Run aground
In Hwang's stories, life for ordinary Koreans is often bleak
Taesop, the backwater math tutor at the center of Hwang Sun Won's Lolita -like tale "The Pond," heaves a deep shudder upon realizing that an ample-bosomed pupil has played him for a fool, using her coquetry to make him unwittingly party to her elopement with a much hipper philosophy student in Seoul. It's a pathetic moment, both embarrassing and revolting to witness, but not hard to imagine. It's also just the first of many convulsions that course through Lost Souls , a compilation of three early collections of stories Hwang a highly influential Korean writer, who died in 2000 ...
