Following on from the success of their feature-length animation Green Days, Studio MWP worked with Korean TV broadcaster EBS to produce a trio of short films which adapt three familiar short stories which are studied by most Koreans in high school: Yi Hyo-seok’s Buckwheat Season, Kim Yu-jeong’s Spring, Spring, and A Lucky Day by Hyun … [Read More]
Category: Short fiction (page 3)
Bringing Kim Hoon’s Hwajang to the big screen: How to act a swollen prostate?
Im Kwon-taek set himself quite a challenge when he decided to make a movie of Kim Hoon’s Hwajang. It is a dense, concentrated and rich piece of writing – I hesitate to say “short story”, because really there’s not much narrative flow. Instead, there’s well-balanced contrast; there’s inner thoughts and emotions; there are the human … [Read More]
LKL’s latest must-see film of the LKFF 2014: The Road Called Life
It’s taking a while to go through the LKFF 2014 programme to prioritise those films which I simply *have* to go to see. So thanks to Frances Yoo from Studio Meditation with a Pencil for alerting me to the title that instantly has gone from “when I get round to it, I’ll look to see … [Read More]
SOAS Book Launch event: Assorted Chatter about Mr.Y’s Literature
Notice of a book launch event as part of SOAS’s ongoing programme of Friday evening seminars: Assorted Chatter about Mr.Y’s Literature Byoung Yoong KANG (Writer & Assistant Professor, Department of Asian and African Studies, University of Ljubljana) 3 October 2014, 5:15 – 7:00 PM Venue: Brunei Gallery | B102 Type of Event: Book Launch Abstract … [Read More]
Book review: Jung Young-moon — A Chain of Dark Tales
Jung Young-moon: A Chain of Dark Tales Translated by Inrae You & Louis Vinciguerra Stallion Press, 2010, 199pp Originally published in 1998 as 검은 이야기 사슬 Jung Young-moon’s chain of forty-five dark tales are dark indeed. Not in a way that will give you nightmares, but in a way that makes you feel mildly uneasy. They inhabit … [Read More]
Get your translated Korean literature for free on your iPad
Thanks to Charles Montogomery at KTLit.com for spreading the word on this free resource available on iTunes, courtesy of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. Chae Man-sik, Yi Sang, Yi Kwang-su and others are represented in the 19-story collection, with more to come later this year. It’s a nice-looking app, with added SNS capabilities. Here’s … [Read More]
Kim Sung Ok: A Literature of and for the Self – Steve Capener at SOAS
On his way to a conference on Alternative Modernisms in Cardiff, Steve Capener gives a talk on one of my favourite authors. Kim Sung Ok: A Literature of and for the Self Steve Capener (Assistant Professor, Seoul Women’s University) 14 May 2013, 5:15 – 7:00 PM Russell Square Room 4421 Abstract After he took power … [Read More]
Jeonju Film Fest to focus on Kim Young-ha
This is the kind of news I like. This year the program of the Jeonju International Film Festival will include “short films based on Korean writers’ short stories, thereby creating opportunities for good Korean literature to be introduced overseas. The focus this year will be KIM Young-ha. KIM Young-ha’s novel, I have a right to … [Read More]
Book review: Modern Korean Literature — An Anthology 1908-65
Modern Korean Literature: An Anthology 1908-1965 Edited by Chung Chong-wha Routledge / Kegan Paul International, 1995, 467pp If you are looking to sample Korean literature in translation, the chances are that you’ll find more short stories than full length novels. This collection, though not universally enjoyable, is extremely useful in giving an overview of the … [Read More]
Im Kwon-Taek’s Village in the Mist — affairs on an Anonymous Island
Han Su-ok, a young schoolteacher, arrives in an isolated mountain village to take up her first job in an elementary school. As she gets off the bus, the village initially seems deserted, like a ghost town, hemmed in by the high forbidding walls of the surrounding mountains like a prison. You wonder what sort of … [Read More]
Buckwheat Season to get the Green Days treatment at Busan Film Fest
One of Korea’s most famous short stories, Lee Hyo-seok’s Buckwheat Season / When Buckwheat Flowers Bloom (메밀꽃 필 무렵, 1936) is to be brought to the cinema by the creators of Green Days (Korean title 소중한 날의 꿈, 2010). Green Days was LKL’s film of the year 2010 and was the stand-out film at the … [Read More]
FT interviews with author Krys Lee
Small talk: interview with Korean American writer Krys Lee in the FT http://t.co/VN4wRXzT (via @rjkoehler). Her first book, Drifting House, a collection of short stories set in North Korea, South Korea and the US, is now available on Amazon. [Read More]
A Yi Mun-yol short story in the New Yorker
A Yi Mun-yol short story (An Anonymous Island) is published in The New Yorker — a first! wp.me/p1mFzB-cJ. Via @subjobjverb. Translation is by Heinz Insu Fenkl. Update: LKL article on the short story and Im Kwon-taek’s screen adaptation of it (Village in the Mist – 안개 마을, 1983) can be found here. [Read More]
Kajiyama Toshiyuki: The Clan Records – Five Stories of Korea
The Clan Records – Five Stories of Korea: The Clan Records | Seeking Life Amidst Death: The Last Day of the War | When the Hibiscus Blooms | The Remembered Shadow of the Yi Dynasty | A Crane on a Dunghill: Seoul in 1936 Kajiyama Toshiyuki, translated by Yoshiko Dykstra (University of Hawaii Press, 1995) … [Read More]