WAYFARER

Wayfarer ($14.95 paperback original; Apr. 1997; 224 pp.; 1-879679-09-4): Eight long stories, all written since the late 1970s, representative of a new wave of Korean women only recently liberated from the second-class status imposed by a male-dominated society. The legacy of the Korean War and the consequent instability of national and family relations are rendered with vivid emotion in such challenging tales as Ch'oe Yun's ``The Last Hanak'o'' and Pak Wan-so's ``Identical Apartments,'' and in greater imaginative depth in the collection's two best pieces: the affecting title story (by Chong-hui) and Kong Son-ok's accomplished ``The Flowering of Our Lives.'' Here is evidence of a rich vein of contemporary writing all but unknown to us—and well worth exploring.