Country of Focus South Korea 한국

For the second year, BWF presents its Country of Focus program, an initiative highlighting the dynamic literature of the Indo-Pacific region. Situating Australian writing within a geopolitical context, Country of Focus emphasises the exchange of ideas across language, culture and geography and the critical role of literature in an interconnected modern world.

Korean culture has become an international sensation in the 21st century. People may immediately think of film, drama and K-pop, but Korean literature is equally impressive, as attested by prestigious international awards and regular appearances on bestseller lists.

Translators have enabled global recognition of works such as Shin Kyung-Sook’s Please Look After My Mother, Kim Young-Ha’s I Have the Right to Destroy Myself and Han Gang’s The Vegetarian – stories that speak eloquently to Western readers in our turbulent era.

— Dr Sung-Ae Lee, Country of Focus Curator

This year, the festival has the pleasure of hosting some extraordinary South Korean talents, beginning with the incredible children’s book illustrators Gihun Lee and JiHyeon

Lee, then expanding to include some of the most exciting and subversive voices in South Korean literature: the experimental Bae Suah; neoromantic Sang Young Park; feminist poet Kim Min Jeong; polymathic Krys Lee; and literary luminary Bora Chung. Their astonishing work probes the psychological disquiet of modernity through radical formal innovation and devastating intimacy.

These are extraordinary South Korean artists and stories. They are stories that particularise the universal, reminding us of the enduring power of literature – to expose how we suffer and how we find salvation.

BWF is pleased to have partnered with the Korean Cultural Centre, the Australia-Korea Foundation, and the Literature and Translation Institute of Korea to bring this event to fruition. We thank them and Dr Sung-Ae Lee for their generosity and expertise.