While I express my preferences between the books, it is worth considering that while some are better than others, for a little over $100 dollars these 25 volumes are  a very nice overview of modern Korean literature. This is partially a credit to LTI Korea / Jimoondang cleverly choosing author-based and novella-length books. This allows a lot of territory to be covered in a way that more formal “collections” can’t achieve.

With that said, and in order of publication, here are the books.

1. The Wings, by Yi Sang
   An absolutely necessary read by the spiritual predecessor to post-modern Korean writers, this short story hints at the disconnection caused by Japanese colonialism. Also includes the excellent short stories Encounters and Departures and Deathly Child.
2. A Dwarf Launches a Little Ball, by Cho Se-hui
   An absolutely necessary read detailing the human cost of Korea’s “miracle on the Han.” The longer version, The Dwarf, is even better.
3. The Cry of the Magpies, by Kim Dong-ni
   A  fair story of trauma caused by civil war. Also includes the short story Deungsin-bul.
4. The Wounded, by Yi Chongjun
   A good, but complicated, evocation of the trauma caused by civil war. Also includes An Assailant’s Face.
5. Deep Blue Night, by Choi In-ho
   An interesting story of Korean expatriates in California embarking on a road trip, and a journey through their own pasts.
6. The Ma Rok Biographies, by Seo Giwon
   Amusing but inconsequential stories of characters linked by name.
7. The Land of the Banished, by Cho Chong-Rae
   An absolutely necessary read. One of the best pundan munhak stories – Cho uses a bit of misdirection at the start of the story to add real flesh to a real villain.
8. Three Days in That Autumn, by Park Wan-suh
   A good but lesser work from a great author.
9. The Rainy Spell, by Yun Heung-gil
   A good but minor work that is more important to Koreans than it could ever be to overseas readers.
10. The Other Side of Dark Remembrance, by Lee Kyun-young
    An absolutely necessary read that neatly manages to describe a very modern Korea, but still tie it back to its tragic history.
    
11. With Her Oil Lamp on, That Night, by Lim Chul-Woo
    Decent, but obvious and a bit dated (even considering that it is from a particular historical era)
12. Between Heaven and Earth, by Yun Daenyoung
    One of the vaguest and least focused of the series
13. An Appointment with My Brother, by Yi Mun-Yol
    A good but lesser work from a brilliant author. This is a political lecture wrapped in a book (a new translation is due in Spring, from Azalea Press). There are far better books by Yi available online.
14. The Camellias, by Kim Yu-Jeong
    An absolutely necessary read set of stories about love. The Camellias is comic and light, The Scorching Heat is tragic, and A Wanderer in the Valley is hopeful, if cautious.
15. Rust, by Yang Gui-ja
    Two good but minor works (the second is Swamp) by a really great author
16. House of Idols, by Choi In-hoon
    A good but minor work.
17. My Innocent Uncle, by Ch’ae Man-shik
    An absolutely necessary read if just for the title story, which is a clever political satire. Also includes A Ready Made Life, which while a bit obvious is a Korean classic. Once Upon a Paddy is a one-note satire. partly because it is trying to make a difficult point.
18. Photo Shop Murder, by Kim Young-ha
    An absolutely necessary read which is one of only two books in the series (mainly due to when the series was published) hinting at some directions in post-modern Korean fiction. Both Photo Shop Murder and Whatever Happened to the Guy in the Elevator are brutally modern, and the latter is laugh-out-loud funny.
19. The Chronicle of Manchwidang, by Kim Moon Soo
    A  quite good story, and amusing. Situational comedy mixed with unfortunate situations engendered by Korean economic development.
20. A Toy City, by Lee Dong-ha
    A  good story, rendered minor by a much more complete version published later.
21. The Last of Hanako, by Ch’oe Yun
    An absolutely necessary read that lays bare the pressure for social conformity in Korea. Basically, anything Ch’oe writes is worth reading.
22. Chinatown, by Oh Jung Hee
    An interesting coming-of-age story, allied to a kind of “wheel of life” narrative that I found completely charming, if occasionally bleak. The other two stories, Wayfarer and The Release are also sharply told.
23. A Man, by Hwang Soon-won
    An adequate book. The title story has remarkably crass sexual politics and is difficult to read. The first story, The Dog of Crossover Village, remains opaque to me, though man other like it. Bibari is an interesting story of Jeju life. If you like this, be sure to chase down “Lost Souls” which has much more of his work, and better.
24. Human Decency, by Gong Ji young
    In competition with Between Heaven and Earth for least important in the series. Too obvious.
25. Hong Gildong, by Seo Hajin
    A light but entertaining semi-retelling of a Korean myth, it is paired with another re-telling of Korean myth, The Woodcutter and the Nymph. Like Kim Young-ha, a very modern writer.

So there you have it.. a clever collection of 26 novellas containing the work of some of the greatest writers of Korean modern fiction.

Comments, as always, welcome.
Heartless (무정 1917) by Yi Kwang-su
Could have been more usefully titled “Endless.” This work is known as the first “modern” Korean novel, but today it doesn’t read as very modern at all, including its rather traditional ending. Add to this the fact that it is an unfocused and rambling soap-opera and it hasn’t aged very well.

Aunt Suni (순니 삼촌 1978) by Hyeon Ki-young
Mix an unhealthy does of insanity and fratricidal violence with a translation that reads as if it were done on a Ouija board by three epileptic illiterates and this is what you get. Aunt Suni is a difficult story, rendered impossible by its translation.

Between Heaven and Earth (천지간 1996) by Yun Dae-nyong
Insubstantial  whipped together with unintelligible creates  a story lighter than cotton candy in outer-space. Even worse, the plot is also insubstantial froth. Give this one a wide berth, despite the fact it was printed under the normally reliable Jimoondang/KLTL imprint.

A Man (사나이) by Hwang Soo-won
One decent story sited in Jeje (“Bibari”) cannot overcome the horrific  and inexplicable sexual politics of the  title story, nor the meandering pointlessness of of “The Dogs of Crossover Village” (which, honestly, has a title that promises something).

Buckwheat Season (매밀꽃 필 무롑 1936) by Yi Hyo-sok
This is not a bad story, actually it can be quite affecting. But without the Korean context required to appreciate it, it comes across as a shaggy dog story without a dog. The central plot element is as obvious as the trunk on an elephant’s face, and the bucolic-romantic nature of the story depends partly on historical knowledge of Korea’s southwest region.  Also, this story has been translated endlessly, and every person who buys a copy today, threatens us with the possibility of a further translation in the future. ^^

"A Man" named Hwang

Hwang Soon-won’s A Man is the 23rd book in the Jimoondang series, and it seems as though the editors were running out of things to translate (despite the fact that there is plenty still out there). It’s a bit of a dog’s breakfast, with three entirely unrelated short stories tossed together. The stories themselves are loosely plotted and seem more like vignettes tossed together than a narrative.

The first story is, to use vernacular language to describe a literary feeling, super weird. The Dog of Crossover Village is told from at least three narrative positions and covers the relatively unremarkable life of a stray dog called ‘Whitey.’ The dustcover says The Dog of Crossover Village, “portrays life in a traditional rural village but can be read as an allegory of the Japanese colonial occupation or of the fate of an outsider in a highly stratified society.” Neither of those allegorical approaches seem likely (Whitey hardly seems colonized or colonialist and she actually fits her way into the local society of dogs) and that the editor would feel it necessary to toss out these unlikely and to some extent in opposition, allegories seems to hint that he/she was uncertain what to make of the story.

The story that gives the book its title, A Man, is even more bizarre. The sexual politics are inexplicable – very nearly random – but always, here comes that word again, weird. Mr. Kim (“the man” of the title) is completely helpless with respect to women. This is partly because in his first marriage his insanely controlling mother sleeps between him and his bride, then blames the bride when she returns home, a decision which seems sensible enough to my eyes. As the mother dies she leaves a last request that paints the oddity of her relationship to her son, “I’ve known only two men in my life – your father and you. And I don’t want you trusting any woman but your mom.” With echoes of Tony Perkin’s mother from Psycho ringing in his ears Mr. Kim goes from unsatisfying relationship to unsatisfying relationship. The dustcover describes Mr. Kim as hapless, but it obviously goes beyond that. The particular relationships he enters are strung together like a child might string beads – loosely and without apparent logic and the concluding scene doesn’t seem to wrap much up.

A Book Called "A Man"

The third story, Bibari, is also a bit off. It is also the easiest to read, because there is a plot to follow and it is interesting where it points out differences between Jeju and the body of Korea. Those differences have been at the heart of a great deal of trauma on Jeju, and Hwang does a good job of portraying them, even in small ways such as parallel vocabularies (The title, for instance, comes from the Jeju word that would be “agassi” in the rest of Korea). Bibari‘s plot revolves around a love story and a fratricide. The fratricide is relatively emotionally convincing in that the murderer explains the mercy she believes she did by the murder, but the love-affair killing result of the murder seems contrived and without real emotional heft. It seems as if Hwang just tossed a couple of plot ideas together without entirely working out how they would mesh.

The dust cover (again!) says that, “Hwang Soon-won is modern Korea’s most successful short-story writer and perhaps its most consistently interesting fictional voice.” It is difficult to see that judgment drawn from this collection of short stories. Hwang also wrote the seminal Cranes (a short story) and Descendants of Cain (a horrific novel), either of which would be better introductions to his writing. Even Sonagi, which I found a bit predictable and pathos-drenched, would be better. I also have his collection of short stories “Book of Masks” which I hope to read and review shortly.

This book, however, is not the one to buy.