Cheong’s co-workers when they go out to dinner. This is viewed as a communal bonding opportunity, and is one of the reasons that Yeong-hye’s decision not to eat any dish with meat is viewed with such distaste by Mr.

One of the ways in which this makes social life difficult, as is seen in The Vegetarian, is the ability to have social meals, as ordering food to be shared among all diners is the norm at restaurants in Korea. Outside of the pages of the story, vegetarianism in Korea is on the rise, but it is still largely viewed as a niche diet and is difficult to maintain, as most dishes in Korea include some kind of fish or meat and there is some confusion about what vegetarians do or do not eat in Korea.

Cheong and the rest of Yeong-hye’s family see her choice to be a vegetarian as disobedient and a poor reflection on the entire family. The remnants of these dynamics are felt in The Vegetarian, wherein Mr. Korean families are also seen as a unit, and the impact of an individual can have ramifications on the perception of the family as a whole. Traditionally, Korean family hierarchies emphasize patriarchal authority, wherein a husband or father exhibits dominance and kindness in exchange for obedience and love. In the end, what truly scandalizes nationalist critics is not the failure of the translator to accurately convey Korean experiences, but the success of the translation in conveying an area of Korean experience they tend to neglect: that of female subjectivity.The Vegetarian takes place in modern-day Seoul, and its society is rooted in conservative Korean values. In contrast to this tendency, reading Han’s original and Smith’s translation together makes visible the damages that both colonization and nationalism have inflicted on the representation of female experiences. Such nationalist tendencies demand the “feminization” of the translator-requesting her to be barely visible while performing a self-effacing humility in deference to the putatively “original” culture. The awarding of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize to Deborah Smith’s English translation of The Vegetarian brought global recognition to emergent Korean literature, but domestically it has sparked outrage among numerous Korean scholars who believe the literal inaccuracies in Smith’s translation have brought about a “national disgrace.” Situating this overheated reaction in the larger context of the colonial history of Korean nationalism, this article points out the irony that the “noble cause” of anti-imperialist resistance has historically led to the silencing of women’s voices in the context of preserving and transmitting an idea of quintessential Korean culture to an international audience.

Deborah smith the vegetarian