Water gathered via a communal tap is used for cooking, washing, and laundry. Residents can’t afford heating or cooling. Sahas live in miserable conditions: they have no plumbing and no electricity (although there are solar panels). Its author, Cho Nam-joo (the text was translated from the original Korean by Jamie Chang in a 2022 edition), clearly means these settings to be seen as very real, providing a visual layout of the Saha Estate buildings in the front of the book, complete with custodian’s office, vegetable garden, and parking areas. There are many more details provided about how exactly Town and the Saha Estates operate in the 2019 South Korean novel Saha. This collection of broken-down buildings is not just a place to live but an identity: its residents are called Sahas. And finally, there are the untouchables, the illegal residents, a group whose existence is barely eked out on the outskirts of Town in an enclave called the Saha Estates. It is a prosperous city state that sorts its citizens into a hierarchical system of classes: there are happy, healthy Citizens, followed by lower-class semi-citizen L2s, and then by blue-collar laborers who do the hard work and survive on two-year work visas. Ranks #7 in total number of titles in Korea.SOMEWHERE, IN AN imaginary literary world, lies a place called, simply, Town.

Namchul is also the uncle of the top Japanese Go title holder Cho Chikun.Īfter his death, he was honored by the president of Korea with a medal and floral tribute. He is known as the founder of Korean modern Go. It wasn't until 1983, that he would be awarded 9 dan, but for most of the 1950s and 1960s, he won the vast majority of national tournaments. In 1943, he returned to Korea and played a key role in the founding of the Hanguk Kiwon. He went to Japan in 1937 to study go as Kitani's first insei, or live-in student. In 1934, Japanese professional Kitani Minoru visited Korea and played with ten-year-old Cho, who deeply impressed the great master. Biography Ĭho was born in a farming village in Buan, North Jeolla Province.

He died of natural causes in Seoul at the age of 83. Cho NamchulĬho Namchul (Novem– July 2, 2006, alternately Cho Namcheol) was a professional Go player (Baduk in Korean). In this Korean name, the family name is Cho.

Cho nam ju