How to review the autobiography of one of Korean’s leading novelists, who has won accclaim both sides of the border; who has spent five years in prison as well as being a person of interest to the authorities for much of his professional career? The memoir makes for fascinating reading as literary history: most of … [Read More]
Tag: RoK prison memoirs
Selected publications
- Shin Young-bok: Reflections from Prison: 20 Years and 20 Days tr Cho Byeong-eun, Jin Young-jong, Kim Hain, Meredith Victory 2022
- Hwang Sok-yong: The Prisoner tr Anton Hur, Sora Kim-Russell, Verso 2021
- Cullen Thomas: Brother One Cell: An American Coming of Age in South Korea’s Prisons, Penguin 2006
- Suh Sung: Unbroken Spirits: Nineteen Years in South Korea’s Gulag tr Jean Inglis, Rowman + Littlefield 2001
Nineteen Years in South Korea’s Gulag
Suh Sung: Unbroken Spirits – Nineteen Years in South Korea’s Gulag Rowman & Littlefield, 2001 Original Japanese version, (Gokuchû 19 Nen, Nineteen Years in Prison) 1994 We are all familiar with stories reporting the horrors of torture and starvation in North Korean prison camps. What we can forget is that over the past decades South … [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]