I’ll have one of each….

Assorted things which caught my eye, but didn’t make a full post

• Korean writer of children’s books Yangsook Choi said she never really appreciated her Korean culture, or her hometown, until she left it behind. It takes Idaho to appreciate Korea? 😉
• A PDF of three stories by Kim Young-ha. It contains Photo Shop Murder and Whatever Happened To The Guy Stuck in the Elevator and Moving  (ALAS, LINK HAS BEEN REMOVED) a short story that I don’t believe is printed anywhere else. I linked to this in my review of the first two stories, but somehow managed to ignore the third one.
• A short article on Ch’oe Yun (There A Petal Silently Falls) focusing on her story, The Grey Snowman. Interesting on its own, but also includes this priceless quote:

Ch’oe’s writing has at times been criticised for having the unpolished style commonly found in translated works. However it reflects a tension and suprression that a superficially smooth literary style would fail to capture.

Heh, I guess it didn’t matter to me because I was reading it in translation. 😉

• An article that is primarily interesting because it contains an essay by Park Kyong-ni on the importance of han to Korean Writing (Link has rotted). He touches on some changes he sees as bad, which comment sort of obliquely on one of the things I really like about Korean literature: That it is, compared to western modern literature, Korean lit is about life and real events. Park says:

‘To end, I would like to talk about our contemporary literature. In Korea our literature seems very rich and varied, reflecting all aspects of life. But why does this richness make us anxious? Why does this variety trouble us? We have to admit that we are in a state of crisis, worsening every day. Occasionally we notice that our literature has taken a very wrong direction and is distancing itself more and more from true life and from truth.