London Korean Links

Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

LKL book database logo

My Sister Bongsoon

Author:
Translated by:
Publisher: , 2008
Original title: 봉순이 언니, 1998
Link to online store *

My Sister Bongsoon is an autobiographical novel. Through the eyes of Jiang, a precocious five-year old girl, the author relates how Bongsoon, a live-in maid who was uneducated, unloved but innocent and hard-working like most of the maids of those days, views the emerging new world of Korean reality. There is anguish, insight, but also immense pain in this novel.

Gong wrote: I decided to picture Bongsoon and many other maids like her who existed in the early stages of economic growth and who were simply ignored amid the hectic development of that era. My Sister Bongsoon is my personal reflection as a comfortable middle-class person on all those women who we just neglected!

Entry on Goodreads.com here.

* Where the book is available from a number of sources, they are prioritised as follows: (1) Amazon UK site, or Bookshop.org for the more recent uploads (2) Amazon US site (3) Other sites in US or Europe, including second-hand outlets (4) LTI Korea, where the title is advertised as available from there (5) Onlines stores in Korea. Links to Bookshop.org and Amazon UK site contain an affiliate code which, should you make a purchase, gives a small commission to LKL at no additional cost to you.