Reviews with content warning for Racism - Beasts of a Little Land

A historical fiction set on the history of modern day Korea's inception. The characters go through the time of Japanese imperialism, through WW2, through the Korean War, and into the 60s. There were a lot of characters which can be confusing as more characters and their perspectives kept getting added as we moved through time with them. There were also a ton of slow parts and the characters got so frustrating that I kind of stopped caring and wanted to dnf it. I finished but a lot of the characters didn't get the treatment or end I would've preferred. Some I thought deserved better, some deserved worse but that is life especially during times of active war.
I did enjoy the focus on the cruelty of Japanese imperialism because it seems a lot of people "in the west" don't know about it. My own motherland was also a victim of the imperialism and colonization so what was described I had already previous knowledge of.
PLEASE LOOK AT CONTENT WARNINGS as this is a historical fiction based on things that truly did happen. Nothing was in too much graphic detail but there are heavy topics within that you should be aware of.

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nini23's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional

3.75

Beasts of a Little Land is a sweeping Korean historical fiction saga by debut author Juhea Kim. Covering the period of 1917 to 1965, those acquainted with Korean history will know these were turbulent chaotic times under Japanese occupation and imperialism (Japan annexed Korea in 1910), the Korean Independence movement and later the breakup of the country by American and Russian forces. The novel opens in 1917 in PyongAhn where an experienced hunter is tracking a leopard which turns out to be a tigerling instead. This hunter (later his name is revealed - Nam KyungSoo) is known by the moniker PyongAhn Tiger and was a soldier in the Korean Imperial Army. He saves a group of Japanese soldiers from a tiger attack which has repercussions for many of the characters years later. One of the Japanese soldiers Yamada Genzo gives the hunter a cigarette case as a gesture of gratitude for saving their lives.

The title of the book refers to something Yamada says later We don't have such ferocious beasts in Japan, and we're a far bigger country. How such beasts have flourished in such a little land is incomprehensible. At the time, large wild animals like tigers, leopards, bears and elephants roamed throughout the Korean peninsula; sadly they've been hunted/killed to near extinction and the book notes that the Siberian tiger is marked as officially extinct in Korea. Currently, in one of those unintended ironic effects of human activity, wild animal life is making a surprising comeback in the DMZ. Juhea Kim is donating part of the proceeds of her book to conservation efforts of Siberian tigers and Amur leopards in the Russian Far East. The tiger is an important recurring symbol of resilience and resistance in the story and features prominently on the book cover. Later, the only time these rare wild animals can be seen is at the ChangGeong Palace Zoo in Seoul (other than as animal pelts), the zoo animals are poisoned by the Japanese when it's obvious their side is losing to prevent them from rampaging the city when the bombs fall. Their loss is keenly felt.

Jade remembered the long-ago nights in her village. The darkness had resounded with the cries of hungry animals, and on some snowy mornings she'd woken up to paw prints circling their cottage. But wild beasts had never frightened her - it was the humans who terrified her with their savegery.

Jade is a young girl sold by her family to a giseang house initially as a maid but through circumstance as a courtesan apprentice under Madame Silver in 1918. She grows up training with Silver's two daughters Lotus and Luna. I was initially wary when reading 'courtesan school' but this part, like the whole book, is well-reseached and respectful. I liked the details like the plays they performed in (The Story of ChunYang, The Story of ShimChung) and the traditional Korean instruments (gayageum, dageum, drums), recitation of poetry by Huang Jini (famed Josean era courtesan), traditional songs they learn in their training as part of the five arts. As with most courtesans of that time, they still need powerful wealthy patrons and backers so Madame Silver has one, as does Dani, the other famous courtesan that the girls are sent to later in Seoul to continue their training with.

The concept that twines throughout the book linking the fate of the characters is 인연 in-yeon. In-yeon is the thread of destiny and connection between people; be it between spouses, siblings, friends even people with enmity. Jade, Dani, Silver, Lotus, Luna are linked by in-yeon but also entangled with that of Nam JungHo (son of the hunter) who comes to Seoul to make a living. Initially living as a street urchin, he later becomes a protection money thug and then gets heavily involved with the Korean Resistance movement. JungHo falls in love with Jade during a courtesan parade. The other parties to this tangled skein of in-yeon are Kim SungSoo (past flame of Dani's, capitalist, future employer of Jung-ho), Lee Myungbo (one of the leaders of the Korean resistance movement), two Japanese army officers Yamada Genzo and Ito. Both the cigarette case and silver ring (that Silver gave to the hunter) passed down to JungHo are the physical manifestations of the in-yeon interconnection.

I liked the first half of the novel more than the later half. Lee Myungbo's appearance heralded a lot of interesting historical facts such as the provisional Korean government and Koryo Communist Party germinating in Shanghai, the involvement of Primorski and Manchuria in resistance efforts and going even further back "Primorski was just the Russian word for Yuenhaejoo, a frosty northern land that horse-riding Koreans conquered two thousand years ago." Within Korea, the independence movement involved uniting factions of Nationalists, Communists, Cheondists, Buddhists, Christians for a unanimous declaration of independence - fascinating. I'm puzzled by the absence of any mention of Korean comfort women, since this is a major part of the damage inflicted on the Korean psyche and a point of contention between the two countries even today.

In the later half of the novel, it felt like the characters were molded to fit historical events, they seemed to lose both personality and agency, the rest was detracted by The Great War Love Story, love unrequited, cinematic grand love. I can just see the billing - love between a rickshaw driver in a rags to riches story, supported by a courtesan that his family will never accept while the resistance fighter waits for her faithfully .... Also, General Ito tells Jade "I'm leaving on Friday so this is the last time we're seeing each other...Fuck war and fuck loneliness. Stay alive." Huh?! This is such a jarring anachronism - it is simply inconceivable and inconsistent given Ito's past disdain and cruelty toward Koreans to give Jade food and money at this crucial period but as a Japanese Imperial army member in 1944 to utter such American modern speech in Japanese just sticks out so incongruously. Likewise, I find that the author's depiction of the 'villains' ' motivations and inner thoughts to be weak, that of SungSoo, Ito and Yamada. Lastly, it's not easy to cover such a wide area of important national events within characters' lives through forty plus years, I did find some of the time skips and chronological transitions not quite smooth.

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macknificent's review against another edition

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emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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goldencages's review against another edition

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emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? It's complicated

3.5

Somewhere between 3 and 4 stars. A well-researched novel documenting the time between 1917-1945, covering the Japanese colonisation and occupation of South & North Korea, but in the end felt a bit lacking in narrative clarity.

tw: rape, sexual assault, general colonialism and wartime atrocities, racism, toxic masculinity

Beasts of a Little Land opens up with an intriguing introduction to Northern Korea in 1917, when "wild beasts" such as tiger, leopards and moon bears were still roaming the forests & mountains of the country. Present in the country already were also the Japanese colonisers. As we follow a starved Korean hunter in the dead of a wintry, stormy night, he comes across a group of Japanese soldiers, burning to get their hands on the prized furs of these native animals. However, at a crucial moment, it is rather the Korean hunter who saves them from a near-fatal tiger attack, miraculously convincing the animal to walk away. It is an that encounter doesn't set in motion the whole story, but will shape the fate of several characters later on.

At the heart of Beasts of a Little Land are two people: Jung Ho, the impoverished son of the former huntsman, and Jade, a girl from the Northern Korean countryside sold by her family to be a courtesan's apprentice. Over the years we follow the two and a set of other recurring characters - wealthy landowners and artists, Japanese military officials, their mentors and their friends from street gangs and the entertainment scene alike, all in front of a surging independence movement, foreign political presence in the country, and later on wartime, hunger and political persecution.

However, the intriguing start that references Korean folklore with tigers and leopards and bears woefully only stays that - a start. I was hoping for the story to be enfused with more folk tales but in fact, just as quickly as these wild animals were hunted by the Japanese and went extinct, they disappeared from the story. It may just serve as a symbol that we humans behave more like the wild beasts we describe these big animals as, and they instead display more of our self-ascribed humanity (such as when the tiger at the beginning walked away instead of attacking). This is underlined by several references to the zoo in Seoul where humans have kept and displayed "ferocious" beasts as museum exhibits.

The characters we meet are certainly not heroes: they come from all sorts of classes, and can be kind and generous but also insecure, angry, entitled and arrogant. What stayed with me the most from this book is a passage in which a character reflects that life is not a gentleman's straight road that you can conquer step by step but rather a wheel, that you try your damnest to keep spinning while also hoping not to be crushed under it.

Following that cynical perspective, it's easy to see that back in those times, idealism or morals only serves one so much. Being a courtesan - while morally society-wide looked down upon - brings one more financial stability than being a hard-working farmer, unarmed resistance leads only to too many lives lost over nothing, and why be politically active and exhaust yourself, when you may as well suck up to those in power?

To survive, to take their fate into their own hands, and to protect those they love, the characters in Beasts of a Little Land often walk a moral grey line, and act selfishly, betraying, rejecting or disappointing each other. Kindness is a luxury, and it's difficult to always walk "the right path". However, this certainly doesn't excuse any questionable deeds, and so the consequences of their actions often do catch up in one way or another to the books' protagonists in the end. The repeated apperacnes of such fateful moments are a tool that Juhea Kim expertly uses to give her characters more depth and layers.

On that note, I want to compliment Kim's writing that is rich, vivid and easy to read. She describes with incredible detail the life of 1910s rural Korea and the interwar, war and post-war-time in the country, the training of Korean courtesans, the entertainment circle in Seoul, life under Japanese imperialism and the sluggish progress of the Independence movement. Reading the book, it is clear that Kim put lots of effort into the research which was reflected in the props and settings described, in the opinions and routines of the characters, and in the dialogues between them that reminded me of the fact that colonistion is truly gaslighting at its worst.

However, in trying to expertly sustain such a big time span and driving the narrative continuously forward to match the events of a specific time period, Beasts of a Little Land also reveals its weaknesses. Many of the "smaller plotlines" - e.g. the unrequited romances that took up a big part of the book - felt aimless. I kept reading and wondering "where does she want to go with this?" or "what's the purpose of this?". In the end, I asked myself wheter the ties between the characters were really only there to tie the POVs together, instead of being of some narrative merit. In my opinion, this book could have done well without the romances.

I particularly think so too because the time period was one where women were simply seen lesser as men and the latter often felt entitled and posessive over the former. While characterising the male protagonists this way is true to the time, it also did not really endear me to any of the main male romantic interests with their toxic masculinity issues (or any of the men, for that reason). By comparison, the women were in spades more interesting than them (especially the two "courtesan mentors" Dani & Silver, as well as Silver's daughter Luna) and I wished we had gotten to see so much more of them, but also of Jade herself, without the bits of her trying to held one man at bay while yearning for another.

All in all, Beasts of a Little Land had a clear overall narrative in documenting the political and social landscape of Korea from the 1910s to the 1940s but suffered from meandering, and somewhat aimlessly connected sub-narratives. It was however an enjoyable enough read as Juhea Kim offers a very accessible writing style and a rich and detailed insight into a tumultous yet important time period of Korea's history.

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