❍

❍ Frozen Mouth
❍❍
K i m H a k-yŏng

❍
Kim Hak-yŏng was born in 198 in Gunma, Japan. As a child, Kim was delivered
a punch to the ear by his father, an event that contributed to a severe stutter.
Although Kim received a PhD in chemistry from the University of Tokyo in 19,
he took up writing as a profession and wrote nineteen works of fiction as well as
hundreds of essays. Kim is sometimes classified as a naikō (introspective) writer
because he emphasized his private thoughts and feelings in his narratives. Sadly,
in 198, at the age of forty-seven, Kim took his own life.
The tragic and compelling circumstances of Kim’s life and death contribute
to a uniqueness of perspective on difference that sets him apart from other
Zainichi Korean writers of his era. Kim, unlike his peers, articulates the notion of
embodiment—the social, cultural, and physiological processes of living and be-
ing a body—as an integral aspect of self and identity. The expression of bodily
feelings and thoughts are conveyed through the repetition of images of a frozen
landscape, which function as a metaphor of isolation, as does the title of his novel
Kogoeru kuchi (Frozen Mouth).
Kogoeru kuchi first appeared in 19 in the journal Bungei and was awarded
the journal’s prestigious annual literary prize. The eight-chapter novel tells the
story of one day in the life of Sai Keishoku, a chemist with a stutter, whose trou-
bles are complicated by his Korean minority status. Kim’s portrait of the stutterer’s
alienation draws attention to his metanarrative of the inevitable loneliness of ex-
istence. Below the surface lies the story of Isogai Shinji, Sai’s Japanese friend, who
represents Sai’s alter ego. Isogai, crippled by his own stutter and violent history,
almost effortlessly chooses suicide to escape his reality. In Isogai’s suicide letter
Kim maps out both the physical violence on lived bodies and the interior land-

Translation and introduction by Elise Foxworth

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scape of the battered psyche to demonstrate how anger and despair can turn
self-destructively inwards. While Kogoeru kuchi sheds light on the motives for and
meaning of suicide, it also celebrates the power of love to sustain the will to live.
The final chapter recounts Sai’s tender relationship with Michiko, Isogai’s sister.
Their long-term relationship represents an unprecedented model, until then, of a
successful inter-racial love affair and allegorically serves as an ideal of reconcilia-
tion for Japanese and Koreans. Indeed Kogoeru kuchi may be read as a love story,
for Kim suggests that such a union, however ephemeral, can provide solace in the
face of enduring loneliness.
While Kogoeru kuchi succeeds as a narrative for understanding the pain of the
stutterer and embodied difference, it also plays a crucial role in demonstrating
Kim’s ideas about ethnicity and politics. While Kim obviously cared greatly for his
fellow Zainichi Koreans, he felt that ethnicity was an arbitrary human quality that
became little more than an alibi for racial narcissism and a license for ethnic abso-
lutism, a view especially meaningful for disaffected Koreans in the early postwar
decades.
Kim privileged a notion of subjectivity detached from ethnicity and politics.
Sai, for example, searches for his true identity, a core self that precedes or super-
sedes his ethnicity or stuttering. Kim, suffused in pain, seemed to need to believe
in a unified—albeit buried—interior self, for perhaps it could one day prevail and
enable him to overcome the constraints of his own personal history and the ideo-
logical belief systems of his day that he felt suffocated and silenced him.

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 Frozen Mouth
Kogoeru kuchi

A nd moses said unto the lord, O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither

heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but I am slow of
speech, and of a slow tongue. (Exodus 4:10)

ch a p t er i

A freezing wind was blowing in from the north. With my chin thrust forward,
I squinted my eyes, hunched my shoulders, and walked into the wind. Barren
trees stood here and there in an unruly formation in the vast lonesome wasteland
where I walked. A grey dusk was gathering. As twilight approached, only the
silhouette of a distant mountain ridge was visible against the dim light of the sky.
I gave no thought to the direction I was going, nor did I care. The wind blew so
fiercely I feared it would blow me away. Yet I trudged onward, my hands thrust
into the pockets of my coat, pressed against my body by the strong wind.
I did not know where I was headed, and yet at the same time I knew my pre-
cise destination. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I intuitively knew. I continued
walking for what seemed like an eternity, but I did not tire. Finally, after a long
time, I saw a very faint red light on a mountain peak far in the distance. It was so
obscure that it was hardly discernable to the human eye, yet I definitely saw it.
“Aah, that’s it,” I thought to myself. Revitalized, I quickened my pace and
headed toward the light. The light itself seemed to be approaching me at an
equally hurried pace. It kept getting bigger and bigger, and the bigger it grew,
the brighter it grew. Soon it seemed as big as the sun, the size of the brilliant red
morning sun. Then it came even closer and grew even larger, expanding relent-
lessly. Before I knew it I was engulfed in a massive red ball of light.
The light was dazzling—a stunningly vivid crimson heavenly palace. The
blustery wind kept whirling and blew my hair away from my face, sending it flut-
tering up behind me. Though my face still felt somewhat chilled, the rest of my
body was warm. Indeed, not only my body, but the ground I’d been walking on,
even the sky I’d been gazing at, were enveloped in this massive globe of light and
had been warmed by its heat. “I made it,” I thought, and I finally relaxed. My face

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softened and, with my chin thrust forward and my eyes still squinting, I smiled.
I felt my face awash in the red glow. I had finally found what I’d been searching
for. At long last I had reached the place I’d been dreaming of; the world I had so
longed to enter. I cried for joy.
“I made it,” I repeated again and again with elation. I wept, tears streaming
down my cheeks. I walked on and on in the crimson light.
That’s when I woke up.
The light of the brilliant sun had vanished. My room was dark. It was dim
outside as well, but dawn seemed to be approaching. The only light was the faint
reflection of distant streetlights on the curtains.
I opened my eyes fully and stared at the dark ceiling. My covers were heavy;
they were so heavy that my body, from my neck down, felt immobilized, as if I
were being smothered. Suddenly a slight breeze blew across my face. “Was that
the wind?” I wondered. Moving only my eyes, I stole a glance at the curtains.
There seemed to be a wind blowing outside; maybe it was blowing in through a
crack in the window, which was adjacent to and just above my futon. I felt the
wind on my face, but if it were blowing in through the window, then surely the
curtains should have been fluttering.
The curtains, though, hadn’t fluttered at all; they hung completely still. As I
lay there mulling this over, it suddenly occurred to me that what I had felt was my
own breath. The covers were pulled up around my chin and bunched up around
my neck. When I exhaled, my breath must have hit the covers and blown back
in my face.
I turned my gaze back to the ceiling and stared into the darkness. I thought
about my dream, cognizant all the while of how the covers felt like a heavy weight
on top of me. I remembered that I’d had a similar dream a few years earlier.
It had been cold then as well. It was right after Isogai died, during the winter
break of my freshman year. I had gone home to Shizuoka for the holidays. I had
dreamt that I was walking along a dry riverbed early one winter morning. In the
dream I was ambling along a path through some rice paddies. I could see the
silhouettes of the early-rising farmers at work here and there. I climbed up the
embankment and kept walking toward where the riverbed met another river. My
hometown is near that river junction, in the vicinity of the second river.
In that dream too, the early morning winter air was cold and fresh; every-
thing was covered in a thin layer of white frost. The place was enveloped in an
all-encompassing silence, and in that silence I walked for a very long time, losing
all sense of time and space. Then, finally, on the opposite side of the river, from
the direction of the forest, I saw the crimson red morning sun starting to rise. It
rose rapidly; its dazzling rays cast a hue over the entire area. Presently, I found

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 Kim Hak-yŏng

myself enveloped by the sun’s rays. The dazzling beauty of the sun’s glittering
rays enthralled me. As I walked on, the brilliant flashing golden rays of the sun
encircled me, forming a cone at the tip of which was the sun. I saw an amazing
spectacle then. In the center of the round sun, I had the distinct impression that
there was something, or maybe someone, staring at me. I couldn’t tell if it was a
person or some other entity, but it communicated to me and beckoned me on, as
if to encourage me forward.
I had no idea what on earth this thing was. What could it be, this thing that
had enveloped me in golden light and was staring at me? I focused my gaze on
it in an attempt to determine what it was. As soon as I thought I’d pinpointed
it though, the mysterious entity simply vanished. Whenever I shifted my gaze,
it would reappear in my peripheral vision, but this kept me from identifying it.
Somehow it made me think that it might be divine, or that maybe it was Isogai.
I was weak at the time and that mysterious entity inside the sun’s glow gently
wrapped me in its warm soft rays and made me feel that it was trying to help
me along. I wept, tears streaming down my cheeks, as I walked on. Eventually I
lay down on my stomach in the grass and sobbed, the silent scream, “I will live”
resounding in my head over and over.
Looking back, I think I was having a nervous breakdown at the time. I’m
sure my fragile nerves induced the dream. Moreover there was the effect of Iso-
gai’s death. Isogai is the only person I have ever, in my entire life, considered a
true friend, though ours was a short friendship of just three months. When he
committed suicide, it felt like a part of me, rather than someone else, had died.
Perhaps it was because, like me, he suffered from a stutter. For that reason I sup-
pose I saw myself in him.
“That same dream,” I thought, staring at the dark ceiling. “Could I be having
another nervous breakdown?” Of late I’ve been plagued yet again by a strange
difficulty breathing. It’s as if I live in constant terror of something, as if I’m being
continually followed by something and it ends up cornering me. Should I blame
these feelings on my recent fall into the “stutterer’s abyss” as I call it?
Lately my stuttering has worsened; the words just don’t come out. There
are times when even I am astounded because words simply will not material-
ize. Times like these come and go at intervals. Sometimes I can speak fluently,
as though I’d never had a stutter, but then I am revisited with a bout of the most
extreme stuttering, what I call the stutterer’s abyss. In my case, this occurs about
once every four months. I, myself, do not understand why; the reasons are in-
comprehensible. Nevertheless, I inevitably find myself trapped in the stutterer’s
abyss. My stuttering overwhelms me; it torments me and consigns me to a deep
melancholic depression.

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 Frozen Mouth

This time, however, I cannot attribute my debilitated nerves exclusively to

my stuttering abyss. For today has finally arrived. All the many hours that I have
spent terrified of today must be partially to blame. I have been consumed with
worry about today; it has brought me nothing but grief. My feelings of fear are
completely paralyzing. There is no way to manage my fear with will power alone;
it is an automatic process. I tremble with fear, and the best I can do is merely
endure the agitation coursing through me.
My anxiety about today’s research seminar is to blame. Today I am sched-
uled to give a presentation on my last three months of research to my colleagues
in the lab. My anxiety has to do with the words I plan to use in my presentation.
In a nutshell, it’s anxiety about my stutter.
I drank last night. I haven’t done so for a long time. I keep thinking I’ll give
up drinking, and in fact, I had gone without a drink for a while. But the truth is
that there are times I can’t cope without drinking.
This was the case last night. On my way home from the lab I got off the train
midway at Asagaya. When you go out the south exit and turn left, there is a line
of pubs. I went to a popular corner pub run by a couple in their fifties. I’ve been
going there for two years, and while their faces are entirely familiar to me, I’ve
never actually had a real conversation with them. I’ve only said things like, “A
sake, please,” “Some fried tofu and shredded radish,” or “Another one, please.”
That’s about the extent of it. As for the couple, they probably just assume that’s
how I communicate, so they have never struck up a conversation with me either.
I can drink there quietly by myself without any concern, which is what I like
about the place. I go there whenever I drink. There are lots of pubs where the pro-
prietors engage in meaningless talk with you in order to keep you from getting
bored. It’s not what they intend, but it makes it impossible for me to relax. I go
drinking because I’m in pain or because there is something I want to work out.
Otherwise I wouldn’t need to drink. If somebody actively tries to make conver-
sation with me, it just makes it harder for me to work things out. I drink alone
and in silence. The more drunk I become, the more I feel the solid mass of agony
coagulated in my chest dispersing through my body and dissipating. I meditate
on and savor this tranquil feeling alone and in silence. When my spirits are un-
bearably low, it lifts them, gently coaxing me into a state of relaxation.
Last night I drank at my usual pub again. I say I drank there, but I drank
only two bottles of sake at most, thanks to my shattered gut. Moreover, I was
weak since my stomach was empty. At any rate, even though I drank so little, I
got thoroughly intoxicated.
My drunkenness had abated long before I went to sleep. Only that myste-
rious pain in my chest, or what seems like anxiety, remained. What brings on

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 Kim Hak-yŏng

these strange feelings? The oppressive darkness engulfs me, shrouds me with its
incredible density, pins me down, and threatens to suffocate me.
Yesterday I made my way to the lab and, as usual, I tried my experiment
again, and as usual, I had the same result. No, actually, it wasn’t the same; the
result was a bit better than usual. For the last two years, among other things,
I’ve worked with high molecular substances trying to produce a synthetic com-
pound, and yesterday was my twenty-fourth and last attempt to polymerize a
number of elemental molecular substances. For a week I had tried umpteen times
to refine and recrystallize them; I’d sampled different materials and had experi-
mented with neutralization, distillation, refined distillation, and I’d tried elimi-
nating certain solvents as well as discounting the temperature. Finally yesterday I
achieved the desired compound once and for all. I extracted 6 percent more than
during the previous experiment, so the extraction ratio increased from 37 percent
to 43 percent. When I began the experiment, I was unable to extract anything,
so I changed the solvents, catalysts, and corollary temperatures. I tried every last
measure I could conceive of, and, at the end of the day, this is all I was able to
achieve.
Even so, I am menaced by that same feeling of suffocation that descends on
me every day that I’m in the lab. It is not something visible to the eye, it can’t be
seen by anyone else, and there is no rational explanation for it. Still, for some
reason, whenever I’m in the lab, the atmosphere is oppressive.
It really is unbearably oppressive. When I can’t endure it anymore, I flee to
the roof, look up at the sky, and walk around a bit. Despite the fact that my heart
is so stricken, there is always an expansive blue sky above my head. Even now I
am aware of the white clouds traversing that blue sky. I instinctively marvel at
the calm of the blue sky and the clouds and begin to feel some relief. Atop this
building surrounded by concrete, I question the meaning of the blue sky above
and the silver clouds hovering there. The expansive heavens, so far away, unwind
my constricted heart. It feels like the stifled pain in my feeble chest is sucked up
and away into that translucent space. My heart is calmed and, for a brief moment,
I feel at peace.
It seems to me that the air in the laboratory is unusual, but perhaps I am the
only one who feels this way. There’s confusion but also order. The lab equipment
and diagnostic tools stand neatly in line, the motors of the decompression dryer
and ventilator drone on and on—like a screeching bus struggling up a mountain
pass. The centrifuge is so badly assembled that the glass beakers inside rattle
away and the reverberations made by the plastic seal aggravate the problem. As if
that weren’t enough, the machines emit all kinds of odors, which fuse to gener-

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ate a distinct stench, albeit muted. All this gives the air in the lab a unique but
unidentifiable metallic feel.
That is really what it’s like. But that isn’t what oppresses me. It may affect my
intellectual experience as a chemist, but it is completely unrelated to my emo-
tional experience. None of it gets in the way of my intellectual process, nor does
it have the capacity to affect my emotional experience. The state of my nerves has
absolutely nothing to do with all that.
Well, what is it in the lab, then, that oppresses me so intolerably? Is it just the
fact that I find doing these experiments utterly meaningless?
All of this research means nothing to me. If I succeed in synthesizing a new
substance, what good does it do me? It holds absolutely no spiritual value for me
whatsoever. As I go about conducting my experiments, I feel their futility. Every
single day, without exception, I suffer misgivings about the personal significance
of these experiments, yet all the while I keep doing them. I remember that once
the professor told some new graduate students, “Doing research is like doing bat-
tle.” I think he is absolutely right. Existence itself is only a battle between oneself
and the “other” or society, which is composed of others. All the more so research,
an activity people engage in to convince themselves that their existence has
meaning. However, in my case, what I struggle with is the fact that my research is
utterly meaningless. For me, conducting experiments is pointless. It has no more
meaning than filling up and emptying a bucket of water again and again.
Of all the actions in the world, is there any that anyone could definitely de-
clare as meaningful? Even if someone made such a declaration, wouldn’t it be that
the action was meaningful just to that person? In any case, the person’s convic-
tion might be nothing more than an illusion—or perhaps the person might make
this declaration because it’s simply too terrifying to admit that one’s actions are
meaningless. I personally cannot conceive of any action that can be considered
meaningful. Why? Because existence itself is already inherently meaningless and
irrelevant, whether or not one acknowledges this fact. At the end of the day, liv-
ing consists only of tolerating that meaninglessness. Meaning is only an ideal
that people, who cannot tolerate life’s meaninglessness, arbitrarily construct.
Or maybe my belief that life is meaningless just reflects the meaninglessness
of my own life; perhaps it is because my spirit is barren. If I could enrich my life
somehow, maybe then I’d feel that life has some meaning. Like everybody else I
yearn for personal fulfillment. I too would like to find some meaning in life. Yet
how does one achieve personal fulfillment? Can I, can anyone? I simply do not
believe it is possible. As far as I can see, the moment one feels fulfilled is, in fact,
the moment of proof that one’s senses are no longer in working order; it’s a false

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sense of gratification, just another illusion. I’m not an expert on it, for the simple
reason that I do not yet understand the nature of personal fulfillment, but for
what it is worth, I am still striving for it. That’s why I try my best. Life, then, in my
opinion, is nothing more than the process of striving for personal fulfillment.
Yet conducting experiments does not satisfy my aspirations in any way. I
aspire only to fulfill my spirit; my purpose is neither to stimulate nor satiate a
worldly materialistic desire with the synthesis of some new substance. Conduct-
ing experiments does not enrich my spirit in any way; it’s an utterly meaningless
and pointless activity for me. If enduring the meaninglessness of an activity itself
has meaning, then fine. But the inability to feel that that is the case just makes it
feel all the more pointless, and that much harder to bear.
But is that what really depresses me? Is it really the futility of conducting
experiments that oppresses me so intolerably when I’m in the lab?
No, that’s not it. Or at least that’s not the essence of the problem. Actually,
sometimes in the middle of an experiment I forget myself; my mind goes blank.
No matter how meaningless it may be, if you engage in an activity all day long,
you can reach a state of oblivion, a state in which you forget all your senses and
faculties. This is a pleasant sensation; in any case it is not painful.
What triggers my psychological battle and angst-ridden sense of suffocation,
however, has nothing to do with all of this. It is the other researchers in the lab.
The cause of the stifling atmosphere isn’t all the lab equipment around me; it isn’t
the peculiar stench that permeates the lab because of the assorted emissions, it’s
not even the noise of the fans or the motors. It is the other students in the lab
conducting experiments just like me. Yet, undeniably, I am the only one who
finds the atmosphere oppressive. For the other guys it’s probably the opposite;
to them, most likely it feels friendly. Maybe the atmosphere is, in fact, agreeable.
Furthermore they are obliging, and they are not purposefully trying to torment
me. Just go ahead and suffer all on my own. I simply cannot stand the fact that
they are even there or that I have to be with them all day. That is what I find so
oppressive.
The lab in which I work is such a dynamic place, and an assortment of voices
swirls around me while I conduct experiments. If I had to put a word on it, I’d
say that it’s that vitality that causes me pain. No, actually it’s not the vitality that
disturbs me. What disturbs me is that I am the only one who cannot fit in. I am
fully conscious of the fact that I can’t integrate into this energetic setting and
that makes me so tense. Worse yet, being conscious of that tension makes it even
harder for me to fit in. I am well aware of how isolated I am here. I am just like
an alien. And that awareness makes it impossible to breathe. The very existence
of my peers is illustrated by their words. What actually oppresses me, if I spell

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 Frozen Mouth

it out explicitly, is not the presence of my peers so much as the presence of the
words they utter.
My colleagues chat together occasionally, but there is no way on earth I can
ever join their conversations. I very rarely say a word. It is not that I don’t speak; it
is that I can’t speak. I don’t mean that I am incapable of speech. I can speak when
I must; at times I’m even eloquent! But for some reason, as soon as I enter the lab,
the atmosphere is so off-putting that I cannot say a single word; it is as if my vocal
chords completely shut down. It’s odd but true.
I am unable to verbalize my thoughts in the way they appear in my mind with
any sort of ease. I simply cannot express my thoughts freely. It is not a psychologi-
cal issue but a physical one. Speaking requires an extraordinary amount of en-
ergy for me. Generally, thinking and speaking are directly related and take place
simultaneously. It requires no energy to think, and thoughts are not suppressed
or avoided by people, and words just flow as naturally from their lips as running
water. In my case, however, soaring mountain peaks separate my thoughts and
my speech. The very thought that I do not have the necessary energy to cross
those peaks—to actually utter a word—ends up as just that, and not a word has
left my mouth. It’s not just physical energy I require in order to actually vocalize
a sound. I also require psychological and spiritual energy. This is especially true
when I am in a place like the lab. To cross those mountain peaks, to expend the
immense energy required to say something, is incredibly exhausting both physi-
cally and mentally. As a result the effort alone drains me completely. Therefore
I speak only when I absolutely must, and I say only what I absolutely must, but
even at those times rarely can I communicate adequately. If you think about it, it
is the inability to say necessary things at necessary times that makes a stutterer
a stutterer.
In certain environments, people who stutter, like me, are practically un-
able to speak. Even if you try to speak, your voice simply won’t comply. Like
all stutterers I, too, have no idea why this happens. In a given atmosphere both
mind and body tense up. This tension paralyses the diaphragm, the vocal chords,
the pharynx, the lips, and the tongue and causes all the organs used for breath-
ing and vocalization to convulse, getting in the way of speaking. Even knowing
this, I still do not understand what really causes the phenomenon. Accordingly,
I have no idea how to prevent it from happening. Symptoms of stuttering present
themselves in all variety and type of circumstances; it depends on whom you are
talking to, the time and the place, and on every little feeling you have. Countless
factors illogically merge and cause one to stutter, and yet the actual stutter itself,
at least to this stutterer, is inexplicable. What I do painfully understand is just

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 Kim Hak-yŏng

how hard it is to live with a stutter, how many problems it causes, and how much
anguish one suffers on account of it. That is all I understand. The truth is I can’t
even begin to count the number of times I’ve been laughed at and humiliated on
account of my stutter. It has caused me so much misery and loneliness.
Words mediate the relationship of any two people. Each time two people
meet they exchange words. Basically that is all that any relationship consists of. It
is only through speech that people can communicate with one another. If being
unable to say anything without constantly stuttering or being unable to com-
municate your thoughts as they manifest themselves in your mind is not an in-
convenience, what then is it? Actually it is not a case of inconvenience. No, it is
one of the worst torments imaginable. I believe this is true for all stutterers. To be
unable to communicate your thoughts as they occur is to never be seen for who
you really are by another human being; it means a huge gulf lies between you and
everyone else. If this isn’t heartbreaking, what is it? If this isn’t torment, what is it?
What makes it even harder for me to bear is how pointless a stutter is.
Yesterday I was working on my experiments as usual. And as usual, I faced
my workbench in an uncomfortable stony silence in the midst of all the lively
voices of my peers chatting away. And furthermore, as is also always the case, I
was fully conscious that I, alone, am silent in the midst of this animated group,
and this made my head ache, and a heavy feeling of hopelessness and despair
descended upon me. It is always the same.
It is a vicious cycle. I am quiet because I cannot actually say what is on my
mind and inevitably, though no one says so, I’m sure they all think to themselves
that I’m a bit odd. Or else they mistakenly assume that the reason I don’t join
in their conversations is that I’m ignoring them or that I am dismissive because
I think they’re just talking drivel or that I simply don’t like them. Just think-
ing about this constricts my chest and makes me feel stifled and shackled. I get
dragged down into a suffocating depression, so I feel even more at a loss for
words, and I completely clam up. Naturally I realize that I must appear even more
abnormal in their eyes, and this realization further weighs on me, constricting,
even strangling my very being.
Yesterday I got caught up in that vicious cycle yet again. My recent fall into
the stutterer’s abyss has exacerbated the cycle. Believing that I would surely stut-
ter over the most minor of words and feeling terrified of the humiliation and
grief, I hardly said a word all day yesterday. To make matters worse I was filled
with the most unbearable dread about today’s research seminar. I was plagued
with terror and torment.
It is an established policy that every graduate student give a presentation
once every three months, at which time we report on our research findings. Then,

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 Frozen Mouth

under the guidance of the professor, the entire team discusses the research in
order to make suggestions and provide ideas.
Today was my turn.
I started preparing for today quite some time ago. Actually I’ve been wor-
ried about today’s presentation for ages and began preparations the day after last
month’s seminar. I say it’s a presentation of research findings, but it’s not sup-
posed to be a big deal. For the other guys these presentations are a walk in the
park. Basically it involves only informally conversing with the professor and your
peers about your research once every three months. For me, though, even if I tell
myself it’s not a big deal, I simply can’t breeze through these presentations. For
me, this occasion once every three months provokes terror.
Preparing for the presentations is only a mental exercise in managing fear. If
I’m weak, the fear overpowers me and completely takes over. I have to do every-
thing in my power to keep the fear at bay. My fear is the fear of speaking, and to
face that fear I have to ready myself. The only way to conquer it is to master the
words I need to use in the talk. To master the words I need for the talk, I need
to be confident that I’ll be able to say them without stuttering. Or else I need to
choose words I won’t stutter over. Some words make me stutter, and some don’t,
so I try to choose words that are easy for me to say. If I sense that certain words
are going to be hard to say (and my intuition is almost always dead right), I will
certainly, almost without fail, stutter over those words. Perhaps it is because I
anticipate that certain words will be difficult to say that I stammer over them,
or perhaps it is being conscious that a certain word is too difficult to say that
actually blocks my vocal chords, and so on, to prevent me from speaking. At any
rate, I have to modify the way I express myself. For example, I have to use the
expression “heat up” rather than “raise the temperature” or “melt” rather than
“dissolve” or say “polymerize” rather than “reduplicate the reflexive tempera-
ture,” and so on. The “t” in telephtalic dichloride is so difficult for me to say that I
simplify it to dichloride. In other words, when I say “dichloride” I actually mean
telephtalic dichloride.
I have to be painstaking in my choice of words. Once I’ve decided which
words to use, I have to assemble them into sentences (and of course I have to put
the sentences in order as well), and I have to store them away in my head system-
atically. The first order of the day, so as to avoid stuttering, is to arrange every-
thing I must say carefully in my mind beforehand. To have everything ready in
my head is crucial. Conveying my thoughts via my voice is what I have difficulty
with. If I fail to prepare so as to avoid the sounds I have trouble with, it becomes
time-consuming and grueling to communicate, and I would surely stutter all the
more.

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Using these tactics I spent the entire month preparing for today’s presenta-
tion. In fact I implemented every strategy possible to keep myself from stutter-
ing. I carefully chose and ordered my words and practiced them out loud until
I was confident that I could say them without stuttering. My stutter is no longer
a simple affliction, it has transformed into a full-blown nervous condition. To
stutter, in and of itself, isn’t such a big problem. No, what I fear more than any-
thing is the psychological and mental shock as well as the humiliation that I feel
whenever I stutter.
Though I still experienced feelings of terror whenever I visualized today’s
presentation, I was as ready as I would ever be, and for that reason, I initially felt
slightly optimistic yesterday. I knew from experience that I could manage the
words I had practiced, even if I were in a stutterer’s abyss, as I have been of late,
so I had a small degree of confidence about today’s presentation. Yet as soon as I
heard my colleagues chattering, I became conscious once more that I alone was
stonily silent and did not fit in, and my confidence mysteriously waned. I began
to worry frantically about today’s seminar again, and my age-old fear and feel-
ings of panic started to well up inside of me until gradually I began to lose my
peace of mind.
“This could be a bad sign,” I thought to myself. In the first place, that kind of
agitation is to be avoided at all costs, and in any case I’d spent the whole month
preparing myself so as to avoid such agitation. However, I could not fend off that
fear and anxiety; no matter how I tried, they still assailed me. They steadily took
possession of me and overpowered me. I knew from experience that even while
caught in my dark abyss, I probably wouldn’t stutter over the words I had prac-
ticed. Yet suddenly I was stricken with the fear that this time would be different
and that my preparations would come to naught. This very thought, combined
with my feelings of alienation from my peers, incited even more fear and anxiety
in me and dragged me into an even deeper state of depression. That is why, on my
way home last night, I went out drinking for the first time in a long time.
I was beginning to notice the patter of raindrops on the roof. Apparently it
had started to rain. My covers felt heavy on my body. I opened my eyes and stared
fixedly at the dark ceiling, inexplicably terrified of something. Listening to the
sound of the raindrops softly falling on the roof, I could tell that my chest was
constricted by a slight sensation of fear. Of course today’s presentation had been
worrying me. I conjured up an image of the presentation going well, like a prayer
almost, but at the very same time, the fear that it would not go well coursed
through me. These competing thoughts crossed my mind in tandem and made
me tense. I told myself that there was nothing to fear, that I was sure I could say
what I needed to say, that I could get across what I wanted to say, despite every-

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 Frozen Mouth

thing. Surely I can at least communicate the bare minimum. Isn’t that enough?
Yet, as hard as I tried to push away, or even extinguish my feelings of fear and
anxiety, nothing distracted my attention from them; they doggedly encircled me,
threatening to strangle me.
I thought about my dream. My deepest fears must have brought it on. What
was it that I was searching for? What space was I trying to inhabit? It was clear;
it was the real me beneath the stutter. It was a world where stuttering did not
exist.
“Ah, if only I didn’t stutter,” I thought, staring into the darkness. If only I
could speak my thoughts just as they are, without restraint. If I could do that,
the burden in my heart would surely be allayed. I’d feel as happy as a cloudless,
luminous blue autumn sky. I’d be beside myself with joy.
As I experienced the feelings of fear in my chest I listened to the gentle sound
of the raindrops for quite some time. At long last I lost track of things and drifted
back into sleep.

ch a p t er i i

In the morning sleet was falling. The wind carried it gently so that it touched the
window with a soft patter. I woke up late. Everyone had already left the board-
ing house for school or work. It was utterly silent except for the muted sound of
the sleet on the windowpane. I became acutely aware that all seven rooms of the
boarding house were empty, that I was completely alone.
I got out of bed, turned on the heater, and made my way downstairs. Then I
washed my face in the sink of the communal kitchen, boiled some water, made
my way back to my room, poured a cup of tea, and sat at my desk. The bare
branches of the shrubbery outside the window were cold and wet; the sleet had
dripped down and seeped in through the windowsill. It was freezing. I wrapped
my palms around my steaming teacup, rotating it around and around and sip-
ping it slowly, in small sips, so that I could savor its aroma. I could feel the hot
liquid trickling into my stomach.
After I’d finished my cup of tea and had taken a quick glance at the news-
paper, I proceeded to do my remedial exercises. These thirty-minute exercises,
designed to correct my stutter, had been a part of my morning routine for the
past five years.
Five years! It suddenly occurred to me that I’d been doing these same exer-
cises for five long years. Despite all this effort, my stammer was as much a part of
my being as ever. The notion that all this practice was in vain fleetingly crossed

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my mind. Still, doing the exercises had developed into a veritable habit; in fact
if I don’t do them, things just don’t feel right—the feeling is comparable to when
you go without brushing your teeth in the morning. In saying that it had become
a habit, I may as well say that I’ve gotten stuck in a groove, which is to say it
might well be in vain. Also, doing thirty minutes of remedial exercise a day isn’t
very likely to correct an ingrained habit of stuttering developed over a period of
twenty years.
Actually, when I first started, I put a lot more time into the exercises. Five years
ago I took a three-week course at a program in Tokyo designed to help stutterers.
It turned out that the program wasn’t actually able to cure a stutter; rather it was
a program where remedial methods were taught, but that is not to say that even if
such a course could cure one’s stutter, that it would necessarily be cured straight
away. A stutter will not be instantly cured. A stutter is not a simple matter.
After the three-week course I took five years ago, I practiced two hours a day
for three months, but it had next to no effect. Gradually I spent less and less time
on the drills; two hours became one and a half, one and a half hours became one
hour—until by the time I graduated from university I was spending only thirty
minutes a day on them. That was three years ago, and I’ve been doing drills for a
half hour a day since then.
I wonder if all of this is in vain; maybe it is. It might be nothing more than
wasted effort; even so, I don’t plan on stopping. I have no intention of giving up.
Indeed, as far as I’m concerned, giving up on my exercises would mean I had
capitulated to my stutter. Having a stutter is clearly one type of destiny; to give
in to my stutter would mean to abide by that destiny. In other words to overcome
it would be an act of defiance to my destiny and would amount to nothing more
than sabotaging my very life. In any case I’ve wrestled with my stutter for five
years. Just because I haven’t pinned it to the mat yet doesn’t mean it has beaten
me. As long as I keep up my efforts, I am still in the game; I haven’t lost yet.
I cannot give up my battle with my stutter or even my battle posture. The
moment I give up the battle, in an instant my abhorrent stammer would menace
me, strike me down, and colonize me completely. Then I would be a defeated
man, forced to live in agony without any rights whatsoever. I am not resigned to
the idea of having failed at life yet. Even if my whole life, from start to finish, ends
up a battle, and even if it ends without me ever seeing victory—if indeed life is
meant to be a battle—then that would be one version of a life, wouldn’t it? In any
case it mightn’t be a negative one at that.
As I mull over these things I fall into despair over my stutter. Each morning
I am overwhelmed by the same worries anew. In the course of a day my emotions

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 Frozen Mouth

swing violently; they reach as high as the peak of a mountain and as low as the
floor of a valley. In the evenings after the undulations of all those ups and downs
I am somehow so depressed that melancholy takes over. It isn’t until the morning
that I return to myself, and the negativity of the previous evening revisits as a
potential for something positive. Perhaps it is just a matter of habit, but I couldn’t
possibly continue doing such a mindless thirty minutes worth of remedial exer-
cises every day if it didn’t hold some positive potential.
I can even admit that I no longer care whether or not these remedial exer-
cises can rid me of my stutter. In a manner of speaking one could say they act
as a ceremonial battle call to my stutter. As for me, I wage war on my stutter in
the same way that laborers fight for wage hikes, and I battle my stammer in the
same way that Koreans battle oppression and campaign for true independence
and nonviolent unification. As long as my stutter perpetually weighs me down, it
remains my only and most formidable opponent that can overpower and destroy
me. It makes me withdraw into myself and acts like a huge obstacle barring an
entryway, closing me off from society. As long as it opposes me, I cannot even
conceive of any other opponents. Any other battles would be meaningless to me.
Even if a social revolution intrigued me, it would be secondary to my personal
revolution. For the moment my only concern is my personal revolt against my
stutter, which thwarts every attempt to participate in society. If truth be told, it’s
only me—the real me, obscured behind this stammer—that has meaning. That’s
all there is for me; it’s not society, ethnicity, or politics.
“Japanese and American imperialism left permanent scars on the Korean
landscape and society; these offenses still preoccupy socialist Korea. These scars
reside at the base of each and every Korean heart. To rephrase it more dynami-
cally, resisting imperialism is a foundational part of the psyche of every modern
Korean; resistance is the guiding principle of every intellectual endeavor.”
I read this in some book.
But this is not true for me. What I wrestle with now, the adversary against
whom I fight is not Japanese or American imperialism. There is no doubt that
they are adversaries. However, for me, the most pressing adversary right now,
and the one much closer to home, is my stutter. It has completely taken me over.
External enemies are nothing more than adversaries I will face after I destroy and
expel my innermost enemy—my stutter—which has imprisoned and tormented
me. Moreover, as far as I am concerned, to overcome my stutter, indeed to strug-
gle against it, is an unavoidable part of my own journey of self-realization.
I face my desk, correct my posture, and begin my routine. I commence with
breathing exercises.

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 Kim Hak-yŏng

A distinguishing mark of stutterers is that whenever they attempt to utter a

sound, their breathing goes out of sync. Most people automatically breathe and
can simultaneously utter a sound without even thinking about it. This is not true
for stutterers, for whom synchronization between breathing and speech is non-
existent. Normally, as the breath passes through the throat, it can be turned into
a sound, which may be transformed into a meaningful utterance, but if a person’s
breathing malfunctions, how can he or she possibly make a sound? In the case
of the stutterer, either the air stream stops just when he or she attempts to utter
a word, or else it gets jumbled up in the throat, one or the other. This means the
stutterer attempts to speak while not being able to breathe. Although an utter-
ance is normally emitted at the same time as the out-breath, the stutterer at-
tempts to emit a sound during the in-breath. It is a case of trying to make a sound
when a sound simply cannot be made. In other words there is no choice but to
stutter when trying to speak under these conditions. I, myself, fully understand
this phenomenon. Just because it makes sense intellectually does not mean that
when one finds oneself caught up in that situation that anything can be done
about it. One may consciously decide not to let it happen, but it inevitably hap-
pens regardless. This is what makes a stutterer a stutterer.
First, one must practice how to breathe correctly. In normal breathing one
inhales and exhales, the chest inflates and deflates, and the shoulders and chest
forcefully expand and contract. However, in the case of the stutterer, because
all the muscles around the diaphragm and the pharynx contract, or even worse
seize up, the force that would typically go into normal chest breathing actually
ends up generating the stutter, so this is what I try to avoid. In fact, I am attempt-
ing to master an abdominal breathing method, known as Mr. Tanda’s breathing
method.
One sits upright with a straight back, on folded knees—Japanese style—with
eyes closed and hands placed in front of the abdomen. Then one tries to push the
diaphragm down towards the lower back, or inflate the lower abdomen filling
the area with energy, and breathe calmly and deeply. While mentally expelling
the air from the lower abdomen, one slowly exhales. It is important to maintain
abdominal energy when exhaling.
This must be repeated fifty times and takes approximately ten minutes.
The next step is vocalization practice. One opens the mouth as widely as
possible, and in keeping with abdominal breathing, contorts the lips in as exag-
gerated a manner as possible while sounding out the vowels a, i, u, e, o, clearly
articulating the vowel sounds. This is done five times and then repeated for all
the remaining fifty major phonetic sounds. The same process is also repeated for

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 Frozen Mouth

minor phonetic sounds. For example, one pronounces the following short syl-
lables as such:

a i u, i u e, u e o, e o a, o a i,
ka ki ku, ki ku ke, ku ke ko, ke ko ka, ko ka ki,
sa shi su, shi su se, su se so, se so sa, so sa shi

This takes approximately ten minutes.

Once this is finished, the next step is the repetition of some really difficult
tongue twisters to loosen the muscles of the tongue and the lips. The purpose is to
enunciate the words clearly and effortlessly while exercising the tongue and the
lips. The following are some of the tongue twisters I vocalize:

Tonari no kyaku wa yoku kaki kū kyaku da.

The patron to my side often partakes of persimmons.
Oyagamo ga ōmugi kueba kogamo ga komugi kū.
If the parent duck eats barley, so the duckling will eat wheat.
Kogamo kome kamu, kamo kogome kamu.
As the duckling chews on millet, so does the duck.
Bōzu ga byōbu ni bōzu no e wo jōzu ni kaita.
The Buddhist priest drew his priestly Buddhist face neatly on the screen.
Mukō no takegaki ni dareka ga take tatekaketa.
Someone leaned some bamboo against the bamboo fence over yonder.

I practice enunciating this type of tongue twister for about ten minutes.
Actually a stutterer does not necessarily stutter when reading aloud as long
as he or she is alone. It is not just a question of reading or reciting something
aloud. As long as no one is present, one is talking to oneself and tends not to
stutter. Some do, but I don’t. Therefore, practicing dictation alone as a form of
remedial treatment is quite meaningless. It merely amounts to exercises for the
mouth and tongue, nothing more.
After I finish my vocal exercises, an empty feeling always afflicts me. It is the
same feeling I experience when I leave the laboratory after a day’s experiments.
I feel despondent for a little while and become weary. Thirty minutes of vocal
exercises is really exhausting for me. The intense weariness that manifests itself
in my entire face and head from having to concentrate on contorting my mouth,
as well as the slump I feel after doing my exercises, are to blame for this exhaus-
tion. There is more to it than that though; I am sure that I am also psychologically

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 Kim Hak-yŏng

exhausted. It is as if the determination and resolve that I experience before I do

the exercises—my ceremonial war calls to my stammer—diminish to the point
where, by the time I am finished, my strength deteriorates, and my muscles be-
come useless.
One thing is certain: as long as I continue my routine of thirty minutes of
remedial exercises every morning I have not succumbed to my stutter. I am con-
sciously facing my stutter head on. Actually, though, the whole project may be
nothing more than a simple act of self-satisfied pretense. One has to ask, are these
exercises really effective as a method of treating stuttering? Honestly, do these
exercises actually do a single thing to cure a stutter? Burdened with exhaustion,
these doubts weigh me down, and I sink into a heavy depression. It is always the
same.
It is maddening that I can feel myself so constrained by this trifling stutter.
People would probably smirk if I were to tell them that every single problem I
complain of stems from my stutter. I suppose if you compare stuttering to any
of the other conceivable afflictions that life has to offer, it may not even be con-
sidered an affliction. Surely that is how it must look to those who don’t stutter.
Nevertheless, fortunately or unfortunately, I’ve personally never met up with any
misery worse than my stutter, nor did Isogai, who is now dead. I’d prefer to meet
with some misfortune worse than stuttering, one that would overshadow it and
allow me to forget it, but thinking this way is utter nonsense. If you think about
it, it’s exactly like a mute wishing he were deaf rather than mute.
I took out a cigarette, lit it, slowly puffed away, and absentmindedly gazed
out of the window at the cold, wet, barren shrubs. The smoke from the cigarette
robbed me of whatever little moisture was left in my dehydrated mouth, and it
completely dried up. I stood to make another cup of tea; the water had cooled and
was now only lukewarm. I drank my tepid tea in one gulp.
I opened the file on my desk that contained the manuscript of today’s pre-
sentation and reread my report. I wondered if the words I’d selected would be
all right, and whether or not I would get stuck. There were still a few words that
inspired a faint shimmer of fear. Suppressing that fear, I recited the manuscript
out loud. How many times had I done so? I already knew the content of the paper
back to front. The problem is that no matter how smoothly I can read it on my
own, there is no guarantee I’ll be able to read it smoothly in front of an audi-
ence. That is completely unpredictable. What is worse is this unwarranted fear I
experience; while I realize this intellectually, there is nothing I can do about it.
In any case, there is no way to know whether or not I can speak without stutter-
ing, even in the midst of all that fear, until the actual moment of truth. I’ve done

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everything possible within my power to prepare, but at the end of the day, what
will happen when I ultimately face my audience is up to chance.
If I worry about all of this, the fear and anxiety will gradually permeate my
system and worsen.
Even if I tell myself “I’ll be okay” to alleviate the fear, I am still filled with
anxiety, whether I like it or not. Nonetheless everything should go just fine. As
sure as the minutes go by, and day turns to night, my fear will escalate, and just
as surely it will pass. Everything should go just fine.

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