Three generations of railroad workers
Author's Note

The power of a vast and powerful narrative that spans 100 years of Korean Peninsula history.
Who we are today is the result of our constant struggle.
Anyway, the world is getting better little by little.

World-renowned master Hwang Sok-yong explores the 100-year history of the Korean Peninsula through his novel, “Three Generations of Railroad Workers.”
Through a vast narrative surrounding a railroad worker's family, the book vividly portrays the lives of workers and the common people from the Japanese colonial period through the pre- and post-liberation period and into the 21st century, and exquisitely weaves together historical materials and old tales to create a literary masterpiece that masterfully portrays modern and contemporary Korean history.
In this era when we dream of a railroad connecting the South and the North, this work is not only a work that allows us to feel the powerful narrative power, but also a masterpiece of the author's life, taking 30 years from conception to writing.
Hwang Seok-yeong's unique wit, which grows stronger with each passing year, and the vivid characters he portrays will long remain a source of pride in our literary history.

Despite its overwhelming length of over 2,000 pages, 『Three Generations of Railroad Workers』 allows readers to fully experience Hwang Seok-yeong's power and the charm of a long novel through its fast-paced development and realistic characters.
This novel is largely centered around the story of three generations of railroad workers, from Baekman Lee to Ilcheol Lee and Jisan Lee, and the story of Baekman Lee's great-grandson and factory worker Jin-oh Lee, who is currently on a sit-in protest.
Jin-oh Lee, a laid-off worker who is on a sit-in protest on the chimney of a power plant factory that is 16 stories high, endures his time on the chimney by naming five plastic bottles with the names of the dead people and talking to them.
On a bitterly cold and long night, Jin-oh contemplates the meaning of life that has been passed down to him from the past to the present while calling upon his great-grandmother 'Ju-an-daek', his grandmother 'Singeum-i', his childhood friend 'Gak-sae', his friend 'Jin-gi', a metalworker's union worker, and 'Yeong-suk', a worker who endured the crane strike.
“Perhaps it is the belief that life, though boring and difficult, still endures.
“That’s how I live today.” (page 207)

The story of the brothers Lee Il-cheol and Lee I-cheol, set in the Yeongdeungpo district, a district with a high concentration of factories, resonates even more deeply as it examines the labor movement and independence movement during the Japanese colonial period.
A railway workshop technician who fell in love at first sight with a train “When Baek-man Lee had a son, he named him Han-soe because he thought of a train, and the next son was also named Du-soe after his older brother, and when he was registered as a civil servant, Il-cheol became I-cheol.” (pp. 23-24) The older brother Il-cheol followed in their father’s footsteps and went through the Railway Workers’ Training Institute to become a rare Korean engineer at the time, making him the pride of Baek-man Lee, but the younger brother Cheol Lee was fired from the railway workshop and worked as a factory worker, and suffered hardships such as being imprisoned while working as an independence activist.
The characters such as Lee Jae-yu, Kim Hyeong-seon, and Miyake, who are depicted as having worked with Lee Cheol, Lee Cheol's wife Han Yeo-ok, who was a hideout couple and gave birth to their son Jang-san, Choi Dal-yeong, who acted as a lackey for the Japanese, and Park Seon-ok, who served as Lee Cheol's liaison for the independence movement, enrich the story of the brothers.


Meanwhile, what stands out in the story that Hwang Seok-young draws like a dream is the performance of the female characters.
When Baek Man's wife, Ju An-daek, passes away when Han Soe and Du Soe are still young, Baek Man's younger sister, Lee Mak-eum, takes care of the brothers, and Ju An-daek and Mak-eum's aunt communicate with them through 'souls' and take care of the brothers' weddings and funerals.
Lee Mak-eum, who “came to work at a textile factory and ended up taking care of the children for her second older brother who was left alone” (page 88), used to “make up various legends about Juan-daek because he was a match for Han-soe” (page 94) with her sharp tongue. Juan-daek, who was quiet and had a strong will to live, often showed up to her aunt and Han-soe because she loved her brothers very much.
In particular, Shin Geum-i, the wife of Il-cheol, who “surprised everyone around her by predicting what had happened in the past and what would happen in the future with just a quick glance upon meeting them for the first time” and whose nickname was “Shin Tong Bang Tong Shin Geum-i” (page 24), used her intelligence and innate foresight as a new woman who had participated in the labor movement with her brother-in-law, Lee Cheol, to wisely overcome the hardships that befell the family, comforting and keeping them centered.


This land here is our scene and reality.
We have no choice but to believe in our own strength.

In his “Author’s Note,” Hwang Seok-young pointed out that in our modern and contemporary literature, “the quality and quantity of long novels are far inferior to that of short stories, and among them, novels that reflect the lives of modern industrial workers are rare.”
Therefore, this weighty novel is the monumental result of a struggle to “bring to the forefront the industrial workers who have been absent from our literary history, and to reveal the roots of the lives of Korean workers today through their life journeys over the past hundred years of modern and contemporary history.”
Literary critic Han Ki-wook commented, “If Yeom Sang-seop’s ‘Three Generations’ unfolded the period from the end of the Joseon Dynasty to the rise of capitalism, Hwang Seok-yeong’s ‘Three Generations of Railroad Workers’ covers the history of the Japanese colonial period and division, as well as the current labor movement. Reading these two works together completes the modern and contemporary history of Korean literature.”


It has been fifty years since he began his full-fledged literary career in 1970 when his short story “Tower” was selected for the Chosun Ilbo New Year’s Literary Contest.
The master, who has fought against dictatorships and worked tirelessly for half a century to bring about social change and the development of Korean literature, says, “In the vast expanse of time in the universe, the traces of the times and lives we lived in may be nothing more than a few specks of dust,” and “The world will change slowly, very slowly, but I do not want to give up the hope that it will become a little better.”
Just as the tender leaves of lettuce that Jin-oh Lee started growing from seeds in a flower pot while precariously clinging to life on a 45-meter-high chimney, which is “neither heaven nor earth,” are growing lush, the story of “three generations of railroad workers” that the author has long cherished will become a seed with infinite potential that will bring about small changes in the world.
I have no doubt that this work will be long remembered as a work that provides us with a sense of comfort and pride as we, as workers living in the Republic of Korea, discover our roots and demonstrate our potential.

This is the story of my hometown, filled with memories of my childhood, and also the story of contemporary workers.
I dedicate this novel to Korean workers, filling a void in Korean literature. (Author's Note, p. 619)