Secret Agency-less Men: Part II
Korean modern literature is relatively agency-less. As a result, the anti-social hero is rare in Korean literature and the tragic hero is even less evident.
The Price of Capitalist Development: “Off to Battle at Dawn” and “The Elephant”
Off to Battle at Dawn and The Elephant are both volumes from the ASIA Publishers Bi-Lingual Edition of Korean Fiction, and though they are about different eras and different people, both stories are about the same problem; the way capitalism has marginalized workers in Korea. As usual with the ASIA Publisher books, each of these…
The Land of the Banished (유형의 땅) by Jo Jung-Rae (조정래)
This was going to be a simple review, after all, I’d reviewed this story once before, in a different edition. But now, reading it years later and with far more experience in grappling with Korean literature in translation, it may seem like a far different creature for me. So, although this has been reviewed on…
In Memoriam: Kim Moon-soo (The Chronicle of Manchwidang) Passes Away
It is with regret that KTLIT notes the passing of Korean author Kim Moon-soo, who wrote the awesome (a literary term I seldom use^^) The Chronicle of Manchwidang, a clever and often funny reflection on the costs of modernization. As far as I can tell from the obituaries in Korean, Kim passed away on either…
Review: “The Chronicle of Manchwidang” by Kim Moon Soo
The Chronicle of Manchwidang, by Kim Moon Soo, is one of the funniest, if not the funniest, translated Korean stories.
Secret Agency-Less, Man!
Reading an introduction to a collection of Korean short stories, I was struck by the introduction in which the editor attempted to explain why Korean fiction was sometimes unsatisfying for Western readers. His argument, essentially, focused on style, which I thought was a bit shallow, but he did mention something that I had already noted…
Early Korean Modern Literature: Collected Short Stories from Korea
Oh my, … in my last review of Modern Short Stories From Korea the first book of translated Korean modern literature in English I noted that it was naturalistic, non-didactic, and even occasionally funny. So next I picked up Collected Short Stories from Korea (Technically “Volume 1” but so far as I know the only…
Love Is A Many-Splattered Thing (A Valentine’s Day meditation on romance in Korean Fiction^^)
(NOTE: This post is a Valentines’ Day post that changes from time to time, so any feedback or additions are welcome) Some time back, regular reader and man of international mystery “Charles” (the other) asked me about Korea love stories. And it brought me up a bit short, because I had a bit of difficulty…
Good guys finish second..LTI Korea Video Contest ‘Visualize ME!” and KTLIT’s second place.
And so I did in the annual LTI Korea Video Contest ‘Visualize ME!” with my entry on Kim Yu-Jeong’s “The Heat of the Sun” a tragic story of love and illness in colonial Korea. Also, I might note, a story that is available from LTI Korea’s brilliant “classical literature” online collection. I really didn’t see…
LTI Korea’s FREE online (and i-APP) collection of 20 early-modern literature classics
LTI Korea has done a rather cool thing and placed 20 works of early-modern Korean fiction online, where they can be accessed as PDF files or through an iPhone application that can bring them to a readers’ e-device. LTI has created the equivalent of a free collection of modern colonial fiction of Korea, and to…