For all you hipsters, hipstettes, anti-hipsters, hippies, and even those of us old enough to worry about breaking our hips, and dying alone and unloved on our bathroom floors, it is becoming increasingly clear that video is a big part of the future of the Internet. Thus it is with some trepidation (and truly camera-unworthy…
On March 24th, Korean author Hwang Sun-mi came to the 10 Magazine Book Club (which, if you don’t follow on Facebook, you should) and was interviewed bilingually (well, that means there was an interpreter). The conversation was wide-ranging and frank as Hwang talked a little about the origin of her work The Hen Who Dreamed…
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…
Another excellent night at LTI Korea with a lecture (and dinner) with Korean Literature star Shin Kyung-sook. It was the usual trip from Dongguk University to LTI Korea, although crossing Hannamdaegyo was kind of depressing because you could look down the river and see how smoggy the day was. As usual I got there a…
The American Prospect has just published an article on Korean literature in translation, entitle Korean Lit Comes to America, including some comparisons to Japan and China, and it’s worth checking out, and not just because I am in it using my favorite comparison of the place of Korea literature in respect to other translated literatures:…
Things discovered while hopping around the web. • First, an online class offered by Portland State University in Korean Literature (by Christopher Hanscom, UCLA). It’s awesome to see that this kind of course being offered, even if the course description is full of a little too much literary theory palaver^^: Border Crossings in Modern Korean…
Lim Chul-woo is an author of anguish (Thanks, Onyx!) and Straight Lines and Poison Gas – At the Hospital Wards, is nothing if not anguished. The novella focuses on (indirectly,so as not to get the author in trouble at the time) the Gwangju Massacre and the national attempt to pretend that it never happened. The…
Beginning with a photo and short caption from the good folks at Yonhap: And followed by an equally brief but amusing tutorial on how to pronounce Shin’s name. I mean, really, “sucrose?” LOL.. that’s gonna send some people to the dictionary! The Facebook Page of the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, which features…
“Show me one soul that wasn’t to blame!” With the slam of a hand and a short sentence, a character in Hwang Sok-Yong’s The Guest sums up one of the bloodiest chapters in modern Korean history, and a moment that Hwang revisits decades later. That moment is a series of atrocities in Northern Korea that,…
Another great one from the LTI Korea/Dalkey Archive’s collection of novels! Lee Ki-ho’s At Least We Can Apologize is narrated by the simpleminded Jin-man, institutionalized as a young boy by his father. The institution he was left in is a horrible place, lorded over by two caretakers — nephews of the superintendent who runs it —…