Here are the upcoming Korea-related books that we’re particularly looking forward to – both fiction and non-fiction. There are probably loads more that we should be looking forward to, if only we knew about them. Sorted by anticipated publication date, with the most imminent titles at the top of the page. Some of the further-out dates may be a little bit speculative on our part; as we get nearer the time the dates will become clearer.
If you know about any titles you think we should be tracking, please let us know via the form at the bottom of this page. We can only log the titles we know about, so do tell!
The Heart of the Nhaga (The Bird that Drinks Tears vol 1)
Discover the bestselling epic fantasy series from the grandmaster of Korean SFF, available for the first time in English by award-winning translator Anton Hur. A can’t-miss for readers of the great classics and giants of fantasy, from J.R.R Tolkien to Ursula K. Le Guin Three handles one. The world is divided by the Line of ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Privileged but Powerless: How North Korean Elite Grievances Reveal the Regime’s Greatest Weakness
A compelling examination of North Korea’s elites, their hidden discontent, and the role they may play in shaping the regime’s future Jieun Baek’s second book on North Korea is a deeply researched and sharply analytical account of the grievances harbored by the country’s elite. Drawing on hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews with escapees from ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
The Seoul Letter Shop
A touching testament to the power of letter writing and connecting with strangers, for fans of Days at the Morisaki Bookshop and What You’re Looking For is in the Library. Hyoyoung feels trapped in her small hometown after her dreams of becoming a film maker are dashed. When a friend asks if she can take ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Black Market Intimacies: The Transpacific Sexual Economy of the Korean War
Black Market Intimacies reveals how illicit exchanges of money and commodities involving sexual encounters between Korean and Japanese women and US soldiers provided the material foundations of the regional economy across Korea and Japan during the Korean War. Against the conventional view that illicit exchanges exist outside the formal economy and legal regulations, Jeongmin Kim ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Hello Baby
A cult feminist hit in South Korea, Hello Baby is a gripping and intimate portrait of motherhood, fertility and womanhood for fans of Butter and Breasts and Eggs. Outside the chat, they had different jobs, personalities, financial backgrounds, but inside, they were all mothers-to-be anxiously awaiting their babies. In a group chat called ‘Hello Baby’, ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Plant Lady
A chilling psychological horror tale of a green-fingered serial killer. Will you dare to disrespect her plants? Moving on from a traumatic experience, Yoohee has opened up her own Plant Shop to start afresh. Rows of plants, meticulously arranged like soldiers, thrive under her green fingers; sunlight filters through the windows at just the right ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Profits of Queerness: Media, Medicine, and Citizenship in Authoritarian South Korea, 1950–1980
This groundbreaking, interdisciplinary study reassesses South Korea’s tumultuous period of authoritarian development (1950–1980) through obfuscated but illuminating histories of “queerness,” defined as gender variance, same-sex sexuality, and atypical anatomies, among other nonnormative expressions. Rather than primarily view these topics through minoritarian and/or liberal lenses, Todd Henry adopts a universalizing approach to examine how social conformity ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
That Summer’s End: Poems
One hundred and six poems of self-reflection and exquisite beauty—an intoxicating blend of Seon Buddhism and French symbolism, and the first poetry collection from this essential South Korean author to appear in English That summer I stood in the centers of storms That summer my despair burst out into crimson but still I weathered the ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
A Plagued Sea
Visionary Korean author Kim Bo-young unleashes a Lovecraftian nightmare of infection, transformation, and abomination. “[Kim Bo-young’s] fiction is a breathtaking piece of a cinematic art.” –Bong Joon-ho, Academy Award-winning director of Parasite While waiting for a train to Haewon, an isolated Korean seaside village, bodyguard Mu-young gets a disaster alert on her phone. TVs throughout the ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Ramen Makes us Complete
In this world, there are two types of food: ramen and non-ramen. Yoon Ina takes ramen seriously. She makes sure to try new flavours as soon as they come out, always has enough packets stocked in the pantry, has developed her own principles and theories for making good ramen, and even keeps up to date ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Mothersucker
A chilling international debut following a grieving mother’s transformation into a vampire who targets men who have harmed women—in the present, past, and future—and the female-led task force entrusted with the murder investigation On top of a mountain in Korea, buried underneath a mound of soil, 51-year-old Geum-hong wakes up transformed. Her senses are vivid, ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
City in a Future Tense: The Making of a Smart City in South Korea
Songdo, South Korea, is one of the earliest and most ambitious smart city projects. Mythical narratives have painted it as a promised land of the future where the problems and struggles of the present have been efficiently transcended—or concealed—by technology. In City in a Future Tense, Chamee Yang interrogates these myths and traces Songdo’s story to show how it ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
American Hagwon
Min Jin Lee, the acclaimed author of Pachinko, returns with a breathtaking contemporary epic that follows one family as they reckon with personal dreams and familial duty. John and Helen Koh and their three children – Bo, DH and Mido – are building new lives in Korea when they find their worlds upended, first by ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Bonobo
Jin-yi devotes her life to the study of primates. One evening, she helps rescue a bonobo who has escaped from a burning villa. While holding her on her lap in the car taking them back to the Primate Study Center, an accident throws her through the windshield and a strange fusion takes place: while her ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Remedying the Body: Plastic Surgery and the Politics of Embodiment in Korea
Plastic surgery has exploded in popularity around the world in the recent decades, with South Korea emerging as a leader of the global beauty economy. This book presents a cultural discourse of plastic surgery in Korea through the feminist politics of care, bringing together intersecting narratives of marginalization to reimagine coalitional ways of surviving a ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
The Pain Chasers
International Booker Prize-shortlisted Bora Chung creates a remarkably fresh dystopia-within-a-utopia that explores the inextricable link between humanity and suffering. Kyobo bookstore synopsis run through Microsoft’s translation engine: A new work by author Bora Chung, who was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Cursed Bunny and shocked readers not only in Korea but also around the ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Employee No. 9
With shades of Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice and Choi Jin-young’s Hunger, Employee No. 9 runs a psychological gauntlet of money, power, personal responsibility, and the daily struggle for survival. No. 9 is in trouble. His son’s college tuition is coming due, his wife needs surgery after taking double shifts at a grocery store, the ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Making Korea: 50 Design Stories
The meteoric rise and global impact of Hallyu has made South Korea a cultural powerhouse, where pop-culture and cosmetic surgery co-exist with centuries-old shamanistic and Confucian rituals. This vibrant creative force, a potent mix of the traditional and hyper-new, informs Korean design today. Drawing on the V&A’s renowned collection, this compelling publication explores social history ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Korea Around the Table: Food and Global Korean Identities
Korea Around the Table: Food and Global Korean Identities brings together leading scholars to examine how Korean cuisine encodes identity, memory, and belonging across local and global contexts. From the early adoption of chili peppers on the Korean peninsula to the proliferation of sundubu jjigae restaurants in suburban New Jersey, this groundbreaking volume shows how ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Mukja: Let’s Eat!: Fan-Favorite Recipes from K-Pop, K-Dramas & More
Celebrate the flavors of hallyu with more than 65 mukbang-worthy recipes inspired by Korean dramas, movies, and music. The Korean Wave, or hallyu, has seen the K-food craze spread globally, spurred by the popularity of cultural exports like K-pop and K-dramas. From dalgona coffee to cheese-filled corndogs, Korean trends are taking over, both on-screen and ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
A Magical Girl Rehired
In this charmingly chaotic follow-up to A Magical Girl Retires, our favorite millennial-turned-magical girl begrudgingly returns to the workforce to fight crime and the forces of evil. Our protagonist from A Magical Girl Retires is done with the magical girl life . . . but the magical girl life isn’t done with her. After her request to ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
ImagiNation: Deconstructing South Korea’s Modern Miracles
In less than a century, South Korea has remarkably transformed its image from one of the world’s poorest nations to a center of global influence. Not just one but a series of so-called modern miracles transformed the country into an exceptional case of national image-making and image-shifting. In contrast with the utilitarian focus of much ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Juniper Tree
“My mother, who tried to kill me, now wants to kill my son.” The grand prize winner of the 12th Kyobo Paperback Story Contest, Kim Hae-sol’s Juniper has been published by the comprehensive publishing brand ‘Bukda’. This is the first full-length novel by an author who is active in various fields such as movies, dramas, ... [Read More]
Everything but the Bomb: South Korea’s Nuclear Hedging Strategy
Amid North Korea’s advancing nuclear capabilities and the declining credibility of U.S. extended deterrence, South Korea has a strong motive to pursue its own nuclear deterrent. With its advanced nuclear energy program, South Korea possesses the means to develop nuclear weapons indigenously. However, its opportunity to do so is constrained by the prohibitive economic, security ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
My Father’s Liberation
Over the course of a three-day funeral, a woman discovers new sides to her deceased father in this hilarious and heart-tugging masterwork from one of Korea’s most fearless writers. So, Father died. Slammed his head into a telephone pole. A very serious man had seriously come to the end of a seriously lived life by ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
My Perfect Deserted Island
A tender and heartwarming novel about the rejuvenating power of island life, for fans of The Healing Season of Pottery and Hakuda Photo Studio. SLOW DOWN. SOMETIMES THE BRAVEST ACT IS STARTING OVER. Jian Cha thought she had her life mapped out – until the weight of endless deadlines and the relentless pace of her ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
On the Eve of Goodbye
On the Eve of Goodbye is an unforgettable novel from one of Korea’s most loved authors, weaving together the lives of three artists to explore creativity and human connection. Set against key moments in history – the assassination of Park Chung Hee, Korean American immigration, a Korean artist’s life in Germany, and the global pandemic – ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Allergic to Love
With outstanding beauty and a sharp, no-nonsense personality, she appears perfectly fine on the outside, but in truth she’s someone who avoids relationships, unable to trust either herself or others. Fleeing from a breakup with her boyfriend and family conflict, she escapes abroad to study. While searching for housing due to a dorm issue, Hwihyun ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
So What If I Love My Single Life
So What If I Love My Single Life by YouTuber Seen Aromi, who has captivated 400,000 readers, covers everything you need to live alone successfully. If you want to live a fulfilling day all by yourself, this book is a must-read. When you say you want to live alone, you often hear nagging from people ... [Read More]
Traveling Chinatowns: The Architecture of Migration and Violence in Colonial Korea
Drawing on an impressive array of archival sources, from colonial criminal records to historical maps and exposé journalism, this book brings to light the overlooked history of ethnic Chinese enclaves in Korea during the era of Japanese colonialism. Situated within a global circuit of Chinese migration, the Japanese empire produced a structure of anti-migrant violence ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Unruly Rites: Christianity, Ritual Politics, and the Making of Religious Difference in Modern Korea, 1884-1945
When Western missionaries first introduced Protestant Christianity to Korea in 1884, Korean converts adopted beliefs and practices that defied prevailing Confucian norms, including distinct faith-based rituals. By the turn of the twentieth century, during the final years of the Chosŏn dynasty, competing cultural and religious viewpoints started to roil Korean society with frenzied—even life-and-death—controversies over ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
The Politics of the Have-Nots: What South Korean Activism Teaches Us about Radical Democracy
Social change requires the emergence of a collective subject that can foster solidarity within and across national boundaries. But how can such a collective come together in our current era of liberal individualism and the pursuit of maximum profit? In The Politics of the Have-Nots, Hae Yeon Choo theorizes how this collective might cohere and ... [Read More]
When We Look at Each Other
An ode to the realities of aging, this is an honest but tender look at the challenges of caring for a relative with dementia, of how our role within the family unit evolves, and a celebration of spending precious time with those we love. Written in warm and reflective prose, it explores the author’s relationship ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
The Last Chance Convenience Store
The much anticipated sequel to the million-copy international bestselling debut The Second Chance Convenience Store. Welcome back to the store where everyone has a story. The Second Chance Convenience Store is open again. After captivating millions of readers worldwide, The Second Chance Convenience Store is back with a delightful sequel that’s just as moving and ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
The Rogue Moon Goddess
In a world where ancient deities linger lurk the shadows, Boreum, a descendant of the Moon Goddess, is cast down to Earth from the Moon. She wakes up in a mystical lake on a mountain which is the domain of the long-lost goddess Mago, only to be accused for the Goddess’ mysterious disappearance by her ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
The 25:00 Magic Lantern Express
Passengers aboard the Magic Lantern Express between life and death must retrieve their lost memories or risk losing their legacy in this cosy Korean fantasy adventure for fans of The Dallergut Dream Department Store and Marigold Mind Laundry Keep your memories with you at all times! When Suhan Cha wakes dazed and confused in an unfamiliar train carriage ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
The Bookshop of Illusions
Step into a dark and magical world where fairytales hold all the answers. After yet another rejection from a publishing house, and with her dreams of becoming a children’s book author shattered for good, Yeon-seo decides to go for a hike in the mountains to clear her head and relax. Lost in her thoughts, she ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
The Gourmet Detective
Heo Gyun is a detective of a different flavour: a “gourmet detective.” With an exceptional palate, he can taste a dish once and immediately reconstruct the recipe in his mind. He understands how seasonings pair, the properties of ingredients, and how food interacts with the human body. Exiled to the rural village of Hamyeol, accused ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Diary of a Korean Plant Parent: Four Seasons of Growth
“I’m delighted to be able to introduce my book to fellow plant parents across the anglophone world. In 2025, we need the wisdom of each and every individual in our communities, now more than ever. During this time, I hope that the stories of plants – their concentrated wisdom unfolding according to the laws of ... [Read More]
Greenhouse at the End of the World
Kim Cho-yeop, who won the Best Writer Award at the Galaxy Awards, China’s science fiction literary award, with his novel collection If We Can’t Go at the Speed of Light, proved that he is loved by readers all over the world, and his first novel, The Greenhouse at the End of the Earth, showed the ... [Read More]
This list can only contain the books we know about. So if you’re aware of an upcoming book that we should be tracking, whether fiction or non-fiction, let us know about it. If it’s literature in translation, we’ll definitely add it. If it’s non-fiction, we’ll probably add it, but reserve the right to politely decline because hours in the day, and database space, are finite resources.