This is so weird it is almost perverse. Korea Magazine decided to do a special on Korean literature consisting of one major article and four sidebars. The article is in English and intended for English audiences. It is entitled Korean Literature Reaches out to a Wider Audience. And yet…. … it is a bit of…
First things first.^^ Over at the excellent London Korean Links you can find Philip’s review of Yi Mun-yol’s Our Twisted Hero.It’s a book I really loved, but Philip has a different view saying, in part: Our Twisted Hero is rather a chore to read, though it is interesting for its balanced assessment of the rights…
On September 17th, at the Scandanavia Design House in Apgujeong, the Seoul Literary Society (a function of the Swedish Embassy in Seoul) Kim Young-ha gave a speech on the things in his youth that affected his writing, and then answered questions from the audience. KTLIT was there, with the handy-dandy iPhone and camera, and recorded…
First, an article in the New York Times about Shin in general, which mentions the next novel: “I Will Be Right There,” about friendship and love set in the country’s political turmoil of the 1980s But an even better preview of the novel (which is due to be published next spring) can be found on…
As part of the semi-support I’m giving the LTI Korea Foreigner Essay Contest 2012, I’m making sure that there are Wikipedia pages for all the authors involved. I’d put Kim In-suk up a while ago (complete with picture!), and now Eun Hee-kyung is also present. I have interviews out with each of those authors, which…
Iyo Island by Chong Han-sook is based on an old Jeju legend/seafarers story of a utopian island the lies just out of sight of Jeju. The story is about many things, including the loss of childhood dreams, the need to endure, and the futility of war. The story follows three boys from a fishing village…
Hwang Sun-won’s The Moving Castle is a brilliant work, which aspires to achieve much, and achieves it. The Moving Castle is literary fiction in the best sense of the phrase. It is Dickensian in scale, attempting to describe an entire society and its interactions, even, with the larger world, and at the same time populating…
There are two different versions of this book, Trees on a Slope, translated by Bruce Fulton, and Trees on the Cliff, translated by Chang Wang-rok. I read the latter version, partly because I believe its translated title is more reflective of the story told here, even if it is a bit less literal (Literally, Trees…
Down in Jeonju to check out the Jeonju Hanok Village (which is awesome!) we came across the Choi Myeonghee Literature House. Myeonghee was previously unknown to me, but is obviously important in Korean literature, as the grounds were pretty big, stuffed with kids, a tour, and Yvonne and I. Anyway, we did find it, and…
Our Twisted Hero is both the story of a new student dealing with a classroom bully and a political allegory with hints of Orwell’s Animal Farm, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and even a bit of Golding’s Lord of the Flies. The political allegory, of course, is intended to refer to Korea and its recent…