Here is what we believe is a pretty comprehensive list of multi-author anthologies of Korean fiction and poetry translated into English, including pre-modern texts. Click on the titles or book cover to go to a list of short stories included in the anthology. The titles are sorted in date of publication, most recent first.
| Book | Cover image |
Poems from Korea: From the Earliest Era to the Present From the publisher’s website: The Koreans, according to the Chinese chronicles, are ‘the people who enjoy singing and dancing’ and who regaled their gods with dance and song. Since then poetry has been an essential part of Korean life and has been regarded as the highest of the arts. In this first comprehensive anthology of […] (Link to online store) | |
Readymade Bodhisattva Readymade Bodhisattva: The Kaya Anthology of South Korean Science Fiction presents the first book-length English-language translation of science and speculative fiction from South Korea, bringing together 13 classic and contemporary stories from the 1960s through the 2010s. From the reimagining of an Asimovian robot inside the walls of a Buddhist temple and a postapocalyptic showdown […] (Link to online store) | |
Korea’s Premier Collection of Classical Literature: Selections from Sŏ Kŏjŏng’s Tongmunsŏn From the publisher’s website: This is the first book in English to offer an extensive introduction to the Tongmunsŏn (Selections of Refined Literature of Korea)—the largest and most important Korean literary collection created prior to the twentieth century—as well as translations of essays from key chapters. The Tongmunsŏn was compiled in 1478 by Sŏ Kŏjŏng […] (Link to online store) | |
Against Healing: Nine Korean Poets From the publisher’s website: Translating Feminisms showcases intimate collaborations and conversations between some of Asia’s most exciting women writers and emerging-star translators: contemporary poetry of labour and language, alongside essays exploring how, where and by whom feminist writing and women’s bodies are translated. Against Healing showcases poems by Kim Hyesoon, Choi Young-Mi, Kim Seon-U, Kim […] (Link to online store) | |
Silvery World and Other Stories This anthology is an exciting new collection of Korean fiction in translation from the early years of the twentieth century that demonstrate the political and ideological divides that Koreans experienced during this time. Contains the following stories: Cho Myŏng-hŭi : Naktong River tr Bro. Anthony of Taize Ch’oe Chansik: The Shore tr Eugene Larsen-Hallock Hong […] (Link to online store) | |
On an Autumn Night: Classical Korean Poetry From the back cover: The poems collected here are in classical Chinese, the language of learning in Korea before the turn of the twentieth century. Though they range from the seventh to the nineteenth century, most were written during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910). They are five-character line quatrain poems written in the New Style, the […] (Link to online store) | |
Gendered Landscapes: Short Fiction by Modern and Contemporary Korean Women Novelists Gendered Landscapes presents ten short stories and novellas by representative modern Korean women writers dating from the 1930s to the end of the 1990s. Signature pieces selected from the acclaimed novelists’ repertoire, these narratives address issues related to Korean women as gendered beings in a Confucian-governed patriarchal society. Thematically interlinked and compellingly articulated, they bring […] (Link to online store) | |
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 […] (Link to online store) | |
An Anthology of Traditional Korean Literature This revised, expanded anthology, compiled and edited by pioneering scholar and translator Peter H. Lee, offers a representative selection of traditional Korean literature. Its rich and diverse selections, covering all genres and forms written in classical (literary) Chinese and the vernacular Korean language, were chosen for both their literary merit and socio-historical engagement with their […] (Link to online store) | |
North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Literature (VOLUME Book 4) North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center is the 144th member of PEN International. Since defecting from North Korea because of their opposition to the dynastic dictatorship, the members of the center have been creating literature that depicts the harsh reality of North Korea and engaging in various activities to improve conditions there. The single […] (Link to online store) | |
Poems of Kim Yideum, Kim Haengsook + Kim Min Jeong From the publisher’s website: This collection brings together three of the most exciting voices in contemporary Korean poetry to the English language in translation. These three women poets shock and delight, entertain and de-familiarize, corrupt and contaminate traditional readings and stereotypical definitions of Asian women, Asian poetry, Asian-ness. While K-pop girl groups sell cuteness, marketing […] (Link to online store) | |
Classical Writings of Korean Women This work is a collection of essays travelogues written by women during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910). The work ranges from a eulogy for a broken needle to a travelogue describing various trips to scenic spots on the Korean peninsula, including to the Keum-Gang Mountains. Now available in English, this collection gives us a sampler of […] (Link to eBook / PDF / online text) | |
Score One for the Dancing Girl Full title: Score One for the Dancing Girl, and Other Selections from the ‘Kimun Ch’onghwa’: A Story Collection from Nineteenth-Century Korea From the publisher’s website: Score One for the Dancing Girl presents more than a hundred stories from an early-nineteenth-century collection of yadam stories, the Kimun ch’onghwa (“Compendium of Records of Hearsay”). Prose tales that […] (Link to online store) | |
The Future of Silence – Fiction by Korean Women These nine stories span half a century of contemporary writing in Korea (1970s–2010s), bringing together some of the most famous twentieth-century women writers with a new generation of young, bold voices. Their work explores a world not often seen in the West, taking us into the homes, families, lives and psyches of Korean women, men, […] (Link to online store) LKL Review | |
The Colors of Dawn: Twentieth-Century Korean Poetry From the publisher’s website: Throughout the twentieth century, few countries in Asia suffered more from foreign occupation, civil war, and international military conflict than Korea. The Colors of Dawn brings together the moving and powerful voices of over forty Korean poets from these turbulent years. From 1903 to 1945, the Japanese Empire occupied the Korean […] (Link to online store) | |
Eerie Tales from Old Korea The tales in this book were originally translated by Homer B. Hulbert and James Scarth Gale, both of whom were missionary/scholars who arrived in Korea in the late 1880s. Hulbert published his tales in the magazine, “Korea Review” between 1902 and 1905 and Gale in the book “Korean Folk Tales: Imps, Ghosts and Fairies” (1913). […] (Link to online store) | |
The Book Of Korean Poetry: Choson Dynasty The Korean Book of Poetry: Choson Dynasty is a comprehensive anthology of Choson Dynasty (13921910) poetry, with translations of 600 plus poems, an introduction to the dynasty, essays on the various genres, notes on poems and poets, guides to original texts, bibliography and so on. An ideal textbook for students of premodern Korean literature, it […] (Link to online store) | |
Rat Fire: Korean Stories from the Japanese Empire This volume brings together twelve short stories by colonial Korean proletarian writers, as well as two works written in 1946 under U.S. military occupation. The volume provides a diverse, ever-changing portrait of the complex movements of people and ideas that constituted both colonial Korea and the Japanese empire, adding the tumultuous experiences of those from […] (Link to online store) | |
The Crane in the Clouds: Shijo: Korean Classical Poems in the Vernacular From the publisher’s website: This anthology presents well over a hundred Korean classical poems known as shijo, in English translation. Shijo, a form of poetic composition still very much alive, has a tradition spanning a thousand years. One of the first historical anthologies of shijo in English, this book offers an overview of that uniquely […] (Link to online store) | |
Modern Korean Literature — An Anthology 1908-65 The sixth book in Kegan Paul International’s “Korean Culture Series”, this volume contains thirty stories that have been selected on the basis of historical interest and literary worth, each representing a monumental moment in the history of Korean Literature. The ten stories in the first part share the common theme of the Korean experience of […] (Link to online store) LKL Review | |
Korean Tea Classics by Hanjae Yi Mok and the Venerable Cho-ui Publisher description: Three ancient texts expressing the essence of the Korean Way of Tea are here translated into English for the first time. The oldest, ChaBu (Rhapsody to Tea), by Hanjae Yi Mok (1471-1498), is a sophisticated and delicate celebration of tea. The author was a scholar of considerable attainments who died far too early. […] (Link to online store) | |
Waxen Wings: The ACTA Koreana Anthology of Short Fiction from Korea The short story has been the genre of choice for writers of literary fiction in modern Korea and it continues to thrive in the new millennium. Waxen Wings: The Acta Koreana Anthology of Short Fiction from Korea offers a diverse sampling from a century of modern Korean short fiction, beginning with stories from two early […] (Link to online store) LKL Review | |
On the Eve of the Uprising and Other Stories from Colonial Korea Collected here are translations into English of six classic stories from colonial Korea (1910-1945) as well as the time of liberation (1945-1948). Each piece takes a different perspective on a defining process in Korean history—the colonization and modernization under Japanese rule. The volume demonstrates the rich variety of registers, settings, styles, and thematic concerns that […] (Link to online store) | |
A Moment’s Grace: Stories from Korea in Transition A Moment’s Grace presents short stories that depict the core of Korea’s modernization, from Liberation in 1945 to the Seoul Olympics in 1988. The stories here provide a view of the process through the eyes of ordinary people as they were affected by the historical and social forces that formed modern Korea. A separate background […] (Link to online store) | |
Questioning Minds Available for the first time in English, the ten short stories by modern Korean women collected here touch in one way or another on issues related to gender and kinship politics. All of the protagonists are women who face personal crises or defining moments in their lives as gender-marked beings in a Confucian, patriarchal Korean […] (Link to online store) | |
The Red Room Publisher description: Modern Korean fiction is to a large extent a literature of witness to the historic upheavals of twentieth-century Korea. Often inspired by their own experiences, contemporary writers continue to show us how individual Koreans have been traumatized by wartime violence—whether the uprooting of whole families from the ancestral home, life on the road […] (Link to online store) | |
Modern Korean Drama: An Anthology From the publisher’s website: Carefully selected and represented, the plays in this collection showcase both the fantastic and the realistic innovations of Korean dramatists during a time of rapid social and historical change. Stretching from 1962 to 2004, these seven works tackle major subjects, such as the close of the Choson dynasty and the aftermath […] (Link to online store) | |
The Brush and the Sword: Kasa, Korean Classical Poems in Prose Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Korean & Introduced with Commentaries & Notes by Sung-Il Lee. Sung-Il Lee lays before us samples of the great classical form of Korean poetry called Kasa, so sadly unknown to western readers along with any coherent knowledge of the country’s past and its culture. One will be so much better […] (Link to online store) | |
Land of Exile: Contemporary Korean Fiction (expanded edition) An English language anthology of post-1945 Korean short fiction, this work looks at the history, society, and culture of contemporary South Korea, reflecting the poignant motif of exile in Korea’s experience of modernity. LKL adds: the collection contains the following stories: Ch’ae Man-Sik: The Wife and Children (1948) Kim Dong-ni: The Post Horse Curse (1948) […] (Link to online store) | |
Anxiety of Words: Contemporary Poetry by Korean Women From the publisher’s website: Anxiety of Words is the first anthology of Korean women’s poetry that challenges one of Korea’s most enduring literary traditions: that “yoryu” (female) poetry must be gentle and subservient. By using innovative language, and vividly depicting women’s lives and struggles within an often repressive society, these three contemporary poets defiantly insist that […] (Link to online store) | |
The Book of Korean Poetry: Songs of Shilla and Koryo From the publisher’s website: “Here at last in one English-language volume is the heart and soul of the Korean lyric tradition, brought to sensuous life by a poet who is our finest all-around translator of Korean literature.”—Bruce Fulton, Young-Bin Min Chair in Korean Literature and Literary Translation, University of British Columbia Korea’s history is divided […] (Link to online store) | |
Because of the Rain: A Selection of Korean Zen Poems From the publisher’s website: Buddhism was introduced to Korea via China in the fifth century and similar to China and Japan a long tradition of Zen poetry developed. This collection spans 1,500 years of this tradition with a selection of the key poets and teachers starting with Great Master Wonhyo the founder of Korean Zen […] (Link to online store) | |
Echoing Song: Contemporary Korean Women Poets From the publisher’s website: Echoing Song presents the work of 20 contemporary Korean women poets active from the 1970s to the present. Each poet is represented with 10 to 15 poems reflecting the range of their poetic development. This anthology demonstrates the originality and variety of modern Korean women’s poetry. The poets include Yi Hyangji, No […] (Link to online store) | |
Cracking the Shell: Three Korean Ecopoets From the publisher’s website: This poetry anthology contains ninety poems by three prominent Korean ecopoets who write about the endangered environment and deplore its impact on nature and mankind. Seungho Choi’s poetry is filled with explicit descriptions and pessimism that condemn the capitalist society and man’s selfish desires, which, he believes, can ultimately ruin the […] (Link to online store) | |
Modern Korean Fiction: An Anthology To represent the past century of Korean fiction, this definitive collection extends beyond familiar writers, challenges cultural norms, and crosses political borders. By including stories from neglected female, North Korean, and wolbuk writers (those who migrated to the North after 1945 and whose works were widely banned in South Korea) and by bringing politically engaged […] (Link to online store) | |
The Columbia Anthology of Modern Korean Poetry From the publisher’s website: Korea’s modern poetry is filled with many different voices and styles, subjects and views, moves and countermoves, yet it still remains relatively unknown outside of Korea itself. This is in part because the Korean language, a rich medium for poetry, has been ranked among the most difficult for English speakers to […] (Link to online store) | |
A Hundred Love Poems from Old Korea From the publisher’s website: Korea’s traditional love poetry is little known in the West. This anthology contains examples of all genres: vernacular to long lyrical poems. A witty informative commentary links the poems and sets them in context. (Link to online store) | |
Korean Short Stories: A Collection from North Korea A collection of short stories from North Korea, originally published in Pyongyang in 1986: History of Iron (1967) – Pyon Hui Gun Happiness (1963) – Sok Yun Gi Ogi (1961) – Chon Se Bong Fellow Travellers (1960) – Kim Byong Hun Everyone in Position! (1974) – Om Dan Ung Unfinished Sculpture (post 1980) – Ko […] (Link to online store) | |
The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Korean Poetry From the publisher’s website: This groundbreaking anthology, edited by the veteran scholar who founded the field of Korean literature in the West, offers a representative selection from the four major genres of native Korean poetry: the Silla songs known as hyangga, Koryo songs, sijo, and kasa. The performance of oral songs was central to the […] (Link to online store) | |
Among the Flowering Reeds: An Anthology of Classic Korean Poetry Written in Chinese From the publisher’s website: Up until the 17th century, the bulk of Korean poetry was written in Chinese, the language of poets, scholars, and monks. This work became an integral part of Korean literary tradition. Among the Flowering Reeds, which introduces this important poetic tradition to the English-speaking audience, includes 100 poems spanning more than 1,000 […] (Link to online store) | |
Meditative Poems by Korean Monks From the publisher’s website: Introduced and Translated by Jaihiun Kim This work is a chronological anthology of Zen poetry spanning the 6th through the 20th centuries. In his introduction the translator distinguishes Zen from other forms of Buddhism, and places it in its historical context. These intuitive poems chronicle the spiritual search as well as […] (Link to online store) | |
Brother Enemy: Poems of the Korean War From the publisher’s website: Twenty-one poets, male and female, North Korean and South Korean, well-known and long forgotten, appear in this collection, the first of its kind in English. The poems reflect the reality of living in a country torn in half by political ideologies. An introduction by translator Ji-moon Suh places the poems and […] (Link to online store) | |
Three Poets of Modern Korea: Yi Sang, Hahm Dong-seon, and Choi Young-mi From the publisher’s website: A superb introduction to the undiscovered treasures of contemporary Korean poetry. American poet James Kimbrell and translator/native speaker Yu Jung-yul have gathered leading representatives of three generations of Korean poets, from the Dada and surrealist influenced work of Yi Sang, to the colloquial, affirming poems of Hahm Dong-seon, and the brilliant […] (Link to online store) | |
The Book of Korean Shijo From the publisher’s website: The Korean genre known as shijo is short song lyrics. Originally meant to be sung rather than recited, these short poems are light, personal, and very often conversational. The language is simple, direct, and devoid of elaboration or ornamentation. The shijo poet gives a firsthand account of his personal experience of […] (Link to online store) | |
The Voice of the Governor General and Other Stories of Modern Korea From the publisher’s website: From the children of a dwarf whose house is torn down by the government to a young man selling his blood for money, the first-person narrators of the stories collected in The Voice of the Governor-General and Other Stories of Modern Korea take us into the heart of turbulent twentieth-century Korean […] (Link to online store) | |
Voices in Diversity: Poets from Postwar Korea Voices in Diversity: Poets from Postwar Korea offers a selection of poems from 37 South Korean poets born in or after 1945, edited and translated by poet Ko Won. The selected poets represent the voice of a nation emerging from Japanese rule; they are witnesses to sweeping political, social and cultural developments who have distilled […] (Link to online store) | |
Variations: Three Korean Poets From the publisher’s website: This book showcases the work of three major Korean poets born at fourteen-year intervals, in 1921, 1935, and 1949. Each has tried to renew Korean poetry by bringing it into closer contact with everyday speech, social issues, and ordinary people’s lives. Kim Su-Young was a major pioneer, first developing as a […] (Link to online store) | |
Unspoken Voices: Selected Short Stories by Korean Women Writers The stories in this collection are written by twelve Korean women writers whose experience, insight, and writing skill make them truly representative of Korean fiction at its best. “The Rooster” is a comical revelation of an old man who accepts the truth that Man and Nature revolve around the same immutable natural law. In “The […] (Link to online store) | |
Looking for the Cow: Modern Korean Poetry This anthology of seventy-two poets covers the whole spectrum of Korean poetry in this century, with larger selections from the best-known poets, including Midang So Chung-Ju, Kim Sowol, and Kim Suyong. Many types of poetry, from the classical shijo to free-verse forms are represented. Many subjects are covered, from love and the love of nature, […] (Link to online store) | |
A Ready-Made Life: Early Masters of Modern Korean Fiction A Ready Made Life is the first volume of early modern Korean fiction to appear in English in the U.S. Written between 1921 and 1943, the sixteen stories are an excellent introduction to the riches of modern Korean fiction. They reveal a variety of settings, voices, styles, and thematic concerns, and the best of them, […] (Link to online store) | |
The Golden Phoenix A collection of seven short stories providing a picture of Korean family life in the 1940s to the 1990s. Their themes include family and community ties, respect for tradition, survival in the face of repeated national disasters, and wrenching social upheaval. The collection contains the following stories: Ch’oe Yun: The Flower with Thirteen Fragrances Kim […] (Link to online store) | |
The Bamboo Grove: An Introduction to Sijo From the publisher’s website: Series: Ann Arbor Paperbacks The sijo is the most popular and most Korean of all traditional Korean poetic forms, originating with the old songs of the Hyangka of the Sylla Empire (668-936) and the prose songs of the Koryo Dynasty (918-1392). Sometimes likened to haiku for its brevity, a typical sijo poem follows […] (Link to online store) | |
The Moonlit Pond: Korean Classical Poems in Chinese From the publisher’s website: Unlike poetry written in the vernacular, classical Korean poetry was heavily influenced by the great poets of the Tang and Sung dynasties and was written in Chinese, while reflecting a perspective which was uniquely Korean. This is the first and only comprehensive anthology of classical Korean poetry to appear in English. […] (Link to online store) | |
Modern Korean Verse in Sijo Form From the publisher’s website: A decade in the making, Jaihiun Kim’s ‘Modern Korean Verse in Sijo Form’ offers what will be the twentieth century’s definitive collection of sijo. Kim begins with the work of Nam-son Ch’oe in the early 20th century and brings the collection up to date with recent poems from Chi-yob Yi and […] (Link to online store) | |
The Rainy Spell and Other Korean Stories This anthology of short stories reflects the writers’ shared core experience of Korea’s trajectory from an inward-looking feudal state, through Japanese colony and battle-ground for the Korean War, to a modernizing society. Three stories have been added to the original edition. Ch’ae Man-Sik: My Idiot Uncle Ch’oe In-hun: My Idol’s Abode Ch’oe Yun: His Father’s […] (Link to online store) | |
Wayfarer: New Fiction by Korean Women The eight writers in Wayfarer are among Korea’s best known authors and bring an astonishing breadth of experience and style to the fiction collected here. They explore love and independence, break the bounds of family, are punished and resurgent. A powerful collection that strikes at the heart of what it means to be modern, to […] (Link to online store) | |
Songs of the Kisaeng Original Korean poems, written during the 16th and 17th centuries, and contemporary English translations. The original BOA Editions publication is now hard to find. Apparently however it is available as an eBook from LTI Korea. According to their website: This e-book was made by scanning and converting the original book using OCR software. We have […] (Link to online store) | |
The Star and Other Korean Short Stories Eight stories by leading contemporary writers of Korea providing deeply moving insights into the human condition. They reflect a common concern with the social realities of the 1980s, with sadness and triumph emerging as unifying themes. The source of this humanity, as these stories strongly reveal, lies in powerful family bonds and a deep nostalgia […] (Link to online store) | |
The Snowy Road and Other Stories The Korean War and its aftermath serve as the backdrop for the six selections showcased in this collection offering the reader a rarely-glimpsed view of Korean life. Each of the authors represented here has been the recipient of the prestigious Korean People’s Literary Award . Their work focuses on ordinary Korean people and the impact […] (Link to online store) | |
Classical Korean Poetry From the publisher’s website: Introduced and Translated by Jaihiun Kim The 600 verses presented in this anthology will provide the reader with comprehensive and varied aspects of the sijo, the traditional Korean lyric, since its emergence as a fixed literary form as early as the late 12th century down to the 19th century. (Link to online store) | |
Modern Korean Poetry From the publisher’s website: Introduced and Translated by Jaihiun Kim A companion volume to the Classical Korean Poetry, this anthology provides the reader a bird’s eye view of modern, 20th century Korean poetry, thus completing the sampling of the Korean poetry beginning with the 12th century through the present. (Link to online store) | |
Contemporary Korean Poetry I have prepared this anthology with the aim of providing the reader with a bird’s-eye view of modern Korean poetry, with its best sampling, from the 1920s to the 1980s, best in the sense that it represents the varied aspects of Korean poetry (Link to online store) | |
Pine River and Lone Peak: An Anthology of Three Choson Dynasty Poets From the publisher’s website: Taken from the pen names Chong Ch’ol and Yun Sondo, respectively, Pine River and Lone Peak represents the works of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Korean masters of the short lyric poetry (sijo) and narrative verse (kasa) forms. This new translation also includes the works of Pak Illo, as well as a […] (Link to online store) | |
The Wind and the Waves: Four Modern Korean Poets No information available (Link to online store) | |
Words of Farewell: Stories by Three Korean Women Writers The universal topics of life, death, love, hate, sex, loss of innocence, and other themes, are explored in fiction by 3 Korean writers. LKL adds: the collection contains the following stories: Kang Sŏk-gyŏng: A Room in the Woods (1985) Kang Sŏk-gyŏng: Days and Dreams (1983) Kim Chi-wŏn: A Certain Beginning Kim Chi-wŏn: Lullaby Oh Jung-Hee: […] (Link to online store) | |
Korean Classical Literature: An Anthology LKL says: It looks like this title has now been digitised. According to the LTI Korea website, where you can probably acquire an eBook, the volume includes works by Pak Chiwon and Yi Injik. This is confirmed by a quick scan of the contents page which you can see on the Kindle version. Hard copies […] (Link to online store) | |
The Green Prodigals: Contemporary Stories and Poems from Korea No contents list available, though according to the LTI Korea database the volume contains at least one story by Kim Dong-ni. Google suggests that the Kim Dong-ni story is The Marsh (in a translation by Chung Chong-hwa also available in Modern Korean Literature: An Anthology 1908-1965); and that the collection also includes Na To-hyang’s The Watermill […] (Link to online store) | |
Slow Chrysanthemums: Classical Korean Poems in Chinese Kim Jong-gil’s personal anthology of one hundred Korean poems written in Chinese covers a period of over a thousand years, from the late ninth century to the beginning of the twentieth. In his introduction to this fascinating poetry, Kim Jong-gil traces the background to the literary use of Chinese in Korea, and discusses the features […] (Link to online store) | |
The Anthology of modern Korean poetry No information available (Link to online store) | |
Love in mid-winter night: Korean sijo poetry No information available (Link to online store) | |
Postwar Korean Short Stories: An Anthology Originally published by Seoul National University Press in 1974 Includes the following stories Kim Dong-ni: Father and son Oh Sang-won: A respite Chang Yong-hak: Poems of John the Baptist Son Chang-sop: Walking in the snow Sŏnu Hŭi: One way Sŏ Ki-wŏn: The uncharted map Pak Yong-jun: The last parting Hwang Sun-won: Time for You and […] (Link to online store) | |
Home-Coming and Other Korean Short Stories Contains the following stories: Hong Song-won: A boy in search of rest tr Sol Sun-bong Kim Seung-ok: Good bargain tr Yi Yong-gol, Sister Janice Hilburn Kim Seung-ok: Operation tr Yi Yong-gol, Sister Janice Hilburn Kim Seung-ok: Record of a journey to Mujin tr Kevin O’Rourke Kim Seung-ok: Seoul, 1964, Winter tr Marshall R. Pihl Seo […] (Link to online store) | |
A Respite and other Korean short stories Contains the following stories: Chang Yong-hak: Poems of John the Baptist Chŏn Kwang-yong : Driver’s assistant Chŏn Kwang-yong : Kapitan Ri Kim Song-han: Badby Nam Jung-hyun: Chaos Oh Sang-won: A respite Son Chang-sop: Walking in the snow Yi Ho-ch’ŏl: The sultriness of a cold evening Yi Ho-ch’ŏl: Torn flesh (Link to online store) | |
Early spring, mid-summer and other Korean short stories Contains the following stories Han Sung-won: Cave Jeon Sang-guk: Wings that will carry us both Kim Won-il: Spirit of the darkness / Soul of Darkness Mun Sun-tae: Sound of the gong Pak Si-jong: Ten minutes to seven Yi Mun-yol: Early spring, mid-summer Yu Chae-yong: Relationship Yu Hyon-jong: D.M.Z. (Link to online store) | |
One Way and Other Korean Short Stories Contains the stories: Ch’oe In-hun: Christmas Carol Ch’oe In-hun: The end of the highway / End of the Road Sŏnu Hŭi: One way Sŏnu Hŭi: Spark of life Sŏnu Hŭi: The colonel and his friends Sŏnu Hŭi: The mirror Sŏnu Hŭi: The story of a peculiar pain Sŏnu Hŭi: The terrorist Sŏnu Hŭi: Thoughts of […] (Link to online store) | |
The unenlightened and other Korean short stories Contains the following short stories An Su-gil: The green chrysanthemum tr Chong In-sop Ch’ae Man-Sik: My Innocent Uncle / My Idiot Uncle tr Yi Kyong-sik Hyeon Jin-geon: The death of my grandmother tr Adrian Buzo Kim Yi-sok: Tombstone without an inscription tr Mun Sang-duk Kim Yu-jeong: The Visitor tr Suh Ji-moon Kye Yong-muk: Adada the […] (Link to online store) | |
Hospital Room 205 and Other Korean Short Stories Contains the following stories: Choe Cheong-hui: Hospital room 205 tr Edward D Rockstein Choe Cheong-hui: When the cricket chirrs tr Kim Chong-un Hahn Moo-Sook: Shadow tr Richard Rutt Hahn Moo-Sook: The Rock tr Chung Chong-hwa Han Malsook: Mr. Kim, the bohemian minstrel tr Richard Rutt Im Og-in: The new life tr Sol Sun-bong Kang Kyŏng-ae: […] (Link to online store) | |
The Road to Sampo and Other Korean Short Stories Contains the following stories: Hwang Sok-yong: The Road to Sampo Lee Byeng-ju: The wind and landscape of Yenang Ch’oe In-ho: Another Man’s Room Cho Se-hui: The Spiny Fish entering my net Cho Se-hui: On the footbridge Cho Hae-il: Iron masks Shin Sang-ung: Pyeon’s Death Yun Hŭng-gil: Group beating Kim Joo-young: The moon-welcoming flower (Link to online store) | |
Two travelers and other Korean short stories Contains the following stories: Ch’oe Illam: The color of mugwort Ha Keun-chan: The spring song Ha Keun-chan: The Suffering of Two Generations / Ill-fated father and son Ha Keun-chan: The white paper beard Kwon Tae-ung: The hunchback of Seoul O Yu-gwon: Two travelers Pak Yŏng-suk: Eroica Symphony Sŏ Ki-wŏn: Half-Holiday Song Pyong-su: Debris (Link to online store) | |
The Drizzle and Other Korean Short Stories Hwang Sun-won’s stories depict various emotional experiences of brief moments of human life in an outstandingly elegant style. The elegance, however, is not the characterizing quality of his style alone. We find it in his description of scenes and momentary feelings of characters as well as in his presentation of themes that range from the […] (Link to online store) | |
The Cruel City and Other Korean Short Stories Contains the stories: Choe Cheong-hui: Chomnye tr Genell Y Poitras Choe Cheong-hui: Round and Round the Pagoda tr Genell Y Poitras Choe Cheong-hui: The Ritual at the Well tr Genell Y Poitras Hwang Sun-won: The Moon and the Crab’s Legs tr Edward W Poitras Pak Yong-jun: The Touch of Life tr Choe Yong Yi Ch’ŏng-jun: […] (Link to online store) | |
Loess Valley and Other Korean Short Stories Contains the following stories Kim Dong-ni: Loess Valley Kim Dong-ni: The Shaman Painting / Picture of a Shaman Sorceress Kim Dong-ni: The Rock Kim Dong-ni: Two Reservists Kim Dong-ni: Tŭngsin-bul Kim Dong-ni: Cry of the magpie Oh Young-Soo: Seaside Village Oh Young-Soo: Wild Grapes Oh Young-Soo: Uncle Soldier Oh Young-Soo: Adolescence Oh Young-Soo: Nami and […] (Link to online store) | |
Ten Korean Short Stories Ten Korean Short Stories samples two generations of Korean short stories, bringing to life the first faltering steps of an ancient land entering the modern age, evoking in truly memorable fashion the spirit that stir the hearts of her people. Here is the pain and anguish of people oppressed by the conqueror, the tragedy of […] (Link to online store) | |
The contemporary Korean poets: Korean poetry since 1920 According to Amazon (who do not stock it) the volume “Presents overall view of modern Korean poetry from 1920s to late 1960s by 64 representative poets.” According to Worldcat, a handful of British libraries hold it. | |
A Washed-out Dream Contains exactly the same stories and translations as Ten Korean Short Stories, with the addition of an eleventh, Ha Keun-chan’s The White Paper Beard. However, you may find the other publication easier to track down. The White Paper Beard is available in the collection Two Travellers – though that’s pretty hard to track down too. […] (Link to online store) | |
Meetings and Farewells: Modern Korean Stories Contains the following stories: Cho Sŏn-jak : The Wall Hwang Sun-won: Retreat Kim Dong-in: The Post Horse Kim Dong-ni: The Rock Kim Seung-ok: A Cup of Coffee Kim Seung-ok: Seoul, 1964, Winter Kim Yu-jeong: The Camellias Oh Young-Soo: Echoes Yi Ho-ch’ŏl: Wearing Thin Yi Hyo-seok: When the Buckwheat Blooms Yi Mun-gu: The Tale of Kim […] (Link to online store) | |
Modern Korean Short Stories Contains the following stories Ch’oe In-hun: Laughter (1966) tr Lee Sang-ok Hahn Moo-Sook: The Angel tr Chung Chong-wha Hwang Sok-yong: The Road to Sampo (1973) tr Kim Uchang Hyeon Jin-geon: The Fire tr Kathryn Kisray Kang Shin-jae: The Young Zelkova Tree (1960) tr Shin Hyun-song Kim Dong-in: Red Mountain: A Doctor’s Memoir / The Red […] (Link to online store) | |
Modern Far Eastern Stories Publisher description: This anthology of carefully-selected modern stories offers the reader a glimpse into Far Eastern literature that has hitherto been largely unexplored. These stories by contemporary writers, which have been translated by specialists who mostly are or were faculty members of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, reveal the social […] (Link to online store) | |
Black Crane: An Anthology of Korean Literature Difficult to obtain other than in a couple of libraries in Denmark and Germany. (Link to online store) | |
Korean Short Stories Contains the following stories: Bare Hills (Kim Dong-in) Adada, the Idiot (Kye Yong-Muk) At the Time When the Buckwheat Blooms (Yi Hyo-Seok) The Third Human Type (An Su-gil) The Echo (O Yong-Su) Silent Parallel (Choi Bum-So) Illusion (Park Kyung-ni) Picture of a Sorceress (Kim Dong-ni) (Link to online store) | |
Flowers of Fire: Twentieth-century Korean Stories Contains the following stories: Hyeon Jin-geon: The Fire Kim Dong-in: Potatoes / Sweet Potato Yi Hyo-seok: When the Buckwheat Blooms Yi Sang: Wings Kim Dong-ni: The Shaman Painting Yŏm Sang-sŏp: The last moment. Hwang Sun-won: Cranes Son Chang-sop: Rainy Days An Su-gil: A third kind of man. Ch’oe So-hae: Point. Sŏnu Hŭi: Flowers of fire. […] (Link to online store) | |
Poems from Korea: A historical anthology Compiled and translated by Peter H. Lee. Foreword by Norman Holmes Pearson Billed as the UNESCO collection of representative works, this volume contains works by many authors, from King Mu of Paekche onwards. According to Stanford University’s Searchworks, this collection was first published in 1964 under the title: Anthology of Korean poetry from the earliest […] (Link to online store) | |
Virtuous Women – Three Classic Korean Novels Contains the following classics: A nine cloud dream by Kim Man-jung The true history of Queen Inhyŏn The song of a faithful wife, Ch’un-hyang (Link to online store) | |
Plays from Korea No further information available. WorldCat lists it, but without giving any details of its contents. LTI Korea suggests it might contain one or more plays by Yu Chi-jin. The volume appears to be for sale (presumably as an eBook) from this source. Amazon US is currently listing a second-hand copy. (Link to online store) | |
Anthology of Korean Poetry from the Earliest Era to the Present From the back cover: This is the first comprehensive anthology of Korean poetry ever published in the English language. In it Peter H. Lee, a Korean scholar, has selected and translated the verse of his country, ranging from the beginning of the Silla Dynasty, in 57 B.C., to the middle of the twentieth century. LKL […] (Link to online store) | |
Collected Short Stories from Korea According to Charles Montgomery, this is the second compilation of Korean translated fiction. The collection includes the following stories An Su-gil: Annals of a Ranch Choe Cheong-hui: Chomnye Choi Tae-ung: Blood Phlegm Chu Yo-seop: Mama and the Boarder Chun Young-Taik: The Cow Chun Pi-Sook: Home-coming Hahn Moo-Sook: Halo around the Moon Kim Shung-Han: Coming Home […] (Link to online store) | |
Voices of the Dawn A Selection of Korean Poetry from the Sixth Century to the Present Day Also available from LTI Korea. No further information available (Link to online store) | |
Modern Short Stories from Korea “Ten of its 20 stories focus on “love and marriage,” and the rest are characterized as “social stories.” Most demonstrate a kind of depth and lack of didacticism that would soon almost vanish from translated Korean fiction. For that reason alone, this book is an interesting one for fans of Korean literature, since the truly […] (Link to online store) | |
Folk Tales from Korea From the publisher’s website: Folk Tales from Korea is a fun way to access to the Korean ethos. Enjoy these folk tales handed down through the generations and you will gain a better understanding of the Korean people. You will most certainly recognize the Confucius influence on people’s lives. “These 99 examples are as various as they are enjoyable, some […] (Link to online store) | |
Songs from Korea Like the similar volume, Tales from Korea, this title was originally self-published (in 1936) and then republished on several occasions. For example the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa has in its library a copy of the 1948 International Cultural Association of Korea edition. The Koreana Museum in Seoul has a copy of the 1936 edition […] | |
The Orchid Door “Usually considered to be the first volume of Korean poetry in English translation ever published”: Brother Anthony gives the background to the printing of this set of translations of ancient Korean poems, a volume illustrated by Lilian Miller. As he explains, Grigsby reworked some literal translations by James Scarth Gale and others, “taking them into […] (Link to online store) | |
Tales from Korea According to Worthpoint, “17 editions [were] published between 1934 and 1963 in English”. WorldCat has the 1934 edition being self-published, with subsequent versions being published by a range of houses. Difficult to obtain nowadays, though Amazon US is currently listing a copy of the 1946 edition with a price reflecting its rarity. Copies are kept […] (Link to online store) |
We think the above list is pretty comprehensive as at October 2020. Help keep this resource complete and up-to-date by letting us know of Korean fiction titles in English translation that aren’t listed above.