Kyung-Sook Shin rocks a Haechi party at the drop of a hat!

Shin at LTI KoreaIf, yesterday, you weren’t at Haechi Hall watching Kyung-Sook Shin get interviewed you need to take a long hungover look at yourself in the mirror today and ask if you made the right decision. Because this might have missed the best 10 Magazine/Seoul ABC book club yet.

Shin talked about her previous works, particularly Please Look After Mom, and looked forward to her next work to be published on June 3rd, I’ll Be Right There (which I’d really love to review, but “Other Press” steadfastly refuses to return my attempts to contact themㅠㅠ. Perhaps I am not “other” enough?^^).

But more than that, Shin was thoughtful, articulate (props to GREAT questions by moderator Krys Lee (Drifting House) and excellent simultaneous translation by Ji Seun), historical, philosophical, and often laugh-out-loud funny.

Just listening to Lee and Shin joke with each other, watch Shin and Ji work together on getting the interpretation just right, and hear Shin’s philosophy about time (and to some extent work), was worth way more than the price of admissions. Shin’s philosophical approach to the merging of the past, present, and future as a philosophy of life was particularly poignant, considering recent events in Korea. As well, her explanations for why her work is structured as it is, were concise and would be quite useful to someone first approaching her work.

In any case, here’s a video teaser of the Tuesday Video that will go up on.. well.. Tuesday.^^