Ch’oe Yun’s short story The Last of Hanak’o is published bi-lingually by Asia Publishers. Ch’oe has been described by critics as an author who focuses on the internal state of her characters rather than the external events that may have shaped them. The original Korean title “하나코는 없다” (literally Hanak’o isn’t here) might some insight into…
Early Spring, Midsummer, may be the best book out of the Si-sa-yongo-sa Modern Korean Short Stories 10 book series. It contains couple of meditations on change, particularly Early Spring, Mid-Summer by Yi Munyol, a couple of historical/metaphorical tales of the cost of war, including Kim Won-il’s The Spirit of Darkness, and a couple of stories…
This notice for an upcoming event is probably not as useful as the book the event is focusing on. Factory Girl Literature: Sexuality, Violence and Representation in Industrializing Korea – Presentation by Ruth Barraclough. Korea’s twentieth-century industrialization saw millions of women and girls leave country towns to generate a series of manufacturing booms. Ruth Barracloght…
The Lee Hyoseok Buckwheat Festival (named after his super famous in Korea short story “When Buckwheat Blossoms Bloom”) was on this weekend, so the wife and I decamped. The bus ride down was uneventful and only took two hours, thankfully a full half-hour shorter than the guidebooks said. We got to Jangpyeong (the nearest town…