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!
Finding Mr. Perfect: K-Drama, Pop Culture, Romance, and Race
Finding Mr. Perfect explores the romantic relationships between Korean men and women who were inspired by romantic Korean televisual depictions of Korean masculinity to travel to Korea as tourists. Author Min Joo Lee argues that disparate racialized erotic desires of Korean pop culture fans, foreign tourists to Korea, Korean men, and the Korean nation converge to ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Perfect Happiness
In this propulsive thriller, master of crime and suspense fiction You-Jeong Jeong, author of The Good Son, takes us to the Korean countryside in a domestic nightmare centered around the life and goals of Yuna Shin: wife, mother, sister–and covert narcissist. Everyone in Yuna’s life knows to tread carefully in her presence. Her husband dreads the ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
A Midnight Pastry Shop Called Hwawoldang
When twenty-seven-year-old Yeon-hwa loses her grandmother, enigmatic proprietor of the Hwawoldang, she decides to respect her wishes by keeping the store going for at least a month, between the hours of 10pm and midnight. She has never learnt to make the traditional desserts herself, and hopes to learn more about her grandmother. On her very ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
A Love Story from the End of the World
From the acclaimed author of Beasts of a Little Land and Reese’s Book Club pick City of Night Birds, an exquisite, globetrotting story collection about humans in precarious balance with the natural world. Spanning multiple locations and times, and rendered in fine detail and vivid color, this transportive, expansive collection shows what it means to ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Artificial Truth
From J. M. Lee, a bestselling phenomenon in Korea, comes a haunting and mind-bending novel about the revolutionary possibilities of AI and the infinite mysteries of what it means to be human. In the virtual city of Alegria, fantasies are made real, innumerable lifetimes are lived, and even death itself is a survivable experience. An ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Bong Joon Ho: Philosopher and Filmmaker
With the release of Parasite (2019), recipient of the Palme d’Or and an Academy Award for Best Picture, South Korean director Bong Joon Ho secured his place as one of his generation’s leading filmmakers. Yet while scholars and critics have long appreciated his penetrating critique of Korean society and global capitalism, his oeuvre has not ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Hail, Che!
An explosive collection of revolutionary poems that make the case that only poetry can save humanity. Korean poet Pak Jeong-de envisioned Hail, Che! as a textual performance that sings and dreams of revolution. In these poems, he invokes the names of more than 200 artists— writers, musicians, filmmakers, and painters—whom he considers comrades capable of saving humanity. ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
The Invention of a Language of Emptiness: The “Chojang chungga-ŭi,” the Earliest Korean Exposition of Buddhism
This volume is the first annotated translation in any language of the “Chojang chungga-ŭi” (The Meaning of the “Middle” and the “Provisional” in the “First Stanza”), a little-known text that yielded considerable influence on early East Asian Buddhism. It corresponds to the first chapter of the Taesŭng saron hyŏnŭi ki (Notes on the Four Treatises[, belonging to ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Fallout: The Inside Story of America’s Failure to Disarm North Korea
A behind-the-scenes look into US efforts to contain North Korea’s nuclear capabilities and why they have not worked For almost four decades, the United States has tried to halt North Korea’s march to build nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. Joel S. Wit, a former State Department official, takes readers to the front ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Two Women Living Together
At some point between living alone and becoming single, Hwang Sunwoo and Kim Hana found each other, and decided to live together in a nice apartment where their four cats would finally have the freedom to run around. Together they became a family – and redefined it. At a time housing costs have skyrocketed whilst ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Reactionary Politics in South Korea: Historical Legacies, Far-Right Intellectuals, and Political Mobilization
In December 2024, South Korean president Yoon Seok-yeol stunned the world by declaring martial law. More puzzling was that Yoon’s insurrection unexpectedly gained substantial support from the ruling right-wing party and many citizens. Why do ordinary citizens support authoritarian leaders and martial law in a democratic country? What draws them to extreme actions and ideas? ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Lyrical Translation: The Creation of Modern Poetry in Colonial Korea
Lyrical Translation is a literary history of modern Korean poetry’s origins and its development through translation. As the use of Korean became increasingly restricted during the Japanese occupation, translation was not a choice but a necessity for higher education and intellectual labor. Yet it also had an expansive, creative function: Korean poets wielded it as an ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Simple Heart
In this moving exploration of dual identities reminiscent of Past Lives, a Korean writer’s pregnancy raises questions about her own childhood abandonment. Nana, a Korean playwright, was adopted as a child by a French couple. Before she was Nana, she was Esther Pak, a girl growing up in a Korean orphanage. And before she was Esther ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Holy Boy
One idol. Four fans. Worship’s never been bloodier. Yosep is a K-pop idol with millions of adoring fans. But for four of them, a poster on the wall just won’t cut it. They have a plan—a perfect, foolproof plan—to get their idol all to themselves. Kidnapping Yosep seemed like the ultimate act of love. But ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
North Korea: A History (revised ed)
North Korea is perhaps the most intriguing, infamous and enigmatic nation of our modern world. Yet how many of us know its full history, and how it came to be? How can we understand such a strange, isolated state? This new edition seeks to provide some answers to these questions. Starting with its origins in the ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
With the Heart of a Ghost: Stories
With the Heart of a Ghost is a debut collection of eight fantastical stories translated by Chi-Young Kim (Whale) that explore feelings unseen, unconveyed, unexplainable. The funny, meditative characters who inhabit this book are pulled far from their ordinary daily routines to stare straight into their own sorrows, however they manifest. Ghosts and otherworldly occurrences ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
K-Pop Fandom: Performing Deokhu from the 1990s to Today
K-Pop Fandom insists that K-pop fan practices and activities constitute a central productive force, shaping not only K-pop’s explosive global popularity, but also K-pop’s cultural impacts, politics, and horizons of possibility. Over the past three decades, the K-pop fandom and its activities have expanded, intensified, and diversified along myriad dimensions, assuming novel social, technological, and economic ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Minbak
The night the baby without a surname was born, the army rolled into his mother’s town Incheon, South Korea, 1985. The country is revolting against a dictatorship, but in the local boarding-house, the chaos inside is only just beginning. When Hana is pulled from school to work in her family’s minbak, all she wants is ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
The Memory Bookshop
For lovers of The Midnight Library and Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, discover a spellbinding novel about a mysterious bookshop that exists outside of time and space, where the past is only a page away… If you’re lost, you’ll find The Memory Bookshop Where the shelves are endless. The books, strangely familiar. And where memories are bound in ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
The Legend of Lady Byeoksa
A tale of star-crossed lovers, political intrigue and mysticism inspired by Korean mythology and set in the Joseon dynasty. ‘Whether I remember or not, it seems I am destined to love you.’ Lady Seomun Bin has a secret: she is a cross-dressing byeoksa, or ghost-stalker. Born with the unenviable ability to see spirits, she is ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Korean Relations with Japan and Ryūkyū In the Early Chosŏn Period: A Translation of Sin Sukchu’s Haedong Chegukki
Between 1392 and 1592 — a period bounded by Japanese pirate raids along the Korean coast and Japan’s invasion of Chosŏn Korea — more than 4,600 Japanese trade missions were recorded by the Chosŏn government. In response to these missions, the famous official Sin Sukchu compiled regulations, detailed information about Japanese contacts, and other material, ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
A Nation Within: North Korean Zainichi in Postimperial Japan
The presence of hundreds of thousands ethnic Koreans in Japan, or “zainichi Koreans,” is one of the visible legacies of Japanese colonialism. A surprising and influential group among zainichi Koreans that persists to this day is Chongryon, the only pro–North Korean diasporic group based in a capitalist society. Chongryon historically represented the central grassroots force ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
From Koreanness to K-ness: Contemporary Korean Culture and Society
From Koreanness to K-ness: Contemporary Korean Culture and Society aims to conceptualise ‘K-ness’ as a new way of understanding the underlying characteristics that shape the semiotic, cultural, and sociological representations of contemporary Korean culture and society. The global popularity of Korean cultural content has sparked extensive interest in various facets of the Korean language, culture, and ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea’s Personality Cult
A landmark history of North Korea, told through the rise of the Kim dynasty and its surprising ties to American Christianity—a spectacular, penetrating account of a world like no other North Korea. The Hermit Kingdom. For nearly eight decades, it has marched defiantly to its own beat, shaking off its Soviet and Chinese sponsors to ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
The Minjung Art Movement: Decolonization and Democracy in South Korea
Emerging as multifaceted cultural activism, the minjung (people’s) art movement defined the aesthetics of the pro-democracy movements in the 1970s and 1980s in South Korea. Tracing minjung art’s history and legacy, Sohl Lee explores how artists associated with the movement mobilized images, print, and performance to build movement publics and reimagine sovereignty. Hundreds of artists questioned the ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
North Korea and South Korea: Monopolizing Nationalism in a Divided Peninsula
The autocratic regimes in both North Korea and South Korea attempted to legitimize their rule through efforts in nation-building but achieved different results. North Korea and South Korea: Monopolizing Nationalism in a Divided Peninsula seeks to answer: How did these regimes’ nation-building strategies through a variety of tools and venues differ in the process of regime development? ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Mrs Shim Is a Killer
A gripping tale of love, food and one woman’s unconventional quest to support her family. I am no ordinary ajumma. I am a killer When Mrs Shim – widowed, unemployed, with two children at home and a fridge to fill – answers a job ad at the Smile Detective Agency, she boosts its fortunes forever. ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
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)
Korean Buddhism: Selected Readings from Primary Texts
This book presents the first comprehensive introduction to Korean Buddhism through twenty-five key primary texts spanning the seventh to twenty-first centuries. All have been expertly translated by leading scholars in the field. The volume introduction provides an overview of major themes that illuminates the diverse sources that follow. The texts, each prefaced by a brief ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Not Everything Unfolds as Anticipated: Selections from Yi Kyubo’s Tongguk Yi Sangguk chip
Yi Kyubo (1168–1241) was the foremost writer and poet of the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392). Not Everything Unfolds as Anticipated is a miscellany of work from his Tongguk Yi Sangguk chip, a collection containing more than two thousand texts and considered the earliest substantial oeuvre of a Koryŏ writer to date. The present work comprises translations ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Emotions, Affects, and Narrative in Korean History and Culture
This collection of eleven essays explores emotions and affect in Korean culture across a broad temporal span, from the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392) to the present. Drawing on a diverse array of sources — including memoirs, diplomatic letters, newspapers, films, video diaries, photographs, and ethnographic interviews — the volume examines how emotions intervene in public discourse ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light
From Korean science fiction author Kim Cho-yeop, a stunning and poignant collection of literary speculative fiction stories that explore the complexities of identity, love, death, and the search for life’s meaning, perfect for fans of Exhalation and The Paper Menagerie. In If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light, Korean science fiction superstar Kim ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
The Promised Republic: Developmental Society and the Making of Modern Seoul, 1961-1979
Synopsis not yet available. The title is based on the author’s PhD dissertation, “The Promised Republic: Developmental Society and the Making of Modern Seoul,” which examines urbanization and social change in 1960s and 1970s South Korea. Russell Burge is Korea Foundation Assistant Professor of modern Korean history in the department of East Asian Languages and ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
The Forest Called You
In a future Korea, the world has been ravaged by dust clouds and the deadly Akanta virus. Rather than live in their nightmarish present, people slip on virtual reality headsets to indulge in nostalgic simulations of the past. 18-year-old Soop – stigmatised due to her brush with Akanta, which causes VR-rejection – is bullied at ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Swell
Each story in Swell launches from the common but pivotal moments that determine the course of everyday life, but they’re often filtered through the perspective of someone else: documentarians, novelists, storytellers, gossips. Then, as the stories build atop one another and intertwine, they begin to shift and destabilize. Characters return but their histories are changed, alternate timelines ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Orange and the Bread Knife
The thrilling high-concept Korean bestseller about conforming to society’s standards, where one woman decides she has HAD ENOUGH Oh Young-a, a warm-hearted schoolteacher, lives to please – smiling through people’s demands, moulding her hobbies and even her heart to match what others deem to be “right”. But beneath her cheerful facade, the weight of constant ... [Read More] (Link to online store)
Hello Baby
Kim Eui-kyung’s new work “Hello Baby”, which won the 6th Surim Literature Award for his novel “Call Center”, has been published by Ginkgo Publishing House. The change in the average age of marriage, the reality that it is not until the mid-to-late thirties that pregnancy and childbirth can be planned. The psychological pressure that you ... [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]
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)
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]
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]
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.