Found on the web #36: Korean Literature coverage in the UK.

Found on the Web

Found on the web

A few things found on the web as I hopped around it the last few days.. perhaps the most interesting being in The Guardian Ten Korean writers on a country sawn in half. This is a really interesting read, including as it does include Yi Mun-yol and Hwang Sok-yong, who are really a bit ideologically different, and their books about “re-union” in North Korea are incredibly different (An Appointment with My Brother for YI and The Guest for Hwang). Also funny to me was Yi’s amusement at readers in the United States who take his work Our Twisted Hero a merely an anti-bullying fable, when in fact it is a savage political satire (along the lines of his Pilon’s Pig). There is also a nice notice of Kry Lee and the odd role, undefined really, that she exists in an area for which Korea has defined no roles (and Korea LOVES to create roles). This one is really work taking a look at for the amount of territory it covers in short order.

A bit less organized is the Telegraph’s South Korea: Writing on the edge, which manages to compare Kim Jong-un to Psy, visit Insadong, take a shot at hagwons, and still talk just a little bit about Korea literature including Paju Book City, Hwang Sok-Yong, Kyung-sook Shin, and Hwang Sun-mi. Again, worth a look.

Finally, the Independent publishedthe Korean fiction: Stories that weave history with myth, including authors Hwang Sun-mi, Kyung-soon Shin, Hwang Sok-ong, and newish to be, In Jung-Myung Lee’s The Investigation which seems to be the next book I will have to read. LOL, the list just gets longer, but all this coverage in the UK can’t help but increase awareness of Korean literature in the UK and, I hope, increase sales.^^