Capitalists Must Starve

Winner of 2018 Hankyoreh Literature Award, this work is based directly on the life of Kang Juryong, a female worker who led a strike at the Pyongwon rubber factory in Pyongyang in 1931, climbing the roof of Eulmildae to protest working conditions. In a Japan-occupied Korea, Kang Juryong leads a peripatetic life with her impoverished parents, moving around from Ganggye to Gando and Seoriwon. She hopes to study and become a ‘modern girl‘, but reality prevents her from realizing those dreams. At her parents‘ suggestion, she gets married, but when her husband suddenly dies, her parents plan for her to marry again, this time to the owner of their house. Instead, Juryong leaves them, heading for Pyongyang. There, while working at a rubber factory, she joins the red trade union and accuses the factory owners of exploiting the workers. Reminiscent of Margaret Atwood‘s Alias Grace and Min Jin Lee‘s Pachinko, this historical fiction tells an ultimate story of ascent by leading to the female working-class hero who loved and fought through the brutal age of the early 20th Century.