First of all, Akeldama by Park Sang-ryooong is a must buy for it’s provocative style and theme. Second of all, it was an amusing message to me about how smart I thought I was about translated Korean literature, and how fleeting such feelings can be. Every once in a while you think you have Korean literature…
There may be a real order to which Korean literature should be read, and although I’m sure I’m not clever enough to map it out, re-reading The Man Who Was Left as Nine Pairs of Shoes (아홉 켤레의 구두로 남은 사내), reminds me that it might exist, because the first time I read this story…
Begin a story with a spinster, nearly psychotic, deluded, clearly suicidal chicken. Try to kill her, but let her escape a genocidal murder attempt. Then, have the chicken get involved with someone not only from another culture, but from a different species. Then, kill off that character. Have the chicken raise an orphan from another species,…
A MUST BUY – MUST READ! Available in paperback or kindle right here. My title here is stolen outright from a similar review at London Korean Links, which I came across while trying to find more biographic information on Jang Eun-jin to create her wikipedia page (which I did create here, so feel free to go…
By Dongmi Hwang Sun-i Samch’on (Aunt Suni – 순이삼촌) – is a work of historical fiction. Hyun Gi-young (현기영) writes with the clear purpose of exposing and validating hidden events that happened on the island of Jeju in the southernmost part of Korea. The story opens with a man returning home for the first time…
Kim Seung-Ok’s (김승옥) Record of a Journey to Mujin (무진기행), is a cross between a high-school reunion and a tale of multiple star-crossed lovers. It begins prosaically, with a man on the bus on the way back to his hometown of Mujin. Mujin is not a real town in Korea, as far as I can…
LTI Korea has done a rather cool thing and placed 20 works of early-modern Korean fiction online, where they can be accessed as PDF files or through an iPhone application that can bring them to a readers’ e-device. LTI has created the equivalent of a free collection of modern colonial fiction of Korea, and to…
Pak Wan-sŏ (not how she preferred her name to be Romanized, which was Park Wansuh), is a beloved Korean writer whose writing can at first appear deceptively simple; women’s works, so to speak. It is easy to lump her work into the category of that of Amy Tan in the United States, or how Kyoung-sook…
Yi Cheong-jun’s (or Yi Chong-jun, as usual there is disagreementㅠㅠ) The Wounded is a powerful exploration of the damage done by war, and the ‘face’ that creates the wounded, both those who can identify the source of their wounds, and those who are scarred in ways that do not have clear, particular source. The story was…
(NOTE: All books are linked to their Amazon pages, for easy purchase!^^) The Suffering of Two Generations (수난 이대) by Ha Geun-Chan (하근 찬) is what one might call a Korean classic, in that it is taught in the educational system, and thus every Korean raised in Korea has likely read it. It is also…