A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

Gary Pak is another writer of Korean descent. In 1998, he published his first novel
A Ricepaper Airplane. Its frame is a middle-aged man’s vigil at his uncle’s deathbed:
“Uncle, then, is like a book. […] It isn’t pleasant coming to the hospital everyday, the
smell of disinfectant and death everywhere. But when he starts telling his stories with no
end, I am hooked, like an addict. […] I lose track of myself and time. […] It’s a real
world.” 314 Told in flashbacks, the intricate non-linear narrative spans one man’s life
journey from Korea to Manchuria, Japan, and Hawai’i. Throughout, Sung Wha fights
injustice and despotism, first in the form of Japanese military occupation, later as
plantation politics and (neo-)colonialism. In the non-Hawaiian passages, the reader learns
bits and pieces of Korean history and mythology, which form the cultural background of
these immigrants.
At first, Sung Wha’s rebellion is instinctive. The subsequent politicization of the
young peasant, hiding with an underground activist and his well-educated daughter in the
city, resounds with the feelings of Native Hawaiians and other victims of imperialism:
We’re a colony of Japan, do you understand that? We Koreans still have our faces
and our souls now, but soon, if this is to continue, we’ll be Koreans in face only.
Our insides will be Japanese. Then, instead of rebelling against the Japanese, our
insides will rebel against our outside. We’ll be rebelling against ourselves (123).
After a raid, the young man and the daughter take flight, having to pass the fabled tiger
country, “Kumgangsan,” on their long way to Manchuria. This place of myth and power
is a refuge from oppressive history:
Time does not dawn here. It never did. Today is yesterday is tomorrow is today…
and there are no such things as villages or towns or societies. There is peace in
nature, and nature is everything. There is no anger or sadness or happiness. There
is no frustration or loneliness. And all is forgotten but the journey of the moment.
A sapling in a forest of giant trees (147).
Outside, however, time moves on, and after a series of flights, fights, detainments, and
separations, Sung Wha escapes to Hawai’i with a forged passport, leaving his wife and
two children behind. Caught in another oppressive situation on the Wahiawa sugar
plantation, he holds on to a dream of returning. The symbol of his futile dreaming is the
314 Gary Pak, A Ricepaper Airplane, Honolulu 1998: 3, 14.
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