I recently met an old friend. He’s a very old friend; in fact, he died in 1979, but I “met” him through the massive book he left behind. His name is Yun Nam-han, a professor at Chung-Ang University, and when I met him it was at his home that had been turned into a wall-to-wall, shelf-to-shelf, crowded library — no, archive. I wondered how his wife put up with his having taken over the whole house with shoeboxes full of 4-by-6 index cards. I was introduced to him because I wanted to find articles written over time about adoption and inheritance issues as I was preparing my Ph.D. dissertation. Yun was compiling a topic index on everything ever written in a "munjip."

What is a munjip? It is a collection of writings of one scholarly gentleman — essays, memorials to the king and epitaphs — all things nonfiction. One often translates “munjip” as “anthology” but the problem with that word in English is it implies fiction, while the Korean munjip is almost totally nonfiction. There is poetry, but little else in the fiction category.

So I was able to look at Yun’s index and find some references that interested me. A short while after that visit I got word that he had died. I was dismayed and felt it a shame that he had not been able to see his work published, as he........

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