Seolyeon Park and Anton Hur, the notable writer/translator duo behind A Magical Girl Retires, reunite for Capitalists Must Starve, which perceptively imagines the short life of early 20th-century activist Kang Juryong, who led a labor strike at the Pyongwon Rubber Factory in Japanese-occupied Pyongyang in May 1931.
Before all that, Juryong is "our Kang girl," her mother's beloved daughter, who is "the prettiest thing" on her wedding day. She is 20, "a shamefully old age to get married"; her groom, Jeonbin, is 15. The arranged strangers share true love, and she follows Jeonbin to join the liberation movement even as she believes, "What's the use of liberating a country that fails to protect or take care of me?" When Jeonbin dies, her in-laws accuse her of murder and demand she be jailed. Due to a lack of evidence, Juryong is released and returns to her family, but soon flees to escape another marriage. She moves back to Pyongyang, where she lived as a child, for a while finding "unexpected joys... in earning and spending her own money." The bosses prove abusive, the work grueling, pay cuts relentlessly looming. Initially unwilling, she rises as a leader other women want to follow.
Park strikingly depicts a woman discovering her stifled strength under horrific circumstances, fiercely working toward more than mere survival. "The greatest bit of learning I have ever received is that there is no higher honor than to sacrifice one’s life for the greater good," Juryong insists, confronting injustice to her very death. Nearly a century later, Park adamantly reclaims history to underscore how the righteous fights must continue. --Terry Hong