London Korean Links

Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

Grotesque Weather and Good People

A debut English translation of contemporary free verse poetry by award-winning South Korean poet and novelist Lim Solah. By turns humorous and dark, these poems explore the simultaneous intimacy and alienation of everyday life in urban Seoul. Writing in a simple vernacular, Lim’s lyric I struggles with the poet’s call to “wonder” in a world … [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]

Thinking Less about Sad Things (K-Poet 26)

Poet Dongman Moon’s Think Less of Sadness English version. Perhaps the world is a place full of sorrow, and no one can escape the sorrow that comes upon them. The upright will to live “eating deliciously / thinking less about sad things/like green beans” is permeated throughout the poetry, even if you can’t handle all … [Read More]

Following Birds (K-Poet 25)

An English version of Poet Chul Park’s collection of poems Follow the Birds. The poet, who has looked into the edge of his life, is quietly approaching the sick beings alone in this collection of poems. You can also meet the poet’s notes and essays that give a glimpse of the poet’s poetry. Souce: Info … [Read More]

Cold Candies

Cold Candies encapsulate the saccharine strangeness of a woman’s life. Fragments of narratives about girls, dolls, sisters, mothers, men, lizards, the moon, and pillows are brought together into otherworldly images that are devastating, yet familiar. Lee Young-ju is one of South Korea’s most original minds, and this collection, curated and translated by National Endowment of … [Read More]

You Have Reached the End of the Future (K-Poet 24)

This is the English version of a collection of poems by poet Hwang In-chan. Everyday scenes flow like a plain confession and become a piece of poetry. The trivial conversations, sometimes like jokes and sometimes meaningless, approach me coldly and honestly, and the more I think about them, the more I think there will be … [Read More]

Non-matter (K-Poet 23)

Poet Lee Hyeon-ho’s third collection of poetry. Scenes of love that are beautiful and therefore infinitely sad are endlessly reborn in the poet’s sentences. To a poet, love is a name that must be called endlessly without any choice, and when love is pronounced accurately at the tip of the poet’s tongue, the world will … [Read More]

Ten Thousand Lives: Maninbo, Volumes 21–25

Born in 1933 in a small rural village in Korea’s North Cholla Province, Ko Un grew up in a Japanese-controlled land that was soon to experience the horrors of the Korean War. He became a Buddhist monk in 1952, and began writing in the late 1950s. Ten Thousand Lives is his major, ongoing work, which … [Read More]

Cave Boys (K-Poet 22)

K-Poet series that meets both Korean and English at the same time. Poet Lee Seol-ya’s 『Cave Boys』 was published as the 22nd collection of poems. From his first collection of poems, We Decided to Get Darker, the poet’s poetry clock, who dictated the voices of the marginalized and the suffering, and never neglected to listen … [Read More]

Beginning the End (K-Poet 21)

Poet Kim Keun’s 『Beginning the End』 was published as the 21st collection of K-poet poems in Korean and English. Poet Kim Keun’s new poetry collection, who debuted in 1998 and published poems such as 『Bam Boy’s Outing』, 『See you at the Cloud Theater』 and 『When you wash your face in the dark』, is divided into … [Read More]

On Translating Modern Korean Poetry

From the publisher’s website: On Translating Modern Korean Poetry is a research monograph exploring the intricacies and complexities of translating modern Korean poetry. This monograph highlights the difficulties entailed in translating Korean poetry, due to the lexical, structural, social, expressive and attitudinal levels with which the translator must be engaged. Featuring all-new translations, this book explores … [Read More]

The World’s Lightest Motorcycle

Yi Won confronts a wired, technological world, often in the mirror, in these inventive, daring and subversive poems. A successor to Korean feminist poets like Kim Hyesoon, Yi Won frequently writes about the perilousness of maintaining one’s human identity in a high-tech, digital environment. In this debut book in English, her poems range from avant-garde prose … [Read More]

Pillar of Books

This debut collection in English from Korean poet Moon Bo Young insists that you, as a reader, put down your expectations of what should be important or serious. While these poems are about god, death, love, and literature, they are also just as much about a hat with a herd of cows on it, science … [Read More]

Tiger Swallowtail (K-Poet 20)

It is a collection of poems in the domain of Tiger Swallowtail by Hwang Gyu-gwan, the 20th collection of poems by K-Poet. In 1993, he began his work by winning the Jeon Tae-il Literature Award and published poetry books such as Cheolsan-dong Post Office, Water Goes its Way, defeat is My Power, Waiting for the … [Read More]

Catcalling

From the publisher’s website: Lee Soho’s debut collection of poems is an experimental lyric bildungsroman that confronts dynamics of abuse as it challenges poetic form. Catcalling exposes and ridicules the violences that the speaker-protagonist Kyungjin encounters as she navigates a patriarchal world. Divided in to five formally distinct sections – ranging from lyric to prose … [Read More]

Suicide Parasite (K-Poet 19)

This is a new collection of poems by poet Kim Seong-gyu, who made his debut in 2004 and persistently looked into the other side of his life by publishing poetry books such as 『You flew by mistake』 and 『When will Heaven collect the broken ones』. As can be seen in the title song “Suicide Parasite”, … [Read More]