Name: Meeting with My Brother
ISBN: 9780231178648

Mun-yŏl Yi

Intro -- Table of Contents -- Introduction -- Acknowledgments -- Meeting with My Brother

A Novella

Meeting with My Brother

Mun-yol Yi

Yi Mun-yol's Meeting with My Brother is narrated by a middle-aged South Korean professor, also named Yi, whose father abandoned his family and defected to the North at the outbreak of the Korean War. Many years later, despite having spent most of his life under a cloud of suspicion as the son of a traitor, Yi is prepared to reunite with his father. Yet before a rendezvous on the Chinese border can be arranged, his father dies. Yi then learns for the first time that he has a half-brother, whom he chooses to meet instead. As the two confront their shared legacy, their encounter takes a surprising turn. Meeting with My Brother represents the political and psychological complexity of Koreans on both sides of the border, offering a complex yet poignant perspective on the divisions between the two countries. Through a series of charged conversations, Yi explores the nuances of reunification, both political and personal. This semiautobiographical account draws on Yi's own experience of growing up with an absent father who defected to the North and the stigma of family disloyalty. First published in Korea in 1994, Meeting with My Brother is a moving and illuminating portrait of the relationships sundered by one of the world's starkest barriers.

Amy Grieve

3.5 stars.

Yi Mun-Yol is a writer my old uni lecturer recommended to me a few years ago referring him as an 'essential' author for anyone interested Korean literature. At the time I was in the midst of my dissertation so I filed that name away until this week when I came upon Meeting With My Brother during some late night book hunting. 

Meeting With My Brother is a semi-autobiographical novella following a middle aged South Korean professor who arranges to meet his brother from North Korea for the first time.

The translation I picked up was smooth and natural which really eased me into the story. I found that I enjoyed the blunt narrative tone which didn't lend itself to sentimentally and created a sense of distance between those who existed within the novella and myself as a reader. This reflected the jaded perspective of the professor who due to choices made by his father in the past has suffered a great deal in his childhood and beyond. It also worked well during the brother's first meeting. There was an inherent awkwardness between the brothers which was enhanced by this sense of distance. Stood together they were strangers linked by blood, separated by borders and hostility.

On this occasion I'm really thankful for the translator's introduction which introduced me to Yi Mun-Yol in detail, helping me to contextualize his work and see how his work is received in his homeland. The introduction also went into detail about Yi's past and how he incorporates his own history into his own work. For example, in Meeting With My Brother the main character's father defected to North Korea during the war leaving his mother with three young children to support alone which is something that happened in Yi's life. It made me appreciate what I was reading more as it was a lived experience. This wasn't a fictional character, but a piece of the author's own pain on the page.

Moray Lyle McIntosh

Meeting With My Brother is a compelling story on two deliberately related themes as Yi Mun-Yol describes his first encounter with a younger brother he has never met. Towards the end of the Korean War Yi's father, an ardent supporter of the communist regime, fled into North Korea, leaving behind his wife and children in the hope that they would soon be reunited. As Korea remained divided this never came to pass and in trying to trace his father Yi discovers that he has remarried and raised a second family. It's a deeply personal narrative as Yi discovers that his father has recently died and is given the opportunity to meet one of his unknown siblings. The meeting is difficult and thought the narrative is restrained Yi manages to evoke the discomfort, the resentments, the misunderstandings and the uncertainty as two men bound by blood, but little else, jockey for understanding. It's an uncomfortable read but an affective one. Their culture, experience and politics are very different and they struggle to bridge religious and ideological gaps.

Alongside this exploration of the meaning of family runs a wider theme, that of the desirability and viability of a reunited Korea. This is addressed most directly in Yi's conversation with and about a pro-unificationist known as "Mr Unification". Interactions between this idealist and other more wary characters reveal the many challenges facing any plans for a united Korea. Mr Unifications calls on ties blood and a shared land and history, in short that a single "people" should have a single nation.

Yi's reservations about easy reunification based on such a romanticisation of a semi-historical, semi-mythological past are clear scepticism and caution and the practical difficulties and ideological tensions are openly discussed but they are most profoundly illustrated through his discussions with his brother. During these fraught exchanges there are some fascinating insights into Confucian and clan observations and rituals in South Korea and their equivalents (or lack thereof) in the North. The intricacies of family etiquette, particularly regarding the sons' relative responsibilities in honouring their dead father can occasionally be overwhelming but the confusion is actually a powerful support for the story as Yi's brother is equally unfamiliar with them and it becomes clear that a lack of an equally shared tradition shared ground causes suspicion and resentment. There is certainly a possibility for accord but the differences and challenges are starkly revealed.

Meeting With My Brother is a thoroughly realistic, personal and clear-sighted story. Yi is honest and clear about the the problems that dog both halves of Korea, from the economic problems of parts of North Korea to the corruption and exploitation in South Korea, openly admitting to his own collusion in the latter. It is a really admirable explication of the problems facing Koreans now and in the future and the emotional toll of unification on the small scale of two individuals powerfully illustrates the stakes.

Thank you to Columbia University Press and Netgalley for providing a free advance copy of this work.

Hellboy TCR

"Narrated in the first person, Meeting with My Brother tells the story of a professor's journey to meet with his younger half-brother from North Korea. The professor's father had left his family behind in the South during the Korean War and eventually had another family in the North. The story includes the professor's negotiations with the go-between who arranges the meeting, his participation in a tour group (the necessary excuse to travel to the area in China where the meeting takes place), his interaction with other tour members and Koreans living in the area, and finally his meeting with his brother. The story includes different positions on reunification and illuminates many of the reasons that make reunification difficult. In this new translation the author has added a new vignette that does not appear in the original."

Meeting with My Brother A Novella

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