Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin
Review of Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin
“That was Sokcho. Always waiting. For tourists, boats, men, Spring.”
Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin (2020). Published in English by Daunt Books Publishing
For some reason, I can remember clearly when this book came out and started to make waves. I remember I didn’t pick it up at the time because I was in a big reading slump and was having a terrible time in college, then the COVID-19 pandemic happened like a month after the English release.
Of course, me being me, I procrastinated on reading this until 2023, when I got this book for Christmas from my older sister. One night I brought the book into the bath with me as a form of getting all the stress out and self-care, and then ended up reading this entire book in one sitting.
It wasn’t hard to do that; the book, when translated into English, is only about one hundred and fifty page. The type and front is also a little larger than the standard, so then it goes by very quickly, especially when there’s dialogue. I think it took me under an hour to finish the book, which is a sign it’s short. I didn’t love or hate this one thought; it just kind of exists, like its narrator.
Let’s dive into the review.
Nothing ever happens in Sokcho, until it does.
Our protagonist in Winter in Sokcho is a young woman who works at a local in under an ahjusshi named Park. She is one of the few young people who hasn’t left this town yet because she feels an obligation to her mother, although we see that their relationship isn’t exactly the best throughout the novel.
She is mixed Korean and French, went to school to study both of those country’s national literatures, but doesn’t actually really speak any French because her father left them when she was young. It seems our narrator doesn’t really remember her father.
It seems like at the start of the novel everything is routine. She cooks at the guesthouse, where the only person really staying there is a young girl from Seoul who got her entire face done with plastic surgery. These two kind of serve as foils throughout the novel, as the narrator/protagonist is told that she should get plastic surgery in order to seek out better jobs in Seoul, but still she remains the same as ever in the town of Sokcho.
The girl’s boyfriend visits multiple times throughout the novel, while the narrator doesn’t have a love interest—that is, until a French writer and artist shows up at the inn. There is a guy that goes to Seoul to model, but I wouldn’t really call him a love interest in her eyes. He just kind of exists and comes back towards the end of the novel; they don’t really d anything together.
The guy is kind of a recluse. He doesn’t speak Korean, and wants to head over the border to North Korea in order to go to a lookout. Our narrator agrees to drive him, much to the surprise of herself and Park, and she serves as a pseudo guide for him.
He’s come in search of inspiration for his next story, and as she snoops at his graphics when he’s not in the room, she realizes he never really draws women in his art. Of course, she has looked him up once she realized what his name and profession was, leading her to make that conclusion.
A good bulk of this brief novel is the two dancing around the notions of a relationship. He does end up leaving at the end of the novel and nothing really happens, just like in Sokcho. This is broken up with passages about the other girl staying at the guesthouse, how the narrator has to clean or cook, and a visit or two to her mother. The interesting part about this book, though, is how the guy reacts to the Sokcho she’s showing him around in.
He doesn’t seem to have an interest in learning about the people of Sokcho. He only really knows her and doesn’t come out for the dinners she makes, meaning he doesn’t interact with any locals outside of heading to the convenience story for instant food and snacks.
Our narrator seems to have this desire for being seen, for being validated, and that doesn’t actually happen much in the novel. Not much happens throughout this story, but context and subtext are everything for trying to understand what is happening beneath the surface. Identity seems to be a key point here, as we see the girl who completely changes her face juxtaposed against our narrator quite a bit.
Another characteristic I was spotting woven throughout was the superficiality of their interactions at times. The writer says he wants to experience the real Korea by going out into a tourist lookout, yet his entire brand of graphic novels is making stories inspired by the quote on quote real culture of the places he’s visited.
He doesn’t even eat any of the legitimate Korean food that our narrator makes, instead choosing to constantly head out and get easy breads and snacks during his time there. At the same time, the narrator has no direct interest in ever actually visiting France, despite the two of them discussing the country.
Overall Thoughts
These reviews I do are brief, just like Winter in Sokcho.
I think this is a novel I’m going to have to return to a couple of times, which is easy because of its length and brevity, to uncover new threads that tie this story together. I want to examine this from a colonial perspective, as this random French man seems like he commodifies culture in a way that he makes a profit, yet not actually immersing himself in the cultures he has the privilege to visit.
The Normandy conversation stuck out to me because he reminisces on World War II and what happened in Normandy, comparing it to Korea, but Korean trauma is so much more recent and ongoing. They can be compared, but they are not similar. Anyways, this is an interesting little novel with vivid details and a narrator who has a strong sense of self. Pick it up if you’re interested.
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