The Courage to Be

THE MARTYRED by Richard E. Kim. 316 pages. Braziller. $4.50.

The saints of modern fiction are not the God-drunk but the nonbelievers-- men racked with doubt but cursed with the will to survive. They find their strength not in faith but in despair, their heroism in acknowledging the prospect of their own extinction.

Such a man is the hero of this somber and remorseless first novel. As an examination of the theme, it can stand with the works of Camus, by whom it was inspired and to whom it is dedicated.

Twelve Who Died. Novelist Kim, 31, lays his scene in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. The advancing United Nations forces have just occupied the city. The narrator is a South Korean political intelligence officer, who is entrusted with the job of investigating the deaths of twelve Christian ministers executed by the retreating Communists. Before they can be used for propaganda purposes as a symbol of spiritual triumph, however, the captain must discover why 14 ministers were arrested and only twelve died.

One of the survivors proves to be insane. The other, Mr. Shin, insists at first that he was separated from the others. If there is a reason for his survival, he tells his inquisitor, it is "divine intervention." But Mr. Shin, it soon becomes apparent, is a tormented man. He intimates that he knows how the martyred ministers died--"like dogs, whimpering, whining, wailing," begging for mercy, denouncing their God and one another.

He acknowledges at last that he was present at the execution, and he is denounced by the Christians of the city for renouncing his faith in order to survive. He adopts the role of public penitent and stands at the altar of his church glorifying the twelve martyrs, whom, he says, he has failed. "I let myself be paralyzed by the withering breath of despair!" he cries. "Blessed be the names of your martyrs! For they forgave me." Chill Wind. The truth is, of course, quite different. Mr. Shin, refusing to issue a public statement supporting the Communists, had acted the role of a hero, as a captured North Korean officer privately reveals. He had been spared on a whim of the officers: "He was the only one who had enough guts to spit in my face. I admire anyone who can spit in my face. That's why I didn't shoot him." Mr. Shin's confession is thus shown to be a deliberate and calculated effort to take upon himself the doubts and failings of his congregation. "I am you, you are me, and we are one!" he cries, and the Christians of Pyongyang --having despaired of their faith in the horrors of war--take comfort both from Mr. Shin's admission of guilt and his assertion of new strength.

What Mr. Shin conceals from the congregation is that he has himself suffered a traumatic loss of faith. His harrowing dilemma is that of a man who understands the need for religion but cannot accept God. His disillusioned vision of Christ is of a "divinely mad young man, nailed to a cross, jeered at and hated, riddled by bloody Roman spears, helpless in the face of his enemies--the pitiful body of the alleged son of God, gasping, panting, sweating, bleeding, without a miracle to save him." And yet, torn by inner doubt as he is, when the Chinese Communists enter the war and the U.N. forces are forced to retreat to the south, Mr. Shin elects to remain with his congregation in Pyongyang. "We will give them their Christ and their Judas," Mr. Shin explains. For he has come to believe that what man needs is not the chill wind of reason, as the young narrator insists, but the healing balm of belief.

Aide-de-Camp. Novelist Kim's father was a North Korean landowner who was jailed by the Communists in 1945 for his defiant political activity. Kim fled to South Korea, was a student at Seoul University when the North Koreans invaded. He served during the war as aide-de-camp to General Arthur G. Trudeau; at war's end Trudeau helped him get to the U.S. and to Middlebury College. There Kim decided he wanted to be a novelist.

He wrote to Poet Paul Engle at the State University of Iowa, who wangled a fellowship for him in the university's creative-writing program. Kim completed most of The Martyred there.

Now a teacher at California's Long Beach State College, he learned to write novels and to write English at the same time. He is far better at both than most U.S. practitioners can ever expect to be.

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