To The Warm Horizon by Choi Jin-Young; translated by Soje
Honford StarMay 2021Selected by Anthony Bird and Taylor Bradley

Choi Jin-young wanted to write a lesbian love story, but felt that setting it in modern Korea would mean dealing with fear, discrimination and homophobia at the expense of the romance she wanted to tell. Her solution was to make everyone in To the Warm Horizon miserable so that her lovers wouldn’t be the only ones suffering. Published in Korean in 2017, the dystopian novel tells of a society wrecked by a global pandemic that has killed hundreds of millions of people in days. In an act of spectacular bad timing, the book was published in English in May 2021. In this excerpt, the narrator has abandoned the Korean peninsula and is trying to survive in frozen Russia. – Anthony Bird and Taylor Bradley

Have you heard of Korea?

Is Korea still where it used to be?

I was born in Korea. That’s where I met Dan and gave birth to Haerim and Haemin.

That was a long time ago.

Haemin now lives in Warsaw. His wife recently gave birth to their fourth child. They told me they named her Lee Bona. They say Bona is as small as Haemin’s head. I will never see that small, precious, precarious bundle of life. Much less hold her in my arms.

Haerim died when she was 11 years old. We abandoned Korea because she died. I abandoned explanation as we left Korea. † Haemin was seven at the time. The age when children have a lot of questions. Haemin could not understand his parents’ decision to leave his bicycle, his computer, and his older sister’s room behind. I could not give him any explanation. I could not tell him. At least some of us have to survive.

I had happened to hear the midnight news in bed. It was a Monday. They said that a strange virus was spreading in a distant country, that the virus would mutate with every new vaccine. Tired as I was, I was mentally adding up our monthly expenses on birthdays, funerals, and weddings as the newscaster explained that there was no way of knowing what to look out for because the infection process was yet unknown. The next day, news of the virus took wind on every street. But it’ll be fine soon. That was what we believed. Because the disaster is in a distant country. Because modern medicine and the government will protect us. Even as we heard about surging death tolls in the Americas, we worried about the cost of living, retirement, and our children’s education in Korea. Then I received the call that Haerim was dead. She’d died less than an hour after being transported from her school to the hospital. Haerim had overslept that morning. After washing her face and tying her hair in a ponytail, she’d complained that her forehead was hot. She’d mumbled weakly that she wanted to eat a Bulgogi Whopper ‡ as she put on her backpack. A soft whisper to herself as if chanting an old, bygone wish. I’d handed her a 5,000 won bill and told her to buy one after school. Haerim had hugged me tight around my waist and rubbed her head on my chest. I’ll get you medicine on my way home from work, I’d said. That was my last farewell.

The official death toll that day, in Korea alone, had been over 100,000. It increased nearly fivefold the next day. We claimed Haerim’s neglected body from the hospital and buried her in the hills behind our neighbourhood. We dug into the earth without shedding a single tear. The parting had struck like lightning. We knew nothing of death. Only as we lowered the body into the pit and began covering it with dirt could I truly see I was dumping Haerim into the ice-cold earth. Shrieking, I jumped into the pit and embraced her. I wanted to hold her in my arms and be buried alongside her. Haerim looked like she didn’t even know she was dead. As she lay there on the frozen earth, it really seemed as if she was simply waiting for class to end so she could go eat that burger. I covered her with dirt, failing to leave her favourite burger by her side.

Mass bankruptcy brought on a disaster surpassing the disease: a rise in robberies, smuggling, human trafficking, murder, violence, and religious cults. The male mortality rate was much higher, and a baseless rumour began to circulate that the infected could be cured by eating the livers of young children. Governments dissolved; public order collapsed. Those were the days when we could neither stay nor leave. ◉

† Korean immigration to Russia dates back to the early 19th century. By 1937, 168,259 Koreans were living in the Soviet Union – with their own schools, theatres, hospitals and newspapers – before Stalin deported much of the Soviet Korean population to Central Asia.

‡ Bulgogi, translated directly as “fire meat” from the Korean, consists primarily of thin cuts of beef or pork cooked over a barbecue. At Burger King in Korea, you can order a Bulgogi Whopper.