deep blue night cover

Deep Blue Night by Choe In-ho

Choe In-ho’s Deep Blue Night is one of my favorite of the Portable Library of Korean Literature translations, partly because it’s theme is so accessible to a western reader. It is a combination of a travelogue and that most quintessential American literary form, the buddy road-trip. The story begins with a scene reminiscent of the…

The Other Side of Dark Remembrance by Lee Kyun-Young

The Portable Library of Korean Literature • Short Fiction • 10 • Jimoondang Publishing • Seoul The Other Side of Dark Remembrance begins in the middle of a fugue state as a Korean salaryman wakes up and springs to his feet in perfectly unfamiliar surroundings. Hungover and thirsty he searches for something to drink and…

“Three Days in That Autumn” by Pak Wanseo

The Portable Library of Korean Literature • Short Fiction • 8 • Jimoondang Publishing • Seoul Pak Wanseo’s (as her name is spelled on the book cover) Three Days in That Autumn is an austere, almost frigid account of the end days of a gynecologist (abortionist, actually) and her practice. The title is a clever…

“The Land of the Banished” by Cho Chong-rae

The Portable Library of Korean Literature • Short Fiction • 7 • Jimoondang Publishing • Seoul Cho Chong-rae’s The Land of the Banished is one of the best of the “political betrayal themed Korean novels. At work we are attempting to taxonomize translated Korea literature by theme, and one of the recurrent themes we see…

An Appointment with My Brother by Yi Mun-yol

The Portable Library of Korean Literature • Short Fiction • 13 • Jimoondang Publishing • Seoul UPDATE – I have been contacted by the folks at Azalea Journal who are eager to have you know that they are publishing an entirely new version of this work, translated by the estimable Heinz Insu Fenkl. The book…

The Ma Rok Biographies by Seo Giwon

It is not easy to make Korean history, which has so often been tragedy, into a farce, but Seo Giwon (ably edited by the redoubtable Kevin O’Rourke) pulls off this unlikely trick in his The Ma Rok Biographies. In three short stories (stories 2, 3, and 5 from the original work) , all featuring protagonists…

The Wounded, by Yi Chongjun

The Portable Library of Korean Literature • Short Fiction • 4 • Jimoondang Publishing • Seoul In The Wounded Yi Chongjun deals with issues of identity. As in An Assailant’s Face that identity is tightly connected to the question of a face, in fact in both stories the question of what and who the face…

Yi Chongjun “An Assailant’s Face”

The Portable Library of Korean Literature • Short Fiction • 4 • Jimoondang Publishing • Seoul Yi Chongjun’s The Wounded (and the included An Assailants Face) has had me a bit stumped. (Parenthetically I should note that Yi, unfortunately, died last year of lung cancer) Together are important works, they deal with the traditional modern…

A Dwarf Launches a Little Ball, by Cho Se-hui

The Portable Library of Korean Literature • Short Fiction • 2 • Jimoondang Publishing • Seoul Those who dwell in heaven have no occasion to concern themselves with hell. But since the five of us lived in hell, we dreamed of heaven… Each and every day was an ordeal. Our life was like a war.…