An interesting article in Korea Times, Korean young writers trying to make it to global scene which is putatively talking about Korean young writers success overseas, primarily in non-English-speaking countries, but then inevitably returning and returning to the question of success in the US market. It begins by referring to a recent overseas residence in France for…
A nice piece this morning over in the Korea Times titled Korean literature expanding global reach which tracks the initial successes of Korean literature overseas, the redoubtable Hwang Sun-won and Kim Young-ha, through the continued success of translations in many languages including French, Lithuanian, Japan and English (mysteriously, the article shows most of the books…
Looking out at various things in the Korean translatosphere, it seems that good-hearted efforts are being undermined by poor planning, and the latest example of this can be found in the 15 volume collection of novellas just published by Asia Publishers. It sounds like a good project when you read the explanation: Asia Publishers present…
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…
As mentioned in my previous post, in Daejeon I did not do a great deal with Korean literature. In fact, I spent most of my time in Daejeon re-hashing what I knew about Korea-American literature, some of which I had read during my Master’s program. I had read Lee Chang-Rae’s work, as well as some…
The 2012 Korean Literature Essay Contest Call for Papers Date: 2012-11-30 The 2012 Korean Literature Essay Contest The Center for Korean Research (CKR) at Columbia University, in partnership with the Weatherhead East Asian Institute Undergraduate Initiative, invites students to enter the 2012 Korean Literature Essay Contest. This contest is sponsored by the Korea Literature Translation…
An interesting article from the Wall Street Journal titled, Another Korea Wave: New Books in U.S.. The article title invokes hallyu, but in fact the article says: But Korea is getting quite a bit of attention in the U.S. in a different medium – books. Three important and substantively different books about the Korean peninsula…
A new feature, because sometimes my commenters say things that I want to look at more deeply. In Mailbags I’ll pull out a comment and talk about it at more length. First comes a comment from Bennifer Lopez who comments on the post Lack of Penetration of Korean Literature in the US? Lopez posits 4…
I was on vacation last month, in the United States, and the wife and I rented a car in Reno Nevada, then drove to Mt. Lassen, Ashland Oregon, Medford Oregon, Coos Bay Oregon, then down the California coast to Fort Bragg and across California back to Reno Nevada. What in the world does this have…
The Korea Herald is reporting, by way of a semi-interview, that Kim Young-ha will soon be rejoining the internet, at least with respect to his podcast (in Korean). Also, next year will feature an English version of his work, “Black Flower,” (2003) which won the Dong-in Literary Award in 2004 and has already been translated…