[Kim Seong-kon] The pleasure of reading alternate history novels

Korea Herald

29-04-2025

They say that there are no 'ifs' in history because what has been done cannot be undone. Still, sometimes we cannot help but wonder, 'What if things had been different?'
For example, we ponder, 'What if John F. Kennedy had survived the assassination attempt?' Today's America would be completely different. We may also ask, 'What if the US had not intervened in the Korean War and thus North Korea had occupied the South?' 'What if General Park Chung-hee had failed in his military coup?' or 'What if Roh Moo-hyun had lost the presidential election?' Then, we, too, would have lived in an entirely different Korea.
Indeed, we are curious about the alternate world we may have lived in if history had taken another path. Alternate history novels pique our curiosity about such other worlds. As fantasy novels and science fiction do, alternate history novels use imagined realities to provide us with a mirror that reflects our present world metaphorically.
When the British novelist Robert Harris's alternate history novel 'Fatherland' came out in 1992, it instantly became a bestseller that has been translated into 25 languages. Readers were fascinated by what the novel portrayed: it portrayed a world in which Hitler won World War II and his only rival was President Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. in the US.
'Fatherland' begins in Berlin, Nazi Germany, in 1964, when Adolf Hitler is turning 75 years old. To improve relations with the US, Germany decides to deny its massacre of the Jewish people. To hide it, the Nazis secretly murder the government officials who attended the Wannsee Conference where they planned the genocide of the Jews.
In the beginning of 'Fatherland,' the protagonist, Xavier March, who is a police officer with the Kripo, or Kriminalpolizei, investigates the murder of a Nazi government official. As the investigation goes on, Nazi Germany's dark conspiracy is gradually revealed. March boldly confronts the Gestapo and the SS, both of which force him to close his investigation. At the end of the novel, however, there is a hint that even March himself was unwittingly manipulated by the Gestapo's broader scheme.
'Fatherland' is set in the 1960s, a time when, in real history, much of the world enjoyed life under liberalism. In Harris's alternate history, however, the world in 1964 is still a nightmarish totalitarian society where the Gestapo and the SS terrorize and manipulate everyone, politicians conspire to hide and fabricate the truth, and ordinary people suffer oppression and surveillance.
'Fatherland' reminds us of the celebrated Korean novelist Bok Geo-il's alternate history novel 'In Search of an Epitaph.' Bok's novel explores a world we can only imagine: 'What if Korean resistance fighter Ahn Joong-geun had failed to assassinate Japan's first Prime Minister Ito Hirobumi in 1909?'
In the novel, Ito survives the assassination attempt. Due to Ito's moderate policies, Japan allies with the US during World War II and thereby emerges as one of three global superpowers, together with Russia and the US. Unlike 'Fatherland,' in Bok's novel Nazi Germany is defeated, and Japan becomes a victorious country instead.
'In Search of an Epitaph' is set in 1987, the year of the novel's publication and a time when the Korean people still suffered under military dictatorship. In the novel, Korea has already been annexed by Japan, and thus the Korean people have become Japanese, speaking the Japanese language. However, there is subtle discrimination against the Korean Japanese as if they were second-class Japanese people.
The protagonist, Kinosida Hideyo, is a 39-year-old Korean Japanese man who is a graduate of Gyeongseong Imperial University. He has served in the Japanese army as a lieutenant, and now he is a section chief at Handow Light Metal Company. He has always thought of himself as Japanese. He lives happily until he loses a chance at a promotion at work simply because he is not considered truly Japanese. Then he comes across some books about Korean history and culture and begins to search for his identity.
'In Search of an Epitaph' was a pioneer in the alternate history genre in Korea. In his novel, Bok presents the seemingly happy lives of Koreans living as Japanese and then unveils the disillusioning reality of the subtle discrimination and restrictions they face. 'In Search of an Epitaph' also criticizes the military dictatorship of South Korea in the 1980s, comparing it to the Japanese military rule portrayed in the novel.
Both 'Fatherland' and 'In Search of an Epitaph' are fun to read because they quench our thirst for expanding the horizon of our imagination. Alternate history novels provide us with an opportunity to contemplate our present situation from other angles. Reading them, we can acquire double vision and wider perspectives, while deepening our understanding of our present situation.
Kim Seong-kon is a professor emeritus of English at Seoul National University and a visiting scholar at Dartmouth College. The views expressed here are the writer's own. -- Ed.