From the publisher’s website: This volume brings together excerpts from Seongyuldang nongso [蟬橘堂濃笑: The Inexorable Glee of Master Seongyuldang] and Imokgusimseo [耳目口心書: First-hand Observations] by the 18th-century scholar Yi Deok-mu. Seongyuldang nongso is a collection of Yi’s observations about life. In Imokgusimseo, Yi writes about what he heard, saw, said, and felt in the day-to-day. … [Read More]
Booklist: Korean literature in translation (page 21)
Premodern Korean Literary Prose: An Anthology
This anthology presents new translations of Korean prose works from the tenth to the nineteenth century. It offers insight into past Korean societies by highlighting genres that have largely not been translated, such as diaries, short fictional biographies, erotic tales, oral narratives, and novellas, all of which illustrate the depth and variety of premodern Korean … [Read More]
Paper
From the publisher’s website: The image of paper, beautifully wrought as the controlling metaphor, runs through each poem sometimes to lament humanity lost over dazzling civilization, sometimes to call for restoration by means of everything good a sheet of paper symbolizes, all in a voice quite pithy and restrained. This poetry book is a grain … [Read More]
Poems of the North
From the publisher’s website: Treasured in both Koreas, Baek Seok: Poems of the North opens an intriguing gateway into the spirit of the North Koreans of the 1930’s-50’s. In a land struggling for freedom and short of food, he treats his readers to the dishes they craved, exhibiting a Korea not in mired in the … [Read More]
The Scorpion
From the publisher’s website: In mainstream literature, it is not unusual to find a great novel whose themes are simultaneously universal and local. humanity and the human condition can be represented through characters and events that reflect the environment of an author living in a specific time and place. In the case of The Scorpion, … [Read More]
The Boy who Escaped Paradise
An unidentified body is discovered in New York City, with numbers and symbols are written in blood near the corpse. Gil-mo, a North Korean national who interprets the world through numbers, formulas, and mathematical theories, is arrested on the spot. Angela, a CIA operative, is assigned to gain his trust and access his unique persona. … [Read More]
An Unknown Realm (K-Fiction 020)
Synopsis from the Kyobo book store website, run through the Papago translator: Kwon Yeo-sun’s novel “The Unknown Area.” The main character Myung-deok hits the ball at dawn and exits the club alone and calls Dayoung. Dayoung was in Yeoju because of the ceramic biennale. The crescent-shaped daytime moon floats in the sky, and Myeongdeok, who … [Read More]
Poems by Huh Sukyung (K-Poet 04)
Text from the Kyobo website and google translate: The first Korean-English University perspectives covering all Korean poets The ‘K-Poet’ series is intended to be distributed to the domestic and foreign markets after extracting the essence of Korean poetry that you always want to read at your bedside, translated into English, and translated into English and … [Read More]
Poems by Baek Seok (K-Poet 03)
Text from Kyobo bookstore and Google translate: The first Korean-English University perspectives covering all Korean poets The ‘K-Poet’ series is intended to be distributed to the domestic and foreign markets after extracting the essence of Korean poetry that you always want to read at your bedside, translated into English, and translated into English and Korean. … [Read More]
Nostalgia
From the publisher’s website: Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Korean by Sung-Il Lee and Insoo Lee. Edited by Stanley H. Barkan. This is a bilingual (Korean-English) selection of poems by the famed South Korean poet Chung Ji-yong, imprisoned by the North Koreans, translated by Sung-Il Lee and his father Insoo Lee, formatted in parallel texts, … [Read More]
Nobody Checks the Time When They’re Happy
No One Checks the Time When They’re Happy is a collection of stories, by turns sad and funny, about the thwarted expectations of the young as they grow older. Eun Heeyung’s characters are misfits who, by virtue of their bodies or their lack of social status, are left to dream of momentous changes that will … [Read More]
The White Book
While on a writer’s residency, a nameless narrator wanders the twin white worlds of the blank page and snowy Warsaw. THE WHITE BOOK becomes a meditation on the color white, as well as a fictional journey inspired by an older sister who died in her mother’s arms, a few hours old. The narrator grapples with … [Read More]
North Station
A writer struggles to come to terms with the death of her beloved mentor; the staging of an experimental play goes awry; time freezes for two lovers on a platform, waiting for the train that will take one of them away; a woman living in a foreign country discovers she has been issued the wrong … [Read More]
Poems by Ahn Do-Hyun (K-Poet 02)
Text from the Kyobo bookstore website and Google translate: The first Korean-English University perspectives covering all Korean poets The ‘K-Poet’ series is intended to be distributed to the domestic and foreign markets after extracting the essence of Korean poetry that you always want to read at your bedside, translated into English, and translated into English … [Read More]
The Song of Ch’unhyang: Musical Text as compiled by Master Singer Kim Yŏn-su
The Song of Ch’unhyang is one of the most popular p’ansori pieces in the genre’s classic repertoire. Its story is simple. Ch’unhyang (“Spring-Fragrance”) is the beautiful daughter of a deceased aristocrat and Wŏlmae, a retired kisaeng. Her ambiguous social status becomes the key dramatic complication when she falls in love with Yi Mongnyong, the young … [Read More]
Poems by Ko Un (K-Poet 01)
The first Korean-English translation of a Korean poet “K-Poet” series, which aims to select the essence of Korean poetry and translate it into English and serve it to domestic and foreign markets. It represents the only Korean-English translation in the world. Korean poems, which will be considered masterpieces over time, regenerate the lives of the … [Read More]