(From Wikipedia) Beyond the Story: 10 Year Record of BTS is a forthcoming biography about South Korean pop group BTS. The book is written by Kang Myeong-seok and BTS, and translated into English by Anton Hur in collaboration with Clare Richards and Slin Jung. It will be released on July 9, 2023 No synopsis yet … [Read More]
Archives: Books
Here is a listing of all the books in the LKL Book DataBase, in the order we happen to have uploaded them (most recent first). For listings in order of publication, visit the DataBase home page which will take you to individual subject listings.
At Night he Lifts Weights [forthcoming]
A disquieting vision of ecological dystopia in a collection by a major Korean writer. An artist is plagued by desire for her mysterious double as disease spreads through an uncanny suburban landscape. An elderly woman suspects the old man who lifts weights in her neighborhood playground of being responsible for a spate of murders. While … [Read More]
Korea and Its Futures: Unification and the Unfinished War
Despite the passage of over forty years since the official end of the civil war in Korea, the north and the south sections of the country remain technically at war. In Korea and its Futures , Roy Grinker argues that the continued conflict between North and South Korea, and the prospects for peace on the … [Read More]
The Black Orb [forthcoming]
“Having reality and fantasy exist side-by-side, Kim E-whan’s fictional writing is often seen as an allegorical presentation of the world we live in. The novel “The Orb of Despair” — which shot Kim E-whan to fame after he was awarded the first Multi-Literature Award in 2009 — reveals his keen insight into human existence and … [Read More]
Your Utopia [forthcoming]
“Indie publisher Honford Star has purchased two books by Chung and Anton Hur: collection To Meet Her, originally published in Korean in 2021 (scheduled for 2023 release), and an as yet untitled standalone novel (scheduled for 2024).” (Source: ClarkesWorld, December 2922( To Meet Her is now known as Your Utopia Yay more Bora & me! … [Read More]
Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop [forthcoming]
There was only one thing on her mind. I must start a bookshop. Yeong-ju did everything she was supposed to, go to university, marry a decent man, get a respectable job. Then it all fell apart. Burned out, Yeong-ju abandons her old life, quits her high-flying career, divorces her husband, and follows her dream. She … [Read More]
Born of This Land: My Life Story
Born of This Land: My Life Story is an English translation of the Chung Ju-yung’s autobiography. Chung ju-yung is the founding chairman of the Hyundai Group. The story begins with the escape from his home to the beginning of Chung’s first auto repair shop. Source: listing on Han Books [Read More]
Three Tigers, One Mountain: A Journey through the Bitter History and Current Conflicts of China, Korea and Japan
Two tigers cannot share the same mountain – Chinese proverb Despite geographical proximity, cultural similarities, and shared status as highly powerful nations, China, Korea and Japan love to hate each other. Why? In search of an answer, Michael Booth journeys across East Asia to explore the mutual animosity that frequently threatens to draw the world … [Read More]
The Logic of Compressed Modernity
Most theories of modernity are based, explicitly or implicitly, on the development of Western societies since the late medieval period, but these theories are of limited value for understanding the development of societies in Asia and other parts of the world, where the process of modernization took place under different circumstances and often in a … [Read More]
Glory Hole
A ground-breaking new collection of queer poetry from a leading contemporary Korean poet. Kim Hyun’s Glory Hole is the first Korean queer poetry collection. Featuring gay teens, elders, cats, caterpillars, robots, and other unexpected characters, Kim’s fifty-one eccentric poems trace themes of love, sexual desire, abandonment, destitution, and death. In recounting the splendid yet tragic journeys of … [Read More]
Mater 2-10
International Booker–nominated virtuoso Hwang Sok-yong is back with another powerful story — an epic, multi-generational tale that threads together a century of Korean history. Centred on three generations of a family of rail workers and a laid-off factory worker staging a high-altitude sit-in, Mater 2-10 vividly depicts the lives of ordinary working Koreans, starting from … [Read More]
Ryu Sŏngnyong, Chancellor of Chosŏn Korea
This biography of Ryu Sŏngnyong presents a new view of his childhood and education, his career as a government official, and his scholarship during retirement. The narrative includes descriptions of the Imjin War between Hideyoshi’s Japan and Chosŏn Korea, and their negotiations with imperial China. With the Japanese invasion of Chosŏn, King Sŏnjo’s court was … [Read More]
Counting the Stars at Night: The Complete Works in Verse and Prose
This book contains the complete works of Yoon Dong-ju (1917-1945), one of the most beloved poets for all Koreans, and is the first attempt at English translation in their entirety, poetry and prose. Yoon’s writings reflect the ardor and longing lodged in every young man’s and woman’s heart. In that sense, the poems contained herein … [Read More]
Moral Authoritarianism: Neighborhood Associations in the Three Koreas, 1931–1972 [forthcoming]
Moral Authoritarianism offers a new perspective on the three modern Korean states—the Japanese colonial state, South Korea, and North Korea—by studying neighborhood associations during the four war decades (1930s–1960s). The existing historiography perceives the three states in relation to imperialism and to the Cold War, thus emphasizing their differences by political changes. By shifting the focus … [Read More]
The Red Decades: Communism as Movement and Culture in Korea, 1919–1945 [forthcoming]
Focusing on previously neglected cultural expressions of colonial-period Korean socialism such as Marxist philosophy, Marxist historiography, and travelogues by socialist writers, The Red Decades reveals Marxian socialism as a cultural phenomenon of colonial-age Korea. Providing an account of the social composition of the Communist milieu in 1920s and 1930s Korea and outlining the aims of … [Read More]
Yellow
Set in the fictional California coastal town of Rosarita Bay, a collection of stories features such characters as Annie Yun, whose passion for country music has her longing for a cowboy, ex-fisherman Alan Fujitani, stuck in romantic widowerhood, and the competitive “Oriental Hair Poets,” whose handcrafted chairs are museum pieces. “Elegant and engrossing…[an] unusually complete … [Read More]