Miracles! (As usual, I welcome disagreements and corrections^^) Previously: I) Hyangga and Koryeo Kasa II) Sijo & Kasa III) Classical Fiction IV) Pansori V) Introduction to Modern Literature VI: Enlightenment VII: Background to Colonial Lit VIII: The History of Korean Modern Literature IX: Themes & Approaches to Fiction X: The Colonial Era XI: War and Separation Era 1970s…
LOL, after rooting out all the dead links in the All Modern Korean Literature in Translation Online” Project! I went back and added a couple of authors and stories. I was particularly pleased to find the work from Kim Yong-ik, whose writing has always been criminally underestimated in English. The entire list of available stories…
The following are the stories I will focus on in second section of my upcoming presentations. The first presentation will be at 10 AM on February 7th. I will be presenting at the International Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur. Then, on March 31st, I will be doing an updated (and road-tested!) version of the presentation…
For Cineastes (e.g. “too lazy to read”^^) and those interested in seeing adaptations of literature, a brilliant move by the Korean Film Archive that makes me want to take them out for a celebratory round of 홍어! They have put up on YouTube, sorted by decade, eight-seven classic Korean movies, many of which are adaptations…
The other day I caught the 401 bus, just to see where it ran. After a bit, it went by the COEX in Gangnam, which contains a reasonably sized Bandi & Luni. So I hopped off. After a cup of coffee in a Caffe Bene, I went down to Bandi & Luni look for some…
This is another way (other than that link you see on the right: Where to Start in Korean Modern Fiction) to gain a quick understanding of Korean Modern Literature. That way is to collect the books in the excellent LTI Korea / Jimoondang collaborative series The Portable Library of Korean Fiction. These books are now,…
A new project. To find all the places online where you can read translated Korean Modern Literature, free ( Here are the works so far (I still have to get all the Korea Journal articles before 1989 and many of the works translated by Brother Anthony). If you know of a work that is NOT…
The Cruel City is one of those anthologies that might have made sense in Korean language and culture, but which seem illy conceived and unfocused in English-language practice. Hints that this might be the case are present even in the introduction, which not only completely neglects to address one of the stories in the book,…
LOL.. Woke up this morning and my daily trawl of the internet found that someone (pretty clearly Korean) had put up a really, really, basic page about Cho Se-hui’s The Dwarf, a book I am quite fond of. Unfortunately, that page was headed for speedy deletion because it looked like this: About 45 minutes later,…
There is no better time than now to begin to read modern Korean literature. It’s many talented authors write in myriad genres and in the past 25 years have begun to skillfully meld innately Korean history and culture to stories with international appeal.