North Kando

North Kando, which describes the starving people of the northern Korean border area toward the end of nineteenth century who crossed over to the fertile land beyond the Tumen River into Manchuria, was hailed as the most important novel to emerge in the decade or so years after Korean Liberation by the noted critic Paik Chul. It was a clearly a tour de force, setting aside the emerging crowd of young talents. It confronts the harsh Korean reality of the time head on and to explores the limits of human empathy by searching deep into the racial feelings of the protagonists. It is a saga of a struggling people with no previous historical precedent. This initial trickle of people into North Kando signaled the beginning of a long tragedy of the Korean dispora in China and Russia which persists even to this very day.