In my expensive quest for more acquisitions for my collection of Korea-related books I am always on the look-out for stores with decent stock. I have in the past been constantly disappointed by the bookshops in Manhattan. The main Korean bookshop in 32nd Street, Koryo Books, caters to Korean speakers rather than English speakers. The … [Read More]
Books and literature (page 42)
Books to look forward to in 2008
Here’s some of the books I’ll be looking out for in 2008. First, Mark James Russell’s Pop Goes Korea From kim chee to kim chic! South Korea came from nowhere in the 1990s to become one of the biggest producers of pop content (movies, music, comic books, TV dramas, online gaming) in Asia-and the West. … [Read More]
Inheriting the gifts of grief: Brenda Paik Sunoo’s moving memoir
Brenda Paik Sunoo: Seaweed and Shamans – Inheriting the gifts of grief Seoul Selection, April 2006 I remember logging this book in my memory sometime in early 2006, having read some advance notice of in, I think, the Seoul Selection weekly email. I didn’t read the small print too closely, and confess I didn’t read … [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]
Racial tensions in Queens
Leonard Chang: The Fruit ‘n Food Black Heron Press, 1996 Leonard Chang’s first novel is proof that giving away key elements of the plot in advance need not ruin the enjoyment of a work of fiction. The book starts at the end, with the hero in hospital, blinded and incapacitated. You are told how the … [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]
The Korea Yearbook 2007
First, to note the publication of the 2007 Year Book, and to draw your attention to the call for papers for the 2008 Year Book. Articles in the 2007 yearbook deal with online grassroots journalism and participatory democracy, the Lone Star scandal, changing perceptions of inward direct investment, the impact of China’s economic ascendance, modern … [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]
Book review: Brother One Cell
Cullen Thomas: Brother One Cell — Coming of Age in South Korea’s Prisons Pan Books, 2007 A “powerful, harrowing and moving memoir”, proclaims the blurb on the back. “A Korean tear in the muscle round the ribs, a Korean hernia…” reads the selective quote. The cover design, a Getty image of hands grasping prison bars, … [Read More]
Technology in the wrong hands – a review of Robert A Kaiser’s Project Yellow Sky
Robert A Kaiser: Project Yellow Sky — A Korean Conspiracy (Authorhouse, November 2006) Those who visit websites with Korea-related content may have come across advertisements for this book in the Google Ads panel. A topical thriller, about the North Koreans trying to steal nuclear secrets… it must be worth putting in the suitcase for a … [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]
Thomas steams in to Korea
A while ago I saw the following headline in the Chosun Ilbo: ‘Thomas the Train’ Toys Recalled. Rather like the Mattel “Sarge” toys recently recalled, there were fears that the paint contained lead. I wondered if the headline meant Thomas the Tank Engine, that friendly, hard-working little creation of the Reverend W Audry, whose books … [Read More]
Richard Stubbs: Rethinking Asia’s Economic Miracle
(Palgrave MacMillan, 2005) Stubbs’s thesis is simple: that one of the key drivers of Asia’s economic growth has been not free market economics, not Confucian values, not the developmental state, not Japanese or American hegemony, but war, both hot and cold. Stubbs takes seven countries – South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and … [Read More]
Book review: Kim Young-jin on Lee Chang-dong
(Seoul Selection, 2007) I can imagine that there was a certain amount of discussion about the timing of this book. After a break of some years — enforced by his stint as Roh Moo-hyun’s first Minister for Culture and Tourism — the well-regarded director Lee Chang-dong was active again. His new film, with two of … [Read More]
Book Review: Digging to America
My slightly random reading patterns in respect of Korea-related books sometimes turns up a gem, sometimes introduces me to an author I wouldn’t otherwise have read, and sometimes proves a disappointment. This book falls into the second category. It came up on my list of Amazon recommendations based on my past purchasing behaviour, and I … [Read More]
Upcoming books on Korean film
Just as the Korean film scene seems to be losing some of its buzz, books about it are coming thick and fast. 2004 saw the Wallflower Press book (though it seems only last year that it came out); 2005 saw the Julian Stringer / Shin Chi-yun book; and last year came the book on Kim … [Read More]