The Yalu flows Book

As the son of a Korean family of substance the author of this autobiographical sketch grew up, in the early years of the century, among unsettling influences from east and west. Europe, known as "West of the Ocean," supplied modern education to replace the old classics of China and Korea. From the east came Japanese troops to annex the country in a bloodless war. Mirok Li, a perceptive and receptive schoolboy, saw this political scene in terms of his day-to-day experience. The remarkable thing is that he continued to see it with the same clarity, truth and detail when came to write the story many years later in Europe, using a simple German that his translator may perhaps have improved on Mr. Hammlmann's English version, at least, is lucent calm and fully expressive of the closely felt Korean scene that stirs the reader by its blend of intimacy and remoteness. Mirok Li, with a sequel on his European impacts barely started, died in Bavaria in 1950. But the little book he has left us is a work of finished and haunting art that conveys a spiritual repose beneath the unrest and progress of his period. - Times Literary Supplement.

Excerpts from The Yalu Flows are included in some high school language textbooks in Germany.