Winter in Sokcho
SynopsisPlot
It’s winter in Sokcho, a tourist town on the border between South and North Korea. The cold slows everything down. Bodies are red and raw, the fish turn venomous, beyond the beach guns point out from the North’s watchtowers. A young French Korean woman works as a receptionist in a tired guesthouse. One evening, an unexpected guest arrives: a French cartoonist determined to find inspiration in this desolate landscape. The two form an uneasy relationship. When she agrees to accompany him on trips to discover an "authentic" Korea, they visit snowy mountaintops and dramatic waterfalls, and cross into North Korea. But he takes no interest in the Sokcho she knows—the gaudy neon lights, the scars of war, the fish market where her mother works. As she’s pulled into his vision and taken in by his drawings, she strikes upon a way to finally be seen.
Story
About this book
Sokcho is a coastal city in South Korea's Gangwon Province, close to the demilitarized zone that separates the two Koreas. In Elisa Shua Dusapin's short novel, winter has settled over the town and slowed its rhythms. A young woman of mixed French and Korean heritage works the front desk of a tired guesthouse. When a French cartoonist checks in, searching for material in this stark border landscape, a cautious connection forms.
She agrees to guide him through the region, visiting mountain peaks, waterfalls, and crossing briefly into North Korea. But he is drawn to a curated version of the country, shaped by outsider ideas of what feels authentic. He shows little interest in the Sokcho she inhabits: the neon-lit streets, the fish market where her mother works, the scars left by decades of military tension.
Originally written in French, the novel won the Prix Robert Walser. Dusapin has both French and Korean family roots, and the book keeps its attention on cultural belonging, on being visible or overlooked, and on the way one person's gaze can reshape another's sense of self.
