One of the few English-language stories with a setting in Korea

A new (to me) writer appears this week in The New Yorker, Heinz Inzu Fenkl possibly a writer who is of Korean descent, w/ a story Five Arrows. Appreciation of this story will depend in part on your tolerance for and acceptance of stories that weave together myth and conventional narrative - Louise Erdrich does this extremely well with her stories about the Plains Indian communities in which she was raised; HIF explores the same technique in this story about a Korean community - material not much explored and examined in English-language fiction. Story starts off quite well with the protag taking a journey with his cousin by rowboat across a broad river, and they both reflect on the darkening and pollution of the water, now filled with dark green algae as a result of construction of a downstream dam for electrical power - so we quote obviously see that familiar man v nature theme (old joke that every English major wrote man v nature about a thousand times in the margins of their undergrad textbooks) and also of the conflict between progress and tradition. The two boys are on a mission to visit "Big Uncle," a reclusive and strange relative now living in a cave on the far side of the river. They do find him, and Big Uncle sets them a Herculean task of recovering five arrows he's shot, and when they recover the arrows and return them to him he will cook them a dinner of "mountain chicken," crow or raven actually. One of the cousins abandons the quest, and the other returns to hear Big Uncle tell a tale of his one-time enchantment by the spirit of a woman who died young and virginal. The next morning, main characters swims home across the broad river, almost losing his bearings and drowning in the algae but bursting safely to the surface. There is reference to the fact that the main character (perhaps like the writer?) has lived in America - so he's estranged from this family tradition - which is why Big Uncle reaches out to tell him of this lore. For me story would have been stronger had there been more of a point to Big Uncle's story - to me it felt like a pause in the narrative, a long-winded tale, and not like a culmination or an emotional or dramatic heightening; still, frame around Big Uncle's narrative is well constructed and provocative and I would be interesting in learning more about these two characters and their stories - one staying in Korean and other sojourning in the West.