2024 was a busy year for Korea-related books in English. Over one hundred books from the year made their way into the LKL Korea Book DataBase, and there were many more that didn’t make the cut. As translated Korean literature becomes ever more prominent in our bookstores, 2024 was, of course, the year in which Han Kang won the Nobel Prize for literature, prompting Granta to re-release those of her titles to which they had the rights, and boosting the public’s appetite for her upcoming We Do Not Part.1
And we mustn’t forget that a representative of the previous generations of writers, Hwang Sok-yong, was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize for his Mater 2-10 (철도원 삼대) – the third consecutive year in which a Korean author has been included in the shortlist. Elsewhere, 2024 was a busy year for translated fiction being published in English, with, by our count, 31 titles appearing in book form, which is a record year if you exclude the titles published by Asia Publishers – which never seem to be actively marketed outside of Korea. Here, for data nerds, is a trend line:2
New fiction published in the UK was dominated by speculative fiction and healing fiction3, genres which seem to appeal to the mainstream publishers and, presumably, the general reading public.
Pottery studios and smiley laundromats were among the places where readers could find a space to de-stress and find some humanity, while new offerings from Bae Myung-hoon, Bora Chung and Djuna provided escape to another world, and Black Orbs, Snowglobes and Jelly Massacres all gave us reason to want to do so.
Nestling among these publications were titles targeted at a more literary audience: two titles from Hwang Jungeun (Didi’s Umbrella – from Tilted Axis Press – and Years and Years – Open Letter); plus short stories from Ha Seong-nan (Wafers – Open Letter) Yun Ko-eun (Table for One – Columbia UP) and, from an earlier age, Choe Myongik (Patterns of the Heart – also Columbia UP). A shout-out to all the translators who contribute to bringing these titles to an English-speaking audience, particularly this year to Anton Hur who by my count had six translations published across both fiction and non-fiction, plus his own debut novel, Toward Eternity.
I sampled many of the genre fiction titles, and found some of them entertaining, but none of the ones I read have lingered much in the memory. I’m hoping when I get to the more literary titles there might be something to stimulate: for example, the title story of the Yun Ko-eun collection (tr Lizzie Buehler), which has been available separately for a while, promises much for the full set.
The most rewarding fictional read I had this year was one I tripped over quite by chance in a Seoul bookstore: a recent translation from the original Japanese of some of Kim Sok-pom’s short stories that touch upon the Jeju Massacre. Originally published in 1957, these stories predate by 20 years anything available in the Korean language on this sensitive topic. The collection is entitled Death of a Crow. It’s hard to find in the UK – best pick it up on your next visit to Seoul – but it’s well worth searching out to get yourself in the mindset for the upcoming publication of Han Kang’s novel that dwells on a similar theme. Kim’s 1970 novel about the Jeju massacre, The Curious Tale of Mandogi’s Ghost, has been available in translation from Columbia UP for 15 years and is also worth your time.
Secondly, I’m not usually one to dwell for long in the realms of poetry in translation, but 2024 was the 40th anniversary of the publication of Park No-hae’s Dawn of Labour, and University of Hawai’i Press celebrated by publishing Brother Anthony’s translation, with brief essays by Janet Poole and the translator. The original Korean collection sold a million copies; it is in the nature of things that its translation will not do as well, but it’s a collection to which I’ll return frequently to sample his unvarnished and heartfelt campaigning to improve the lot of Korean factory workers.
Before moving on to non-fiction we should mention the English-language novels and poetry collections published by writers of Korean heritage. I haven’t had a chance to dip into any of them yet, but there looks to be plenty to enjoy here.
Despite the wealth of fiction titles to tempt me this year, I had more enjoyment from reading non-fiction. Choi Byonghyon’s meaty biography of Ryu Songnyong proved to be a highly stimulating mix of historical narrative, political analysis and Confucian philosophy. Thae Yong Ho’s memoir also provided much enjoyment. While much of the earlier part of the book focused more seriously on Kim Jong-il’s negotiating strategy (broadly, delay as much as possible to buy time to perfect the DPRK’s nuclear technology) the more enjoyable sections share anecdotes from Thae’s time in London such as having to defuse the diplomatic incident with the Ealing barber offering Kim Jong Un-style haircuts, and escorting Kim Jong Nam to the best guitar shops when he came to London for the Eric Clapton concerts. Another North Korean memoir provided a very different perspective: Black Girl from Pyongyang tells the story of the daughter of an African dictator who was brought up in North Korea under the protection of Kim Il-sung, and is well worth searching out. But my most stimulating non-fiction read was not a recent publication, but one I only heard about during the course of the year: The Korean Pentecost: And the Sufferings Which Followed. This is a fascinating first-hand account of the growth of the Presbyterian church in Korea, told by one of the key missionaries. The climax of the account, by William Blair, is the Pyongyang Revival of 1907, in which the attendees at a bible study conference experienced a deep spiritual transformation. The book also contains an account of the difficulties of the church firstly under Japanese colonial rule particularly in relation to the enforced shintoism and then under the early years of communism in the North of Korea.
If healing and self help are a bit of a thing in translated fiction at the moment, the trend is also spilling over into translated non-fiction too, with the appearance of titles such as I’m Not Lazy, I’m on Energy Saving Mode, Tteokbokki 2, How K-Dramas Can Transform Your Life, I Decided to Live as Me and If You Live To One Hundred, You Might As Well Be Happy. Some of the titles even look as if they are using the same cover artist, with the same pastel colour palette, as if to build a K-Healing brand. I didn’t manage to find time to look at any of these titles (I enjoyed one of the first of the trend to make it into English, Haemin Sunim’s Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down, but really couldn’t get in to Tteokbokki 1 which has rather put me off the whole genre for the time being). But there’s plenty of enticing titles to explore in other non-fiction published during the year. For example, I’ll certainly add to our shelves some of the impressive-looking titles on art history, for which 2024 was the most fertile year I can remember, with books on post-war and contemporary Korean art by Kim Youngna (Korean Art Since 1945: Challenges and Changes), Kim Hong-hee (Korean Feminist Artists: Confront and Deconstruct), Mina Kim (Contemporary Korean Art: New Directions since the 1960s) and Jung Joon Lee (Shooting for Change: Korean Photography after the War), with more traditional arts and objects covered by Beth McKillop and Jane Portal (Precious Beyond Measure: A History of Korean Ceramics) and Charlotte Horlyck (The Emergence of the Korean Art Collector and the Korean Art Market).
Literature, film and other art forms have not been neglected either, with academic publications on the Korean film industry, documentary cinema, the Korean War novel, social engagement in literature and film, Korean theatre and traditional folk performances in the madang. And reflecting the increasing embeddedness of Korean food culture the cookery books published this year have focused on the more specialist topics of Banchan and Jang. As always there are more books to be read than there is the time available to read them, which is perhaps preferable to the other way round.
Links:
- Was I alone, though, in wishing that the Nobel committee had commissioned a more flattering line drawing of the novelist?
[↩]
- The graph only captures translations published in a book: magazine and online publications are excluded. [↩]
- Paul Fulcher lists 7 healing fiction titles from the last 18 months [↩]