London Korean Links

Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

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Selected translations

Translations by Ju-chan Fulton available online

  • Hwang Sun-won: My Tale of the Bamboo Wife tr Bruce Fulton, Ju-chan Fulton, Fabulist 2016

The 2010 Essay Contest – Who ate up all the Shinga?

Last year, the Korean Literature Translation Institute launched an essay competition to encourage people to read Korean Literature in translation. The title chosen was Ch’oe Yun’s There a Petal Silently Falls – a novella which I personally struggled with. In my own feeble submission, I suggested that a colonial period novel would have been a … [Read More]

Petal essay contest Salon des Refusés 3

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]