Set in the aftermath of the Korean War, Fox Girl is the story of its forgotten victims, the abandoned children of American GIs who live in a world where life is about survival. The "fox girl" is Hyun Jin, who is disowned by her parents and whose life revolves around her best friend, Sookie, a teenage prostitute kept by an American soldier, and Lobetto, a lost boy who makes a living running errands and pimping for neighborhood girls.
I was describing this book to my mother and I said, "I dunno, it kinda looks like a children's book, but I don't think it is," and she said, "I hope it's not a children's book." And then I said, reflecting on it, "Yeah, probably not, there's a pretty brutal gang rape scene in there," and then she was silent, probably in respect of my absolute inability to delineate what makes a children's book a children's book. And I don't want to spoil the book for you, but trust me, you're gonna thank me later for not letting you get to that scene unprepared.
Fox Girl is the story of Hyun Jin, who kinda gets sucked into the world of prostitution and sex slavery by accident. She's born with a bad luck mark, a large black splotch, on her face, and it is an ill-fated mark of her destiny. Throughout the book, the tale of the fox girl is told several times, in different incarnations - in some versions, she is a a thief and a murderer, in others, she is merely trying to fit in, in a world which isn't hers. Hyun Jin is all of these girls, both victim and abuser, as she charts her course through the camptown life.
As the book begins, Hyun Jin and Sookie are best friends, despite their differences, mostly because Hyun Jin is a teacher's pet and Sookie is a half-American whore's daughter and they share a bond of being outcasts. Events begin to spiral out of control when Sookie's mother, Duk Hee, disappears to the "Monkey House" which is a hospital and provider of abortions. As Sookie struggles to survive in her mother's absence, Hyun Jin is a terrible friend, bringing her food only when she remembers, and only when Sookie is agreeable enough to her will. When Duk Hee's American GI boyfriend comes looking for her and finds Sookie, starving, instead, things begin to take on a tinge of inevitability for Sookie. Hyun Jin, who really is kind of a bitch, still can't manage to untangle herself from Sookie, and winds up getting disowned and thrown out on the street after discovering that she is not the daughter of two upstanding Korean citizens, but Sookie's half-sister, the child of Duk Hee and Hyun Jin's father, who wanted a child but could not get one with his sterile wife. Her father's love is not enough to overcome his wife's hatred of the ill-marked child who was given to them, and who utters the self-fulfilling prophecy that blood will tell. Hyun Jin winds up staying with Lobetto, a half black, half Korean boy who runs errands and hangs about with Hyun Jin and Sookie sometimes. When Hyun Jin finally gives in to economic pressure, Lobetto is all too ready to introduce her to her new reality.
In some ways, Hyun Jin's introduction into the world of sex slavery is worse than Sookie's, and is all the more brutal for her naivete. I really wanted to shake Hyun Jin, about 80% of the time. You see her just not getting it, and you want to yell at her for her stupid choices. It's a feeling I tried not to have, since she is more than repaid for her stupidity. The unrelenting stubbornness and take no shit attitude which got her into the mess in the first place is also what helps her claw her way out of it, though. I have to say, the most unrealistic part is when she becomes "popular" because she knows how to individually accommodate each man she services, because if there's one thing about Hyun Jin that sticks out, it is her absolute inability to read people or compromise.
The gang-rape/de-virginizing of Hyun Jin leaves her pregnant, which she (irrationally) decides to keep. When she loses the baby, in suspicious circumstances, she loses herself as well for a time, until she discovers that Sookie is pregnant. Hyun Jin makes a devil's pact: Hyun Jin will support Sookie if Sookie will keep the baby. In a world where the market is flush with young Korean girls prostituting themselves for GIs, Hyun Jin distinguishes herself by allowing any indignity to be performed on her body. After the baby is born, however, Hyun Jin finds it in herself to fight for a better future.
I know that's a lot of plot up there, but I kinda need to talk it all out, like therapy. I can't really do a critical review as I am still turning over the story in my mind. This is a killer of a book, and all the more sorrowful because this world is not a fantasy, it is history. The three young people who make up the center of the story - Hyun Jin, Sookie, and Lobetto - are sadly cruel to each other, demanding everything that it is possible to give. Lobetto and Sookie are more straightforward than Hyun Jin - they just want her body and her cooperation, while Hyun Jin wants their hope. They are all oddly loyal, even as they make each other's lives wretched.
It's in many ways a story that says that the family you are born with is not as important as the family you create. Despite the ways in which they use and abuse each other, Hyun Jin, Sookie and Lobetto are also the only ones keeping each other afloat, and Lobetto's final act is to give Hyun Jin the chance he never had. But at the same time, their closeness is poisonous, their ties to each other also binding them into the same old patterns. Only by separation are the three of them granted a future.
Besides being an absorbing, if depressing, look at the problems created by the American military in Korea, I'm not entirely sure what I should be taking away from the book. I don't think it's hopeful - even as Hyun Jin narrates her last chapter, she alludes to the fragile peace of her home, and the ever-present threat of destruction. In the end, Hyun Jin must let go of Sookie, her dark sister, who cannot leave the only world she's ever known. You'd be messed up too, if you were her, but you still can't help but hate a world that makes people like Sookie and Lobetto, and then abandons them.
It also suggests that you cannot escape fate - Sookie and Lobetto's courses were set for them long before Hyun Jin realized the depths to which you can sink, and only Hyun Jin, who was never raised in that world to begin with, manages to escape it by the end of the book. In a way, blood did tell, just not the way in which her mother believed it would. You almost don't want to root for Hyun Jin, because she is what Sookie accuses her of being: the fox girl who, taken in by a human family, eats them all in her hunger. But her courage and bravery make you admire her in spite of yourself.
It's a tough subject, and a tough read. Keller does a good job with the writing, and the twisted English phrases which mean nothing to Hyun Jin give off a detached feeling of unreality. It's a good book, and it makes me want to read more about it in detail, in a non-fiction format. South Korea has a prostitution problem, created by WWII, and exacerbated by the American military afterwards. What has been done is shameful, but there is hope for the future.
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