FOX GIRL

Keller (the much-lauded Comfort Woman, 1997) follows the fortunes of two teenaged girls dragged into prostitution in an American Town ghetto created to service GIs in the wake of the Korean War.

Hyun Jin and Sookie are best girlfriends in late-’60s Chollak, Korea, united by their ugliness, whether physical or moral: one side of Hyun Jin’s face is marked by a disfiguring birthmark, bringing her derision despite the relative financial security that her parents’ sweets shop affords; and Sookie is the fatherless daughter of a local hard-going prostitute whose fortunes only improve when she secures an American “uncle” from the local base. While Hyun Jin works hard to be first in school, enjoying the favor of her father, Sookie scavenges the much-coveted American junk food left over by her mother’s “darkies.” When her mother disappears, leaving Sookie without money or protection, the girls skip school to search for her, first at Dr. Pak’s Love Clinic No. 5, where the prostitutes must check in for VD exams, then at the notorious Monkey House, where the more serious cases are sent to get “fixed up.” From here, the slide into prostitution is predictably heart-wrenching, since Sookie has nowhere to go but the clubs where GIs are entertained, and Hyun Jin, thrown out of her home, takes refuge with her childhood friend-turned-pimp, Lobetto, who still hopes pathetically that his African-American father will return to claim him and his mother. Keller creates a tight, unself-pitying microcosm of outcasts so bedazzled by American culture that even rape and infanticide are tolerated on the way to a better life. Hyun Jin is a strong, capable character, and the reader is continually appalled by her misjudgments, hoping somehow she will escape her “bad blood” origins and transform herself into the “fox girl” of Korean legend.

A powerful though gently paced story that will be forgiven for occasionally falling into melodrama.