The Naked Tree is their third translated book I have read in the last couple years by Korean cartoonist Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, after the powerful Grass, and The Waiting. The Naked Tree is a comics adaptation of a classic Korean novel by Park Wan-suh about a Korean painter., set during the Korean War that was of course devastating for both South and North Korea, tearing the very fabric of the country in shreds, separating families. War between families. The only way we can relate to this in the US is to think of the Civil War.

The year is 1951. Twenty-year-old Kyeonga works at the US Post, where goods and services are available for purchase by American soldiers, Two colorful guys that Kyeonga manages hand-paint portraits on silk handkerchiefs, specifically images of girls and women the soldiers send the handkerchiefs to. A serious painter, a Northern escapee, OK-Huido, coms to join the crew, working to support his family. Kyeonga falls in love with him, but I won’t tell you how this all shakes out. OK-Huido only wants to create serious art.

This is a story of first love--Kyeonga’s for the married OK-Huido. It’s the story of the Korean War and the struggle for survival. It’s the story of the passion for and commitment to art exemplified by OK-Huido. It’s the third novel by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim translated by Janet Hong that I’ve read in a year. Keep translating, Ms. Hong, and I will keep reading and reviewing!

*I like how the cartoonist brings the novel’s author into the story in her adaptation. I like the artwork that calls up the time and place. Grim, but character-driven illustration.

*OK-Huido later paints a naked tree with two women--one, OK-Huido’s wife, the other Kyeonga--on either side of the tree. Maybe this tree is OK-Huido, in the war, devastated, caught bewteen two. . .impulses.

*A wind-up chimpanzee that OK-Huido and Kyenoga see comes to symbolize how society and war make people function, automatons.

I truly appreciate the afterword, with photographs and an essay helping us with the background of the war, the novel, the art. I highly recommend all of this artist’s works you can get your hands on. Powerful story, powerful adaptation.

The Naked Tree comic is based on the novel by the same name by Park Wan-suh. It's set during the Korean war. 1951 Kyeonga is a young woman making portraits for American soldiers to get by. Her coworker is Ok Huido, who's a talented painter and an actual artist. She falls in love with him, but he already has a family and she has lost hers, well, the mother is mostly a ghost now anyhow. We looks at their lives through the war and see them survive, because they need to. Eventually Kyeonga writes her first novel, The Naked Tree, about the war time and the artist she adored. The story is sad and hollow in many ways. Somehow it depicts the war time so well. The rhythm isn't the best though, as the beginning in slow and towards the end, we have time skips, but not enough pages to make them work.

The art is smudgy, just like Asian brush art and it fits the comic well. The Naked Tree is an interesting comic for its topic and how things are seen from a young woman's point of view during dark times. I don't think I can read the original book, since this was heavy enough. Korean history is surely interesting and horrible too.

(I received this book from the editor and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review)

The naked tree by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim is a very sensitive and profoundly intimate coming-of-age story surrounded by an adjacent war and the turmoil of a broken family.
When protagonist Lee Kyung was twenty years old, she sold hand-painted portraits to American soldiers while trying to find a way to bee free in a saddened and shadowy household where no man was still lived. A dull, repetitive life until northerner Ok Huido came looking for a job and the initial indifference turned into friendship and then into the first strokes of desire for a girl lost in the day-to-day routine.
They way in which author Keum Suk Gendry-Kim both describes and draws realism is just mesmerizing. The reader gets to get very intimate with the characters, their emotions and their fears. With the slow movement of each panel, the reader gets to appreciate every little detail, every wrinkle in Lee Kyung’s mother’s mouth, every gesture. Even the cold seems to go beyond the page. Thus, the story never feels stagnant and each chapter is just a new opportunity to walk those streets or watch the little monkey dance.
I would also like to mention the translation by Janet Hong. It feels very agile and true. The decision of leaving some of the words in Korean and the translation in a footnote makes some of the conversations feel more genuine, somehow. I do not know if the little footnotes explaining some of the cultural facts are a decision by the translator or if they were already present in the original, but are a huge help.

Keum Suk Gendry-Kim has been critically acclaimed for her other works, and I think The Naked Tree consolidates her as one of the best story-tellers in recent years.