Interview with Kim Young-ha (김영하) and some fanboying^^

랄랄라 하우스 ("Lalala House) cover

랄랄라 하우스 (Lalala House) cover

Today I had the chance to interview Kim Young-ha. This is always pretty funny, because I feel like we get along pretty well, although we’ve only met a few times. Still, I’m reduced to a bit of a fanboy in his presence, which is pretty funny considering my advanced age.

At any rate, the interview will be airing this Sunday night on Arirang’s “Catch The Wave” and if you don’t listen you are a very bad person!^^ Kim speaks quite good English in a baritone that makes me jealous, and as usual MC Adrien keeps things bubbling along.

The staff was kind of fanboying as well, with two staffers bringing in books for Kim to autograph. I snapped the cover of one of these books, because there is an interesting story behind it.

This is a book of essays that have not yet been translated into English, but the cover picture has meaning to Kim. The little paws you see at the top belong to his cat (sadly, now deceased), and the cat is sitting on an actual manuscript of Kim’s. Kim laughed and said that whenever he was trying to work on a manuscript the cat would jump up onto it and try to interfere with the process.

The interior of the book also had pictures of the cat, but I found this particular picture too cute, as it reminded me of my long-dead cat RatPunko King of the Wonderbeasts (And one darned fine cat!) who had played the same game with me when I tried to write.

The other awesome thing that happened was that I brought a stack of books and had Kim autograph them (don’t worry readers, in the next month of so you will get your chance to win a book autographed – directly to you – by Kim!). Here is a quick collage of the cover pages and, yes, you may feel jealous. Very, very jealous.^^

For readers in Seoul, there is a possibility that Kim will be coming here for a lecture in the next few months, so keep tuned.

Kim Young-ha's autograph(s)

Mine, not yours!