There are places where history does not settle, where time folds in on itself, leaving wounds that never scar over. Korea is such a place. A land split not by nature, nor by the will of its people, but by a line drawn in haste, cutting through mountains and rivers, through families and fates. Some separations are clean, but this one festers, leaving behind echoes of longing, of letters never sent, of names spoken only in dreams.
I have spent my life between two books, much like my country exists between two shadows. The first is The Guest (손님) by Hwang Sok-yong, a novel about ghosts, not just those of the dead, but those of the living—of war, of ideology, of separation. The second, The Samurai’s Garden by Gail Tsukiyama, is a novel of quiet exile, of healing, of a man caught between cultures in a time when war made everything uncertain. At first glance, these books have nothing in common, one written by a Korean, the other by an author of Chinese and Japanese descent. But beneath the surface, they carry the same ache. And somewhere in them, there is archery—not as a sport, not as a skill, but as a symbol of distance, of something once whole now torn apart.
A Wound in the Land – The Guest
There are books that tell history, and then there are books that force you to feel it. The Guest is the latter. Hwang Sok-yong does not offer a simple story. He gives us a journey through hell, through the American invasion, through the Korean War, through the ideological battles that turned neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother.
The novel follows Ryu Yosop, a man returning to North Korea after decades in exile. He does not return as a soldier, nor as a revolutionary. He returns as a ghost, as a man trying to reckon with what was lost. The title itself is a cruel irony—the word “guest” (손님) refers to the Christian missionaries who arrived, bringing their own wars of belief, of division. But Yosop is a guest in his own homeland, no longer belonging, no longer recognized.
And in this landscape of fractured memories, there is the bow. Not in grand battle sequences, not in the way of warriors, but in a quiet, forgotten moment—an old man teaching a child how to string a bow, how to aim, how to let go. The bow is an old relic, handed down through generations, once used for hunting, now only a reminder of something lost. In North Korea, where tradition is erased in favor of ideology, even a bow becomes dangerous, a whisper of a past that cannot be controlled.
That scene struck me like an arrow through the ribs. I thought of my grandfather, of the stories he used to tell, of a time when bows were not just weapons but instruments of survival, of discipline, of connection to the land. He never spoke of the war. He only spoke of the before. Of a Korea where the sky did not feel so heavy, where the rivers did not feel like barriers.
In The Guest, there is no victory. There is only the bitter knowledge that history does not care for individuals, that war takes and takes, leaving nothing behind but regret.
Exile of the Heart – The Samurai’s Garden
Where The Guest is harsh, like the winter wind cutting through the mountains, The Samurai’s Garden is gentle, like the last warmth of autumn before the cold sets in. And yet, it carries its own sorrow.
The story follows Stephen, a young Chinese man sent to a quiet Japanese village to recover from tuberculosis. The world is at war—China and Japan are enemies, blood is being spilled—but in this village, time slows. He meets Matsu, an old samurai turned gardener, a man of quiet resilience, of wounds that do not show. And through Stephen’s time there, he learns that healing is not just about the body.
There is a scene, buried in the pages, where Matsu speaks of his youth, of the time before the war, before the world turned cruel. He speaks of archery—not as a weapon, but as a meditation, as a discipline. The way the breath controls the shot, the way the mind must be still before the arrow is released. It is not about hitting the target. It is about the moment before.
And there it was, again. The bow. The same bow that appeared in The Guest, but now it meant something different. In Korea, it was a relic of a past erased. In Japan, it was a bridge to something deeper, something untouched by war.
Reading The Samurai’s Garden, I felt the ache of longing, the same ache I felt reading The Guest. Different wars, different lands, but the same sorrow. The same quiet question: what does it mean to belong when the world has already chosen sides?
The Space Between Arrows
Two books. Two lands divided by history. Two bows, drawn in different hands, for different reasons. And yet, both books tell the same story—a story of exile, of separation, of people who can never quite go home.
I think of the old archers I have met, men who still practice despite their failing eyesight, despite the years that have made their hands shake. They do not shoot to hit a target. They shoot to remember. To hold onto something that history tried to take from them.
I think of my own family, of the letters my grandfather never sent to his brother in the North, of the stories left untold because sometimes it is easier not to remember. I think of the stories still waiting to be written, of the bows that will one day be strung again, of the arrows that will fly once more—not as weapons, not as war, but as something else.
As a way to say: I remember you.
Even across the border.
Even across time.
