Go U-yeong’s Three Kingdoms — A Classic Redrawn in the Margins

Stories of China’s Three Kingdoms have found audiences across China, Korea and Japan. In China they draw on a familiar history. In Japan, Koei’s strategy games introduced the period to generations of players.

In Korea, people can come across the story in childhood and return to it as adults, through lectures, novels or an ordinary conversation. There are few stories quite so easily shared across all three countries.

Romance and Historical Record

There are two works behind the familiar title. The historical record sets down accounts of people and events. The later romance makes a novel out of that material, using invention to give it a larger narrative.

In ordinary conversation, Three Kingdoms often means the romance traditionally attributed to Luo Guanzhong. Its sources include the historical work of Chen Shou, later material gathered in Pei Songzhi’s annotations and traditions of popular storytelling recorded in the illustrated Sanguozhi Pinghua.

The novel is usually called Romance of the Three Kingdoms in English. Chen Shou’s work is known as Records of the Three Kingdoms.

The Period behind the Story

The story reaches from the Yellow Turban Rebellion in 184 to reunification in 280. The fall of the Han court, Dong Zhuo’s rule and the division among rival warlords bring Cao Cao, Liu Bei and Sun Quan into the same vast story.

The Story in Korea and Japan

In Japan, Mitsuteru Yokoyama drew an influential manga version, which was also adapted for television.

In Korea, Yi Mun-yol’s version has long been one of the best-known retellings. Other writers and teachers have continued to recast the material for new readers.

Go U-yeong’s Three Kingdoms

Go U-yeong chose to draw the story. That decision gave him a different way of pacing a scene, directing a joke and letting the narrator enter the action.

The pages go down more lightly than a long novel, but the lightness is part of a deliberate style. Go’s drawing and the way he interrupts the narrative give the work a voice you can recognise quickly.

The comic ran in Ilgan Sports from 1978 to 1980 and is still remembered as a major Korean adaptation of the story.

An Irreverent Reading of Familiar Figures

Go’s commentary gives the impression that he is talking over the action as you watch it. The humour makes the story easy to enter without taking away its weight.

At times the artist seems to walk into his own comic. He exaggerates a scene or makes an anachronistic reference, even bringing in Jesus, to let the tension out for a moment. The interruption is as much a part of his storytelling as the action.

He also gives familiar characters a new reading. His Cao Cao looks like a reformer. Liu Bei, often the figure the reader is expected to root for, can come off as a fool.

Go gives Lü Bu a rougher treatment too, drawing him as ugly and making much of his willingness to kill a man he had called his father.

Zhuge Liang, by contrast, becomes so capable that Go can entertain the idea that he intentionally let Guan Yu fall. That is an invention within this reading, and it tells you more about the reach of Go’s Zhuge Liang than it does about the historical events.

What Censorship Did to the Pages

Go drew the comic at a time of strict censorship in South Korea. The version readers could buy lost enough material that what could have filled ten volumes was reduced to around five.

Changes were sometimes made to the original art rather than to a copy. In the introduction to a later restoration, Go wrote about the pain of seeing the work cut apart and then having to depend on the mutilated version for years.

The work returned in the 2000s through a CD edition and new print editions.

Go’s Three Kingdoms is worth reading for what changes when he takes over the story. The faces may be familiar, but the person telling you what to make of them has a voice of his own.

Book Information

Go U-yeong’s Three Kingdoms

Author

Go U-yeong

Publication

20 July 2007 (edition reviewed)

ISBN

9788959191291

View the book at Kyobo

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