to such methods in order to intensify the expression of their opposing views, but it is pathetic that they cannot get any more creative. The vocabulary chosen by those opposed to everything Yi stands for is poorly chosen when you consider that the target is a national author. If anyone thinks they can keep other authors from expressing themselves and saying what they want to, then they have lowered themselves to some truly dangerous low level of thinking.
(November 6, 2001)
