A love that has no beginning and no end. The story of Sapa’s ‘Love Market’ where unrequited love meets. A very special romance with the literary prototype of writer Bang Hyun-seok, who loves the world and cares for people. Bang Hyun-seok’s 『At Sapa』 was published as a K-Fiction special edition. His new work, the story … [Read More]
Booklist: Korean literature in translation (page 15)
HappyLand (K-Poet 15)
This title is listed only on the LTI Korea website. It is available from Kyobo bookstore, but probably nowhere outside of Korea. The following description is from the Korean on the Kyobo website, fed through Papago I met the sky alive, so I accomplished everything. Kim Hae-ja’s new collection of poems, “Happy Land”. “K-Poet” series … [Read More]
One Left
During the Pacific War, more than 200,000 Korean girls were forced into sexual servitude for Japanese soldiers. They lived in horrific conditions in “comfort stations” across Japanese-occupied territories. Barely 10 percent survived to return to Korea, where they lived as social outcasts. Since then, self-declared comfort women have come forward only to have their testimonies … [Read More]
Yi Sang: Selected Works
Formally audacious and remarkably compelling, Yi Sang’s works were uniquely situated amid the literary experiments of world literature in the early twentieth century and the political upheaval of 1930s Japanese occupied Korea. While his life ended prematurely at the age of twenty-seven, Yi Sang’s work endures as one of the great revolutionary legacies of modern … [Read More]
Unexpected Vanilla
A sensual, surrealist collection by a young feminist poet, in an equally sensuous and sensitive queer translation. Lee Hyemi’s poetry is characterized by fluidity and wetness, with subjects moving about and soaking in each other through curious means. Unexpected Vanilla’s exchange of liquids often involves sex, but intercourse can be nonsexual: drinking tea or alcohol, going to … [Read More]
Forty Two Greens
From the publisher’s website: The poems in this book, by the way they speak to all parts of our minds, invite us to come alive and experience each movement, each emotion and action, and some statements therein, intuitively and aesthetically. This is about a Korean man’s everyday life in the milieu of contemporary America; his … [Read More]
Moms
From the publisher’s website: An outrageously funny book about middle-aged women that reexamines romance, lust, and gender norms. Translated from Korean by Janet Hong. Lee Soyeon, Myeong-ok, and Yeonjeong are all mothers in their mid-fifties. And they’ve had it. They can no longer bear the dead weight of their partners or the endless grind of … [Read More]
Re-evolution: Selected Poems by Kim Chi-ha
From the publisher’s website: Kim Chi-ha is widely regarded as one of the greatest poets and thinkers in modern Korean history. Throughout the 1970s, as a symbol of the ‘resistance’ movement against the Park Chung-hee dictatorship, he was forced to live a life of fleeing, wandering, imprisonment and torture, leading up to a death sentence. … [Read More]
Almond
This story is, in short, about a monster meeting another monster. One of the monsters is me. Yunjae was born with a brain condition called Alexithymia that makes it hard for him to feel emotions like fear or anger. He does not have friends—the two almond-shaped neurons located deep in his brain have seen to … [Read More]
The Disaster Tourist
Yona has been stuck behind a desk for years working as a programming coordinator for Jungle, a travel company specialising in package holidays to destinations ravaged by disaster. When a senior colleague touches her inappropriately she tries to complain, and in an attempt to bury her allegations, the company make her an attractive proposition: a … [Read More]
As I Walk Alone
No information available. This title is particularly difficult to source, but can be obtained from the University of Hawai’i Press. [Read More]
The Society for Studies in Matryoshka and Basting Pins (K-Poet 14)
The below text is from the Kyobo website, run through the Papago translation engine: About the world and us, the fantasy and the Allegory that opens up and continues. A new collection of poems by Yoo Hyung-jin, “The Society for Studies in Matryoshka and Basting Pins” “K-Poet” series introduces the essence of Korean poetry that … [Read More]
You Arrived in the Season of Perennial Summer (K-Poet 13)
Details from LTI Korea website. The title is available from Kyobo and probably other Korean online stores: Times like this are no good. They’re too distant from the root cause. I think I was a weaver in a factory a hundred years ago. Maybe a handweaver for hire a thousand years ago. I’m now weaving … [Read More]
Maya in Tokyo (K-Fiction 027)
As this is an Asia Publishers title, it’s pretty difficult to obtain outside of Korea. Text from the listing on the Kyobo website, fed through the Papago translation engine: Nothing. Just grow into Maya. In July 2020, Jang Ryu-jin’s “Maya in Tokyo” was published as the 27th installment of K-fiction. Jang Ryu-jin’s new short novel, … [Read More]
Bluebeard’s First Wife
From the publisher’s website: Disasters, accidents, and deaths abound in Bluebeard’s First Wife. A woman spends a night with her fiancé and his friends, and overhears a terrible secret that has bound them together since high school. A man grows increasingly agitated by the apartment noise made by a young family living upstairs and arouses … [Read More]
Seven Years of Darkness
A young girl is found dead in Seryong Lake, a reservoir in a remote South Korean village. The police immediately begin their investigation. At the same time, three men – Yongje, the girl’s father, and two security guards at the nearby dam, each of whom has something to hide about the night of her death … [Read More]