London Korean Links

Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

I’m Waiting For You: Kim Bo-Young in conversation with Sophie Bowman and Sung Ryu

This is the third speculative fiction title to be featured at a KCC literature event this year:

I’m Waiting For You

by Kim Bo-Young, translated by Sophie Bowman and Sung Ryu
Wednesday 23rd June 2021 12:00 noon – 1:30pm
Registration required by 8 June

I'm waiting for you

In the title story, an engaged couple working in distant corners of the galaxy plan to arrive on Earth simultaneously and walk down the aisle together. But small incidents wreak havoc on their vast journeys, pushing the date of their wedding far into the future. As centuries pass on Earth and the land and climate change, one thing is constant: the desire of the lovers to be together.

Through two pairs of interlinked stories stories, Kim explores the driving forces of humanity – love, hope, creation, destruction, and the very meaning of existence.

‘Her fiction is a breath-taking piece of a cinematic art … powerful and graceful’ – Bong Joon-ho, Oscar-winning director of Parasite

Kim Bo-young

Kim Bo-young’s first published work of fiction, a novella titled ‘The Experience of Touch’, unanimously won the award for the best novella at the Korean Science & Technology Creative Writing Awards in 2004. In 2010 she published a two-volume collection of short stories, The Story Goes That Far and An Evolutionary Myth. 2013 saw the publication of her first novel, The Seven Executioners, which won the Korean SF Award. Kim’s work enjoys widespread popularity in Korea and has been praised by award-winning film directors Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho. She acted as a script advisor for Bong’s 2013 film Snowpiercer.

Sophie Bowman

Sophie Bowman studied social anthropology and Korean studies at SOAS University of London before studying at the LTI Korea translation academy. Sophie was a recipient of the ICF Literature Translation Fellowship during her studies at Ewha and won the Korea Times Modern Korean Literature Translation Award grand prize for poetry in 2015 with her translations of Jin Eun Young. She is now a PhD student at the University of Toronto, researching post-War Korean fiction by women authors. Her translations include: the novellas “I’m Waiting for You” and “On My Way” in Kim Bo-Young’s I’m Waiting for You and Baek Heena’s Magic Candies.

Sung Ryu

Sung Ryu has received LTI Korea grants to translate Tower by Bae Myung-hoon and Shoko’s Smile by Choi Eunyoung, the latter for which she won a GKL Korean Literature Prize in 2018. She also translates non-fiction, including Secrets Behind Things That Look Good (2017), Digital Playground: 10 Building Blocks of Digital Marketing (2015), and the Korean edition of Grandma Moses: My Life’s History (2017).

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