Ahn Jung-geun Shot Abe

       In The Korea Herald Ahn Sung-mi reports that Startling novel urges Abe to apologize. 'Abe' would be Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe; as to the sort of 'urging' on offer here ... well, the title of Kim Jung-hyun's [김정현] novel kind of gives away the ending: 안중근, 아베를 쏘다 ['Ahn Jung-geun Shot Abe'], as:

The book is based on the tale of Ahn Jung-geun (1879-1910), a Korean patriot who assassinated Hirobumi Ito, the first resident governor-general of Japanese-occupied Korea on Oct. 26, 1909. Kim brings the incident to the current era and restructures the story, where a reincarnated Ahn assassinates Abe on the same day, at the same place, in the same method as he did Ito about 100 years earlier.

       Well, it's a ... creative idea.
       Nice cover, too:



       Not that it isn't obvious from everything about this where Kim is coming from, but you almost have to admire choice quotes such as:

The Japanese wanted to label this incident (Ahn's assassination of Ito) an act of terrorism, not a patriotic deed.

       Death-mongering of any sort never really seems like a great idea, tinged as nastily as this is with nationalism certainly doesn't make it any more palatable. There's understandable lingering resentment that:

Japan has not offered deep remorse or heart-felt apologies over their wartime crimes. Instead, they still visit places like Yasukuni Shrine, paying homage to class-A war criminals, shamelessly and arrogantly.

       Still, it's kind of a dangerous step to go from that to sentencing a contemporary world leader who wasn't responsible for those crimes to death. (And the glorification of any kind of assassin surely is dubious per se.)
       Anyway, I'm curious whether the Literature Translation Institute of Korea pushes this one abroad ... something for Dalkey's Library of Korean Literature, perhaps ?
       (Recall also the to-do about Nicholson Baker's Checkpoint.)