Yi Sang. The Darkroom of the Map

Seoul: Literature Translation Institute of Korea, 2014. — 13 p.Lee San. Dark room on the map (In English)“The Darkroom of the Map” (1931), Yi Sang’s first Korean short story, is often considered to be his most difficult work. As the text opens, we are led into the labyrinthine mind of an insomniac named “Ri Sang”, but the prose is extremely experimental, even by Yi Sang’s iconoclastic standards. Most notably, the use of pronouns is highly ambiguous throughout. As a result, the narrator, the character Ri Sang, and his friend “K” often become impossible to distinguish. A sentence might begin with the narrator speaking, but by the end, the apparent words of the narrator have become Ri Sang’s thoughts.