Part 1
처음 ~ 뱃사람이 이야기를 꺼내기까지
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Boat Song
On the third day of the third lunar month, the narrator is lying on the grassy slope of Moranbong in Pyongyang, drinking in the spring, when a mournful strain of the Yeongyu boat song, the 'baettaragi', drifts over from somewhere nearby. He goes looking for the singer and finds a sailor in the pine grove by the Tomb of Gija, a man who has not been back to his hometown of Yeongyu in some twenty years. When the sailor sighs that fate is the strongest thing of all, the narrator asks him to tell his story.
human helplessness before fatethe conflict woven from love and jealousya wanderer's lifelong longing for homethe narrator's aesthetic, beauty-seeking outlook
Public domain: the author died in 1951 and the work was published in 1921, so its copyright has ended in Korea, the US and the EU. Everything written here is our own; no translation is copied.
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Characters
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- 나(액자 바깥의 화자) I (the narrator of the outer frame) A young romantic who follows a mournful boat song across Moranbong on a spring day.
- 그(뱃사람 형) He (the sailor, the elder brother) A sailor who sings the boat song like no one else, and hasn't been home to Yeongyu in some twenty years.
- 그의 아내 His Wife
- 그의 아우 His Younger Brother
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Part 2
뱃사람이 들려주는 마을 이야기 ~ 아내의 장례까지
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Part 3
아우가 마을을 떠나는 장면 ~ 끝
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