Eastern Sentiments, translated (brilliantly!) and introduced by Janet Poole and published by Weatherhead books is a book of essays by Korean writer Yi T’aejun, who had previously been best known in English for his stories Crows and Before and After Liberation (A Writer’s Memoir). The anecdotal essay is a very Korean form of writing, which…
(EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a new edition of The Land of the Banished” which was previously published in the Portable Library of Korean Fiction. A review of that version can be found here. It was also published as the title story of the excellent collection Land Of Exile) What makes Jo Jung-rae’s (if you can…
Soul of Darkness (어둠의 혼), other than REALLY tempting me to make some kind of horrible pun that might end up as a blog name, is a brief, ugly, but completely transparent snapshot of what happens when starvation and politics intersect. In that way, it is also a snapshot of a particular time in Korean…
Two Travelers is a collection of nine short works (including three from Ha Kun-chan) , many of which cannot be found in any other collection. Two Travelers is volume 7 of the 10 book Modern Korean Short Stories Collection, which is no longer in print and thus can only be found online, although often inexpensively.…
Our Friend’s Homecoming (돌아온 우리의 친구) by Shin Sang-ung (신 상 웅) is a short story/novella that was written some time in 1977-8 during a series called the Roadside Drinking Stall, which was turned into a collection in Korean. A roadside drinking stall is a place, often illegal, for quick drinking, a place to eliminate…
Shin Kyung-sook’s Where the Harmonium Was is an excellent short story that could be recommended to almost anyone. Published in 1993 it tells the story of a woman who is haunted by 10 days of her life when she was “six or seven”, the 10 days, after her mother deserted the family that another woman,…
History and literature have recorded diasporas of over 900,000 Koreans in Japan (the so-called zainichi), 40,000 Koreans in the Karafuto Prefecture in Russia (now Sakhalin), almost 10,000 Koreans in Hawaii, and an unknown number in Manchuria. But partly due to its relatively small size (about 1,000 Koreans) the Korean diaspora in Mexico was relatively unknown.…
On the Eve of the Revolution and Other Stories from Colonial Korea collects six stories from the colonial era (1910-45, when Korea was under the Japanese boot) and the immediate post-liberation era. It begins with a great introduction by the editor, which helps build context for the book as a whole, and each story is…
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…
One of the best collections of Korean women’s fiction, maybe the best one, Words of Farewell, translated, like Wayfarer, By Bruce and Ju-chan Fulton. It’s 278 pages with 7 stories by three authors. It is up there with Wayfarer and Questioning Minds if you’re interested in female fiction Words of Farewell is a collection of…