Peter Corbishley offers his entry into the “There a Petal Silently Falls” essay competition. A Korean novella – a human tragedy It is unnerving to have images from a half-recollected film1 play through a reading of There a Petal Silently Falls.2 Yet that sense of disorientation evocatively models how the girl’s bewildered spirit-awareness3 interweaves, recalls … [Read More]
Category: Translated Korean literature (page 21)
Petal essay contest Salon des Refusés 2
The LKL Editor contributes his own unsuccessful entry into the “There a Petal Silently Falls” essay contest. Ghosts of Kwangju Ch’oe Yun’s There a petal silently falls is an interesting choice for a first Korean literature essay contest. Elusive in content, obscure in characterisation and insubstantial in length, it encourages a discussion not about the … [Read More]
Petal essay contest Salon des Refusés 1
Earlier this year the Korean Literature Translation Institute sponsored an essay competition based on Ch’oe Yun’s There a Petal Silently Falls. Now that the finalists have been announced, Michael Rank is the first to offer his submission for publication on the pages of LKL. The Kwangju (Gwangju) massacre of 1980 has been called the most … [Read More]
Brief review: Kyung Ran Jo: Tongue
Kyung Ran Jo: Tongue Tr Chi-young Kim Korean version 2007 English version Bloomsbury 2009 A lightweight and enjoyable book set among the foodies and fashionistas of Kangnam. A talented young cook is ditched by her trendy architect boyfriend, and spends much of the book getting over it, in a way that is a pleasure to … [Read More]
Troubles with the Petal
12 Sep: The only way I’m going to be able write anything on There a Petal is to leave it to the last minute and rely on the deadline pressure for inspiration. Having now read it three times I have no angle on it at all. 10 Oct: Really struggling to write 2,000 words on … [Read More]
Park Wan-suh’s Shinga reviewed in FT
The Weekend FT reviews Park Wan-suh's book "Who Ate Up All the Shinga?" "Lyrical … Gripping". The full review can be found here. # [Read More]
Yi T’ae-jun’s Eastern Sentiments published
A new translation of essays by colonial-period writer Yi T’ae-jun: “Eastern Sentiments”, translated by Janet Poole, Columbia UP: http://bit.ly/akMvg #; available at Amazon.co.uk. “Yi laments the passing of tradition with keen sensibility yet, at the same time, celebrates human perseverance in the face of loss and change.” [Read More]
Korean Literature essay contest
Now here’s the kind of initiative I like. The Korean Cultural Centre has teamed up with the Korean Literature Translation Institute to bring you the inaugural Korean Literature Essay Contest. In what I hope will be the first of many contests of this nature, the subject text is the novel on which Jang Sung-woo based … [Read More]
Ragnarok – one of Korea’s top manhwa
Manhwa in Korea was born 100 years ago. From their beginnings as cartoons in the newspapers, they have grown into long-running graphic novel serials with spin-offs in online games and big screen adaptations. Among the most celebrated of modern Manhwa series are Priest (Hyung Min-woo) and Ragnarok (Lee Myung-jin). Both of these have been translated … [Read More]
Hwang Sun-won: Trees on a Slope
Hwang Sun-won: Trees on a Slope Originally published 1960. Translation by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton, University of Hawaii Press, 2005 Hwang Sun-won’s Trees on a Slope is one of the few Korean novels directly dealing with the Korean War to be available in English. That’s not to say it’s anything like the bludgeoning experience of … [Read More]
Sex, modernity and the Korean war: a review of Ahn Junghyo’s Silver Stallion
Ahn Junghyo: Silver Stallion – a novel of Korea Soho Press, 1990 First published in Seoul in 1986 Translated from the Korean by the author As the book opens, we encounter a small village which is somehow untouched by the Korean war which seems to have passed them by. The old order, personified by Old … [Read More]
Book review: Kim Seong-dong — Mandala
Kim Sung-dong: Mandala Translated by Ahn Jung-hyo Dongsu Munhaksa, 1990 A novel about the search for truth, and about the nature of corruption in religion. When Pobun takes his priestly vows, he undertakes not to kill, steal, have sex, lie, drink, wear ornaments, sing or dance, sleep in a comfortable bed, possess gold, or eat … [Read More]
Suicide Notes – a brief review of Kim Young-ha’s I Have the Right to Destroy Myself
Kim Young-ha: I have the right to destroy myself Originally published 1996 Translation by Kim Chi-young, Harcourt, 2007 An entertaining book to read, but somehow difficult to distill and digest. The narrator, who makes a macabre living as a self-employed suicide counselor, bizarrely seeks out clients whose exits he facilitates. A small and eccentric cast … [Read More]
Che in Verse launched
Loyal readers who have followed this site from its early months may recall a question posed by a visitor about a year ago. Gavin O’Toole was working on assembling a compilation of poems from around the world about the great revolutionary Che Guevara. He’d heard that there was a couple of poems about him by … [Read More]
Kim Hunggyu: Understanding Korean Literature
ME Sharpe, 1997 Written in 1986 and expertly translated by Robert Fouser ten years later, this is a highly readable basic introduction to the wide variety of Korean literary forms. The scope of the work includes oral literature, literature written in Korean but using Chinese characters, and, perhaps controversially, literature written in classical Chinese, as … [Read More]
Oh Jung-hee: The Bird
Telegram Books, 2007 Originally published as 새, 2003 Translated by Jenny Wang Medina Another of those enigmatic, slightly depressing modern Korean novels which causes you to have sympathy with the large number of Koreans who are turning to Japanese novels for their entertainment. Set during the mid 90s economic slump, the story chronicles the lives … [Read More]