[_list: Books from Korea] Vol.14 Winter 2011 by LTI Korea Library

FAQ What is list_Books from Korea, and where can I find it? list is a quarterly magazine packed with information about Korean books. Register online at www.list.or.kr to receive a free subscription.

Can I get it in English? The printed edition of list is available in English and Chinese. The webzine (www.list.or.kr) is available in English, Chinese, and Korean.

What if I want information about Korean books more often? We offer a bi-weekly online newsletter. Simply email list_korea @ klti.or.kr to begin receiving your free copy.

Who publishes list_Books from Korea? list is published by the Korea Literature Translation Institute, which is affiliated with the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism. LTI Koreaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mission is to contribute to global culture by expanding the knowledge of Korean literature and culture abroad. Visit www.klti.or.kr to learn about our many translation, publication, cultural exchange, and education programs. Contact : list_korea @ klti.or.kr

Foreword

Riding the Korean Wave Korean pop culture is electrifying the world with the phenomenon called Hallyu, the “Korean Wave.” It is a far cry from when Korean pop culture’s best efforts were merely an echo of Hollywood. The Korean media is saturated with images of Hallyu’s success overseas, showing young people from around the world screaming at K-pop concerts, singing along to K-pop songs in Korean, and studying the Korean language. Fellow East Asians were the first of these fans in the mid-1990s. In 2011 the Korean Wave swept Europe, notorious for its cultural snobbery, the Middle East, South America, and finally the United States, penetrating the cultural center of that country, New York. What is really going on? Koreans are bemused, for the most part, by media images of enthusiastic foreigners, because in Korea the catchy tunes and flashy dance routines of K-pop, perfectly executed by dazzling, unreal teen idols, have lost its charm for many. People want to hear actual singers, not entertainers, which is why reality competition shows such as “Naneun Gasuda” (“I Am a Singer”), “Superstar K,” and “Star Audition: the Great Birth” are doing so well. Koreans are only now warming up to music of the truly homespun variety, where there is no place for the slick music of teen idols manufactured by huge record labels. There is something about the Korean Wave, however, that makes it difficult to dismiss as merely the result of a few greedy entertainment companies or an occasion for nationalistic pride. Yes, the Korean Wave and the K-pop craze is built and sustained by a deeply exploitative system involving a handful of talent agencies signing teenaged stars for so-called “slave contracts,” but that does not make the Korean Wave any less of an ongoing cultural phenomenon, and a big one at that. For this issue of list_Books from Korea, “The Rise of Korean Pop Culture,” aims to address that phenomenon through a discussion of Korean dramas and novels, the Korean animation and character industry, Korean film, and K-pop. What is happening with Korean pop culture? What does digital media have to do with it? And what will happen with the development of 3D? What kind of cultural shift is taking place on social networks such as YouTube and Facebook? After years of trying to remake itself in the image of Hollywood, has Korean culture eventually come back to its roots? The universal and the idiosyncratic meet in the Korean Wave, now a worldwide phenomenon. By Kim Yonghee

list_ Books from Korea

Vol.14 Winter 2011

KLTI Overseas Publication Grants

KLTI Overseas Marketing Grants

Applicant Qualifications

- Any publisher who has signed contracts for the publication rights of a Korean book and can publish the book by December 2012. (The book should be published by then.) - Or any publisher who has already published a translated Korean book in 2012 based on a contract for the publication rights of a Korean book.

- Publishers who have published Korean books in translation and are planning to hold promotional events which require the author's presence. - Other events not directly involving the author's presence can be supported only in exceptional cases confirmed by LTI Korea.

Grant

How to Apply

- Roundtrip airfare and accommodation expenses for the author. - Other expenses for marketing events and advertisements can be supported only in exceptional cases confirmed by LTI Korea. - The amount will be decided by LTI Korea after due consideration of the marketing plan and scale. *The grant will be provided directly for the author or the overseas publisher in two payments, before and after an event.

- Register as a member on the website (http://eng.klti.or.kr) and complete the online application form.

How to Apply

Application Documents to be Submitted

- Register as a member on the website (http://eng.klti.or.kr) and complete the online application form.

- Part of the total publication expenses. - The amount varies depending on the publication cost and genre of the book. - The grant will be awarded after publication.

1. Publisher's profile, including its history and major achievements (e.g., previous publications related to Korea (if any), the total number of books it has published so far, etc.). 2. Publication plan including the dates and budget for translation and publication in detail. 3. A copy of the contract between the publisher and the translator. 4. A copy of the contract between the publisher and the foreign rights holder. 5. The translator's resume.

Application Documents to be Submitted 1. Publisherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s profile including its detailed history and major achievements (e.g., previous publications related to Korea (if any), the total number of books it has published to date, etc.). 2. A copy of the contract between the publisher and the translator. 3. A copy of the contract between the publisher and the foreign rights holder. 4. Marketing event plan and detailed statement of expenses.

Application Schedule and Announcement of Results

- Submission period: 2012. 1. 1 ~ 2012. 9. 30 - Grant notification: April, July, and October

- Application schedule: every month - Announcement: selection to be announced early each month

Contact

- Name: Mina Park, Youngju Cha - Email: grants@klti.or.kr

Contents Winter 2011 Vol. 14 01 06 07 08 10

Foreword Trade Report News from LTI Korea Bestsellers Publishing Trends

Special Section

Spotlight on Korean Pop Culture

12 14 17 20 23

Redefining the Real Korean Wave Digital Paradigms: Changing the Face of Korean Pop Culture From Print to Screen and Back Again K-Pop: From Gayo to Global The Korean Film Industry Makes Waves

Interviews

26 Novelist Yi Mun-yol 32 Novelist Kim In-sook

Excerpts

30 "An Anonymous Island" by Yi Mun-yol 36 "Bye, Elena" by Kim In-sook

Overseas Angle

46 Reflecting on Korean Literature in Sweden 47 Writer's Note: Kim Ki-taek

The Place

38 Korea's Best-loved Book Festivals

Theme Lounge

42 Youth: Waiting for Your Time to Bloom

Reviews

48 Fiction 68 Nonfiction 74 Children's Books

Spotlight on Fiction

53 "Together with a Chicken" by Jung Young-moon

Steady Sellers

67 I Have the Right to Destroy Myself 79 My Classmate Young-dae

Meet the Publishers

80 Gimm-young Publishers, Inc.

New Books

82 Recommended by Publishers 90 Index 92 Afterword

list_ Books from Korea

Vol.14 Winter 2011

Contributors Bae No-pil is a reporter with the

JoongAng Ilbo and a writer for the online newsletter plus list_Books from Korea.

Bae Young-dae is a reporter who writes on recently published books for Joongang Daily. Bok Dohoon is a literary critic. His works include A Portrait of the Blind. He won the Contemporary Literature Prize in Criticism in 2007. Cho Hyunju is a journalist at the

weekly news magazine, Sisa Journal.

Cho Yeon-jung is a literary critic. She made her debut in 2006 winning the Seoul Shinmun New Critic’s Award.

Choi Jae-bong is a reporter at the

Cu l t u re De s k o f T h e Ha n k y o re h newspaper.

Eom Hye-suk is a researcher in children’s literature and a critic of illustrated books. She also works as a translator. Her most well-known work is Reading My Delightful Illustrated Books. Han Hyewon is an assistant professor

of digital media at Ewha Womans University. Her written works include Homan Narrans, Digital Game Storytelling, and Vampire Chronicles.

Han Mihwa writes on the subject of

publishing. Her written works include Bestsellers of Our Time and This Is How Bestsellers Are Made, Vols. 1, 2.

Hur Yoonjin is a literary critic. She

is the author of 5:57: Critical Essays by Hur Yoonjin. She is a contributing editor at the quarterly Munye Joongang.

Jung Yeo-ul is a literary critic. Jung lectures at Seoul National University and the Korean National University of Arts.

Kang Mi is a novelist and teacher at Ulsan Girls High School. She wrote The Book on the Road, a novel for young adult readers, and Winter, Blog, a collection of short stories for youth. Kang Yu-jung is a literary critic. In 2007, she published O e d i p u s’ Forest. Currently, she teaches at Korea University and is a member of the editorial committee for the quarterly publication Segyeui Munhak. Kim Dongshik is a literary critic and

a professor of Korean language and literature at Inha University. He has published Cynicism and Fascination. He is on the editorial board of list_Books from Korea.

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Vol.14 Winter 2011

Kim Hyoung-joong is a literary critic. He is a professor of Korean Literature at Chosun University and is an editorial board member of the journal Literature and Society. He was awarded the 28th Socheon Lee Heon Gu Prize in Literary Criticism in 2008 and has published various books of criticism, including An Analysis of Literature and the Mind. Kim Ji-eun is a writer of children’s

stories and a critic of children’s literature. She currently lectures on theories of writing fiction for children in the Department of Creative Writing at Hanshin University.

Kim Min-ryoung is a children’s

literary critic. She won in the children’s writing category of the Munhwa Ilbo New Writer’s Award in 2006 and in the criticism category of the Changbi New Children’s Writer Award in 2010.

Kim Su-yeong is president of Rhodus Publishing Co. and a lecturer of philosophy.

Kim Yeran is a professor of media art at Kwangwoon University and is on the editorial board of list_Books from Korea.

Kim Yonghee is a literary critic

and professor of Korean Literature at Pyeongtaek University. Her works include Penelope’s Loom: Modern Women Poets and Going to Heaven. She is on the editorial board of list_Books from Korea.

Kwon Seong-woo is a literary critic and professor of Korean Literature at Sookmyung Women’s University. He published Romantic Exile and The Fascination of Criticism. He was awarded the Kim Hwan Tae Literary Prize in literary criticism. Lee Sang-yong is a film critic and programmer of the Busan International Film Festival. He wrote a book titled All That Cinema Allows. Park Hyekyung is a literary critic.

Her works include The Wound and the Gaze, The Mystery and Melancholy of Literature, and In the Eyes of Orpheus.

Pyo Jeonghun is a book reviewer,

columnist, translator, and freelance writer. He has translated 10 books into Korean and written Books Have Their Own Destiny, A Short Introduction to Chinese Philosophy, and An Interview with My Teacher: What Is Philosophy?

Richard Hong is a book columnist and

the head of BC Agency. He translated 13: The Stor y of the World’s Most Notorious Superstitions, has appeared on KBS 1 Radio’s “Global Today,” and writes columns for The Korea Economic Daily and Posco News. Rosa Han is head of Toc Publishing Co. and international sales & foreign rights director for Yolimwon Publishing Group, a parent company of Toc. Han introduces Korean titles to overseas markets, while bringing notable foreign works to the Korean market. She is also engaged in projects aimed at discovering promising Korean writers for overseas markets.

Shim Jinkyung is a literary critic and is

also currently a member of the editorial committee for the quarterly magazine Jaeum&Moeum. Her main works are Traversing Women’s Literature and Korean Literature and Sexuality.

Shin Hyunjoon is HK (Humanities

Korea) professor in the Institute for East Asian Studies (IEAS) at Sunkonghoe University. He worked as a research fellow at ARI in Singapore National University. He is interested in the millennium identity related to pop music, music and politics, pop culture, and cultural studies.

Uh Soo-woong is editor-in-chief of the Chosun Ilbo Weekly Magazine.

Yang Sunghee is a producer at the Drama Department of Production Division at jTBC. Yi Soo-hyung is a literary critic and a senior researcher at the Seoul National University Academic Writing Lab. He studied contemporary literature, and has taught at Hongik University, Seoul Institute of the Arts, and Korea National University of Arts. Yoon So-hee is a children’s writer. She

Translators Ann Isaac has a BA and MA in Classics and English Literature from Cambridge University, and an MA in Japanese Studies specializing in translation from the University of Sheffield. After moving to Korea in 2001, she studied Korean at various institutions and currently translates from Korean to English, with a special interest in literary translation. Cho Yoonna studied English literature

at Yonsei University and earned her MA in conference interpretation at the Graduate School of Interpretation and Translation at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. She is a freelance interpreter and translator.

C h o i In yo u n g i s a n a r t i s t a n d

translator. She has been translating for over 20 years. She specializes in Korean literature and the arts.

Christopher Dykas studied German

Studies and Politics at Oberlin College. He is a graduate student at UCLA.

H . Ja m i e C h a n g r e c e i v e d h e r undergraduate degree from Tufts University. She is a Bostonian/Busanian freelance translator.

Heinz Insu Fenkl is an author, editor, translator, and folklorist. His first book, Memories of My Ghost Brother, was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers book in 1996 and a PEN/ Hemingway finalist in 1997. Fenkl’s most recent book, Korean Folktales, published by Bo-Leaf Books, is a collection of traditions myths, legends, and folklore. Kari Schenk was the co-recipient of the

commendation award in the 2006 Korea Times contest for new translators, and in 2010 she attended a special course in translation at LTI Korea. She lectures in English at Korea University.

has written such works as Prejudice, Aram’s Secret, and 7 Stories to Help You Study. She is the winner of the 13th MBC Children’s Writing Prize. She is on the editorial board of list_Books from Korea.

Kim Soyoung is a graduate of the

Yu Youngjin is a critic of children’s

Kim Ungsan graduated in German L i t e r a t u r e f r o m S e o u l Na t i o n a l University and also studied at the Free University of Berlin. He earned an MA in Comparative Literature. Currently he is working on a PhD in English Literature.

literature and a teacher at Ja-un Elementary School. He is the author of The Body’s Imagination and Fairy Tale.

Graduate School of Interpretation and Translation at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. She is now focused on translating books written in Korean (fiction/nonfiction) into English.

Park Sang-yon is a PhD candidate in

Social Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She is currently helping North Korean refugees settle in the UK. She has translated a number of books and papers, including Suwon Hwaseong: The New City of the Joseon Dynasty Built on the Spirit of Practical Learning.

Peter J. Koh is a freelance translator and

interpreter who completed KLTI's Special Workshop in 2009 and Intensive Workshop in 2010. He currently resides in Seoul.

Vol.14 Winter 2011 A Quarterly Magazine for Publishers

PUBLISHER _ Kim Jooyoun EDITORIAL DIRECTOR _ Kim Yoonjin MANAGING DIRECTOR _ Lee Jungkeun

Sora Kim-Russell is a freelance translator. She teaches full-time at Ewha Womans University’s Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation and is currently translating a novel and a short story collection.

EDITORIAL BOARD Kim Su-yeong Kim Yonghee Kim Dongshik Kim Yeran Yoon So-hee

Yang Sung-jin is a staff reporter and

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Kim Sun-hye

deputy editor at The Korea Herald. Yang wrote a Korean history book in English, Click into the Hermit Kingdom, and a news-based English vocabulary book, News English Power Dictionary. His homepage is www.sungjinyang.com.

Yi Jeong-hyeon is a freelance translator. She has translated several books and papers, including Korean Traditional Landscape Architecture, and Atlas of Korean History.

Editors Kim Stoker earned an MA in Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii. She is currently a full-time lecturer at Duksung Women’s University. Krys Lee is an editor, translator, and fiction

writer. Her short story collection Drifting House will be published by Viking/Penguin in the US and Faber and Faber in the UK, in Feb. 2012.

MANAGING EDITORS Cha Youngju Kong Min-sung EDITORS Kim Stoker Krys Lee ART DIRECTOR Choi Woonglim DESIGNERS Kim Mijin Lee Jaehyun Jang Hyeju Noh Dah-yee PHOTOGRAPHER Lee Kwa-yong PRINTED IN _ EAP Date of Publication 2011. 11. 23

list_ Books from Korea is a quarterly magazine published by the Korea Literature Translation Institute.

Cover Art Han Choong-seok has had four solo exhibitions and participated in over 40 group exhibitions. hahaha821@naver.com blog.naver.com/hahaha821

All correspondences should be addressed to the Korea Literature Translation Institute at 108-5 Samseong-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea 135-873 Telephone: 82-2-6919-7700 Fax: 82-2-3448-4247 E-mail: list_korea@klti.or.kr www.klti.or.kr www.list.or.kr Copyright © 2011 by Korea Literature Translation Institute ISSN 2005-2790

Cover art © Han Choong-seok, Self-regard (2011) 162.2x130.0cm, acrylic on canvas

list_ Books from Korea

Vol.14 Winter 2011

Trade Report

Quality Content Expands Readership Overseas:

Comics and Illustration Books Spearhead Overseas Market In 2005 and 2006, major publishers in France including Casterman, and other European publishers including Planeta Diagostini, rushed to buy the rights for South Korean manwha, which is essentially different in terms of literary storytelling than Japanese manga. The titles that were sold at good prices include Kim Donghwa’s The Ugly and The Story of Life on the Golden Fields, and Lee Dooho’s Deongdeokkung and Lim Geok-jeong. The foreign rights for the comic book titles sold five or six years ago are set to expire this year, but European publishers show renewed passion for Korean content. They are producing newly designed editions and planning fresh promotional events; in the process, the European publishers are asking to renew their contracts. In fact, as far as sales volume is concerned, Korean comic book content is far from a blockbuster hit, especially compared with its Japanese rivals. On average, each title is scoring sales of fewer than 5,000 copies per year. Nonetheless, the Korean titles are getting contract renewals, which invariably results in advance payment of royalties. Why? Perhaps the answer has to do with the publishing industry’s peculiar practice that sometimes spurns the logic of commercial profits. High-quality content, though not so profitable in the short term, can improve the image of publishers. Publishing, in other words, has an aspect that cannot be quantified in monetary terms. If so, what is good content? Unlike the first question, there’s no convincing answer to the second, largely because readers’ taste and preferences change over time. For all the ambiguities, regional

preferences do exist. For instance, Far Countries, Neighboring Countries is a huge hit in the Korean publishing market, but the long-running series has yet to be sold to a European publisher. Of course, good news might come sooner rather than later. Interestingly, History of Science with Comics, published by Boo-Kie, broke new ground in Europe. Its rights were first sold to Casterman. As soon as the French edition came out, the educational comic book series sold rights for an Arabic translation. The reason: the series goes beyond the mere comic book concept as informative educational material, with a drawing style strongly appealing to customers in the target market. European buyers no longer opt for limited contracts that involve “only picture books” or “only comic content,” a practice that was prevalent five or six years ago. They are now attempting to utilize Korean content in various ways. For example, French publishers such as Mango and Fleurus are eyeing Korean board books that might strengthen their existing portfolios. A growing number of foreign companies are securing Korean comic books and novels designed for specific target readers instead of general titles. All in all, it’s hard to pinpoint which genre or what kind of titles get noticed more easily, but the list of titles whose rights have been sold hints at an element that is essentially universal. By Rosa Han

1. The Ugly Kim Donghwa, Happy Comic Works Co. 2006, 376p, ISBN 9788995348598 2. The Story of Life on the Golden Fields (3 volumes) Kim Donghwa, Happy Comic Works Co. 2003, 312p, ISBN 9788995348536 (Vol. 1) 3. Lim Geok-jeong (32 volumes) Lee Dooho, Jaeum & Moeum 2002, 212p, ISBN 9788984475304 (Vol. 1) 4. The History of Science with Comics (5 volumes) Jung Haeyong; Illustrator: Shin Younghee, Boo-Kie 2010, 204p, ISBN 9788960510722 (Vol. 1)

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News from LTI Korea

KLTI Holds Forums in China, Japan, and the U.S.

In the latter part of this year, KLTI held forums with writers, translators, and publishers in China, Germany, Japan, and the U.S., with the goal of strengthening the Korean literary network. These forums were aimed at exploring ways of branching out overseas more effectively. The first event to be staged this fall was the China Forum, which took place over two days on September 26 and 27 in Shandong, the home of Korean studies in China. Held in collaboration with Shandong University’s College of Korean Studies, this forum saw the participation of literary figures including Korean novelist Kim Won-il, poet Kim Sa-in and, literary critic Hong Jung-sun. On the Chinese side was the celebrated author and chairman of Shandong Province Writers’ Association, Zhang Wei, the head of Weihai City Federation of Literary and Art Circles, Qian Qi-Min, and the chairman of Weihai Writers’ Association, Wang Chun-Bo. Representatives of Shandong Literature and Art Publishing House and translators also took part. Enthusiastic presentations and vigorous discussions took place on the theme of “Literary Creation and Literary Exchange in the Global Environment,” with the focus on increasing receptiveness to Korean literature in China. The Japan Forum was held from October 19 to 22 in two locations: Tokyo and Nagoya. This event took the form of a dialogue between Korean and Japanese writers, providing an opportunity for exploring through literature the cultural similarities of both countries. The first

day of the Tokyo forum saw Korean writer Jung Young-moon paired up with the Japanese poet Nomura Kiwao, and Korean author Shin Kyungsook with Japan’s Tsushima Yuko. On the second day, Korean sijo poet Lee Geun-bae and Japanese haiku poet Ishikura Hideki discussed the appeal of the two countries’ classical forms of sijo and haiku respectively. This year for the first time a forum was also held in Nagoya where novelist Shin Kyung-sook and Japanese writer Hoshino Tomoyuki met and held discussions, reflecting the high level of interest among Japanese readers. The last forum for 2011 was the U.S. East Coast Forum held in New York and Binghamton from October 25 to 28, continuing momentum from the West Coast event earlier this year. This time Korean poet Mah Chonggi, novelists Gong Ji-young and Cheon Woonyoung, and literary critic Lee Kwang-ho participated. At the first session, staged at Binghamton University, there was vigorous debate among writers, publishers, and scholars on the topic “Rediscovering Korean Literature – The Diversity of Contemporary Korean Literature.” In the second session, hosted by the Korean Cultural Service Institute in New York, the Korean writers met American writers Susan Choi and Ben Ryder Howe and together explored their different literary worlds, offering an informal opportunity for lovers of Korean literature to “meet the author.”

KLTI Events in Germany

In October this year, KLTI held a number of literary events in Germany including the “Europe Translators Community,” the KLTI German Forum, and public readings of Korean literature. The first event, the “Europe Translators Community,” was held at the University of Frankfurt in Germany over two days on October 10 and 11. The event was timed to coincide with the Frankfurt Book Fair. The Translators Community is a new initiative from KLTI this year which provides an opportunity for professional translators of Korean literature from a particular continent to meet and discuss the practical problems of translation.

Following up on the Asia Translators Community held in the summer, this second seminar in Europe was attended by a total of 11 translators from nine countries and took the form of presentations and discussions on the theme of “The Practicalities of Cultural Translation.” Starting with a keynote address by Professor Antonetta Bruno of the Korean Studies Department of the Sapienza University of Rome in Italy, the translators from various language spheres took this opportunity to share the difficulties they encounter when translating Korean literature such as the orthography of proper nouns, choice of words, and cultural interpretation. This year’s KLTI German Forum was held on October 17 in the former East German city of Dresden. Korean novelist Yi Mun-yol, poet Choi Seung-ho, and novelist Bae Suah met with German translators of Korean literature and conducted a “Translator-Writer Dialogue” on the subject of strategies for the glocalization of Korean literature. In addition, on October 17 and 18 readings of Korean literature were staged on consecutive days in Dresden and Berlin. Novelist Yi Mun-yol, poet Choi Seung-ho, and novelist Bae Suah participated, and there were readings from German translations of their works, The Poet, Autobiography of Ice, and Sunday Sukiyaki Restaurant, respectively, as well as a meet the author opportunity for German readers. The audience of around 120 who attended over the course of the two-day event all gave an enthusiastic response, displaying a keen interest in and appreciation of Korean literature.

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Vol.14 Winter 2011

Bestsellers

What We’re Reading Fiction

Nonfiction

The Crucible

Wandeuk

Gong Jiyoung, Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2009, 294p, ISBN 9788936433703 The novel was inspired by a shocking real-life story that happened at a school for the hearing-impaired. By exposing the perpetrators who attack social minorities, Gong’s novel tackles the boundary that divides good and evil and truth and lies. Thanks to the recent film adaption, the novel has reentered the bestseller list.

Kim Ryeo-ryeong, Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2008, 237p, ISBN 9788936433635 A coming-of-age story, the novel depicts how 17year-old Wandeuki, who is poor and always gets low grades, confronts the challenges in life with his signature optimism. His quest for his own path in life is deeply moving. The novel-inspired film of the same title was released in October 2011, boosting the novel back on the bestseller list.

My Palpitating Life

Noblesse

Kim Ae-ran, Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2011, 354p, ISBN 9788936433871 The first novel by Kim Ae-ran revolves around 17year-old parents who gave birth to a child who suffers from an extremely rare disease of progeria. Faced with tragedy, characters in this moving tale tackle life with optimism and humor. Their endeavors are so humane that readers may well feel the beauty of their lives throughout the novel.

Son Je-ho, Samyang Publishing Co., Ltd. 2011, 320p, ISBN 9788954244886 (Vol.1) A vampire wakes up from an 820-year-long sleep and transfers to a high school. This novel is based on an online comic series of the same title that began in 2007 on a major portal site. A single installment of the online comic series, which is still highly popular, is said to attract more than 3 million hits.

The City of Familiar Others Choi In-ho, Yeobaek Media 2011, 391p, ISBN 9788958660941 A man attempts to discover the truth hidden in lost memories. The novel mixes together forgotten memories and retrievable facts and juggles fantasy and reality in a way that highlights social irregularities and the identity crisis of today’s people. The author wrote this engrossing novel in two months while fighting cancer.

A Turtle Who Has a Dream Never Stops Kim Byoung-man, Silkroad 2011, 255p, ISBN 9788994893150 Comedian Kim Byoung-man, who runs a ‘Master’ segment in the popular TV program “Gag Concert,” has written a book. As with his performance, the book reveals his dedicated attitude toward life and how he puts his best effort into everything he does.

Child’s Self Esteem

The Deep-Rooted Tree Lee Jung-myung, Millionhouse Publishing 2006, 292p, ISBN 9788991643154 (Vol.1) Set in the Korean royal court in the 15th century, this mystery novel centers upon a serial murder case involving the high-ranking scholars inside the tightly guarded courtyard of King Sejong. Mathematics, astronomy, architecture, the and arts are interwoven into an intricate plot. The novel, which is regarded as a well-made Korean-style ‘faction,’ has been adapted into a TV drama series.

Chung Ji-eun and Kim Min-tae Knowledge Channel 2011, 280p, ISBN 9788952762078 The authors, who gained recognition with their previous work, The Private Life of My Child, have come back with a new title on self-esteem that is regarded as one of the most important elements in shaping character. Theoretical explanations and practical tips aimed at nurturing self-esteem properly are described in detail.

A Country Doctor’s Self Revolution Park Kyoungchol, Woongjin Think Big Co. 2011, 399p, ISBN 9788901130460 Park Kyoungchol, a medical doctor who is also recognized and respected as a social mentor among Korean youth, shares his insights into self and society, mind and labor, and learning and the future, targeting today’s young generation.

A Night of Seven Years Jeong You-jeong, EunHaeng NaMu Publishing Co. 2011, 523p, ISBN 9788956604992 A father happens to commit a murder due to a minor mistake. As a result, his son ends up enduring a miserable life, the life of a murderer’s son. All of this is captured in a story-within-a-story format. Happenstance in life, fate, the schizophrenic confrontation between good and evil, and the will to live are depicted in a lively writing style.

The City of Familiar Others

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Vol.14 Winter 2011

Wandeuk

A Turtle Who Has a Dream Never Stops

Psychology of Relationships

These totals are based on sales records from eight major bookstores and three online bookstores from August to October 2011, provided by the Korean Publishers Association. The books are introduced in no particular order.

Children's Books Anxious Mother and Indifferent Father Oh Eun-young, Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. 2011, 344p, ISBN 9788901122816 When it comes to raising children, no one is more important than mothers and fathers. But when mothers become anxious and fathers do not pay attention to what’s happening at home, problems arise for their children. The book offers specific steps and methods on how parents can overcome such challenges.

Psychology of Relationships Lee Cheol-woo, Kyunghyang Media 2008, 296p, ISBN 9788990991676 Lee Cheol-woo, author of bestselling titles in psychology, offers detailed advice on the increasingly complex relationships between humans. Sporting an engaging writing style, Lee provides specific tips and principles that help readers pursue relationships that can satisfy all parties, including the self and others.

3 Minute Classic Park Jae-hee, Little Seed Books 2010, 255p, ISBN 9788964231159 Park Jae-hee, a specialist on Eastern philosophy, compiles famous and thought-provoking passages from classical texts and applies them to everyday life in a way that accentuates their effectiveness and validity. In an easy-to-understand, informative and wonderful style, Park brings the classical passages to life.

Ignoramus Samdigi

Leafie, a Hen into the Wild

Yangpa’s Outcast Diary

Hwang Sun-mi; Illustrator: Kim Hwan-young Sakyejul Publishing Ltd. 2002, 200p, ISBN 9788971968710 Leafie lives caged up in a chicken farm only to produce eggs. She, however, dreams of going out into the outside world laying eggs freely. One day, she escapes the chicken farm and deals with one challenge after another in her admirable quest for maternal love and freedom.

Moon Sunny, Bluebird Publishing Co. 2001, 144p, ISBN 9788970572529 Jeong-hwa, the main character, wants to join a group of friends who call themselves Yangpa. In her attempt to make it to the Yangpa group, Jeong-hwa gets to learn the dynamics of how friends form groups, and what relationships mean.

Bookworm Ahn So-young, Borim Press 2005, 288p, ISBN 8943305842 Lee Deok-mu, a Joseon era literati, is called a bookworm because he never stops reading books. Lee has achieved a high level of academic achievement, but is terribly poor. With the help of writings and books, he forms good relations with his friends and shares his experiences and wisdom with them.

Ignoramus Samdigi Won You-soon; Illustrator: Lee Hyun-mee Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. 2007, 94p, ISBN 9788901068602 Samdigi, even after becoming a second grader, cannot read, but he never loses confidence and goes on to try hard. In this tale of hope and courage, he finally reads a book with confidence in front of all the classmates who once ridiculed him.

Red Pencil Shin Soo-hyeon; Illustrator: Kim Sung-hee BIR Publishing Co., Ltd. 2011, 207p, ISBN 9788949121338 In this secret tale, Min-ho comes to own a magic pencil. With this, he can write as smoothly as he wants, a wonderful gift. Later, however, Min-ho realizes that writing carries a meaning only when it expresses truth.

You’re Colored, so Aren’t You Hot? Park Chae-ran; Illustrator: Lee Sang-kwon Blue Bicycle Publishing Co. 2007, 118p, ISBN 9788989192732 This book examines the life of the children of migrant laborers in Korea and those who are born from foreign laborers and Koreans. It zooms in on the prevalent double standard for foreign residents in Korea and the groundless prejudice against migrant workers.

The Bad Boy Stickers Hwang Sun-mi; Illustrator: Kwon Sa-woo Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. 2009, 95p, ISBN 9788901068596 An authoritative teacher and a child who is labeled as a bad boy clash with each other before opting for reconciliation in this story. The underlying assumption, strongly suggested by the author, is that if there’s a bad boy, there must be a bad teacher.

Red Pencil

You’re Colored, so Aren’t You Hot?

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Publishing Trends release, followed by a sharp rise in sales as the movie took off at the box office that finally catapulted the book to number one on the sales charts. It was remarkable, given that the novel did not achieve the number one sales ranking two years ago. The belated popularity of the novel is certainly proof of the film’s real impact on society. But another aspect behind this development is that it is also a showcase of the novel’s power. After all, the film adaptation traces back to the original novel. Gong Jiyoung, one of the most popular writers in Korea, has had her novels adapted for the big screen before, such as Go Alone Like A Musso’s Horn and Our Happy Time. The two film adaptations garnered some commercial success, but fell far short of the social reverberation generated by The Crucible. Gong expressed her satisfaction about the artistic level of The Crucible compared with other films based on her novels. In every aspect, the literary and silver screen success of The Crucible is a memorable case in which literature was happily and satisfactorily transported to film. By Choi Jae-bong

Nonfiction The Crucible (2011)

The Crucible Gong Jiyoung, Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2009, 294p, ISBN 9788936433703

Fiction

When Literature Meets Film One big social issue in Korea this fall is the feverish popularity of a movie titled “The Crucible.” Set in a school for students with special needs in a provincial city, the film exposes sexual assaults committed by teachers and school officials. The movie quickly jumped to the No. 1 spot at the box office after its release. The impact has reached far beyond initial estimates, considering the sensitive topic. The film, based on a real incident, depicts the perpetrators receiving due punishment. In the real world, however, they did not, which has angered the public. As a result, new social agendas have emerged: far stricter punishment should be sentenced for those convicted of sexually assaulting minors and the handicapped, and more supervision and monitoring should be set up for educational facilities catering to students with special needs. Perpetrators who were freed on parole at the formal trial received extra punitive measures due to the film, and the school in question was recently shut down. All of this testifies to the power of a single film. The film also sent a shock among literary circles and the publishing industry. The film is, in fact, adapted from Gong Jiyoung’s novel of the same title. Gong’s novel, first published in 2009, sold nearly 500,000 copies. When it hit bookshelves, the interest in the sexual assault incident was at its height, but not so much compared with the fallout sparked by the film’s huge popularity. The novel was thought to have run its course as a bestseller, but it regained momentum after the film adaptation. Sales steadily went up through word-of-mouth before the film’s 10 list_ Books from Korea

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Korean Youth Reshapes Publishing Market Youth, It’s Painful finally gave up its No. 1 position on the bestseller list in the last week of September. Though not directly related, Korean society is currently being swept by a new political movement called “Youth Concert.” Park Kyungchol, an author known for A Country Doctor’s Beautiful Companion, and Ahn Cheolsoo, professor at Seoul National University, jointly held a talk show across the nation targeting youth, offering advice addressing young people’s concerns. Originally deemed as a lecture series for those in their 20s and 30s, Youth Concert turned into a sort of political rally requesting social reform on the strength of widespread support from the public. At the same time, Professor Ahn emerged as a new political icon. Regardless of his intentions, Ahn is widely regarded as one of the most promising presidential hopefuls for 2012. Park Kyungchol’s book, A Country Doctor’s Beautiful Companion, first published in 2005, has reentered the bestseller list, helped by the Youth Concert syndrome. The Ahn Cheolsoo syndrome that has shaken up the existing party-oriented political system from its core, is interpreted as a reaction to the growing concern that Korea is turning into a stagnant society that blocks young people from pursuing their dreams. This hopeless situation for youth also explains why Youth, It’s Painful had dominated the bestseller list for such a long period of time. Kim Byoung-man, born in a rural area, barely got a formal education before coming to Seoul to pursue his career as a comedian. He started from scratch and endured a painful period as an up-and-coming comedian, but he never gave up hope. Kim, who is now one of the most famous comedians in Korea, has an autobiographical book A Turtle Who Has a Dream Never Stops on the bestseller list, not because it’s a work by a successful comedian, but because his painful youth resonates well with today’s young people. A Child’s Self Esteem, a psychology title concerning children, has also gained popularity, boosting the sales of other early childhood education titles such as It’s Mothers Who Bring Pain to

The attention to ecology is reflected prominently in creative picture books and the fairy tale genre. While nonfiction books are designed for delivering knowledge to readers, original children’s tales and picture books are mostly based on the authors’ respect for life linked to their interest in the humanities and philosophical ideas. Kwon Jeong-saeng’s Puppy Poo, a steady seller, is a case in point. Leafie, a Hen into the Wild, Hwang Sun-mi’s masterful mix of ecological concerns and maternal love, is also deeply founded upon the idea of the respect for life. Leafie, a Hen into the Wild, published in 2002, was successfully adapted for the big screen in 2011. The movie version sold a record 2.19 million tickets. At the same time, the original book, which had already set a record by selling 1 million copies, extended its popularity further by selling another 100,000 copies after the film’s release. An animated picture book by the same publisher also sold 100,000 copies. The deepening public interest toward ecology is spawning more diverse content. Vegetable Garden Explained by a Ladybug illustrates the cycle of food with focus placed on illuminating the essence of life. Jeong Yak-jeon and Marine Expedition sums up historical facts surrounding the publication of Jasan Eobo by Jeong Yak-jeon, while conveying a story about the sea, including salt and fish. Other notable titles include In Search of Rainbow Poop, Graybacked Thrush, Children in Dumbeong Town, and The Great Voyage of Princess Ant.

1. A Country Doctor's Beautiful Companion 3. It’s Mothers Who Bring Pain to Children Moon Eun-hee (2 volumes)

Park Kyungchol, Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. 2011(revised edition), 316p ISBN 9788901131191 (Vol. 1)

By Yoon So-hee

Wisdomhouse Publishing Co., Ltd 2011, 271p, ISBN 9788991731578

2. Anxious Mother and Indifferent Father Oh Eun-young, Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. 2011, 343p, ISBN 9788901122816

Children and Anxious Mother and Indifferent Father. These titles are aimed at stressing the importance of psychological and emotional connections among family members, marking a departure from past bestsellers that focused on making children stand out academically. Books by authors with religious backgrounds have also attracted attention. Lee Mina, whose father is a leading intellectual in Korea, was a thorough rationalist with a diploma from a top university. After going through a personal tragedy, Lee eventually ended up seeking solace in religion, a path that is well described in Children in the Far Corner of the Earth. Other titles that have continued to gain popularity include Stop Living on this Land, Go to the Everlasting World of Happiness, Live There Forever, by a meditation practitioner Woo Myung, and Who Is Pulling Me? by Rev. Park Ok-su, an expert on the youth problem. By Bae No-pil

Children's Books

Kids Get Back to Nature Ecology-related titles have dominated the children’s book section of late. The new trend comes as a heightened sense of crisis about environmental pollution seems to be combined with children’s instinctive perceptions about life. Parents and teachers continue to focus on well-made nonfiction titles designed for educational purposes. A mong nonf iction series based on knowledge in various categories, titles related to ecology such as the earth, the environment, and nature make up the largest portion.

1. In Search of Rainbow Poop Nam Sang-wook; Illustrator: Jung Hwa-ja Purunnamu 2011, 76p, ISBN 9788974144692

4. Vegetable Garden Explained by Ladybug Ro Jeong-eem; Illustrator: An Kyung-ja Chulsu & Yeonghee Co. 2011, 40p, ISBN 9788993463163

2. The Great Voyage of Princess Ant Kim Jung-hwan; Illustrator: Kang Woo-keun Prunsoop Publishing Co. Ltd. 2011, 178p, ISBN 9788971846599

5. Jeong Yak-jeon and Marine Expedition

3. Children in Dumbeong Town Kwon Ojoon; Illustrator: Baek Nam-ho Bori Publishing Co., Ltd. 2011, 91p, ISBN 9788984286658

(3 volumes)

Kim Haedeung; Illustrator: Lee Kyungsuk Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. 2011, 201p, ISBN 9788901116839 (Vol. 1)

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Special Section

Spotlight on Korean Pop Culture

Redefining the Real Korean Wave What is the Korean wave? Is it a real phenomenon ? One thing for sure is that Hallyu, the “Korean Wave,” had to already be manifest as a concrete and actual reality in Korean society before these questions could be considered properly. The genesis of the Korean Wave can be traced back to the mid-1990s when the ‘idol’ group H.O.T. began commanding a massive fan base in East Asia that spread with the rise of other idol groups such as Shinhwa and TVXQ, Korean dramas such as “Dae Jang Geum” and “Winter Sonata,” Korean games such as Lineage, and Korean characters such as Pororo. Korean pop culture has now become a cultural phenomenon reaching far beyond the boundaries of East Asia. With a positively microscopic publishing industry and a much smaller reading population compared to Japan, the seemingly unstoppable path of the Korean Wave has left Koreans with mixed feelings of pride and incredulity at the same time. What is certain is that the Korean Wave has ceased to be a teen subculture and has gained momentum with people of all ages from around the world. It can consequently be considered an important aspect of popular culture providing fertile ground for a complex discourse. This phenomenon is further complicated by overzealous coverage by the media, the interests of entertainment agencies, the system that industrializes culture, and cultural nationalism. These are all factors that must be considered when examining the history of the Korean Wave. The Korean Wave began spreading in East Asia from the mid-1990s. It did not manifest in its current intensity until 2005, the year when foreign tourists to Korea hit the six million per year mark. This is largely thanks to “Dae Jang Geum,” as that was the year the drama hit China. Bae Yong-joon of “Winter Sonata” fame was enjoying a second splash with the film “April Snow,” but his popularity in Japan was seen as more of a cult following than proof of any interest in Korean culture. “Dae Jang Geum,” however, provided an epic story that presented Korean culture in a way that captivated Chinese audiences. While women of the royal court were usually confined to roles that depicted them vying with each other for the King’s affections and squabbling over power, “Dae Jang Geum’s” Jang Geum used her own skills and determination to get ahead, a fresh female character that became an instant classic. After that, the film “The King and the Clown” came out in 2006 and the dramas “What Love?,” “Lovers in Paris,” “All In,” and “Iris” all 12 list_ Books from Korea

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sold at high prices abroad. What exactly is this Korean Wave, then? According to scholar Cho Hae-joang, the Korean Wave refers to: “The tendency to enjoy and consume Korean pop culture in the forms of music, dramas, fashion, tourism, and film that is particularly prevalent among the people, most notably adolescents, of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Vietnam.” Cho’s definition, however, leaves it unclear about whether the cultural product must include a cultural component or whether it is sufficient to have been made in Korea. Cho defines the Korean Wave according to its end result regardless of the ideological and commercial intentions that go into the beginning of production. The subject of hottest debate when it comes to the Korean Wave in Korea, however, is regarding the inclusion of a cultural component in the end product. The success of the Korean Wave starting in East Asia in the late 1990s and then throughout the world in the 2000s was not enough to quell these concerns over cultural nationalism. When Korean nationalism plays a major part in the Korean Wave, its ideological position is one that clearly goes against the definition of culture. Assuming that culture is based on a mutual understanding of its power to transcend borders, to make Korean identity the center of the Korean Wave would be to invite resistance from other countries. It is only natural that there should be conflict and resistance when one culture meets another. The political history and psychology of any country demands it. For instance, in the mid2000s the two major private broadcasters in Japan cut down on the air time given to Korean dramas. Their decision to reduce the air time allotted to Korean dramas cannot be understood without understanding the history of the two countries. Historically it is rare for neighboring countries to be on good terms. Culture cannot be pure creation, nor can it be pure imitation. Most importantly, bombarding one country with the culture of another in a purely one-sided cultural exchange cannot ever be truly ‘cultural.’ Regarding other countries in East Asia and throughout the world as mere consumers of our culture is infantile cultural supremacy and slavish capitalism at its worst. From this point of view it is imperative that Korea open itself up to a more equal exchange of cultures if it wishes to see the Korean Wave continue to flourish in the long term.

Another problematic aspect of the Korean Wave is that it equates commercial interest with national interest from an econo-centric point of view. Some of the most-branded phrases belonging to this school of thought include ‘in the age of cultural wars, culture is competitiveness’ or even ‘culture is money,’ which of course is nothing but the rankest barbarity that stands between the true exchange and understanding of diverse cultures. As the Korean Wave gathers fresh momentum it is good to rethink these kinds of attitudes from a critical point of view and see if we can find alternatives. The revival of the Korean Wave in recent years is largely thanks to the surge of interest in K-pop. First gaining popularity in East Asia in the 1990s, K-pop now has fans in Europe and the Americas. The Korean media has lost no time showing videos of foreign youngsters screaming at K-pop concerts singing along to the lyrics in Korean, and imitating the dance routines of idol stars. The people of Korea swelled with pride to see the youth from cultural giants in Europe bopping to Korean music, but at the same time could not decide what the attraction was. The thought was that K-pop was merely a product manufactured by talent agencies that aggressively groomed attractive teenagers into girl groups and boy bands. To be honest, their flashy song and dance routines were beginning to wear thin in Korea (the popularity of the audition program “Naneun Gasuda” (“I Am a Singer”) speaks volumes on how fed up the more mature public is with such idol stars). Against this backdrop the stalemate of idol groups is a subject of growing interest. The word ‘idol’ has become an important icon in Korea, taking over the place once occupied by ‘star.’ A star enjoyed mysterious, even symbolic status; an idol is by definition manufactured under a commercial system. The rise of the idol in Korea is closely related to the rise of extreme capitalism in the country following the Asian financial crisis of 1998. Capital became most important in Korea and encouraged ever-greater competition at an increasingly hectic speed. The human body had become nothing more than a machine, a tool for securing more capital. By the 2000s this extreme capitalism had become the matrix that dominated the lives of the Korean people. This change in social and economic attitudes resulted in a visible change in popular culture. In the 1990s talent agencies did the casting for an idol group before preparing them to become idol stars. Since the 2000s, however, agencies have maintained a vast pool of trainees who compete with each other to become part of an idol group. Since there are far more trainees than potential idol groups the trainees spend years practicing without any guarantee they will actually make the cut. Trainees practice singing, dancing, foreign languages, and any other skill that might give them an edge over other trainees. Exposed to this system from an early age, they internalize the fantasy and disenchantment that goes with being a manufactured product. It dovetails with the situation of the Korean youth dubbed the 880-thousand-won (800 dollar) generation, trapped in the present, with no prospect that the future will be better, shackled to the drug-like hope of making it big someday. They fantasize to forget the wretchedness of reality (in the case of idol groups, they spend their teens practicing under inhumane conditions for a contract they may or may not win, that may turn out to be a slave contract even if they do, and laboring under the stress that even if they do succeed their popularity might be short-lived). Idol groups flourished along with the swift growth of talent agencies in the 2000s. By this point the capital clout of the agency had become more important than the musical influence of the

producer. Agencies sought to create entertainers, not singers, who were more valuable as a multi-purpose product. The frenzy to capitalize on this growth resulted in an explosion of trainees basically at war with each other to become idols. Numerous idol groups are being formed, undergoing training, or being disbanded every moment in this system of competition. The success of the television talent show competition “Superstar K2” reflects this trend. The winner of the show, Huh Gak, became the cultural icon of 2010. When invited to the Blue House last year, Huh introduced himself as living proof that Korea was a fair society where anyone could realize their dreams. “Superstar K2”, however, was a fiercely competitive contest that dropped contestants each week; only the final winner remained. Korean youth working at part-time, irregular jobs under a constant fear of unemployment might dream of striking gold with audition programs like this, but the reality is much harsher. As much as talent agencies might play into the myth of success, the truth is that they are ruthless machines operating in a neoliberal market and to become one of their products is to be programmed and tailored down to the finest detail, rather than to embrace diverse potential and talent. Considering this background, how does one look at the K-pop craze? Is the fact that K-pop is gaining popularity in Europe, South America, and Australia one that Korean viewers and Korean youth should celebrate as they watch how the myth of making it big plays out? The sure thing is that the Korean Wave needs to stop equating itself with commercial success or politico-diplomatic hegemony in a blatantly cultural supremacist way and embrace the phenomenon as a movement that celebrates the sharing of culture. All cultures are influenced by others—there is no culture that is pure creation, nor one that is pure imitation. Cultures meet, absorb, imitate, and repel each other in a never-ending process of creation and consumption. From this point of view every culture is a mongrel, a hybrid curiosity. To package the Korean Wave as something uniquely Korean is trying to market jingoism. K-pop already brings in producers, choreographers, and composers from many countries—it is already a cultural hybrid from its inception. Global, it turns out to be, is merely another word for hybrid. Against this backdrop it would be useful to view the Korean Wave as a phenomenon in which one local culture acts as the common meeting point for a variety of other cultures, transcending both similarities and differences. By Kim Yonghee

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Vol.14 Winter 2011

Special Section

Spotlight on Korean Pop Culture

Digital Paradigms Changing the Face of Korean Pop Culture

Storytellers in the digital age aren’t limited to the written word, and strive to use diverse images and technologies to effectively convey their tales to the masses. Movies, animation, games, as well as books are all effective means of delivering entertaining stories. Virtual worlds, where mutual interaction with users is important, can be seen as alternative spaces containing a wide variety of content. From this perspective, Korea’s diverse cultural content possesses both universal and Korean characteristics while actively incorporating various forms of digital technology. As a result, it conforms to digital paradigms, yet remains interesting and unique. In the 20th century, Korean pop culture tried to enter the global market with purely Korean themes and characteristics. In the 21st century, however, mainstream Korean cultural products are distinctive yet maintain compatibility with universal cultural norms. In this article we delve into the secrets of success for products ranging from “Pororo the Little Penguin,” who has captured the hearts of children in more than 120 nations, to popular Korean MMORPG, which boast the highest number of concurrent users in the world.

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“Edutainment” Tailored for Kids Today South Korea is known as an “edutainment” power that deftly combines education and fun. Edutainment isn’t used to kill time or cause children to zone out, yet is also different from the problem-solving material commonly found in textbooks. Because the content itself is engaging, children achieve realizations on their own through the process of direct observation, experience, and contemplation. Having a compelling story is the most important factor in edutainment. The children’s animation program “Pororo the Little Penguin” made its debut in 2003, and has been sold to more than 120 countries since then, with an estimated brand value of 389.3 billion Korean won. Pororo has been OSMU-licensed (One Source MultiUse) for over 1,500 items including toys, stationery, and clothing. Pororo’s nickname in South Korea is “The Kids’ President” due to his huge popularity with children. Their fascination with Pororo is so great that simply showing Pororo to crying babies is said to be enough to quiet them.

Children are actually quite finicky consumers because, unlike adults, they react immediately and viscerally. If the character or story is even slightly boring, children quickly lose interest. What, then, do picky children find so fascinating about Pororo? “Pororo the Little Penguin” is fully-rendered in 3D and includes a diverse cast of characters to hold children’s interest. Content-wise, the series understands the desires of children, providing them with the stories and visuals they are interested in. Probably the biggest reason for Pororo’s success is the appealing storyline found in each episode that engages and draws children in. First of all, the animated series is set in Antarctica, a place that most kids have never been to. This stimulates their imagination. The North and South Poles in particular are perceived in almost the same way by the world’s children, regardless of culture, helping Pororo succeed in diverse markets. Second, Pororo and company have created their own community where they live without parents or guardians. Thus, when serious problems occur, Pororo and his friends have to solve everything on their own, affirming children’s desires to be independent. Third, each character evokes animals from fables, while also doing a good job of representing different child personalities: Pororo is active and adventurous, Eddy is an inventive tinkerer, Loopy likes to cook, Poby likes to take photos, while Crong is the temperamental youngest of the bunch. According to their characteristics, children project themselves onto any of these personalities as well as onto additional characters appearing in the program. This panoply of characters also presents children with diverse perspectives. Fourth, cliched villains are absent. In most traditional animation, there is a clear division between good and evil, with narratives praising the former and denouncing the latter. In contrast, when conflicts or problems arise in “Pororo the Little Penguin,” all the characters work together to overcome them. Therefore in every episode, while the story itself is interesting, emotional themes are invariably hidden within the plot for children to mull over. Discarding the good vs. evil framework, “Pororo the Little Penguin” appeals to children through its depiction of natural ways to solve problems. Fifth, in every episode the series depicts activities that children long to try but are forbidden to do. To be more precise, each episode is concerned with limits and how to overcome them, earning the program the lasting love of children worldwide.

In 2000, Korea’s edutainment industry began to use highquality 3D rendering technology in unique works of storytelling. “Robocar Poli,” one of the popular animation series currently being aired in Korea circa 2011, is focused on vehicles, which have been a perennial favorite category for children. This series goes beyond simply anthropomorphizing vehicles, a common sight in regular animation, to explain the motives behind a vehicle’s desire to transform. The series was created for children ages four to six, depicting issues and solutions to problems commonly faced by this age group. There are many other examples of beloved Korean edutainment that features engaging plot lines, charming characters, and themes with emotional appeal. Nowadays, there are many upstart works of animation that dream of becoming the next “Pororo the Little Penguin” for the ‘post-Pororo’ era.

Online Games Increase Number of Users through “Random Stories” Edutainment is just one driver of Korea’s digital culture. Another driver is the world of online games, which even adults can enjoy. Korea is a powerhouse in a world of online gaming that has witnessed diverse social phenomena, benefits to the game industry, and excellent research results. The world’s first graphic MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) was “The Kingdom of the Winds,” developed in Korea. Today MMORPG encompass a wide range of games that appeal to all age groups: “Maple Story” is popular with teenagers, while “Lineage” is popular with male gamers in their 30s and 40s. Korea also introduced the partial subscription revenue model to the online game industry. As such, Korea was both first and foremost in online gaming, with its people today as some of the most passionate in the world about developing and playing games online.

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Vol.14 Winter 2011

Special Section

South Korea’s leading game developer, NCsoft, chose the medieval era as the setting for its trilogy of games “Lineage,” “Lineage 2,” and “Aion.” For the past 12 years, the first title has steadily drawn gamers, while the second title is still going strong even after eight years. The third and most recent title alone cost 23 billion Korean won to develop. This trilogy has earned a total of three trillion Korean won in revenue. In addition to these games, other large-scale Korean online games have been well-received in China, Japan, Taiwan, North America, and Europe. In online gaming, the most important factor is the number of concurrent users, a statistic in which Korean online games lead the industry. The main factors behind the success of South Korean online games are culture and technology. Whereas existing console games emphasized human-computer interaction, Korea’s online games emphasize interaction between human beings and the formation of gaming communities. Therefore, the world of gaming transcends the world of machines, becoming a virtual world that can influence human lives. South Korea’s online games also try to ref lect a variety of real socio-cultural phenomena in the virtual world. When actual political or social issues come to the fore in Korea, passionate debates are held within these online worlds. Seen from this perspective, virtual worlds are more akin to creative works in progress than finished products. Unlike today’s movies or animation, online games avoid presenting a well-crafted story to passive viewers. Instead, online games are worlds in flux created through users’ active participation. Therefore, in order to create vibrant virtual worlds, the participation of users and the random events they cause are of paramount importance. In Korea’s virtual worlds, users display creativity and initiative. While they are faithful online role players, they have demonstrated their ability to bypass the bounds set by developers, as illustrated in various incidents. 16 list_ Books from Korea

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For example, in “Lineage,” gamers gain a sense of satisfaction from leveling up their characters and obtaining items. They come to empathize with their avatars. Through the clan community system, users can interact with each other and build friendships. In fierce battles called sieges, opposing clans fight one another, allowing users to taste the glory of triumph or the ignominy of defeat. The random events that occur in the normal course of online gaming are what sometimes make virtual worlds more compelling than actual reality. The accumulation of many such player-created events makes the creation of a vast virtual world possible. In fact, the great success of Korean online games in general is due to their excellent production values, which are created through the hard work of developers as well as through active user participation. Online games go beyond simple entertainment, providing alternative creative spaces for new cultural phenomena. Korea, blessed with a long history and rich traditions, has possessed a wealth of legends and folklore since long ago. These are now appearing in digital form, utilized as fun and engaging game content. One could say that the local online game industry was founded on the basis of Korean folklore’s mythological imagination. Examining the world’s successful games reveals that many of them contain elements of mythology at their core. Mythology is universal rather than provincial, making it well-suited for creating a global consensus. The oral tradition basically requires interaction between the storyteller and listeners, and this same interaction occurs in the digital culture of online gaming. This world is real-time by nature, created by constant interactions among users. In the oral tradition, the storyteller and listeners pass the story back and forth as if knitting cloth with filling yarn and raw thread. This metaphor describes the interplay between game developers and the players who work together to create online epics.

Beyond IT Power to Cultural Powerhouse Korea is commonly known for its highly-developed IT industry, which has affected a wide variety of sectors during the process of technological development. The arts and technology have an especially complementary relationship: as technology develops, art is greatly affected. It naturally follows, then, that Korean IT will both directly and indirectly influence cultural content. Information technology has exerted a direct influence on the technology of the oral tradition. Its form is also becoming more compatible with the digital paradigm, reflecting an evolution in both content and form. Prime examples of the intersection between technology and art are edutainment and online games. These creations are sublime technical works that also reflect the digital paradigm, conveying stories in an engaging way and in a form most suited for the digital era. By Han Hyewon

Special Section

Spotlight on Korean Pop Culture

From Print to Screen and Back Again The Dramatization of Novels, the Novelization of Dramas Hollywood is well known for its heavy dependence on bestsellers for interesting stories, and a large number of Japanese films and dramas have their roots in comic books and novels. Likewise, Korean television dramas are always on the lookout for fresh stories. As we can see from the success of the Harry Potter movie franchise, quality works of literature are increasingly proving themselves to be a great source for multimedia adaptation, a trend that is now prevalent in Korea as well. Television drama writers are constantly searching for material gleaned from stories in novels, and likewise popular dramas are commissioned for novelization. Such practices are part of a natural progression of the contemporary entertainment industry, which seeks to maximize profits through the multimedia adaptation of a single content source.

The Dramatization of Novels In Korea, novels that are adapted for television dramas are, for the most part, genre fiction. Many of these works by new or unknown writers that have been picked up by small to medium-sized publishers have been adapted into huge hits. The most notable recent drama adaptation is “The Deep-Rooted Tree,” (2011) a period mystery drama based on Lee Jung-myung’s novel of the same title about King Sejong, the king who created Hangul, the Korean alphabet. Lee, who is famous for period fiction with creative plotlines, successfully reconstructs the development process of the Korean writing system and imagines what conflicts might have surrounded it, digging deeper than what appears in the annals of the Joseon dynasty. Shedding new light on King Sejong, the most revered monarch of the Joseon era, is the story’s other main focus. The participation of the screenwriting duo Kim Young-hyun and Park Sang-yeon of “The Great Queen Seondeok” fame has also created a great buzz for the drama. “The Painter of Wind” (2007) is another drama adaptation of Lee Jung-myung’s work based on the provocative assumption that Shin Yun-bok, a brilliant painter from the Joseon era, was in fact a woman. Moon Geun-young, beloved as “every Korean’s little sister,” assumed the role of Shin Yun-bok in the drama as a woman who disguises herself as a man, which earned her the nickname of “every Korean’s little brother.” The idea that Shin Yun-bok was in fact a woman was also used in the film “Portrait of a Beauty” produced at approximately the same time as the drama. The drama “Sungkyunkwan Scandal” (2010) is based on Jeong Eun-gwol’s period romance about four teenagers from the Joseon era, The Days of Sungkyunkwan Confucian Students. The story is about a girl from a ruined noble family who disguises herself as

a boy and becomes a Sungkyunkwan pupil. Based on the “girl disguised as a boy” plot device, the drama tells the coming of age story of four Sungkyunkwan pupils, poking fun at the patriarchy that dominated society and contemplating a new era with the reformist King Jeongjo. Thanks to the great popularity of the cast including Song Joong-ki and former TVXQ member Park Yucheon, the drama also enjoyed great popularity as a part of Hallyu, the Korean Wave. The girl disguised as a boy and fictional history (faction) devices are currently the hottest tropes in Korean dramas. The girl disguised as a boy motif represents a catalyst that challenges the fixed paradigm of patriarchy and heterosexuality and upsets the existing order. A fictionalized history reflects the shift in social perception that allows history to be the subject of light-hearted and playful reconstruction instead of being heavy with the weight of the past. Other notable Korean dramas adapted from novels include “My Lovely Sam-soon” (2005, original story by Ji Su-hyeon), a Korean version of Bridget Jones’s Diary; “Coffee Prince” (2007, original story by Lee Seon-mi), a romantic comedy based on the girl

My Sweet Seoul (2008)

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Special Section

My Lovely Sam-soon (2005)

disguised as a boy plot with a touch of homosexuality; “Gyeongseong Scandal” (2007, original story by Lee Seon-mi) used the politically oppressive Japanese colonial period as a unique backdrop for romance; and “Rooftop Room Cat” (2003, original story by Kim Yu-ri), a romance featuring a female leading character who comes from a humble background but is full of positive energy. The huge popularity of “Rooftop Room Cat,” the first drama adaptation of an Internet novel, bolstered the popularity of commercial fiction as a source material for dramas. With the exception of “Gyeong-seong Scandal,” every drama mentioned above is a typical romantic comedy featuring a romance between a rich man and a girl from a humble background. However, they were successfully able to avoid becoming clichés by creating confident and guileless female leads. For instance, “My Lovely Samsoon” featured Kim Seon-ah as a likable pastry chef with plain looks and “Coffee Prince” featured Yoon Eun-hye as an energetic girl from a humble background who disguises herself as a boy in order to get a job at a coffee shop with an all-male staff. In both dramas, the good-looking but bratty rich boys fall hard for the female character’s guileless personality, stroking the ego of female viewers. Although not so common as genre fiction, literary fiction is also being adapted into TV dramas and films. “The Immortal Yi Sunshin” (2004) focused on the private side of Admiral Yi Sun-shin, based on Kim Hoon’s The Song of the Sword and Kim Takhwan’s The Immortal Yi Sun-shin. A journalist turned novelist, he writes exquisitely about the individual’s struggle against dominant social discourse or pressure to protect his or her identity. Kim Hoon’s portrait of Yi Sun-shin in The Song of the Sword shed Yi’s image of being a national hero and revealed his private side, gaining a huge following and enjoying a popularity rivaling that of the novel itself. In addition to The Immortal Yi Sun-shin, Kim Takhwan’s I, Hwang Jin-i was made into the drama “Hwang Jin-i” (2006). Hwang Jin-i is a historic figure from the Joseon era who, despite her position as a gisaeng, or courtesan, defied the limits imposed upon her by feudal society with her beauty, talent, and spirit. In the drama, Ha Ji-won assumed the title role and conveyed the image of a strong independent woman who defies her destiny. A passionate writer who abandoned the security of a tenured professorship to focus on his writing career, many of K im Takhwan’s novels have been popular for adaptations. Following the dramatization of The Sound of Thunder, The Immortal Yi Sunshin and Hwang Jin-i, early this year The Secret of the Virtuous Widow was made into the hit film “Detective K: the Secret of a 18 list_ Books from Korea

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Virtuous Widow.” Another film based on his novel Gabi the Russian is awaiting release under the title “Gabi,” and the film rights for A Court Lady from Joseon in Paris, The Banggakbon Murder Case, and The Arrest of the Ghost by a Buyeo County Official have already been sold. In another example, Jung Yi-hyun’s My Sweet Seoul was adapted into a drama of the same title in 2008, a romance portraying the love life of young urban ladies. The actress Choi Kang-hee, who is renowned for her great sense of fashion among young women, received critical acclaim for her portrayal of a modern woman. The greater popularity of genre fiction for drama adaptation, compared to serious literary fiction, can be explained by literature’s slow response at incorporating changes in social conditions and lifestyle that TV dramas are required to incorporate almost instantaneously. Korean literature, however, has been a great resource for Korean film, now enjoying its second golden age. “The film My Wife Got Married” (2008) featuring Son Ye-jin as the female lead, adapted from Park Hyun-wook’s novel of the same title, created a sensation when it was released. The story revolves around a woman who dares to have both a husband and a lover. Many works of popular writer Gong Jiyoung have been made into hit movies including “Our Happy Time” (2005) and “The Crucible” (2011), proving her novels’ strength as original stories. “Our Happy Time,” featuring Kang Dong-won and Lee Na-young, looked into the issue of capital punishment and triggered an anticapital punishment movement. The most recent film adaptation of her work, “The Crucible,” starring Gong Yoo, is a story about heinous sexual abuse that occurred at a school for children with disabilities and the corrupt and broken system that ignores such injustices, addressing the serious issue of child sexual abuse. A writer representing the 386 generation (referring to the generation of Koreans who were born in the 1960s and attended college in the 1980s when the military dictatorship collapsed), Gong’s work has been frequently made into movies including “Go Alone Like a Rhinoceros Horn” (1993). A strong focus on social issues and intense drama based on true stories makes her work great for screen adaptation.

Sungkyunkwan Scandal (2010)

In recent years graphic novels have been sought after for TV and screen adaptation. Kang Full and Huh Young-man are among the most popular. The great popularity of Kang Pool’s work and the humane messages of many of his stories led to screen adaptations of five of his graphic novels: “APT” (2006), “Innocent” (2008), “The Fool” (2008), “I Love You” (2010), and “Pain” (2011). The popularity of his graphic novels, however, did not translate into screen success, making his work one of the toughest original stories for adaptation. In contrast, Huh Young-man’s works have enjoyed great success both at the box office and in TV ratings, including the top grossing film of 2006, “Tazza: the High Rollers” starring Jo Seung-woo and Kim Hye-su. “Le Grand Chef” has also been adapted into two commercially successful feature films (2007, 2009) and a hit TV drama (2008). One emerging graphic novel artist of note is Yoon Tae-ho. The screen adaptation of his work “Moss” (2010) by director Kang Woosuk highlighted his great ability for strong plot. Won Su-yeon is another graphic novel artist whose work has been adapted television dramas, mostly romantic stories such as “Full House” (2004), starring Song Hey-kyo and Rain, and “Marry Me, Mary” (2010), starring Moon Geun-young and Jang Geun-suk.

Novelization of Dramas The novelization of dramas is also increasingly becoming a common practice. This is particularly true for hit dramas, with the majority of popular dramas being adapted into novels. Recently, a graphic novel type adaptation featuring only drama scenes and dialogue is becoming more common. Most hit dramas, such as “Secret Garden” (2010) that made Hyun Bin enormously popular, “You’re Beautiful” (2009), famous for making Jang Guen-suk a superstar in Japan, “My Girlfriend is a Nine-tailed Fox” (2010), a drama that once again proved the great sensibility of its writers, the Hong sisters, and “The Greatest Love” (2011), have been adapted into either a graphic novel or novel immediately after they were completed. In some cases a novel adaptation is commissioned in advance based on the synopsis to be released as soon as the drama goes on air. The novel adaptation of “The Princess’ Man,” a drama about a Romeo and Juliet-like romance during the period of political warfare from the Joseon era, was released as a tie-in with the drama.

1 2 3

1. The Painter of Wind (2 volumes) Lee Jung-myung Mllionhouse Publishing Inc., 2007, 266p, ISBN 9788991643260 (Vol. 1) 2. The Immortal Yi Sun-shin (8 volumes) Kim Takhwan GoldenBough Publishing Co.,Ltd. 2004, 348p. ISBN 9788982736827 (Vol. 1)

3. The Days of Sungkyunkwan Confucian Students (2 volumes)

Jeong Eun-gwol, Paranmedia 2009, 423p, ISBN 9788963710051 (Vol. 1)

4. My Sweet Seoul Jung Yi-hyun, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. 2006, 442p, ISBN 9788932017150

The novel adaptation of a hit drama “The Great Queen Seondeok” (2009) was also published. This drama opened the door for a wave of female-oriented political dramas by focusing on the female character Mishil, a historic figure briefly mentioned in Hwarangsegi. Famous dramas such as “Winter Sonata” (2002), which triggered the Korean Wave, and “Dae Jang Geum” (2003), have all been adapted into novels. Both “Winter Sonata” and “Dae Jang Geum” have been adapted into a novel, musical, animation, and comic book. This novelization of popular dramas is becoming increasingly common as a business model for diversifying ways to generate profit from an original content source. The greatest market growth engine for the novel adaptation of hit dramas is a loyal fan base at home and abroad who long to repeat the experience of watching the drama through another medium. A case in point is the writer Noh Heekyoung, who has a huge cult following, and has published a collection of her drama scripts as well as novel adaptations of her own dramas. The quartet “The Most Beautiful Goodbye” (1996), which she dedicated to her late mother, is one of the novel adaptations she worked on. She also published original scripts and received great reviews. Noh’s published TV scripts include “The World That They Live In” (2008), a story about life and romance of diverse people working for a broadcasting company starring Song Hye-kyo and Hyun Bin; “Lie” (1998), her career making drama with a searing look at the psyche of a couple in an adulterous relationship; and “Goodbye, Solo” (2006), a story of people who are suffering from a loneliness hard to shake off, whether they are in love or not. By Yang Sunghee

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Vol.14 Winter 2011

Special Section

Spotlight on Korean Pop Culture

K-Pop: From Gayo to Global Six years ago, I wrote a paper titled “Cultural Politics of K-Pop.” The use of the term K-pop caused something of a stir as it was generally unknown to the public back then. In fact, the term K-pop was more commonly used in Japan than in Korea at the time, so that I included the subtitle, “K-Pop, Made in Korea and Packaged in Japan?” It was quite reasonable to assume that the term K-pop was derived from J-pop, and my analysis was also focused on how K-pop was consumed in the Asian region, including Japan. A few years later, K-pop is clearly moving beyond Asia. According to the KBS documentary “K-Pop: Making the World Dance” that aired on June 24th, 2011, K-pop is now enjoyed by audiences in countries ranging from Europe to Latin America. The documentary itself was produced after the “SM TOWN LIVE” concert in Paris drew an explosive response from local fans. K-pop’s global reach can also be observed from the number of foreign contestants singing and dancing to K-pop music quite adeptly in the recent slew of audition programs that has swept Korean television. Now K-pop has established itself as the official term for Korean pop music both at home and abroad. Although some Koreans may still feel more familiar with the term gayo (the Korean term for Korean pop music), we may have to leave it behind when we go 20 list_ Books from Korea

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abroad. At this point, therefore, it might be worthwhile to explore when and how gayo became K-pop. Taking a look at when, where, and how Korean pop music gained an audience in the last 10 years should throw some light on the matter. There are few examples of Korean pop artists gaining popularity abroad up to the mid-1990s. In the mid-1980s Jo Yong-pil, already a successful singer in Korea, became a hit in surrounding Asian countries, including Japan, with such numbers as “Please, Come Back to Busan Harbor.” He even contemplated a singing career in Japan during his stay there. Then in the 1990s the popular female singer Kim Wan-seon explored a career in Hong Kong and Taiwan, releasing a series of albums recorded in Chinese. Such cases, however, were isolated instances. The popularity they enjoyed abroad may have been a career high for these singers but it was not part of a major trend. The music of these artists was also far from cutting edge. The more forgetful of us notwithstanding, many would agree that the Korean pop music and the pop music industry of the time was less sophisticated and polished compared to that of Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. While there is much variation among different countries, the East Asian music industry as a whole relies heavily on visual

media such as television and film to promote artists. That is why it is extremely tough for a foreign artist to become a star through promotions based on TV appearances without careful planning and strong commitment. The popularity of Hong Kong pop music (referred to as Cantonese pop) in the Asian region is a case in point. In Hong Kong, entertainers often have both acting and singing careers. These performers first found audiences outside of Hong Kong through their films, which led to record sales abroad. This was back when the posters of Hong Kong stars such as Leslie Cheung, Alan Tam, Andy Lau, and Li Ming were selling out. In this period, artists, as well as products, had to physically appear in foreign countries to become a hit across the region. If all this sounds like a thing of the past, it is because so many changes have happened in the media since then. The so-called media globalization phenomena swept across Asia in the 1990s thanks to the popularization of cable and satellite TV and a little thing called the Internet. This trend accelerated after the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s. The changes in media explain the popularity of Clon in Taiwan, H.O.T. in China, Lee Jeong-hyeon in Vietnam, and Baby V.O.X. in Mongolia in the 1990s. Artists no longer had to make physical appearances as they did in the past. During this period, it became increasingly common for a TV show produced in one country to be shown to an audience in another country. It is no mystery that many of the people who were first exposed to K-pop around this time heard it as a soundtrack on television dramas. Still, in many respects, the Korean Wave at the end of the 1990s was significantly different from the popularity enjoyed by K-pop today. Time lag is one of the differences that stand out. It took time for what was popular in Korea to catch on in other Asian countries. In other words, K-pop was not trending in real time. While it is easy to take it for granted nowadays, the popularity of K-pop abroad was a genuine surprise back then with few people prepared to promote it systematically. The fact that the K-pop artists mentioned above did not enjoy wide popularity across Asia, but that their appeal was quite specific to individual countries, also made it difficult to make systematic planning and promotion efforts. That was why many artists turned their eyes to overseas markets after their career peaked in Korea, a career move that has become obsolete nowadays. BoA’s 2001 debut in Japan was probably the first attempt to consciously market and promote an artist overseas. As is well known, she was recruited at an early age and underwent rigorous training in order to enter overseas markets, including Japan. The expression “localization” often appeared in news articles to describe her strategy for success—staying in the country for a prolonged period of time, learning the local system to become a star there rather than trying to make it in Korea first and use that to jumpstart an overseas career. SM Entertainment, the talent agency behind BoA’s success, applied the same localization strategy to TVXQ for their 2004 debut in Japan. Other examples include actors such as Ryu Shi-won, Park Yong-ha, and Lee Byung-hun, who have released

records in Japan and positioned themselves as recording artists as well as actors. Another example would be Jang Na-ra, who lived in Beijing and built her career within the local Chinese entertainment system. Of course, all these “localized” artists recorded albums in the local language. Localization, however, did not work for everyone, nor did it become the norm in the K-pop industry. The toughest challenge the industry faced in the early 2000s was illegal downloading. The impact that the digitalization of music, or rather the digital distribution of music, had on the music industry was too great to be fully discussed here. SM Entertainment, JYP Entertainment, and YG Entertainment were among the few to survive the seismic shift (hereafter referred to as the Big 3 for convenience’s sake). By far the collapse of the record industry and the nascent digital music market was the biggest push for the K-pop industry’s move towards overseas markets. During this period the Big 3 scrambled to expose their best stars to as many overseas markets as possible. As mentioned earlier, SM promoted BoA and TVXQ, JYP pushed for Rain, and YG bet on Se7en. Fortunately there was now a demand for these artists in overseas markets and the venture was a success. According to my research on the K-pop phenomenon in 2005, Rain and Se7en were popular across Southeast Asia including Thailand and Singapore as well as China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Encouraged by their success in the Asian market, the two artists turned their eyes to the U.S. market. Rain had a concert tour in the U.S. and starred in Hollywood movies, and Se7en tried to release an English single. Min, a member of Miss A, is also known to have worked on building a singing career in the U.S. during this period. The K-pop industry’s love affair with the American Dream reached a new height in 2009, when BoA released an English album in the spring and the Wonder Girls released an English single in the fall. We don’t have to pretend that all of these efforts were a smashing success. However, it is also true that such efforts have attracted global attention to K-pop. Not only has K-pop become a well-established term, it has also come to be associated with a certain style—good-looking artists, energetic and dramatic group dancing, catchy tunes, and a lively beat. Such basic pop music qualities have always been there in Korean pop music. But the groups leading the current K-pop trend are definitely an improvement not only in terms of looks, but also in terms of dancing and stage performance. The sound producing and recording quality has improved as well, which marks a dramatic change from the K-pop of the 20th century.

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Special Section

Without getting into technicalities, it is safe to say that K-pop has moved beyond a single musical genre and become a semi-automatic producing method. It is no coincidence that English articles covering K-pop often use the machine metaphor to describe it, showing an intuitive awareness of the systematic music production process. These changes are even more pronounced in the forms of media in which K-pop is disseminated. Of course, it is still important to perform well on television and to produce well-packaged albums, but the medium most responsible for the current popularity of K-pop is video footage available via the Internet free of charge. Video sharing websites such as YouTube provide a space for sharing music where music fans worldwide can enjoy music they like, free from the constraints of their physical locations. More and more copyright holders are sharing their music on such sites, utilizing them for promotion and marketing. Now the expression real time has become the norm to those who came of age at the turn of the century and after. Users of these sites not only use them for sharing

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and distributing videos they like, but also produce videos themselves (UCC) and form global fan communities for a specific musical genre or artist. If such change is not limited to K-pop, then why is K-pop making a sensation right now? One of the answers many be that before the 21st century, or more specifically before digital media distribution became popular, music such as K-pop did not have the means to move beyond national borders and be introduced to a global audience. This seems the time to conclude with a more detailed definition for “music such as K-pop.” Such music refers to pop music from any country that studied and practiced dominant American pop music for a long period of time and finally became able to produce music of rivaling quality. Some might say that K-pop is too commercial, artificial, and lacks soul. Conversely, K-pop’s popularity proves that such commercial music can still achieve great success in the global music market. K-pop is a welloiled machine, soulless but efficient. Those who seek soul in music can listen to other genres. K-pop’s popularity also demands Koreans to reconsider their treasured belief that “the most Korean is what is truly global.” What K-pop has shown is that what is most global becomes truly Korean. In other words, the world is changing Korea, and through that change the short but cool prefix of “K-” has replace that of the Republic of Korea and South Korea in pop culture. By Shin Hyunjoon

Special Section

Spotlight on Korean Pop Culture

Old Boy (2003)

The Korean Film Industry Makes Waves Nowadays when I meet people at international film festivals, Hallyu, or the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Korean Wave,â&#x20AC;? becomes a topic of conversation. Of course, the Korean Wave they are referring to is different from the commercial Hallyu spoken of within Korea. Foreigners tell me their personal accounts of how they came to know and fall in love with Korean pop culture. I have had several opportunities to attend the annual Korean Film Festival held in Florence, Italy, and this year I had a discussion with a film festival volunteer named Francesco. He shared his thoughts with me regarding Korean cinema. Francesco is a step closer to South Korea than most, as he is married to a Korean woman who came to Florence to study. Francesco used to work at the Uffizi Gallery which is famous for its many Renaissance artworks, and nowadays does his own Italian subtitles for Korean dramas, submitting them to fan sites. In fact, Francesco was even more familiar with Korean dramas than I was! We might call Francesco a special case, but to hear his story illustrates the method through which the Korean Wave should spread. His interest in Korean culture started with movies, but his first taste of foreign culture itself was through China and Japan. For Europe's younger generation that includes Francesco, Korean movies and dramas are rarely their first foray into foreign culture. In most cases, their eyes are opened to Asian culture through Japan and China, countries which many Westerners are curious about. Throughout Italy, one can find Japanese comics or animation posters, and wherever I went Italians politely asked me if I was from Japan or China.

According to Francesco and other European youths, however, many of their stereotypes about Asia were dispelled after viewing Korean f ilms. W hen encountering a new culture, the most important thing is to find personally familiar styles and codes. Many European film critics have pointed out that Korean cinema is characterized by intensity and heterogeneity. Foreigners with a fondness for Korean cinema find that it grows on them, and such an interest often branches out into various Korean dramas and even to Korean pop music. There is an important issue to consider within this phenomenon; Korean culture has been able to spread to the Western world thanks to new technologies such as the Internet and sites like YouTube. Online videos of singing and dancing Korean 'idols' and girl groups who are the spokespersons of Korean pop can be easily accessed online as well as imitated by fans. In addition, the plethora of online storage services in Europe has turned the existing movie distribution model on its head. The process of introducing movies at film festivals, followed by screenings in movie theaters, DVD sales, and finally TV syndication takes a long time. Although online storage space is illegally used for uploading and downloading movies, it is a medium for quickly introducing Korean cinema to the world. Perhaps that is why movies, which speak the universal language of imagery, have been relatively successful as a component of the Korean Wave compared to literature and dramas, which require the translation of content and dialogue. The spread of new technologies has helped Korean film reach a wider audience. Korean cinema also began to receive attention thanks to screenings at international film list_ Books from Korea

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Special Section festivals during this period. Im Kwon-taek was the first Korean director to receive international acclaim, followed by Hong Sangsoo and Kim Ki-duk. Their films entered the international film festival circuit in the late 90s, exposing European audiences to Korean cinema. Interest in Korean film exploded in popularity, however, after director Park Chan-wook's “Old Boy” was released in 2003. Even today, many movie buffs refer to “Old Boy” as the most famous cinematic work from Korea after the year 2000. Although the movie was an adaptation of Japanese manga, it made considerable departures from the original through reinterpretation, endowing it with a totally different style. Perhaps most importantly, it made it possible for viewers to consider the universal question of original sin, adding a modern-day Oedipal plot twist involving incestuous relations between a father and daughter. Park Chanwook's works include both the sorrow of tragedy as well as elements of action-packed fantasy. In “Old Boy,” there is a scene in which the protagonist tracks down the solitary prison where he had been confined for 15 years, and assaults the compound armed only with a hatchet. The intense violent imagery from this scene is visually dazzling and contributes to the diversity of the work itself. Korean cinema can be said to have entered a new phase since the arrival of director Park Chan-wook. In previous works by directors Hong Sang-soo and Kim Ki-duk, artistic reflection and personal style were the main draws for audiences. For example, Hong Sangsoo's works evoked a European art film style, while his use of repeated imagery and jarring observations about reality showcased his unique humor. Director Kim Ki-duk's works, brimming with sex and violence, exemplified Korean cinema's cult sensibilities. His works make a strong impression on audiences through plots dealing with controversial issues and the use of intense blood-splattered imagery. Even today the people I meet abroad can still recall scenes from his movies. Director Im Kwon-taek's films are set in quintessentially Korean settings and deal with Korean issues more than other Korean films, making them comparatively inaccessible to foreign and Western mores. Although Korean films before 2000 won prizes at film festivals in Venice, Cannes, and Berlin, this was possible due to Korean cinema's internalization of the art house style favored by the festivals.

Spring Summer Fall Winter and Spring (2003)

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Universality and Uniqueness “Old Boy,” which was screened at Cannes, was able to attract more mainstream interest thanks to its elements of Greek tragedy familiar to Western audiences, masterfully combined with unique action sequences that created cinematic pleasure. This development signaled a trend of diversification for Korean film. King Oedipus and Oh Dae-soo, the protagonist of “Old Boy,” have much in common. As we all know, Oedipus is the tragic figure who unwittingly kills his father and sleeps with his mother. Oh Daesoo is a tragic character who is imprisoned for 15 years without knowing why, surviving solely on fried dumplings during his internment. Instead of the magnificent city-state of Thebes, Oh Dae-soo's tale centers upon a small room in a run-down building, yet both Oedipus and Oh Dae-soo are figures who cannot escape from destiny's grip. Both characters can survive only by giving up their sight. The story is a manifestation of humanity's awareness of original sin lying deep within. The film is a unique statement made from the fusion of Greek tragedy and the director’s style. Directors Bong Joon-ho, Kim Jee-woon, Ryu Seung-wan, and Na Hong-jin, who came onto the international film scene together with Park Chan-wook, are known for works that have a firmer genre film foundation while being creative in their own right. Genre films are typically associated with Hollywood's commercial film industry, but their most salient feature is that they possess universality, allowing anyone to understand their themes. South Korean genre films maintain the universality of Hollywood genre films while also adding Korea's regional flavor, thereby creating something unique. Director Kim Jee-woon's “A Bittersweet Life” is a fresh reinterpretation of Hollywood's film noir while Bong Joon-ho's “The Host” is a different take on the standard Hollywood monster flick. Ryu Seung-wan's films pay tribute to the action movies of both Hollywood and Hong Kong, but he has begun to create his own distinctive style in the genre. The important fact is that in the process of Korean cinema's development, it has come to ref lect Korean characteristics in traditional Hollywood genres. Let's examine some of the key differences between Korean and Hollywood genre film through director Bong Joon-ho's “The Host.” Like Hollywood's Godzilla, Bong Joon-ho's work contains the obligatory hero who vanquishes the beast. Like Godzilla there are requisite scientists who explain how the monster came to be (the film also features a reporter who plays the tried-and-true role of finding clues to advance the plot). In “The Host,” however, the first scene depicting the U.S. military's illegal disposal of hazardous chemicals down the drain is a

suggestion, not a definite cause, of the monster's origin. “The Host” is concerned not with the monster’s origin, but with placing the monster's existence in the realm of rumor. This ambiguity is actually quite political; consider, for instance, that in many momentous decisions that have affected Korea, clear causality did not exist. The monster is a phenomenon arising out of this ambiguity, and can be said to symbolize the anger of the Korean people. In Greek mythology, the monster with hundreds of heads is called the Hydra. As many literary theorists have pointed out, the Hydra slain by Hercules symbolizes the people. In director Bong's “The Host,” a family is ostensibly pursuing the monster in order to find their daughter, Hyun-seo, but perhaps what they are truly chasing is their rage. In many respects, the hero narrative in “The Host” is quite different from that in Hollywood epics. Actor Song Gang-ho, who plays the role of father, is portrayed as a dullard rather than a stock Hollywood CIA operative. The heroes portrayed in Korea film aren’t heroes with superpowers, but rather shabby and hungry protagonists. In this sense, Bong Joon-ho’s, “The Host” is a personal work that reflects the realities of Korean society. Since 2000, the foundation of the Korean Wave which has carried Korean cinema to distant shores has been the dialectic between Korea's willingness to use universal elements from Western genres and distinct Korean emotional characteristics. In fact, the combination of universality and uniqueness is the harmony that mainstream art aspires to achieve, a harmony that creates suspense through a chemical reaction between the familiar and the strange. Over the course of history, Korean film has been fortunate. When the transition from the 5th to the 6th generation in Chinese film stalled, a flood of independent Japanese films began to appear in the mid-90s, followed by the emergence of Korean film as the new champion of Asian cinema. Only then did Korean cinema begin to receive attention at world-class international film festivals and draw the interest of Western audiences.

The Second Coming of Korean Film Generational change in Korean film is occurring rapidly nowadays and independent Korean film was the international darling last year. In the past, mainstream Korean film pursued experimental and fresh paradigms, but as it has matured, the reality is that Korean cinema has become more focused on individual narratives. Examples of this new trend are director Yang Ik-jun's “Breathless,” which recorded higher box office sales in Japan than in South Korea, Park Jung-beom's “The Journals of Musan,” and Yoon Sunghyeon's “Bleak Night,” all of which are independent films which have recently been in the spotlight.

The Host (2006)

The Korean Wave in the West is diversifying. Viewer interest which was initially confined to prize-winning works at film festivals or the works of certain directors has now broadened to the point where foreign audiences are now open to the possibility of bona-fide stars emerging from the Korean Wave. A prime example is Jun Jihyun from “My Sassy Girl.” Of course, film directors also receive special treatment as the artists behind the movies themselves. Director Lee Chang-dong has alternately been a jury member and participant in the competition category at the Cannes Film Festival, and his most recent work “Poetry” even opened in French theaters. Today Korean films appear in French and Japanese theaters and are screened at various cinemas throughout Europe. Although this isn't big news, the important thing is that Korean movies are being shown in urban theaters and regularly reach audiences. Korean cinema today has diversified to the point where it includes examples of director-driven, genre, independent, and actordriven films to satisfy the different tastes of moviegoers. Although Korean cinema is not at the epicenter of the Korean Wave, it is one step ahead of the overall phenomenon, and offers a model for Hallyu to follow. The story of Korean cinema's continued development can be used as a mirror for the history of the Korean Wave. By Lee Sang-yong

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Vol.14 Winter 2011

Interview

Rediscovering Korea’s Literary Giant Novelist Yi Mun-yol

After 40 years of writing novels, Yi Mun-yol strikes with renewed urgency. Kwon Seong-woo: It's been a long time, Mr. Yi. Over 10 years ago, I accompanied your close friend Jang Chang-shik, Professor of Modern Japanese History at Dongduk Women's University, on a visit to your house in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province. Today is the first time we've met since then, I think. How have you been? Yi Mun-yol: Well, I feel like in the old days my original designs went according to plan, but it doesn't happen so much nowadays. I was supposed to have finished my current project in March and to have begun a new work in the summer, but I still haven't started on the new project yet. Besides the original project I'm working on, there are others that I want to start as well. In the past, such a situation never would have happened. Anyways, for the past three or four months, I've been unable to make concrete progress on my writing, so I've just been reading books. Kwon: I heard that your short story, “An Anonymous Island” (1982), was recently published in The New Yorker on September 12th. I believe this is a sign that the universal literary value of your work has been acknowledged. This is a first in Korean fiction, and I would like to hear your thoughts on this development. Yi: I must say that it was a bit unexpected. During my stay in the United States, I remembered hearing that having one's work appear in The New Yorker was important for entering the American literary world, so I set my hopes on this goal. Ultimately, The New Yorker published one of my works after I had returned to Korea. I believe Heinz Insu Fenkl's superb translation of “An Anonymous Island” (1991) was one of the reasons they decided to publish it. Kwon: Also last June, The Poet (1991) was selected for the 'LITPROM List' by Germany's Society for the Promotion of African, Asian, and Latin American Literature. Together with the critical success of novelist Shin Kyung-sook's Please Look After Mom in the U.S. and other countries, it seems that Korean novels are finally getting the literary recognition they deserve. Some warn, however, that this might be a short-lived phenomenon. What is

needed to keep Korean literature in the international spotlight? Yi: It has already been 20 years since my first novel was translated into a foreign language. Over this period, interest in translating my works for foreign markets has been relatively higher than for other writers, yet I find this issue wearisome. To be honest, there is little that authors themselves can do in the process of introducing Korean literature to foreign audiences. We have no choice but to leave this to foreign readers of various countries who possess their unique outlooks on life. I think it's possible in some cases for foreign readers to pay attention to what Korean writers have to say; it's also possible for Korean writers to become conscious of the global audience and choose themes accordingly. In other words, writers may deliberately choose material likely to appeal to global readers. For example, I believe that American readers want to read well-written Korean novels about North Korea. America is quite interested in the DPRK, having called it the "axis of evil." On the other hand, authors cannot always choose their subject matter in such a mercenary fashion. I think that overall, we can look forward to the outside world becoming more interested in Korean culture and literature. Kwon: There are some who say that the Korean government must play a more active role in overseas support for the Korean arts. What kind of support do you think the Korean government can provide? Yi: Obviously the government can provide support, but it must proceed very carefully as its involvement might actually be counterproductive. Kwon: It's a known fact that many of your works have been translated into various foreign languages, more so than any other Korean writer. Among your yet-to-be-translated works, however, is there any one in particular which you would like to introduce to foreign readers?

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Vol.14 Winter 2011

Interview

novelist Yi Mun-yol and critic Kwon Seong-woo

“Due to my age, I do not have a lot of time left on this Earth, so I’ve given much thought to what kind of novels I am best-suited to write.”

Yi: Yes, The Song of Songs (2000) is such a work. After all this time, it is only now in the process of being translated into English. This work seeks to evoke the aura of the old Korean culture which disappeared long ago from our society. The Song of Songs was written when I was 50 years old and reflects my issues of interest from that period quite well, which is perhaps why I have special affection for it.

Kwon: The close cooperation between author Shin Kyung-sook and a capable translator has been one of the reasons given for the critical success in the U.S. of her novel Please Look After Mom. In your case, to what extent do you collaborate with translators? Yi: Actually, I hardly interact with translators at all. When communication does take place, it mostly takes the form of the translator posing a question to which I reply. Even were I to work one-on-one with a translator, I would only be able to help that person understand the original Korean text, and would be limited because I am not a master of foreign languages. There have also been cases in which I have seen my translated work published without ever seeing the translator's face. Kwon: Are there any comments or critiques of your work from overseas readers that have made an impression on you? Yi: My novels have been translated into a variety of European languages with the exception of English. My works have received varied reviews, but Our Twisted Hero (1987) in particular was reviewed most prolifically. Some reviewers commented that this work was similar to the novella Cat and Mouse by Günter Grass, or William Golding's Lord of the Flies, or any number of works written 28 list_ Books from Korea

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1. An Anonymous Island and Other Stories Yi Mun-yol, Munhaksasang Co., Ltd. 1994, 353p, ISBN 9788970121307

4. A Portrait of Youthful Days Yi Mun-yol, Minumsa Publishing Group 2005, 329p, ISBN 9788937420122

2. Immortality (2 volumes) Yi Mun-yol, Minumsa Publishing Group 2010, 405p, ISBN 9788937482960 (vol. 1)

5. Our Twisted Hero Yi Mun-yol, Minumsa Publishing Group 2005, 199p, ISBN 9788937420207

3. The Song of Songs Yi Mun-yol, Minumsa Publishing Group 2000, 300p, ISBN 9788937403392

in the languages into which my work was translated. There is one terrible review which still sticks in my mind, however. A Columbia University professor claimed that Our Twisted Hero was plagiarized from a Japanese Taisho period novel called Young Kingdom. The basis for his claims were ludicrously flimsy, as the reviewer defined plagiarism in overly-broad terms. The reviewer condemned even the slightest similarities between the novels as wholesale stealing. Of course, there were many good reviews of this work as well. Referring to the French translation, one clergyman wrote me a letter saying that Our Twisted Hero helped him finally understand Korean society, which had remained incomprehensible to him when reading my other novels. This comment moved me, and I was quite thankful to this reader. Kwon: It could be said that you have the largest reader base of any author in the history of modern Korean literature. In my literature classes, I often recommend A Portrait of Youthful Days, (1981) which was one hugely popular work. Recently published works such as Immortality, (2010) however, have sold relatively few copies. What are your thoughts on this? Yi: Yes, I admit my readership today has fallen. There are two reasons for this. The first has to do with the fact that my novels are incompatible with the cultural code of the Internet era. I have been writing for about 40 years now, so it is only natural that my readership might dwindle. The second reason, or perhaps suspicion, is that Korean society is controlled by political forces which deliberately seek to deprive me of a reading audience.

Kwon: Your most recent work is Immortality, a novel about Ahn Jung-geun, which was published in February 2010. Could you talk about your concrete plans going forward? Yi: I'm currently working on a novel set in the modern era as well as another novel centered on a historic figure. Next year I plan to start working on the former, which I conceived of in the 1980s. I'm also putting the final touches on the latter, a historical novel I've been preparing for a long time. Due to my age, I do not have a lot of time left on this Earth, so I've given much thought to what kind of novels I am best-suited to write. At least for the foreseeable future, I plan to complete the two novels referred to earlier. Kwon: Do you hope to regain your lost readership with these new novels? Yi: I cannot help but be slightly concerned about the decline in the popularity of my work, however I do not consider it an urgent matter. Rather, I feel great gratitude to my readers for having enjoyed my writing over the years. As time passes, it is only natural for readers to discover new writers. It is a bit much to expect that my work will be eternally acclaimed. Kwon: I appreciate your time and candor. I hope that your upcoming novels will be worthy additions to your great collection of existing work. By Kwon Seong-woo

I noticed that online reviews of Immortality frequently attacked my political views rather than critiquing the literary merit of the novel itself. The problem is that such online reviews are quite influential. Online booksellers sell many more books than their regular brick-and-mortar counterparts, with something like a six to four ratio in favor of the former. Perhaps it's bad luck, but there is a dedicated camp of people who hate me and my work. Whenever I publish something new, this group does their best to create negative buzz. There have even been over-the-top cases in which my detractors criticize publishers for even daring to print my work. According to my publishers, for about four days after printing one of my new books, it's impossible for them to answer the phone due to the volume of hate calls. The root causes of this are all speculation, of course. Basically my work is out of touch with the spirit of the times and current trends, as reflected in my sales figures.

1. The Poet Yi Mun-yol, Minumsa Publishing Group 2008, 300p, ISBN 9788937482168 2. The Poet, versions published overseas

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Vol.14 Winter 2011

Excerpt

An Anonymous Island That spring, I graduated with a degree in education and took my first job at an elementary school in a rural village, which I will leave nameless. It was sixty li from the county seat, up past two high, rugged mountains in a valley where it seemed no one would want to live. I got off the bus and stood on the slope at the bus stop for a while, feeling desolate and alone. The mountains encircled me like the giant walls of a prison that would confine me for the rest of my life, and the village of about a hundred houses that I saw in the distance looked abandoned—like a ghost town. The school I was looking for must have been hidden behind a ridge. I couldn’t see it anywhere. The few people who had got off the bus with me had already disappeared, so I went to the store nearby to ask for directions. I had gone only a few steps when I felt something like a sharp beam of light pierce my skin. I stopped to look for the source and saw a young man sitting on the back porch of the store, silently watching me. His pants were so stained and dirty that I couldn’t tell what material they were made of, and the sleeves of his dyed army jacket hung in tatters. His face was dark and weathered, with a prominent nose and high cheekbones. I stared at him without realizing it. Just then the light seemed to prick at my skin again. It was hidden behind a veil of madness, but the source was unmistakable—it was coming from the man’s eyes. It’s as if I were on a forest path. I see a snake through the thick foliage and the fear stays with me until I leave. No simple fear but a kind of primal thrill that dissolves into a hollow regret when I’m safely through and the danger has passed. That’s how it made me feel, the light from his eyes, until the shopkeeper opened the door and came out, breaking the illusion. “Ggaecheol, you idiot! What are you doing still sitting out there?” Although the man must have been five or six years older than him, the shopkeeper talked down to him, as if he were a child. The man was apparently not some vagrant just passing through— he belonged to the village. He didn’t even pretend to hear the shopkeeper, but just kept looking at me with those vague hooded eyes. His expression wasn’t lewd or disgusting, but for some reason it frightened me. “You deaf?” the shopkeeper said. “Get up!” He went over and gave Ggaecheol a loud thump on the back, and as I cautiously approached he ca lled out, “Welcome! A re you look ing for something?” It was only then that I was able to break Ggaecheol’s clinging gaze from my body. I asked coolly, “Where is the elementary school?” 30 list_ Books from Korea

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“Ho! So you’re the new lady teacher they said was coming.” The shopkeeper’s face suddenly overflowed with kindness. He turned just as a boy, who looked about six, came out from the back of the store. “Hey, come over here,” he called. “What is it, Mr. Togok?” the boy said. “Looks like this is the new teacher. Show her to the school before you go.” He looked toward me with a hint of pity, and muttered, “The school’s the size of a booger, and it’s way out in those hills.” Obediently, I stepped forward to follow the boy. Ggaecheol’s eyes were on me again, but I had recovered my composure. I shot him a fierce look as I left. Walking to the school with the boy, I realized how quickly I was being introduced to the peculiar dynamics of the village. The boy nodded in greeting to each man we met, calling him “uncle” or “grandfather.” I had grown up in the city, and my only exposure to relatives was when I visited an uncle’s house once or twice a year; the closeness of this place felt strange to me. In the classroom, half the students had the same surname and even those with different surnames seemed to be first cousins. Later, I learned that this was because the village was surrounded on all four sides by layer upon layer of high mountains, with only a single road threading through from north to south. The village produced nothing special, so there was virtually no influx of people from other family lines. After my first encounter with Ggaecheol, I forgot about him for a while. Of course, he was constantly lurking about the village doing nothing, and I would see his shabby form and feel that hooded gaze several times a day, but this was my first job and the first time I had been far away from home by myself. I was busy cultivating my new life and I paid him no attention. But as I more or less adjusted to my new life and had some time to think, I gradually became curious about my surroundings, and the first thing that came to mind was Ggaecheol. What initially struck me was the question of his origins. He wasn’t born in the village and he wasn’t related to anyone there either by blood or by marriage. He had drifted in by chance, however many years ago, and had been living there since. He was over forty, and yet he was known by the childish nickname Ggaecheol, to adults and children alike. The next unusual thing was how he earned his living. At first I assumed he did physical labor or odd jobs, but then I saw that he spent his days doing absolutely nothing. Even so, he was able to get three meals a day and had a place to sleep every night in the village. This is what he did when he wanted to eat: he would burst into any house as the family was gathered around the table, and announce, “Give me some food.” Just as no one ever spoke politely to him, he never used the polite form of address, either. It was strange how the men of the house reacted. Not only were they not annoyed by his intrusions; they actually seemed to welcome him. They would say, “Even an idiot like you has to eat to live. Mix up a bowl for him, dear.” The wife would fill a large ceramic or brass bowl with rice, soup, kimchi, and whatever, stir it all together, and push it to Ggaecheol, who would take the bowl and slurp it all down, sitting on the corner of a straw mat or the edge of the raised wooden floor. As he left, he would announce, “It was good. I’m going now.” “Don’t you say thank you?” “What for?” he’d say. “I ate my food and now I’m going.” He’d wander out and there would be neither hide nor hair of him in that house again for a few months. According to my calculations, the number of days he stayed away was approximately equal to the number of households in the village.

It was similar with his sleeping arrangements. Usually, he slept outdoors in a pavilion or in a common room, but when it grew cold—or if it was a day when no wood had been prepared for the heating fire—he was sure to go around the village saying, “Let me sleep in your house.” “You can sleep here if you take a bath first.” “You won’t need your blanket,” he’d say. “You’re just gonna go lie down next to your wife, right?” That was the usual procedure, and it all seemed a bit too comfortable to me. When I thought about it, there was clearly something strange about Ggaecheol’s relationship with the villagers. The men all treated him like a half-wit or a madman, but it seemed as if they were trying hard to mask their anxiety that perhaps he wasn’t really like that. The women, too, seemed to consider Ggaecheol dimwitted or mad, but beneath their strict maternal façade they hid a protective impulse that went beyond mere sympathy. What I couldn’t understand, no matter how much I thought about it, was why the villagers supported him in this way, like a member of their own community. He did no work, he had no special skills, and he never earned their good will with his wit or humor. But then something happened that hinted at an answer to my question. One day, after I had been there for six or seven months, I was walking home from work when I witnessed a disturbance in the vacant lot in front of my boarding house. A young man was literally pounding Ggaecheol into the dirt, but it was odd—neither the attacker nor the victim indicated any reason for the fight. The young man, with a staff in one hand and a piece of firewood in the other, was wordlessly thrashing Ggaecheol wherever he could find an opening. Ggaecheol was curled up like a porcupine, periodically spitting out a groan. As I watched, not knowing what to do, villagers gathered from here and there, and they ended up explaining the brutal violence. “What the hell are you doing, Hwacheon? We look out for each other in this village! How can you behave like this?” “Tell us, Hwacheon, what could this idiot possibly do?” “That’s right, Hwacheon! You’re losing face and bringing shame on your family. Our ancestors have been here for three hundred years, and not once did a woman get thrown out for adultery.” All the men were trying to make him stop, but to me it sounded as if they weren’t so much trying to convince Hwacheon as reassuring themselves. “Look, Hwacheon, you’ve got to think about your wife’s dignity. Are there no other men in the world that a woman would do it with an idiot like him?” “That’s right! She’s got her own perfectly good snake with Hwacheon here, so why would an idiot . . . Don’t go killing him now!” “You’ve got to behave like a man of your standing. He’s over forty and impotent! Can’t even dream of getting a wife.” Even the older women helped calm the young man down, and their tone, too, suggested that Ggaecheol’s being an idiot was his saving grace—a sort of magical charm. Strangely, not one of the younger women came forward to help, and their angry looks were directed not at Ggaecheol but at the young man wielding the staff. The disturbance didn’t last long, but it was through that unexpected event that I was able to get a sense of why the villagers permitted Ggaecheol to live among them. The fact that everyone in the village was related by blood or marriage also meant that they looked out for one another, especially where issues of morality were concerned. I was now certain that Ggaecheol played some peculiar role in the sex life of this closed village.

My suspicions were confirmed one day when I accidentally overheard some village wives whispering by the bank of a stream. It was a hot and humid summer night, and I had gone there so that I could at least cool my feet. The water must have reflected the sound of their voices, as I was able to hear them from quite a distance. “Don’t you think Yeoung’gok’s baby looks like Ggaecheol?” “Be quiet! Do you want poor Ggaecheol to get killed this time?” “What did I say? I was just talking.” “Even so. Ggaecheol’s just an idiot with no place to go.” “Right, he’s an idiot. Ggaecheol’s just an idiot.” They seemed to end their conversation by tacit agreement, and I thought I heard an intimate tone of conspiracy in their voices. I was finally able to guess why I sensed that strange protective quality for Ggaecheol among the women even when they spoke of him contemptuously. Ggaecheol never worked, but he got three meals a day and a place to sleep every night—and the women were half the reason. But the other half? I couldn’t figure out why the men put up with his presence in the village. [ …… ] My replacement happened to be an alumna of my college, and on the day I left the village she walked me to the bus stop to see me off. Who knows when he showed up, but there was Ggaecheol, crouching on the back porch of the store, watching the new teacher with the same look he had given me on my first day. Seeing that, I was going to tell her about Ggaecheol, but in the end I decided against it. In a village full of people who were so closely related, all tied to the same lineage, he was the sole drifting island of anonymity. Perhaps if she was like most of the village women—or like me two years ago, feeling unbearably trapped and sexually frustrated—she might have need of that anonymous island. Instead of warning her about Ggaecheol, whose eyes clung to her almost hatefully, I shot him a cool look. He met my gaze with the same coolness. I might have been mistaken, but at that moment I thought I saw a faint laughter in his eyes. Just a glimmer. Then he turned his head toward the village and the paddy fields stretching out on the slopes below. There was not a piece of land or a fistful of dirt that he could call his own—or a house, or a room where he could lay his head without the owner’s consent—yet he gazed out over that land like a great man, the possessor of everything, an emperor. Translated by Heinz Insu Fenkl * published in The New Yorker on September 12th, 2011

An Anonymous Island and Other Stories Yi Mun-yol, Munhaksasang Co., Ltd. 1994, 268p, ISBN 9788970121307

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Vol.14 Winter 2011

Interview

One Writer’s Life Novelist Kim In-sook Shim Jinkyung: You have been writing for nearly 30 years straight since your literary debut. But your image is still that of a young writer, and in fact, your works are considered alongside the works of young contemporary writers. What do you think about the way your works are appraised? Kim In-sook: I do make an effort to write like the younger writers. I debuted at 20, and debuting at such a young age can be a handicap. As a result, I’ve been treated as if I’m older than other writers my age. So I feel that if I don’t make an effort to make myself younger, I’ll get lost in the shuffle of time. But it’s not easy. When you write for many years, you never stop building your own house, and that house becomes the box that confines you. That “box” refers to the safe, easy method of writing that is all your own. Seeking out that box means creating the characteristics that are unique to “Kim In-sook, the writer.” But if you settle within that, it becomes difficult to keep pace with contemporary literature. My goal has not been to build up a method of fiction writing that can be summarized as “Kim In-sook’s style,” but to break out of the literary mold that I have created. Shim: So perhaps that is why it is so difficult to group your body of work together into one consistent trend. You’ve demonstrated a keen eye for timely issues and matters that have been regarded as socially and culturally important. Your works from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s address the trends in each of those eras. Your fiction in the 1980s mostly dealt with the turbulence of the South Korean democratization movement or takes place against the backdrop of the labor movement, whereas in the 1990s, the setting of your work expanded to include the everyday spaces of personal lives and addressed the issues of female characters who are unable to break out of the mold of their everyday lives. Then in the 2000s, you broke down the theme of everyday life a little more and addressed it on a deeper level, while also cleaving a little more closely to social conditions. What are your thoughts on this? Kim: I look at that in two ways. First, I tried to respond sensitively to each tendency in my work on a case-by-case basis. In the 1980s, all of Korean society was moving in that direction, and in the 1990s, I got married and had a baby, so that everyday life became a part of my work. Then, with the start of the 2000s, I got divorced, and my life changed. In particular, as I was raising my daughter, those experiences seemed to find their way into my writing. I think the changes in my writing have naturally accompanied the changes in my personal life.

Shim: Nevertheless, if I were to point out a common thread in your work, it would be the fact that you don’t limit the issues of individual lives to the dimension of individual experience but combine them with social and historical issues. Of course, it is a contingent approach, but the characters in your work do seem to represent their respective eras. Upon first read, they seem to be everyday, individual stories, but upon closer inspection, they move in step with their generation. In your writing, there is an unusual coexistence of history and the everyday, as well as society, and the individual. Kim: I used to be called an activist writer. There was a time when I was well-acquainted with socialist realism, which says that literature must serve the social revolution. You could never separate the individual from society. Of course, the method of examining the individual in society and the society in the individual has changed. If the individual was examined through the window of society in the 1980s and 1990s, then now we look at society through the window of the individual. Nevertheless, one thing is clear: regardless of whether we are inside or outside the window, the “society” in my stories hasn’t changed. That’s the root of my literature. But right now, I’m trying not to openly reveal my interest in that society. Instead, I’m trying to show a critical view of society in a roundabout way, by closely scrutinizing individual lives one by one. Shim: Your latest short story collection, Bye, Elena (2009), was awarded the prestigious Dongin Literature Award. This collection gives the impression that you have reached a kind of zenith of insight. This is truly a collection of literary gems. But in glancing over them, what jumps out at me is the keyword “wound.” It’s a vague keyword, but while digging deeply into the “wounded histories” of individuals, it seems to form a solidarity of wounds in the end. The characters in your works are bound together, albeit loosely, through their “woundedness.” Perhaps that is why painful wounds are read as a fate that we cannot escape. I wonder how you achieved such deep insight into wounds. Kim: When I wrote the stories in this collection, I didn’t intend to base them on the theme of wounds. I guess it happened naturally. I just don’t believe that life is fair. You’re born, so you have to live life to the fullest. Steve Jobs passed away recently. One of the news articles that reported his passing included a collection of his quotes. I wanted to write them all down. But not everyone can become Steve Jobs, even if they live exactly the same way he did. When you strip away the layers of those adages or aphorisms, reality is not list_ Books from Korea

Vol.14 Winter 2011

Interview

critic Shim Jinkyung and novelist Kim In-sook

so glamorous. I think that literature has to focus on those pitiful, crumbling lives that cannot be understood through—or rather, cannot be filled by—adages and aphorisms. 99 percent of the world’s people will never become Steve Jobs or Bob Dylan. Shim: But if Steve Jobs or Bob Dylan were to appear in your work, maybe it would not take place in that 99 percent world. Kim: The lives we see are over 90 percent. But I’m not interested in that 90 percent of life. I only deal with the energy to maintain the life that is seen, or the unseen inner side that’s working hard for that life. Maybe that internal side is what you refer to as a “wound.” 2

1. Bye, Elena Kim In-sook, Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2009, 226p, ISBN 9788936437107 2. The Autobiography of a Girl Kim In-sook, Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2005, 266p, ISBN 9788936436889 3. Sohyeon Kim In-sook, Jaeum & Moeum 2010, 340p, ISBN 9788957074848

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Shim: Since we’re on the subject, let’s get into it a little further. In, “Pavane for Jo Dong-ok,” the phrase tongip golsu caught my eye. “Pain that cuts to the bone…” Of all of the phrases about pain that I’ve read, that is the most extreme. This phrase is used to express the pain felt by Princess Suryeong, who suffered after sending her daughter away as a female tribute to the Yuan Dynasty in China, during the Mongol invasions of Korea at the end of the Goryeo period. But it also expresses the suffering of the young daughter who had a child after being raped, then left for Brazil and spent the rest of her life cursing herself as a “whore.” This adds to the pain of the speaker, who sends away her child on impulse. The story can be read as being about the pain and sorrow of three mothers. In that case, would you say that the female body is the source of suffering? Kim: The hardest thing a human being can do is give birth to and raise a child. The role of a mother is the most difficult and painful. Even now I tell my daughter that even if she gets married, she should not have a child. I always feel sorry to my children. Even when they have everything and accomplish everything, the world is unfair. I feel sorry for bringing children into such a world. The pain that can be described as “pain that cuts to the bone” comes directly out of my relationship to my children. I feel regret and guilt and pain and hatred. It frightens me to talk about my children. In the past, it was difficult to talk about my mother, but now I fear talking about my children even more.

“But even if a writer does not reveal a character in his or her entirety, the writer still has to know everything about that character.”

Shim: In Bye, Elena, you talk a lot about holes. Of course the holes in this case symbolize the empty spaces opened up by wounds. The grandmother in “Southern Village Beyond the Mountains” describes a wound the size of a hole in a sieve as gradually widening, and in the end, it becomes a bottomless pit. If a sieve-like hole has the possibility of being sealed, a “bottomless pit” is a hole that can never be stopped up. Each and every one of us who comes from the hole of a mother becomes another hole and vanishes. Saying that out loud makes it sound horrible. This mention of holes also appears in the story “Vertigo.” Isn’t that too nihilistic an imagination?

Kim: This novel begins with loneliness and ends with loneliness. There is no one in this world that is not lonely. In particular, there is nothing more painful than the loneliness of being denied your own existence. “Sohyeon” is the crown prince of Joseon but is denied his rightful position. The story I wanted to tell was too obvious. Everyone loses his or her rightful place in the end for some reason or other. Everyone has her or his own existence disavowed. Therefore, everyone winds up feeling lonely. I am somebody, but at the same time I am nobody. That disavowed “somebody/nobody” is 99 percent of who we are.

Kim: According to one of the Nobel Prize winners, after billions of years, everything will be reduced to white ash and will vanish. Light vanishes, and that is the fate of the universe. I feel the same way. These are the lives we were given, so we have to live them to their fullest, but what is left after that effort ultimately amounts to nothing.

Shim: Is that why you are more interested in reanalyzing and recasting people who are excessively evil or those who have been cast out from the world?

Shim: It sounds like you have already turned into one enormous hole. But the interesting thing about your work is that you both hide and reveal these wound-like holes. For example, in “Pavane for Jo Dong-ok,” the daughter digs up objects buried in the ground while hiding her own wounds. In your most recent novel, Sohyeon, as well, there is this simultaneous concealment and disclosure. Your characters seem to express themselves through this same strategy. Kim: I don’t express my characters in their entirety in my work. But even if a writer does not reveal a character in his or her entirety, the writer still has to know everything about that character. If the characters in my work seem to be simultaneously exposed and concealed, then that may be why.

Kim: I suppose so. I also think that by trying especially to write about people who are not all that special, I’m drawn all the more to special cases. Shim: Between things that look special on the outside and those that don’t, it turns into a riddle that must be solved, due to that 99 percent that is unseen. As a writer, you seem to have the desire to solve those riddles. Talking with you, I get the image of a writer who decodes secret messages. You seem to decode people, just as one might decode Princess Suryeong’s epitaph. I look forward to more of your decoding in the future. It was a pleasure to speak with you today. By Shim Jinkyung

Shim: Your latest works deal with social issues, but they are more like character studies than genre paintings. That is the case with “Pavane for Jo Dong-ok,” “Southern Village beyond the Mountains,” and “That Day.” But your novel Sohyeon expands this further. For that reason, Sohyeon strikes me as a character study colored by social conditions rather than a historical novel. The problem is that the characters, perhaps because they reveal themselves through concealment, hold back too much. They only guess at what the other is feeling, and they don’t discuss their emotions openly. They all say, “My feelings could not be misunderstood,” yet they withhold the most important words. Perhaps that is why the characters in this book, despite being historical figures, are difficult to understand. Kim: When I wrote Sohyeon (2010), I did not write it with the idea of a historical novel in mind. I merely selected a historical background for the story. The starting point of this novel was my interest in Sohyeon’s loneliness, the loneliness of a person living as a hostage in an enemy country. Shim: I guess that is why the characters in Sohyeon are all lost in their own loneliness, make each other lonely, and hurt each other in the end.

1. The Long Road Kim In-sook, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. 1995, 156p, ISBN 9788985712538 2. The Long Road (English Version) Kim In-sook, Merwin Asia, 2010

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Vol.14 Winter 2011

Excerpt

Bye, Elena I got the first email about two weeks after my friend left the country. The subject line read, “Whoa. Internet access!” There were three photos attached. File names: elena1, elena2, and elena3. I read the rest of the email before opening them. The message was brief. Man, this place is lousy with Elenas. Here an Elena, there an Elena. The short email ended with an LOL. I thought he was messing with me, and I opened the files. Elena1 was a picture he took with some white girl he met while traveling, and Elena2 was a picture of an old photo of the same white girl sitting next to a middle-aged white woman. Most likely he’d taken a picture of a photo the girl kept in her wallet. Elena3 was a shot of a kiosk—a woman selling newspapers was smiling broadly at the camera. I pulled up all three photos on the computer screen side-by-side and stared at them for a while. My friend’s message was so short that there was pretty much no way for me to figure out what the photos meant. Before he left on his trip, I asked my friend to find my sister for me. I didn’t blurt it out while drunk or anything—I meant it as a joke. At least I think I did. A long time ago, my dad used to work on a deep sea fishing boat. Since it was before I can remember, that too could have been just another of my father’s jokes. But even long after I was grown up, whenever my dad drank, he would launch into his fishing stories, and those stories of a young sailor catching squid in the Antarctic Ocean for half a year or even a full year at a time always sounded romantic to my young ears. Even before setting eyes on the ocean myself, I knew the sea from my dad’s memories. The ocean in my imagination was always bobbing with ice. Schools of ruddy squid swam between the floes. Lonely, so lonely. My father ended each chapter of his story with those words, like a chorus. Of course, there was nothing romantic about those sea voyages that took him away—not from morning to evening—and required him to be at sea for several months in a row. New crew members couldn’t take the seasickness and the loneliness and the fights that broke out at the drop of a hat, and would throw themselves overboard, but my father laughed as he told me how they would just fish them out with nets, their stomachs bursting from all the water they’d swallowed. The first time I saw the ocean, I was well into my teens, long after the other kids my age had seen it. In that iceless sea, there were no swimming squid, no lonely sailors aboard fishing vessels. But there were nets. Women with towels knotted around their heads sat in rows on the wharf mending fishing nets. Not one of them was pretty. Considering that my memory of those sun-

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blackened and wrinkled faces of women patching fishing nets is so much clearer than my memory of seeing the ocean for the first time in my life, it’s no wonder that the story that impressed me the most of all of my father’s drunken ramblings was his Elena story. I left a kid named Elena behind in every port. Poor things… I sowed my wild oats, and they raised themselves. He was still living with Mom at the time. Each time he told that story, she snorted. I would listen to her snort with laughter, sounding just like someone blowing their nose, and I’d think to myself, gee, Mom likes that story too. My memory may be blurry, but I’m sure she did. Every night I dreamt I had a sister with a different skin color than me. We would talk in an indecipherable language. Since they were kid dreams, we were always in a castle with pointy spires or a meadow in the Alps, like something you would see in a cartoon. But do they have meadows in the Alps? Anyway, they did in my dreams. I would wake up feeling like there was a heavy weight on my chest. If I dreamt of running away in my younger years, that was probably in order to find my sister who was said to be on the other side of the world. p. 24 It’s not all ocean there. They got meadows, too. And wide, so very wide! It’s just horizon all around, and cows as far as the eye can see. They look scattered since the land is so wide, but there are still thousands, tens of thousands, of cows. That country’s got more cows than people. While we were anchored in the port, I went to a friend’s ranch, and there I named one of the cows Elena as well. I don’t know how that damn cow got so fat all by itself, but Oof! each time her udder swayed, it was like the earth wobbled on its axis! But the swaying’s a good thing. If you’ve ever been on a boat, then you know what I’m talking about. You know that when the rocking stops, that’s when it’s unbearable. You step off the boat and onto the dock and, Whoa Nelly! the nausea hits you. Your legs are still moving up and down, but the ground’s not, so of course you can’t take it. That’s why sailors stagger when they walk. Cracks everyone up to see it. But Elena—wait, was she a cow, or a person? My memory’s a mess. Anyway, she was ginormous, that woman. Each time I rode her, I was a-rockin’ and a-rollin’. It was fantastic. A hell of a woman. She let me ride her as much as I liked. If I’d wanted to, she probably would’ve let me ride her for the rest of my life. Her name was also Elena, and her daughter was named Elena, too. That’s how they do things in that country. They name you after your mama, after your grand mama. So there are Elenas all over the place. But what can you do? If I couldn’t take the kid home myself, then of course she gets to name it. Nothing I could do about it. I had to come back. I may be a sailor and a scoundrel, but I know that much. Had to come back. Had to come home and take care of my wife and kids, through thick and thin. I know at least that much, I tell you. Of course I was sorry. How could I not be? The thing about ports is, they’re full of people out of their minds from feeling sorry, people so sorry that they can’t stand it when the rocking stops. They grab little kids and hug them, no matter if they’re theirs or someone else’s, and pour their boozy breath into those little ones’ ears and sob. It’s a rotten sight. Sobbing and crying, I’m sorry, I’m sorry… I’m sorry for being human… Is that funny? You think I’m being funny? I guess I do know my way around a joke. But I’m telling you, every living thing feels sorry towards some other living thing. That’s a

first-rate joke, yeah? The thing about jokes, there’s no gag to be had in wordplay. Your eyes have to well up with tears for it to be funny, no? — My f at her’s na me is Ba k M i nsu, born 1961, my grandfather’s name is Bak Dori, from the southernmost sea… Another attachment, a note written in broken Korean, photographed again with a digital camera, arrived in an email from my friend. I did not laugh when I opened the file. If only I could turn back the clock, could I take back what I had told him? He didn’t have a girlfriend. He was a good person, but he wasn’t that welcome in our circle of friends. He asked too many questions, he liked to talk, and he was friendly to the point of making other people uncomfortable. If he got up for a moment, someone would always start complaining about him. What’s that guy’s problem? When I brought up the story of Elena before he went on his trip, I didn’t do so because I expected him to help me. I sat there listening to all of the countries he planned to visit and suddenly felt the need to say something of my own about those places as well. It didn’t occur to me that because he had no girlfriend, he had no one else to email. I just got a little jealous that night. Not only had he poured his entire severance pay into that trip, he had dreamt it up in the first place. My friend had something he wanted to do… and as for me, it wasn’t that there was nothing I could do, but maybe there was nothing I wanted to do. I have no idea what comes first, not being able to do something or not wanting to do anything, but at any rate both were true of me. Bak Minsu was not my father. My father was not born in 1961, and though I don’t remember my grandfather’s name, I know he wasn’t from the south. And the woman who wrote me the note was not named Elena. She said her name was Soony. She wrote her name in English, but it probably should have been spelled Sun-hui. Why did my friend send me a photograph of a letter from a woman who’s not an Elena? That night, we went out for karaoke after drinking draft beer and eating thin-crust pizza in front of Hongik University, because he’d brought his car and needed time to sober up. My friend, who was used to hearing people saying, What’s that guy’s problem? all the time, was being overly friendly that night as well. Hey, there’s a song here called Elena. Sure enough, he showed me the song book and there it was. Since we didn’t know the melody, we just watched the lyrics go by on the screen. Suni, rumored to be in front of the theater that night, in front of the Turnaround Cabaret... That’s how the song started, and it ended with Suni, Suni, who changed even her name to Elena. Suni, up all night winding thread, Suni and her crimson skirt, Suni who changed even her name to Elena, Suni… The song’s exact title was “Sun-hui Became Elena.” The snapshot of the note written by “Soony”—not Elena— did not have a file name with Elena and a number. I know he’s clueless, but there’s no way he’s come this far without having thought at least once about what’s inappropriate. The file name was “untitled.” p. 31 On his deathbed, my father did not say a word. The last thing he did, while he was still conscious, was hand me the deed to the house and his bankbook. The balance left in the account was so paltry that it would barely cover my basic living expenses for a month. But the deed, even for a house that small, was a fortune. Since most people my age can’t hope to pocket such a

good “severance,” my friends were sure to all envy me. I printed out the photo my friend had emailed me from abroad, the photo of the note from the girl looking for her father Bak Minsu, and taped it to my wall with the others. I looked at the photo and pondered whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that my father was not Bak Minsu. It was a pointless thought. I no longer dreamed of castles with pointy spires, or of meadows in the Alps that may or may not really be there. Is that why I’m lonely… It’s a useless question. After a while, I went into the living room, grabbed my father’s funeral portrait, and taped it to the wall next to the letter. Seeing it on the wall like that, it really did look like a joke. Wasn’t he laughing like he was just one more Elena out of all of the Elenas in the world? Of all of those photos, leaving out the ones where it wasn’t clear whether the person was male or female, my father was the only man. But my father, who’d named a cow Elena, might have given himself the same name. After all, he was a father who thought he knew his way around a joke. Bye-bye, Daddy… It had been a long time since I called my father Daddy. I felt like I was going to burst into tears. But I could hold it. Just five minutes… If I could hold it for just five minutes, I’d be fine. It’s okay, Daddy. I said the words out loud. I wanted to forgive my father for dying without apologizing to me. If he had, I would have said it again as well. I’m sorry… It’s not that I was sorry I didn’t get the chance to say sorry… so sorry I could die… I could have said it about my father, and about my own life as well. I’m sorry, My Dear Shabby Life… Good thing I have the deed to the house. For five minutes I gritted my teeth and felt like apologizing to the deed as well. The second hand on the clock that hung on the wall ticked busily past the countless Elenas. Those five minutes were as short as my own short life, and as long as my father’s not-so-short life. Those five minutes of my life, just maybe, were my father’s final farewell to me. Translated by Sora Kim-Russell

Bye, Elena Kim In-sook, Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2009, 226p, ISBN 9788936437107

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Vol.14 Winter 2011

The Place

the 2011 Paju Booksori Festival

Korea’s Best-loved Book Festivals Autumn is the Season for Reading The breeze that sweeps past one’s nose now feels quite chilly. One can tell it is definitely fall by the way people are dressed. What would be a typical autumn scent in Korea? That would be the delicate mixture of ink and paper, which undoubtedly is the smell of a book. For bibliophiles, there is nothing more welcome than “The Book Festival.” Paju is the first place that Koreans think of at the mention of books, and it is here that a very special book festival takes place. If you would like to experience the deepening of autumn surrounded with books, then the excellent publishing compound located in Paju, Gyeonggi province, as well as some of the ancient palaces in Seoul, are the places to check out in the fall. Let’s explore the book parties that are taking place in some of these interesting sites. 38 list_ Books from Korea

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the 110th an niversary sp ecial exhibit of the Nobe l Prize in Lite rature

Paju, the Cradle of Books Paju in Gyeonggi province is a city synonymous with books. This is because Paju Book City, located in the Gyoha district of Paju, handles the complete process of publishing from planning and printing to selling. This publishing cluster is viewed as an unprecedented phenomenon both in Korea and abroad. Paju Book City, which stretches far along the lower stream of the Han River, resembles the shape of a book. When one looks down at it from the nearby Shimhak mountain summit, the city, like an open book, resembles the letter W. That is why Paju is the bosom of books, for the city not only produces books but is also formed in the shape of a book. Located in the northwest part of Gyeonggi province, Paju has played a central role on the Korean peninsula for a long time. However, since the division of Korea after the Korean War, Paju, which is near the DMZ, was regarded by most people as a hinterland region turned into a remote suburb. It was only a little more than a decade ago that this dilapidated city began to recover. In 1988, people from the publishing industry formed a publishing union and one year later, came up with the idea of creating a unified area for those in the business. The birth of Paju Book City, which seemed a far-fetched, idea, became a reality in 2002. With the first move by one of the publishing houses to Paju, a stream of major publishing companies followed suit. Until now, because of its proximity to Seoul, Koreans have regarded Paju Book City as one of the places for those looking to do something different on weekends. On weekdays, Paju Book City looks vacant and forlorn, for there are hardly any visitors, but Paju in the autumn of 2011 looked quite different. It is thanks to a book party hosted by the entire Paju Book City community, an event that is indeed exhilarating.

Silk Road bit "Open the the Photo Exhi

with Books"

The 2011 Paju Booksori that took place for the first time in Paju Book City showed the best of what a book festival is about by focusing not merely on offering books at a reduced price, but rather on the truly important aspects of reading. The festival brought together readers, writers, and publishers under the banner of the Asian Festival of Intellect. With more than 260 publishing companies based in Paju Book City along with about 300 art organizations participating, the festival organized more than 130 diverse exhibitions, lectures, seminars, performances, and hands on experience having to do with books. Among these, “The 110th Anniversary Special Exhibit of The Nobel Prize in Literature” was particularly popular. The mementoes and literary works of 107 past Nobel Prize winners from all over the world were on display. A handwritten letter by the first winner, Sully Prudhomme, a typewriter Ernest Hemingway once used, and Hermann Hesse’s last poem, along with 1,000 other artifacts, were shown. The other appeal of the Paju Booksori Festival is that it provides a forum in which people can exchange their thoughts about books they have read. One of the concepts of this festival is that it is a platform for knowledge. Accordingly, each of the publishing companies in the Paju Book City has organized lectures and creative writing workshops where readers and writers can have discussions and debates. Some of the most exciting lectures included the “humanities lectures by eminent scholars,” which was presented by the poet, Ko Un, Lee O-Young, former Minister of Culture, and Jeong Jaelist_ Books from Korea

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The Place

seung, professor at KAIST. There is also The Korea-Japan Special Antique Book Exhibit where one can see rare copies of Korean and Japanese ancient books, not to mention the Book Market Event where visitors can purchase books at a reduced price, a definite boon to going to a book festival. While the visitors enjoyed diverse programs at the festival, the sun set before booklovers even realized it. One of the most special treats that the Paju Booksori Festival offers is the magnificent sunset of the autumn sky against the backdrop of fascinating scenery created by the buildings in Paju Book City. The 2011 Paju Booksori Festival took place in Paju Book City from October 1st to 9th, 2011. Visitors can get a Book Citizen membership card from the Paju Booksori special organizing committee for bargain deals, such as free admission to “The 110th Anniversary Special Exhibit of The Nobel Prize in Literature,” and discounts on books in Paju Book City bookstores. *For more information: www.pajubooksori.org.

The Original Book Festival in Korea The outdoor Seoul Wow Book Festival that takes place annually near Hongik University in western Seoul is the first book festival of its kind. Starting in 2005, it held its seventh book fair this year. In effect, it is not unusual that there should be an annual book fair in that neighborhood because Mapo is where all the publishing houses started out before they moved to Paju. The district of Mapo was the center of books with around 900 publishing companies in the 1990s. After the establishment of Paju Book City in 2005, with a huge exodus of publishing houses, the

the 2011 Seoul Wo w Book Festival

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reputation of the area as the empire of publishing went into decline. However, the Hongik University neighborhood is still a stronghold of books were many publishing companies remain; local people still half-jokingly say that half the businesses there sell books, and the other half, coffee. Several hundred publishing companies that are scattered in the Hongik University neighborhood all come together each fall. The Seoul Wow Book Festival takes place in the middle of a street that is designated for parking, and in the galleries and book cafes that are located on “Ideal Street for a Walk” near Sangsu Station on subway line 6. This book festival is becoming increasingly popular each year and is now viewed as one of the most distinctive events that symbolize Hongik University, or “Hongdae” culture. True to its reputation as the very first book fair, many diverse programs are offered. During the weeklong festival, around 70 interesting programs are available. The seventh Seoul Wow Book Festival opened with the themes of “Drunk with Books,” “Fantastic Library” where readers could actually meet writers, “The Street Book Fair,” which filled up parking lots, as well as a variety of performances and exhibits. Naturally, the indie scene that is an integral part of Hongdae culture was part of the program. In the opening ceremony of October 1st, an indie singer who resides in the neighborhood was invited to perform. The Seoul Wow Book Festival selects a unique topic for its special exhibit every year. Comic books, or manhwa, were spotlighted this year. Under the subtopic, “Intoxicated by Pictures,” the festival provided a special event, “Wow Comic World,” which had to do with the art of the cartoon. Some of the numerous activities that visitors could check out included a podcast, in which

webtune artists were invited, the network party where comic book writers came together, and the comic book street fair. Another special feature was that Alain de Botton, a French writer who is much loved by Korean readers, was invited to do a guerrilla book signing on the streets of Hongdae. Without question, a most delightful aspect of the Seoul Wow Book Festival must be the publishing company booths, of which there are over 100 and cover about two kilometers of street; thus one is able to check out their many books. That you can purchase books, which would not normally be available at a bargain price, is an added benefit. With the coupon you get after buying a book, it’s possible to get a drink right away at the cafes that are taking part in the book fair. For people who love books, performances, and coffee, this is an opportunity they would not want to miss. The Seoul Wow Book Festival took place from September 28 to October 3, 2011, at what is called ‘parking lot street’ near Hongik University and “Ideal Street for a Walk,” as well as in the book cafes in Mapo, Seoul. *For more information: www.wowbookfest.org.

Book Party in a Palace What would it feel like to read a book in a palace? If you want to simultaneously enjoy the beauty of a palace and the joy of reading, the Seoul Book Festival at Deoksu Palace is the answer; as a bonus, you will be able to relive the experience of a Neo-Confucian scholar from the Joseon era. The Seoul Book Festival first took place in October 2008 at Gyeonghee Palace in Seoul. It was held there again in 2009, while in 2010 and 2011 the book fair took place in Deoksu Palace. About 30 publishing companies were participants in this year’s festival, which was held from October 7 to 9, under the theme of “The Book Road.” During the Seoul Book Festival, Goongaeseo, the Deoksu Palace library located in the corridor of Seokjojeon (the Imperial Palace) opened. In addition, a musical performance was held at Jeonggwanheon, where King Gojong held banquets. With a thousand books in the Goongaeseo Library, and a musical performance in the banquet hall, one is certain to have the best of times during the autumnal season. If you donate a book that you’ve already read to the “Beautiful Bookcase,” you’ll be given free admission to the Seoul Book Festival. By Cho Hyunju

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Theme Lounge

Waiting for Your Time to Bloom Books targeted towards consoling twenty-somethings flourish in a time of fierce competition and uncertainty.

880 Thousand-Won Generation Woo Seok-hun and Bak Gwon-il, Redian Media Co., Ltd. 2007, 328p, ISBN 9788995995204

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Youth unemployment has become a worldwide phenomenon. Korea is no exception. Until the 1980s, Korea’s rapid economic development provided ample opportunities for work and startup companies. Koreans refer to those who were born in the 1960s, attended college in the 1980s, and are currently in their 30s as the “386 Generation” (this generation has recently grown into their 40s, and should probably be called 486 now). For the 386 Generation, it was possible to slack off in college and still land a job at a big corporation. Since then, Korea’s overall economic structure and society has evolved into the “developed country model” and new opportunities have been dwindling. To add insult to injury, polarized income levels have exacerbated tension between the classes. The economic crisis in 1997, commonly referred to as the “IMF crisis,” was a turning point for the economic reality of Korea. It no longer became possible to hold onto a job for an entire lifetime or climb the ladder through hard work alone. Frequent restructuring made the threat of unemployment and the resulting anxiety a part of daily life. In 880 Thousand-Won Generation by Woo Seok-hun and Bak Kwon-il, the authors pose the question: Is there hope for the younger generation living in the dreary reality of Korean society? Why do they refer to the younger generation as the “880 thousand-won generation?” The authors predict that 95 percent of Koreans in their 20s today will be temporary workers. Only the top five percent will have relatively stable work. The other 95 percent will have to live on 74 percent of the average temp salary (1.19 million won), which is what temps in their 20s receive. The total comes to 880 thousand-won per month. Most people who belong to the 880 thousand-won generation start out their careers as low-income temps or part-time workers. Many prepare for civil service exams or other standardized tests that are prerequisites for stable positions, but there is little chance that they will find such work. Anxiety escalates, and it becomes

increasingly difficult to plan for the future. The authors write, “The younger generation is a casualty of the recovery period since the IMF crisis and the emergence of neo-liberalism, and the first generation to experience the tragic realities the next generation of laborers will face.” If all generations had a similar average lifetime income, job competition would become intra-generational. However, with limited resources and jobs across the board, the probability that a young, inexperienced worker will find stable work drops dramatically. Intra-generational competition becomes meaningless under such circumstances while inter-generational competition becomes cutthroat. There is, of course, little chance that the older generation will just give up their positions for the younger workers. The authors insist, “The imbalance must be remedied by redirecting some of the resources to the younger generation to achieve better overall stability.” 880 Thousand-Won Generation, published in August 2007, became a bestseller and the term stuck to this eponymous generation and the reality of Korean society. Even those who have not read the book are familiar with the term, “880 thousandwon generation.” It is no exaggeration to say that this book ranks among the most influential Korean books published in the first decade of the 21st century. One of the most popular Korean novelists, Gong Ji-young, has published a collection of essays, I Will Support You No Matter What Kind of Life You Choose in the form of letters to her daughter. These are letters from a mother to her daughter in her last year of high school. Published in March 2008, this book also made it to the bestseller list. It is a series of honest, heartwarming letters of advice from one who has had more experience with life: “You will soon choose a path. It doesn’t matter if it’s the best. Even if you don’t end up getting any job in this world, it doesn’t matter. I’m sure you know I mean it when I say this. But I have one demand. Always choose love. Given the choice between

I Will Support You No Matter What Kind of Life You Choose Gong Jiyoung, Openhouse 2008, 256p, ISBN 9788996047636

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Theme Lounge pleasure and happiness, always choose happiness. Between desire and friendship, choose friendship. Between vanity and sincerity, choose sincerity. And if you’re going to rebel, rebel passionately.” “When you meet someone, observe and discern if you’re with someone who knows how to end a relationship well, someone with whom you can end the relationship politely and with a little regret. Someone you’ll remember fondly for the rest of your life and feel that having known that person was no doubt a stroke of good luck.” The letters are for her daughter and at the same time for all the youth who are about to go out into the world. The author says she wrote the letters with all the mistakes of her

Youth, It's Painful Kim Rando, Sam&Parkers 2010, 310p, ISBN 9788965700036

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life in mind. Gong says it was a shame she could not ask her own mother for advice, woman to woman. The things she felt wanting in her life motivated her to pen these letters to her daughter. While raising her daughter, the author allowed her a great deal of freedom, so much so that her daughter believed at one point that her mother did not care. Gong was different from the other mothers who devoted grand efforts to their children’s education, which would ideally lead to then attending prestigious colleges. But Gong’s daughter realizes through her mother’s letters that Gong genuinely trusts her and wanted to raise her to be free, and that she sincerely cares for and supports her. The keywords for this book, then, are “care” and “support.” Gong’s daughter writes her mother in response: “You taught me everything, as if to make up for all the time you could not be there for me. I think your words contributed to my changes in the past few years. Instead of telling me to get into a good college, you told me to live each day with sincerity and passion. Those words are engraved in my heart. You’ve given me a special freedom that I would not trade for the greatest college in the world.” While Gong expresses her care and support for her daughter, others express care and support for the entire young generation. Youth, It’s Painful by Seoul National University professor Kim Rando was published in early 2011 and had sales of over a million copies within a year. Author Kim had sent an email to his student in 2005 when he was on sabbatical in the United States. In the email, he gave an unmotivated student stern but warm advice on how to live life. The letter, which appeared on Kim Rando’s blog, spread through the Internet and made Kim famous among his students as a life mentor. Since then, he has written many pieces of advice to console the younger generation. This book is a collection of such writings. Here are some of his words of comfort: “Discouraged? Are your friends advancing onward and upward? Don’t forget. There is a season for your flowers to bloom. It is not your time yet. You will one day bloom as well. Even if it is later than you expect, when your season arrives, your flowers will be as lavish and majestic as anything. So lift up your head. Prepare for your season.”

“Youth, just begin first. Even if it’s not what you’ve expected, humbly take that first step into society. Even if you’re riding third-class, first, just step on the train. And slowly move toward first class. This will be easier than hopping onto the first-class car of a train that is running full-speed.” “The brutality of hardship is not the issue. It all comes down to how one views that hardship. I am the only one who decides whether the hardship is brutal or not. If I perceive it as difficult, my life becomes difficult. If I perceive it as nothing, my life becomes easier. So how are you perceiving your hardship?” The very popularity of this book became the talk of the town. Its popularity became proof that the younger generation was seeking a caring mentor and that they are, as the title suggests, in pain. The book also received its share of criticism. As one can glean from the excerpts, the book does not deal with the social and structural reasons behind the current state of the young generation, but comforts them in a purely personal and sentimental way. In spite of these criticisms, many young Koreans read this book because they’ve been craving comfort and advice. Kim Rando’s talents as a lecturer also had a hand in this book’s popularity. Since its publication, Kim has become an active lecturer. Young people have quoted and circulated lines from his books through social networking systems such as Twitter and Facebook, which has also been a factor in the book’s success. Many young Koreans are using Kim’s words to comfort each other. Park Kyungchol, also known as the “Country Doctor,” penned A Country Doctor's Self Revolution for the younger generation, which made it onto the bestseller list almost the instant it was published in September 2011. Park is a practicing doctor, a financial columnist, and the author of several bestsellers before A Country Doctor's Self Revolution. Through this book, he tells young people that above all, it is important to be the owner of one’s life. He said he wrote this book because he regretted that his youth was spent dealing with the situations that befell him instead of taking charge of his life. Park suggests that it is important to first figure out who you are, and in order to do this you must follow the right path even if it means peril ahead. Once you have figured out who you are, then it is time to look at the world outside you. Park asserts that it is just as important to make changes in the world as it is to pass on the world inherited from the previous generation. And the most important thing is, as the title says, self-revolution. Self-revolution is to break free from the barriers one has set up for oneself. He compares self-revolution to swimming: “If you start swimming today and resolve to do two laps, you’ll run out of breath and give up at about a lap and a half. But if you resolve to swim farther than you did yesterday, you’ll swim two laps. If you set a goal for yourself, you can’t grow beyond it, but if you resolve to reach beyond your limits, the psychological limits are pushed. The fundamental nature of life is the same as this.” Bestsellers reflect the times and realities of a society. Since 2007, books that comfort and cheer on the younger generation have enjoyed great popularity. The books introduced in this article are the most popular among these. In some ways, the

A Country Doctor’s Self Revolution Park Kyungchol, Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. 2011, 399p, ISBN 9788901130460

popularity of these books speaks to the strong desire of young Koreans to find hope in the midst of a bleak reality. They want reports that analyze to a ‘T’ the reality they face. They want mentors who understand and empathize with their situations and worries. They the want mentors who will advise on what to do and how to pave the path ahead. Books that meet the needs and demands of this generation will continue to influence the Korean publishing market for many years to come. By Pyo Jeonghun

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Vol.14 Winter 2011

Overseas Angle

Some thoughts on the Swedish translation of The Old Garden by Hwang Sok-yong

Reflecting on Korean Literature in Sweden Den gamla trädgården Hwang Sok-yong, Albert Bonniers Förlag, 2011

In Sweden, as in many other Western countries, it is often difficult for literature translated from non-Western languages to successfully enter the market and attract the attention of a larger readership. Furthermore, in Sweden the Anglo-Saxon dominance is overwhelming; 70 to 80 percent of all translated novels are originally written in English, with the result that even literature in major European languages such as German and French is marginalized. As a scholar of Korea and a translator of Korean literature into Swedish I must say that I find it pleasing that Korean literature, despite this overall marginalization of works from non-English speaking countries, over the years has been able to slowly build up a presence on the literary scene, thanks to the efforts of the Korea Literature Translation Institute and other Korean institutions. In the beginning it was smaller and specialized publishers like Tranan who were willing to first introduce Korean literature in Sweden. Among the earlier authors to be translated were Ko Un and Yi Mun-yol. These publishing companies continue to publish Korean authors, broadening their coverage to also include the works of authors of children’s literature like Choi Sukhee, but recently the overall situation has started to change. Now also larger and more mainstream publishers themselves are seeking out Korean literature. Literature translated from languages like Korean can’t of course 46 list_ Books from Korea

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in general expect large sales numbers, but the impact of these publications is still significant since they get reviewed in the leading newspapers such as Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet. Such exposure catches the attention of literary critics and the readership interested in exploring new literature from all over the world. The works of Hwang Sok-yong are a good example of how Korean literature, having gained a larger recognition internationally, started to attract the attention of publishing companies in Sweden. Having become aware of Hwang’s work through their French translations, and having been recommended them by a leading Swedish critic, Lars-Olof Franzén, Albert Bonniers Förlag, one of the most prominent publishing houses in Sweden, took the initiative to publish a Swedish translation of A Chronology of Mr. Han. They contacted me and my co-translator Park Okkyoung to assign us the work and we produced a translation that was published in 2007 with the Swedish title Berättelsen om herr Han. Albert Bonniers Förlag, established in 1837, is one of the oldest and most prestigious publishers in Sweden, and the publication of Hwang Sok-yong’s work is significant, not only in terms of fiction, but also when it comes to nonfiction. Each year close to 200 books are published and a hundred more re-issued. Bonniers furthermore plays a leading role in introducing foreign works in translation, in particular through the Panache series in which Hwang Sok-yong’s A Chronology of Mr. Han was included. The reception of this first translation of Hwang Sok-yong’s works into Swedish was very positive. The book was given good reviews in the main newspapers. Svenska Dagbladet, for instance, wrote: “Hwang Sok-yong’s breakthrough novel is gripping… [Sometimes] the f low of events freezes into scenes that turn into ‘history’ and whose poetic qualities are rather reluctant, which makes them even stronger.” The national Swedish radio furthermore recorded a reading of the book that was broadcast on one of their main channels. The publication of A Chronology of Mr. Han is now followed up by Albert Bonniers Förlag with the Swedish translation of The Old Garden, published with the Swedish title Den gamla trädgården. This event is significant for many reasons. The publication of A Chronology of Mr. Han can be seen as an attempt to introduce the literary world of Hwang Sok-yong through an early and not so lengthy work, and now, with the publication of The Old Garden, readers in Sweden will get the opportunity to read what must be considered one of the major works of Hwang Sok-yong. Furthermore, although Korean literature has gained increasing recognition, one of the first things reviewers remark upon is that they didn’t know very much about Korea before reading the book under review, and that they appreciate the opportunity to learn something about Korean history, culture, and society. With the publication of this work, readers in Sweden will for the first time be able to acquaint themselves with the historical period in Korea that saw the struggle for democratization. Introducing the book on the homepage, Bonniers wrote: “In The Old Garden Hwang Sokyong wrestles with the big questions—love, life, and rebellion. He draws a tender portrait of a South Korean generation that sacrificed its youth and freedom, sometimes even its life, for the dream of a better tomorrow.” The publication of this important work will not only broaden the appreciation of Korean literature in Sweden, but also deepen the understanding of Korea’s modern history and trends in contemporary South Korean society. By Anders Karlsson

* Anders Karlsson is an associate professor of Korean Studies at Stockholm University and chair of the Centre of Korean Studies at SOAS, London University.

Writer's Note

Enjoying Korean and Australian Cultural Differences In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Korea and Australia, twin literary events were held in each country in May and late August 2011. I'm familiar with Australia because I often enjoy its beef and cheese, but Australian literature was totally foreign to me. I therefore greatly anticipated the literary event held Down Under. I was part of a delegation of South Korean poets including Hwang Tong-gyu, Bak Ra-yeon, and Park HyungJun who took part in the August event, which for all of us was our first visit to Australia. Earlier in May, two poetry readings were held at Seoul Art Space Yeonhui in the Shinchon district in Seoul. The first poetry reading was an informal occasion held at the request of Australian poets interested in meeting their Korean counterparts. As this was an unscheduled event, there were almost no attendees from the reading public, thereby enabling poets from the two countries to recite poems and comfortably chat with one another. It was also a good opportunity for Korean poets to learn about Australian poetry. From Australia, the poets Barry Hill, Terry Jaenche, and Ivy Alvarez were in attendance along with David Prater, managing editor of the Cordite Poetry Review webzine, and University of Melbourne Professor Nicholas Lowe. Representing Korea were Yi Kyunglim, Shim Bo-seon, Kim Un, myself, and others. The poetic styles of all three Australian poets were quite different, giving us the opportunity to enjoy a range of Australian poetry in one sitting. Barry Hill recited a lyrical poem redolent of the Eastern contemplative tradition with its religious and philosophical depth. Terry Jaenche's free-form poetry was at once sentimental and avant-garde, while the work of Ivy Alvarez was concerned with events from everyday life, posing poignant questions about humankind and existence in a humorous but lyrical way. The second poetry reading held in Korea was attended by the general public on a spring evening, with musical and video performances accompanying poetry readings in a festive atmosphere. In addition to reciting verse, the Australian poets in attendance shared their photos of new cultural experiences acquired in Korea. They also distributed poems and pictures printed on business card stock to all those present. Their freshness, wit, and humor were a great hit with the crowd. The hip-hop artists Swings and Garion energetically recited their rap interpretations of our poems, followed by the singer Sorri's rendition of Korean poetry combined with sweet melodies. Of course poets must also eat, so the highlight of the evening was the post-event dinner consisting of makgeolli (raw rice wine) and jajangmyeon (noodles with black bean sauce). During the relaxed meal everyone enjoyed pleasant conversation. A fe w mont hs later, we at tended t he Melbou rne Writers Festival which was actually held in both Sydney and Melbourne from August 25th to September 4th. We participated in a variety of activities including poetry readings, radio interviews, meetings with poets from other countries, discussions, and literary lectures. The most memorable events, however, were the poetry readings held before the Australian reading public in Sydney and Melbourne, respectively. Members of the public were divided into small groups while

poets visited each to recite poems and f ield que st ions. We had l ively a nd amicable discussions thanks to close oneon-one interaction with the audience. I recited four of my poems which have been t ra nslated into Eng l ish, including “Cow” and “Eating a Live Octopus.” “Cow” is one of my most wellknown works, but this was my first time presenting it to a foreign audience. I had misgivings because I assumed that readers must share the Korean sentiment toward cows in order to appreciate the poem. Since ancient times, Korean farmers have relied on cows to plow fields, and cows were treated like part of the family living within the fenced-in confines of the same yard. In addition, Korean cows are slow, gentle, and obedient, earning them human affection and compassion. In other countries, however, cattle are raised on large ranches with vast fields. Non-Korean cows are also more aggressive. I thought Australians might be amenable to “Cow,” however, as Australia raises scores of cattle on vast pastures, exports large quantities of beef to Korea, and has a special place in its heart for cattle. I also wanted to see how Australians would react to this poem. Before reciting, I explained to the audience the cultural differences between the perception of cows between our two countries. Surprisingly, many Australians actually related to the sentiments expressed in “Cow.” “Eating a Live Octopus” is a poem about a food culture that most non-Koreans are unfamiliar with. A lthough Australians also enjoy eating octopus, they only consume it fully-cooked. After a preliminary explanation of Koreans' culinary enjoyment of live octopus, however, my poetry reading was met with an unexpectedly overwhelming response. I think that hearing about Korea's exotic culinary practices stimulated the imaginations of many Australians, resulting in lots of laughter, even expressions of disgust, and many questions from the audience. Because we were able to come face-to-face with the reading public in an intimate setting, cultural difference became a source of interest, bringing poets and readers closer together rather than keeping them apart. I will never forget the autumn evening I spent in the small, quiet seaside village of Queenscliff, where poet Barry Hill resides. The exquisite food, conversation, laughter, and poetry readings against the backdrop of the moon, sounds of the ocean, and the chirping of insects made me feel out of this world-in a word, it was poetry. By Kim Ki-taek

* Kim Ki-taek is a poet. Kim’s poetry collections include Fetal Sleep (1991), Storm in the Eye of a Needle (1994), Office Worker (1999), Cow (2005), and Chewing Gum (2009). Kim won the Contemporary Literature Award and the Midang Literary Award.

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Vol.14 Winter 2011

Reviews Fiction

Testing the Rules of the Game Mr. Monorail Kim Junghyuk, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. 2011, 409p, ISBN 9788954615396

Kim Junghyuk ’s novel, Mr. Monorail, reads like a board game in narrative form. A board game inventor named Mono, creator of a wildly successful game called Hello, Monorail that takes players on an adventure around 50 European cities by train, plans a three-month trip around Europe to research his next train adventure game. But when he arrives at a train station in Rome, he finds himself mixed up in a case like a character in his game. During Mono’s quest to find Ko Gapsu, a man on the run somewhere in Europe after being associated with a cult called the Balls Movement, he meets friends from Europe and Seoul who bear a striking resemblance to the characters in Hello, Monorail: “On their trip to the train station, Mono felt as though the characters from Hello, Monorail had come to life. The five characters he’d come up with were complete inventions, but here they were now in the flesh. Red was just like Red from the game, Ko Uin was like Pink the hairdresser, Luka the brain was like Detective Blue, and Ko Uchang who was running from Mono and Ko Uin was like Black the bank robber. Mono was the creator of Hello, Monorail, so he was like White the novelist. Observing the characters that came to life, Mono furtively smiled to himself.” Can Mono and his friends clear the train adventure game that goes through

Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, and the U.K.? This is a question without an easy answer. Mister Monorail appears to follow the rules of a board ga me, but in its undercurrent is the question, “What is life?” Well, what is it? For starters, it is similar to a board game. Mono was introduced to board games at an early age, thanks to his parents who were board game geeks. As Mono lost game after game, he realized that he would do much better if there were no rules he had to follow. His father explained, “It is impossible to play the game without following rules because without them there will be too many variables. A game is not about seeing who’s best at carrying out a certain task, but being the last man standing in a limited environment.” So are there rules in life? Isn’t life full of inexplicable coincidences and exceptions that cannot be neatly organized into rules? If so, life is a game, but none we can survive by sticking to all the rules. The success of Hello, Monorail, was in fact thanks to the greater variables and possibilities that set it apart from other board games. The Balls Movement, on the other hand, bewitches followers with a forged scripture and prophetic writings that preach unfounded false rules and t heories. W hy a re people willing to commit themselves to ridiculous rules? Perhaps because all the coincidences and

exceptions people face in life generate anxiety rather than fill people with the hope of possibilities. Exceptions are fun in board games, but burdensome in real life. Mr. Monorail thus poses a serious question through a light adventure narrative. By Yi Soo-hyung

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Vol.14 Winter 2011

Reviews Fiction

Questioning the Ethics of Desire An Affair, of No One Choi Ihnsuk, MunyeJoongAng 2011, 406p, ISBN 9788927802518

Whether it is the unquenchable desire for money, the desire to break free of one’s humble routine to live a different life, or the desire to peep into another’s existence, human desire exists in a variety of forms, none of which can be judged hastily along moral lines. This is because we are all slaves to our desires. An Affair, of No One may be read as a questioning of the ethics of desire, for at the center of the narrative, an illicit love affair unfolds between Sujin, a factory worker’s wife, a nd Ja ng-u, a member of a powerful f inancial conglomerate. Sujin escapes from her poor family into her own secret space to enjoy peace. Her husband Sang-gon attempts to conceal his ineffectuality beneath silence and violence. Jang-u, with his parasitic family members, regards all human relationships as forms of transactions. Dae-il is a film director with nothing but intellectual vanity to his name. And Yeonsook is a department store clerk who uses her body as a weapon in confronting the world. In the complicated relat ionsh ips t hat e x ist a mong t he se

The Lives of the Violent South Gate Han Chang-hoon, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. 2011, 273p, ISBN 9788954615761

The biggest tragedy of violence is that the victims come to resemble the perpetrators in their ugliness. Those who have been hit want to hit back. Those who are hurt want to be avenged. Those who are cursed want to curse. Violence is inherited and communicated in this manner. South Gate covers three kinds of violence in Korean society that have been passed down from previous generations: family, school, and state violence. The family violence that the protagonist undergoes is a product of patriarchy. The author paints a sad portrait of a family that must move in perfect consort with the father’s will. And as soon as the main character has escaped from the violence at home, he is exposed to a form of institutionalized violence at school. This violence is not limited to the corporal punishment visited upon students. A system which instills the belief that either 50 list_ Books from Korea

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someone is number one or he is nothing is itself a form of spiritual violence that holds sway over students throughout their lives. State violence, the third kind, is more severe than the other two forms combined. The Gwangju Uprising in 1980 left us with the tragic understanding of how brutal state violence can be. Those who dared defy the state lived under constant threat: one day they could die, without anyone knowing. Many people participating in the democratic uprising faced wrongful imprisonment and all kinds of threats to their lives, including torture. The violence was so lethal that people’s memory of it threatened even love among neighbors and the camaraderie of friends. Fear of the state caused people to betray their neighbors and colleagues. Submission to the state caused individuals to relinquish their humanity. It is this awful essence of state violence that South Gate brings alive for the reader. By Jung Yeo-ul

characters, the author shows us the naked faces of desire. In view of these abject faces, is it possible to speak of good and evil? The author does not push his characters, the haves and the have-nots, and those who take and those who are taken from, into a simple oppositional moral framework. The reason is as follows. According to author Choi, all of us, having desire or wrapped up in our own selfish desire, cannot acknowledge the desires of others, and may somehow be t houg ht of a s victims rat her t ha n transgressors. An Affair, of No One is awash with the sad faces of enervated characters who cannot become the subjects of their own desires. By Cho Yeon-jung

Reviews Fiction

Exposing the Fiction of Reality A Contrived World Jung Young-moon, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. 2011, 294p, ISBN 9788932022253

A Contrived World is a record of the author Jung Young-moon’s stay in San Francisco. It’s a peculiar kind of record, for as the author has revealed: “It’s a story of not seeing things as they look, not hearing things as they sound, not feeling things as they feel and not accepting experiences for what they are.” The content of the novel consists largely of a stream of thoughts the author has about passing scenes and characters. It’s diff icult to regard the setting, San Francisco, as offering the necessary driving force for his writing. The author claims he intended to call the novel My Thoughts on Fun, and as he has pithily stated, it was written with “an unceasing desire for play.” What kind of desire is it that Jung was pursuing? A novel is a fictitious world created through words. If the fictional world of the novel always resembles reality, writing a novel is itself the work of making “some artificial world.” However, if reality itself is already only a great fabrication, then what is a novel? If we follow the author’s counsel and read the work as a story of “not

accepting experiences for what they are,” it is clear that A Contrived World, a lump of ideas lacking visible order or structure, is not noteworthy for creating a fictitious world apart from reality, but for recognizing that reality itself is artificial. We can read the novel as the author’s desire to expose the artificial character of reality within a space created by indifferent language. “By writing a novel, I was taking revenge on novels,” he writes, but it seems the object of his revenge was not only mimetic novels. To be precise, he was taking aim at the artificiality of reality, which other novels so scrupulously try to render. In Jung’s work, the unconscious world of the novel dreams of taking revenge on our artificial world. By Cho Yeon-jung

Outsider Stories, Outsider Lives The Hint Is “Brother-in-law” Baek Ga-huim, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. 2011, 282p, ISBN 9788932022178

The Hint Is “Brother-in-law” is Baek Gahuim’s third short story collection. For his first book, The Cricket Comes, Baek wrote stories resembling psychological reports recounting the morbid violence of men obsessed with sexual fantasies. These stories were horrible and grotesque, but at the same time bold and lyrical. His style turned in the direction of dry realism for his second collection, Manager Jo’s Trunk. Here, the cold gaze he turned on humble everyday life took the place of any conspicuous violence. Just as in his previous work, the new book features characters who have always lived as outsiders in society, those who “get into the habit of sitting on the edges of their chairs.” So while the protagonists of the eight stories (including a woman in an international marriage, a North Korean defector, a traveling salesman, and a man exposed to a defoliant) are fated to fail and be frustrated

in their everyday existence, there is no expectation that their lives will improve in the future. These stories, however, feature one protagonist who is singular in that he has not appeared in Baek’s previous works. Referred to as either P or Baek, he is featured in a number of the stories. This character is a novelist who has published a novel with a yellow back (the cover of the author’s first publication was yellow), so it is not hard to recognize him as the author. Thus, in this third work, the most important narrator and protagonist is the author himself. Baek has seldom written in the first person, so we can read the emergence of this character as proof that he has started to self-consciously reflect on the significance of his exceptional job, that of writer. But this novel does not lead in the usual direction of meta-fiction to a realm of abstract and conceptual language play which negates the reality of the harsh world. The writer, who records the pain of others, suffers within his novel too. His suffering is not sublimated in intellectual play, but as

before, is inclined towards the misery of the world. By Kim Hyoung-joong

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Vol.14 Winter 2011

Reviews Fiction

Love and Faith in Outer Space Divine Orbit, Vols. 1 & 2 Bae Myung-hoon, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. 2011, 672p, ISBN 9788954615716

Science fiction has not been acknowledged as true literature in Korea, as realism has held a strong foothold. But Korean literature in recent times has discovered a new kind of reality since it began exploring fantasy and the realm of the future. The novelist Bae Myung-hoon has proved that science fiction in Korea can be a literary success through works such as Tower (2009), a serialized novel, and Goodbye, Artificial Being (2010), an anthology of short stories. Bae’s literar y strengths are his logical narrative and description, original ideas and epistemological presuppositions, clearly distinctive characters, and the exploration of ethical human relationships. Bae’s first science fiction novel, Divine Orbit, starts out with a typical hypothesis found in sci-fi: What if God existed as a physical entity somewhere in the galaxy? With that supposition, the story extends its imaginative reach outward to the universe. Eun-gyeong, whose dream was to become an astronaut, wa kes up on the planet Narnie 15 years after she was frozen on account of committing a crime for aiding

and abetting a terrorist, Baclava. She finds out that her father is the one who froze her and that Narnie, an artificial planet, belongs to her rich father who is the owner of many satellites. While she is trying to escape Narnie, Eun-gyeong encounters the monk “Namul,” who resembles Baclava. From t hen on, t he t wo d rif t a nd get involved in all kinds of adventures. Despite its remarkable scale that confronts the existence of the divine, the fall of humanity, and trekking between the planets, the novel sincerely delves into the fundamental issues of humankind, such as love and faith. Divine Orbit will surely become one of the milestones of science fiction in Korean literature.

Stories that Morph and Mingle Seven Cat Eyes Choi Jae-Hoon, Jaeum & Moeum 2011, 379p, ISBN 9788957075418

Choi Jae-hoon is a new writer whose career is about to take off. His debut story, “Baron Quirval’s Castle,” centers around a virtual film called “Baron Quirval’s Castle” with the characters from the Middle Ages who enjoy eating human flesh; diverse discourses on ca nniba lism are inter woven like a mosaic in the story. Refreshing narrative devices that are not often used in fiction are employed in a witty manner; for example, newspaper articles, interviews with the film director and actors, a description of a college lecture hall, and excerpts from a thesis on cannibalism. Since then, the writer has continued to work on stories in which he has reinterpreted or put together things like fusion food, characters such as Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein, a witch, a monster; in other words, outrageous materials from B-movies, and used them to construct an interesting story. 52 list_ Books from Korea

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Seven Cat Eyes shows these qualities of the writer in a splendid manner. On the surface, the anthology looks as though it has four separate stories but these stories are linked without any repetition. Not unlike pi (π) that helps define the Cartesian folium—and its decimal representation that never ends and never repeats but goes on infinitely—in this outrageous and appealing collection, reality and fantasy overlap and crisscross in endless permutations within a limited space. In the process, the identity of the characters, as well as the boundary between reality and fantasy, get dissolved in a stream of infinitely changing stories. Thus, this novel makes us realize that this world is hiding something from us; if not, we are concealing something from ourselves. Thus our life is essentially a mystery novel and we cannot take but one step outside of this folium. By Park Hyekyung

By Bok Dohoon

Spotlight on Fiction

Together with a Chicken *

Written and translated by Jung Young-moon

* Jung Young-moon, from An Afternoon of the Faun Munhakdongne Publishing Corp., 2008

Together with a Chicken It was early dawn when I woke up from sleep at the sound of a cry. The sound continued in several long stretches, and only after listening to it for some time after I woke up did I realize that it was the crow of a chicken. I think at first I thought it was the sound of someone quietly tapping a triangle in the dark, then the sound of someone’s muffled scream, then the sound of a bird crying, a long-necked bird like a redcrowned crane, for instance. It became clear, however, that it was the crow of a chicken. Listening to the crow of the chicken which continued for quite some time, I found it strange and wonderful at the same time that I could hear a chicken crowing nearby at home in a city, but I thought there was nothing odd about hearing a chicken crow at dawn. Slowly coming to myself at the continuing sound of the chicken crow, I lay still and listened to the sound, thinking that even though a chicken crowed several times a day, there was no crow like the crow at dawn, and that the chicken itself, knowing that better than anyone, probably put the most effort into the first crow at dawn after a night’s sleep, considering it the best. Then in a moment, I quickly thought, like someone who was facing a great danger and thinking of a way to get out of it, a somewhat silly thought, that it could be very disappointing for a chicken to hear another chicken crow at dawn before it did, and that it could be very disheartening for a chicken to hear another chicken crow louder than it did. It

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seemed a little funny that I had a thought like that as soon as I woke up at dawn, which pleased me quite a bit. Still lying down, I looked out the window with a smile on my face. I a ssu med from t he crow t hat t he chicken wa s a rooster—hens don’t crow in such an arrogant way, parading themselves—and the rooster was probably quite large. I opened the window so that I may better hear the sound that, together with dawn, had awakened me. It was dark outside with a thick mist, which reached the windowsill, which made the window in my room look like a window of a ship, and it seemed that it would be appropriate if a whistle hooted somewhere in the mist. The moment I threw open the window all the way, however, the crow of the chicken, which had been continuing in long stretches, came to a complete stop like magic. It was as if the act of opening of the window had led to the closing of a door, shutting out the sound completely. I could no longer hear the sound of the chicken crow after that, no matter how long I waited. That chicken has failed to make a lonely man at early dawn continue to focus all his attention as though to receive a signal sent from an unknown being in a distant, unknown world, I muttered like someone who was shy. I looked at the thick mist in the air where the crowing had stopped, and for a moment was tempted to walk out the window of my second-story room, to fall lightly into the void. A moment later, I closed the window after filling my lungs with the dawn air, which had been full of the sound of crowing, but as I expected, I didn’t hear the crowing. It was over. It was the same throughout the day, and the next day at dawn. Still, I couldn’t stop myself easily from thinking all day about the crowing that had gently shaken up the dawn for a little while. Maybe someone had brought a chicken home to keep it, or because someone he knew had asked him to take care of it for a little while, then taken it back because the neighbors complained too much when it crowed at dawn. Or maybe someone who always took his chicken around with him, because he couldn’t bear to be apart from it no matter where he went, had visited him for a night, then left. I made an attempt

to think so, though it wasn’t very likely, because it made me feel good just to imagine that there was a man who traveled around with his pet chicken. They could travel together and look at the scenery unfolding out the window together, or look at each other as though they had read each other’s thoughts, or fall asleep together, or wake up from sleep and feel happy that they had each other by their side. Or maybe the chicken was still at the house, but for some reason didn’t want to crow ever again after dawn that day. In any case, I was quite sad that I couldn’t hear the chicken crow again. To ease my sadness, I took out a snapshot of a chicken from my desk drawer and looked at it, and I had to spend some time during the day sitting on the windowsill for quite a while, looking at the birds flying over to the branches out the window, but they only chirped, none of them crowing like a chicken. Only chickens cried as though to blow off steam. Other birds only spoke, and didn’t shout like chickens. The cry of a chicken was like that of an elephant or an wolf. It also had something in common with the sound of a bell. Still, I considered it a good omen for a trip I was planning at the time—it would be more precise to say, a trip I was vaguely imagining, or to say that I had allowed vague thoughts about a trip to gently stir up my mind—that I got to hear the crow of a rooster that dawn. The trip I was thinking of, however, could be something like a vague story whose plot grew more and more vague, with the characters disappearing as well, or something that was close to something like that, not an actual trip. The next night, a woman, a friend of mine, came to visit. She said that she could no longer hear the hallucinations she had been hearing for some time, and I said I was sorry. From time to time, she had heard a muffled sound, like a sound from the other side of the wall. I told her how I’d heard a chicken crow at dawn the day before. She said it had been quite some time since she’d heard a chicken crow at dawn, and I said that a chicken that crowed at the top of its voice like that may crow, thinking that none other could do it better, and that it was doing something none other could do, and could

not be entrusted to any other. She said that someone she knew had left a mynah in her care. The mynah was quite arrogant in a way, and tended to look down on people. She said that the bird, which was also bright, would throw back the latch on the birdcage and go out into the living room and walk around for a bit, then quietly go back into the cage as if being out of the cage didn’t change anything, and as if it had come out of the cage even though it wasn’t unaware of that, and as if that was why it had to quickly go back inside the cage, and then close the door by throwing back the latch again, and sit on the perch as if nothing had happened and quietly look at people in a scornful attitude, as if that was all there was for it to do as a mynah. I said that I wanted to see the mynah that looked at people in a scornful attitude, and that I hoped it never lost or abandoned the attitude. She said that the mynah, which had already grown into the attitude, would not change. We went on talking about birds, and after talking about something, we became curious as to why chickens or other birds bobbed their heads incessantly as they walked. We weren’t sure, but we concluded that maybe they did so in order not to forget the fact that they were birds, or to maintain their balance, which could easily be lost as they walked on their two legs, by bobbing their heads. Being in a good mood, I asked her to tell me about an experience she had while traveling in China. I had heard the story several times before, but it put me in a good mood whenever I heard it, so I always asked her to tell it to me. We began to drink beer together, and she began the story. She once went on a trip to China with a friend, and had an experience not to be forgotten for the rest of her life. They were traveling on the Yangtze River on a ship, when three robbers disguised as passengers tried to rob the passengers, but were found out and jumped into the river and swam away. She said that they looked quite fabulous as they swam casually away like cormorants in the Yangtze River after jumping into the water like frogs, and that she learned later on that they were a family of robbers that went back generations, and that list_ Books from Korea

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maybe they went back to the era of Water Margin and had been carrying on their family business since then, and thus had great pride in what they did. The story was fabulous enough, but the story I wanted to hear at the time was one about chickens, not robbers. I wanted to hear the story about chickens more than anything. My friend and her friend arrived at a little village in a remote area in China. They saw a rooster standing at the mouth of the village as if waiting for them. It looked quite dignified, holy, even, and before long, they readily followed the rooster—guided by the rooster, according to my friend’s words—to a house, and a woman greeted the visitors her rooster had brought. My friend and her friend, however, were so tired and hungry that they wanted to eat even the chicken that was so dignified, and they let the woman know how they felt. The woman said without hesitation that she would prepare the chicken in return for some money. She caught the chicken and began to prepare it, and in the process tried to use spices they didn’t like, so they had to stay by the furnace to keep her from doing so, but she used the spices when they were off guard and made it so they couldn’t eat it. In the end, the dignified rooster wrapped up its life by filling up the stomachs of the woman and her family. Afterwards, I saw a picture of the chicken my friend had tried to eat but couldn’t, which didn’t look at all holy as she’d said, or dignified, either, but it did seem that it was keeping up certain appearances, appearances that could perhaps be kept up only by all the chickens in the world. Still, when I saw the picture of the dead chicken, I felt an odd feeling as though I were looking at the picture of a distant relative I never knew, who had died long ago. She felt terrible that she had made the dignified chicken die just to appease her hunger, but afterwards, she saw another rooster along with several hens in the woman’s backyard, a rooster that looked just like the one that had just died, as though it had been reincarnated. She said, however, that the terrible feeling she had about making the chicken die did not go away. 56 list_ Books from Korea

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The picture of the rooster—it was the picture I took out of my desk drawer and looked at on the day I heard the chicken crow at dawn—was not the only thing she showed me at the time. She took pictures of many chickens she encountered while traveling in China, and chickens were the only things she took pictures of on that trip. No, to be precise, there were only chickens at times, and people and other animals as well at times, in the pictures she took of chickens. The focus, however, was always on the chickens, which made the chickens the central figure of the pictures. She said that she didn’t know why she’d decided to take pictures of so many chickens, but that once she began to take pictures of them, she didn’t want to take pictures of anything else. I looked at the different chickens in a variety of poses, seemingly lost in different thoughts, and they were more impressive than any other travel record. She said she could recall vivid memories about her trip while looking at the chickens in the pictures. She also said that she’d had a wonderful trip because she took pictures only of chickens, and because of the chickens. Perhaps she could, in the same way, take pictures of only cows if she went to India, and of camels and donkeys if she went to Central Asia. A dignified or contemptible looking chicken, walking around or standing quietly in the garden or the ruins of a grand temple, could actually be much more impressive than the temple itself. We continued to talk, while drinking, about raising chickens, and talked about things we could speak more freely about because we didn’t really intend to actually raise chickens, for instance, about how many chickens would be good—the number of chickens we could raise could theoretically start from one and increase infinitely, but we could always maintain a certain number of chickens, a hundred and forty-two, for instance—and whether we would raise just chickens—we could raise along with the chickens animals that could blend in naturally with them, such as ducks and geese, or ones that had a hard time tolerating each other, such as dogs and cats. We talked about how it was animals other than humans that usually made us smile, but we couldn’t be sure what the reason was exactly.

I fell asleep for a little while after she left late that night, and I had a dream, a dream with chickens in it. In the dream, which was somewhat impressive, my friend and I opened the door in a house we had entered somehow, and walked into a room to find a vast desert stretching out before us. There was majesty to the desert that stretched out endlessly, even though the desert was in a little room. In a moment, however, a gigantic sandstorm began to rage in the tranquil desert. Struggling through the sandstorm for a while, I thought that the storm, which was slowing down our steps, was somehow losing its force, after which the storm subsided, and at last, the tranquil desert reappeared. Spread out before us was a majestic and marvelous view of the desert, created by the simplest, and in a way, the smallest unit of particles called sand. The view, made more impressive by the most extreme contrast between light and shadow created due to the location of the sun, evoked ancient times, as well as the end of the world. The tranquil desert looked like a scene in a photograph in a way, and processing its lines and surfaces in a certain way, I could fold the desert in half like a photograph and put it in my pocket. In this way, I put several deserts in my pocket. And I realized that the sky there, too, had been painted on. The sky was blue paint painted on a broad canvas that went on infinitely, and the sun was red paint painted at the center of the blue. The sky, however, was too big to fold into a few layers. After proceeding for some time, we came across a small oasis, and Arabian music came floating from somewhere. A record was playing on the turntable of an old phonograph under a palm tree, and that was where the song was coming from. I thought that Arabian music was pleasant to listen to anytime, but that it was perfect for listening to in the middle of a desert. Anyway, there was something standing languidly in the languid scene—it was a rooster with a vivid red comb, standing with one foot raised and gently folded, and looking quite brawny. It looked like a figure created by the languid Arabian music through a spell, and it seemed that anything

could be created by such Arabian music as if by magic. I thought that the rooster would step up onto the record that was playing any minute for some reason, but for some reason, it didn’t. We stared at the rooster without moving as if bewitched by something, because the rooster stared fixedly at us as if to bewitch us. I felt as if I would fall into a strange hypnosis just by staring fixedly at the rooster, and in fact, I did almost fall into a state of hypnosis once, after staring too intently at a chicken. At any rate, you could fall into hypnosis by staring intently at anything long enough, and that could be the principle behind hypnosis. In the shadow of the oasis in the middle of the desert where the sun was beating down mercilessly, the rooster stood looking like a riddle, in a somewhat brazen attitude like a sphinx. And it seemed that the rooster, looking like a riddle, would pose a curious riddle for us, but it didn’t say anything. It seemed that if the rooster opened its mouth, it would make a sound that would sound quite strange, either for the sound of a chicken or that of anything else, but it didn’t open its mouth and make a sound, and neither did it make a sound with its mouth closed. It seemed to me that under the circumstances—I couldn’t guess what kind of circumstances they were—it was trying to show that it would be better for it to stay with its mouth closed. The rooster thus stood still, bewitching those who were looking at it, and as if bewitched itself, and it looked quite enchanting, absorbed in itself. At the same time, we were reminded of a rooster that belonged to a musician in Marrakesh, an old city in Morocco, North Africa, that had been on a TV show we happened to watch together some time ago, and talked about it. The rooster let out a long cry from time to time, as though in accompaniment, as it stood precariously and continued to rock to and fro on the head of the guitar on its master’s shoulder, which it had been trained to do. The rooster, however, wasn’t very bright and cried when it wanted to, not when it was supposed to, so its master had to force it to cry from time to time by rapping it lightly on the head, but at list_ Books from Korea

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times, it wouldn’t cry no matter what. People liked watching the master playing the guitar and the rooster crying out or not crying out in time, and gave the master a bit of money. I couldn’t tell how the chicken felt as it stood precariously on the guitar, singing as it continued to rock—it seemed very nervous—but the master looked very happy to put on little performances with his rooster. In any case, my friend, probably reminded all of a sudden by the rooster next to the oasis, said that she was going to go see the musician’s rooster in Marrakesh, as if Marrakesh were a place she could reach just by climbing over a hill or something. I thought it would be nice to go to Marrakesh to see the rooster and its master sing together in the square. Marrakesh was far away, but it seemed that seeing them would be reason enough to go there. I saw her walk towards the sand dune that was before us, then climb over the dune. The dune was very big, and her body looked very small in comparison. Somehow, it really seemed that Marrakesh, Morocco would be on the other side of the dune, and that there would be a rooster singing on a guitar on the square there. With her back towards me, she waved at me, and I waved back at her. At last, she climbed over the dune, and could no longer be seen. I smiled, picturing her invisible lips smiling. I was sad that we had parted because of a rooster, but soothed my sadness by thinking something else about the rooster. When I turned my eyes back to where the rooster had been, however, the rooster of the oasis had disappeared. It seemed as if it had vanished along with the incantatory, lethargic Arabian music that had come to a stop in the meantime. And after I had that dream, I was somewhat surprised and pleased at the same time that the more I thought about chickens, the more there was to think about chicken. It was very pleasant to have continuing thoughts about something, especially about chickens. And they had to be thoughts by thoughts, and for thoughts. One of the things I liked to do as a child was to sit blankly on the f loor watching the chickens roaming the yard. I 58 list_ Books from Korea

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never got tired of watching chickens. They didn’t seem that interesting at first glance, but the longer I watched them, the more interesting they grew. And one of my favorite moments was when I was lying in my room at midday in the hot summer, and watching through the open door the chickens quietly roaming in the yard, or a rooster suddenly attacking a hen for some reason, getting up on its back and pecking it on the head. The chickens would peck at the feed or sit still, doing their thing, but then suddenly chase other chickens away ruthlessly, as though they couldn’t stand the fact that other chickens were there, or that the other chickens were their associates. Anyway, chickens being the only things in the yard that moved around, I would always grow drowsy after watching them for a while. The chickens, seemingly dazed from the midday heat, got me, who couldn’t take my eyes off them, dazed as well. Sometimes, I would watch the chickens that were walking around the yard while giving myself up to the drowsiness, and hear my mother and father talk loudly to each other somewhere unseen, and what they said sounded bizarre at times. Once, I heard my mother talk about a squirrel and sand and a letter, and my father talk about a barber shop and a post office and a butcher shop, and their words got mixed up from time to time and sounded something like, I’d like a squirrel to get a haircut at the barber shop and buy some cow intestines with sand in them at the post office and take them to the butcher shop (I think I’m always drawn to my childhood memories because of such strange yet fascinating scenes that could be pictured only during my childhood). At such times, I would think of the mailman who rarely came to our house, and fall asleep, thinking that I didn’t need any news that would make me happy, but that it would be nice if he brought me an orphaned squirrel every time he came—he had an old pouch that looked as if it would carry anything and everything, including several orphaned squirrels—and thinking that I—I was ready to set out with a squirrel—should tell him that the next time I saw him, but I never made such a request. I also wondered, after falling into a doze and waking up

from a dream, what chickens dreamt about. If they dreamt at all, they must dream about the people they lived with. They would surely not dream about whales or tigers or turtles, which they had never seen. But it was possible that they often dreamt about cats that often tormented them. Dreams about cats could be nightmares for the chickens, and after having such dreams, the chickens could lament the reality in which they couldn’t live in a world without cats, or at least in a world that was separate from the one in which cats lived, even though they wanted to, and peck at other chickens with their beaks for no good reason. A f ter wa rds, I remembered how even when my grandmother died, I had just stared at the chickens in the yard amid the sound of people crying. The chickens, quietly roaming the yard, helped me feel the sorrow I should feel, and at the same time, endure the sorrow. My grandmother had once bought me a bicycle with the money she had gotten from selling the chickens she had raised. Being awake, I stayed in bed, but I didn’t have an easy time falling back asleep. Somehow, I felt that I’d be able to fall asleep if I heard the sound of a chicken crow in that moment, but no such sound came. I let out a very quiet yelp that sounded as if it could make even a flower flinch, if there had been a flower by my side, but then stopped. I had some beer again after tossing and turning for quite some time, but it was no use. Another sleepless night had arrived. At moments like that, even a tangled string on the floor could look quite tragic, but I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t feel either good or bad. I felt indifferent. If I left the earth and went to someplace like Saturn, it seemed, maybe I would feel a little different. I couldn’t really tell what I was thinking, either. It was as if I were fumbling with a braille book I couldn’t read with the tip of a finger. Nevertheless, it seemed that my thoughts vaguely touched upon something. I took out about five sleeping pills, put them on a plate, and took them one by one with some beer. The pills, in different colors—white, yellow, and pink—had similar effects.

From time to time when I couldn’t sleep, I put some sleeping pills on a plate and slowly took them with some beer, as though they were snacks on the side. Once, I took a few sleeping pills so that I could get some sleep, but I didn’t fall asleep, so I kept taking them to see what changes would come over my body and mind depending on the amount of sleeping pills I took, and found it interesting to feel myself gradually slipping out of consciousness, and ended up taking nearly fifty pills. What I had taken, however, was only half the lethal dose. In any case, I hadn’t taken the sleeping pills to take my last sleep. After taking about ten sleeping pills with beer, I felt a little fuddled, though I couldn’t tell whether it was because of the beer or the pills, and the blanket, crumbled up on the bed, began to resemble the Tien Shan Mountains or the Kunlun Mountains, and it seemed that in the darkness beyond them under the bed, there would be a desert like the Taklamakan Desert, and that fish and birds would be flying or swimming together in a place that could either be a lake in the desert or the sky, and that a fisherman at a lake there would fish out with a fishing net a horse that was white all over. I pictured flamingoes flying under the bed, and it seemed that where I was lying down could be anywhere in the world. I could be lying down on the grass on a grassy plain, or a rock in the woods, or in the middle of the desert. I thought of some names of deserts, such as Taklamakan, Gobi, Namib, Sahara, Mojave, Kalahari, and Negev, and the names seemed to quietly call me to someplace very far away. I was floundering in a semiconscious state. I thought that if I were lying on the grass, it was only natural for me to picture a snake crawling on the grass where I was lying, and that there should be a pillow or a die or a kettle, as well as countless shards of a shattered mirror. They may not be necessary for the snake, but at any rate, the snake, too, would prefer that countless pieces of a shattered mirror, quietly reflecting the sunlight, be with a pillow or a die or a kettle on the grass, than something that made a sound that could startle it, which was poisonous. And it would be nice as well if on the grass there list_ Books from Korea

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was a little ball, such as a baseball, that had nothing to do with the snake and had come flying from somewhere. The snake could pass through the grass at leisure or coil itself up or shed its skin, giving no heed to the things that had nothing to do with it. And if I were lying in the woods, I could think about how one of the greatest things about the woods is that you can lose your way there, and that the woods always held open the possibility of you losing your way there, and that a wrong path could turn out to be a wonderful path. And I thought that if I were lying in a desert, it would be nice if there were countless camel’s feet, cut around the ankles, stuck upside down around me. I once heard that’s the way Mongolian nomads held funerals when their camels died. Suddenly, I thought of the chair in the mirror that had appeared in a dream I had. There was a chair reflected on a mirror, and I tried to sit on the chair in front of the mirror, but there was no chair I could sit on. The chair existed only in the mirror. Curiously, the grassy plain and the woods and the desert that had come to my mind also seemed to be something without substance, like the chair in the mirror. I went on taking the sleeping pills one by one, as if I were savoring their taste, and I grew more and more fuddled, and my mind was dizzy with thoughts about the play of thoughts. Something inside me seemed to move, but I didn’t. I felt a feeling of sadness for a very brief moment, but after letting go of the feeling as though letting go of a fish I’d caught with my hands, I didn’t feel much of anything. Nevertheless, it seemed that if I moved at all, something long and thin inside me, perhaps something that took up a great part of me, would come flowing out like strands of noodles. The more it seemed that something inside me was being stirred up, the more still I remained. And after some thought, I told myself that now wasn’t the time to meet a ghost or to lie still in bed, becoming a ghost myself or wearing a coat that made me resemble a ghost. Then it seemed that everything grew quiet. I thought of the names of the tranquilizers I’d taken, such as Stilnox, Xanax, Ativan, and Halcyon, and the names felt as 60 list_ Books from Korea

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awful as their effects or side effects. It seemed that names of deserts, such as Taklamakan, Gobi, Namib, Sahara, Mojave, Kalahari, and Negev, would be much more appropriate as names of sleeping pills or sleep inducers. It would be fabulous to fall asleep after taking sleeping pills named Taklamakan, Gobi, Namib, Sahara, Mojave, Kalahari, and Negev. Even when I tossed and turned, unable to fall asleep even after taking the pills, I would be able to imagine that I was wandering around deserts with such names. And the thought would make my sleeplessness a little less painful. Anyway, as I sat still leaning against the bed, opening and closing my eyes repeatedly, unfamiliar scenes slowly unfolded before me. They had to do with dreams, and reveries in the form of dreams, and a perspective outside reality, through which reality was perceived in a strange way. Various scenes were spread out before me, and there appeared rooms in which languages roamed about capriciously, and thoughts rushed in and out like waves, and I passed slowly through the rooms, which were full of picturesque scenes like scenes in an engraving made up of only blue and white. When I went into a room that looked like the living room of someone’s house, a scene of nature unfolded. There was a huge river in the middle of the vast scenery. Suddenly I recalled a childhood memory. Whenever I saw a river, I used to picture a frozen lake, or more often, myself skating endlessly as it grew dark on a frozen lake that stretched out as far as the eye could see. It seemed that in the cold water beneath the thick ice, there would be fish, nearly made up of ice, at rest as though frozen. Curiously, I pictured a frozen lake whenever I saw a lake, perhaps because I imagined that at the end of it, there was a world you could reach only by endlessly skating away on the frozen river. It wasn’t winter, however, and the river wasn’t frozen. The river was flowing slowly, and on the slowly flowing river there was something that was drifting down just as slowly. It was a large tree, pulled up by the roots, and it seemed that it was drifting down in comfort. With my eyes fixed on the tree, I walked for a little while at the speed at which it was drifting

down. I felt that I was walking side by side with a tree, and felt happy. I felt that way because it was the first time I felt that I was walking side by side with a tree since I once had had a dream about walking side by side with a little tree, holding its hand (the tree, of course, was reaching out its branch like a hand). It seemed that you could make possible a series of impossible things just by chanting a spell in your mind or snapping your fingers lightly. It seemed, for instance, that it wouldn’t be such a big deal to run into squirrels sitting with their legs crossed, or having a serious discussion with their arms crossed, and that it would be nothing for a bird, sitting on a tree, to fly up into the sky, uprooting and taking the tree along with it. I continued to pass by rooms in a house, and imagined traveling with a chicken the whole time. Considering that when people traveled in the past, countless animals such as horses and camels served as their companions, comforting them, and enriching the journey in a way that wouldn’t have been possible without them, imagining a journey with a chicken may not be anything remarkable. I imagine that any minute, a chicken may appear and we may experience a brief moment together, or be on our way together. Perhaps I would come across a rooster standing on someone’s grave, looking like a sculpture in the form of a chicken, as if it has forgotten that it’s a chicken, or walk on the sandy beach with it. Then I could say to the chicken walking by my side, There’s an island beyond the clouds in the sky touching the sea, and you can see it from here when the weather is fine, but the weather isn’t very nice right now, so it’s all right if we can’t see the island. But somehow, I felt as if a chicken, which hadn’t revealed itself, were already guiding my way, and I pictured a chicken that was with me. I kept on walking. I gradually came to understand the joy of walking, and realized that I only had to let my body understand the joy. No, I only had to let my body pass on the joy it already knew to my mind. I was headed to a realm of

ideas, however, rather than a specific place, and I was feeling the joy of wandering in the midst of ideas with my body and mind. And when a hill unfolded beneath my feet, I ran into a flock of sheep. One of the sheep came towards me, and I, too, went towards the sheep. We looked at each other for a moment, as if waiting for the other to say something first, and took part in a silent conversation for a moment. I realized once again through the conversation with the sheep, as well as my own monologue, that there’s an element of monologue in every conversation. When I opened another door and entered, a forest opened up, and when I continued for a little while to follow the path leading into the forest, I saw a brook running, and heard the booming sound of water beyond the brook, and then in a moment, a waterfall appeared before me. Huge fish were swimming against the strong current in the quite large waterfall that bespoke a certain energy and spouted a strong current of water, and I watched the fish going up the waterfall with envy. When I was little, too, I used to watch the fish in the river for long stretches of time, with envy and admiration, and it seemed that in those moments, I could live with a sad face at all times, if for the fish that looked sad for some reason, that lived in a place where I couldn’t live—once, when I was little, I became curious as to how long the fish that lived in a world that was different from mine could stay out of water, and wanting to find out, I caught a fish and placed it outside the water, and to make it fair, I myself went into the water and stayed there without breathing, and I think we came out even. And once, I became fixated on the question of why fish smelled so fishy, and continued to think about it by myself. Was it to protect themselves through the smell? There must be predators that are repelled by the smell. But the predators, also fish, would probably not keep themselves from eating other fish because of their smell, even if they’re repelled by it. Plus, the predators themselves could smell fishy. Anyway, I wonder how fish feel about each other’s smell. Are they drawn to it, or list_ Books from Korea

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repelled by it? I think they’re probably drawn to it, since it’s hard to imagine so many fish living in water being repelled by each other’s smell. And maybe it’s impossible to detect the smell in the water. Anyhow, such thoughts were appropriate for thinking while looking at fish, and perhaps they were one of the first serious inquiries I had about something in nature. Most of the fish failed to go all the way up the waterfall in one attempt. They all succeeded, however, after some failure and practice. But it seemed that even though they didn’t require that much practice—perhaps they had trained themselves sufficiently while swimming towards the waterfall, that going up such a waterfall had become no big deal—they enjoyed going up the waterfall for the sake of it, and that’s why they jumped up to the top of the waterfall, falling back down, repeating the act several times, then heading upstream. It seemed that the fish loved jumping up over the strong current, then falling back down. I could see why. And when I saw the fish going up the waterfall, looking so splendid, it seemed that there was nothing in the world as splendid as going up a waterfall. It wasn’t something that just anyone could do. Only some fish, that had the amazing capacity to go up waterfalls, could enjoy such blessing. And somehow it seemed that the waterfall would be much less interesting if it weren’t for the fish that went up the waterfall. The fish, it seemed, made the waterfall even more wonderful, and even more vibrant. And as I quietly watched the fish going up the waterfall, I was even deluded into thinking that it was the fish that were making the water fall. It seemed that the phenomenon occurred under the same principle in which caged squirrels spin their wheels. I said that to the invisible chicken next to me, which agreed. Anyhow, I saw something circling around in the whirlpool created by the waterfall where the water fell vertically, and upon closer look, I found that it was an unpeeled onion. The onion continued to sink and rise, trapped in the whirlpool and unable to drift down any further as if someone had thrown 62 list_ Books from Korea

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it there for an experiment, and now, as I quietly watched the onion, I felt as if the onion were making the fish jump up the waterfall. The strong current of falling water and the violently jumping fish and the thrashing onion seemed to be moving through a physical, organic force, which created an optical illusion effect. I took a small path next to the waterfall and went up towards the upper part of the waterfall. There were many fish there that had already come up the waterfall, swimming towards their destination upstream. I walked for a little while along the brook, moving together with the fish that were swimming towards their destination. As I went upwards, there appeared other waterfalls of various sizes and shapes. I gave each waterfall a fitting name, and it seemed that waterfalls would continue to appear as long as I kept giving them names. At the same time, it seemed that I would be able to turn each waterfall into a shape I wanted. I could, for instance, make a waterfall that looked like a comet with a long tail. And it seemed that the waterfalls, while they were actual waterfalls, were at the same time waterfalls in my ideas. When I opened another door and entered, I saw enormous trees I’d never seen before, standing in a strange posture like a person with distorted limbs, with a huge knot that looked like an eye of a giant on each stem. The trees looked like lunatics, and it seemed that they would suddenly go berserk, or at least block my way. I walked among the trees, quite nervous that I may have to take part in a strange fight against the insane trees. The trees, however, stood still, looking ominous rather than flaunting a splendor fit for their great size. Nevertheless, it seemed that the trees were twisting their limbs almost imperceptibly as I passed through among them. Incidentally, there was something on the branches. At first I thought they were birds, a kind I’d never seen before. But sitting on the branches were children, all naked. The children didn’t turn their heads away or anything, even when they saw me. No, it seemed that they didn’t see me. Their eyes

were all closed, and they were gently rocking, looking as if they were dreaming. I felt an urge to wake one of them, but stopped myself. Above all, I felt that the children shouldn’t be disturbed, whatever they were doing. Children should be tying up a bird they caught onto a tree branch, or spinning a top, or rolling down a hill, or running across a field against the wind with their mouths and arms wide open, at the speed of a bird soaring high up into the sky and in like manner, or lying down in a barley field in the manner of barley stalks bending in the wind, or knocking down an ant tunnel and raising up another ant tunnel in a similar shape, but they’re not, what’s wrong with them, I muttered. I could see, however, why the children were in such a state. I recalled a memory from my childhood about throwing live rats, which I’d caught with other kids, into the river. I couldn’t remember, though, why I’d done such a thing at the time, or whether the rats had swum safely out of the river in the end, or drowned. We were playing a game of catching rats and throwing them into the river, which was a suitable game for children to play. The children on the trees were clearly playing a game of their own. And it seemed that I, too, was engrossed in a game of my own. It seemed that the children would wake up suddenly and ask strange questions, and that if they did, I would be able to give them answers that sounded strange in my own ears. Or it seemed that they would wake up slowly and turn into chickens or some other birds. But they grew faint, as shadows do, and in the end they vanished completely. It seemed that at that moment, there came from somewhere a sound like the sound of a chicken crowing, which had awakened me the day before at dawn, and which I’d listened to for a while even after I woke up. I began to walk towards the direction from which the sound came. Somehow, it seemed that I was returning to the oasis in the desert where there had been a chicken that appeared, then disappeared amid the sound of Arabian music. But I found myself marching in place. I felt my eyelids droop under the weight of sleep, and

felt my body grow fainter and fainter, thinking I was learning how to travel together with a chicken.

An Afternoon of the Faun Jung Young-moon, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. 2008, 303p, ISBN 9788954605793

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About the Author Jung Young-moon, born in Hamyang, South Gyeongsang province in 1965, graduated from Seoul National University, majoring in psychology. Jung made a debut with a feature-length novel, A Man Who Barely Exists, in 1996. His collection of short stories are A Chain of Dark Tales (1998), A Most Ambiguous Sunday (2001), Dreams (2003), and An Afternoon of the Faun (2008). His novels include Pale Soliloquy (2000), Pierrot on the Moon (2004), Vaseline Buddha (2010), and A Contrived World (2011). In 1999, Jung won the 12th Dongsuh Literary Award with A Chain of Dark Tales, whose English and French editions were later published. The German version of Pierrot on the Moon is scheduled to be published soon. Jung is also a professional translator who has translated more than 50 titles.

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Reviews Fiction

To Pacify the Heart’s Darkness Snake Yun Bo-in, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. 2011, 285p, ISBN 9788932022321

Yun Bo-in’s first collection of short stories, Snake, is dedicated to those who have traversed the pains of a life of longing in light of her own sins and contradictions. Within the seven tales of this collection, the characters that appear in Yun’s stories seem all too happy to leave this Earth, rather than endure the insignificance of existence. One of the most noteworthy tales in this collection is “Sunday,” in which the third person plural, “we,” is used to refer to a group of nameless children. These are “bad” children, children who steal, tell lies, and do not believe in love despite being avid churchgoers. These children, who encounter only loneliness even within a community of love, play the organ in order to forget their solitude. Within this tale these children, who have until now been timid, can at last break their silence and speak for themselves. What is more, these children are able to form their words in an incredibly poetic language. Yun’s language pacifies the undeniable hunger for life by people who are slowly withering away in solitude. The sum of the

horrifying, sickening images that make up the overall impression of the collection— perhaps even describable as a noxious odor that arises from the tales—constitute a form of “garbage” and “filthy remnants” (“Odor”) that continually cut into the hearts of these figures. But who would shake their finger at these people, calling them dirty, shaming them? As is shown in the latter half of the book, if art were a human being, it could be a force to pacify the dark forest that any one of us might have in our hearts, blowing away effortlessly like a breeze. Could the hand that lightly wipes away the tears of human beings, without judging the vile and abominable in us, be the hand of art? By Hur Yoonjin

A Taste of that Literary Feeling! The History of the Hamburger that Was Nothing to Anyone Jo Hyeon, Minumsa Publishing Group 2011, 222p, ISBN 9788937483844

W hen we come into contact w it h literature, the orbit of our lives tilts by about five degrees. Summers do not feel like the summers before and the winter cold is somehow different as well. In this way, literature alters lives. Sometimes it might even seem as though not having encountered certain works would have been better. Just as the sharp memory of a first kiss can leave one with an aching heart for the rest of one’s life, there are some changes that simply do not fade. Jo Hyeon introduced genre-specific ways of writing into our literature and rearranged the boundless sea of information to write a new narrative. That is why Jo’s work is bound up with both fact and fiction. One of the most interesting parts of reading Jo Hyeon’s work is asking oneself: How much is fact? What is information?

Where does the fiction begin? The greatest reason that Jo serves as a breath of fresh air is that he sets the attainment of sympathy as his goal. By setting this feeling as his final goal, Jo reaffirms his own humility to readers. If readers do not experience empathy, then literature is nothing. If Jo’s work can become a special language—even to only one person—that is exactly what literature is, and the kind of reader that Jo’s work calls for is exactly that kind of reader. Jo’s f irst novel serves as a proposal of sorts to literature itself, and of all the sorts I have read it would seem as though Jo’s writing is one of the most romantic confessions of love. That said, it is not his writing in itself that serves as the drive behind his means of captivation, but rather what is interesting is the way in which his writing calls forth empathy. If nothing else, Jo Hyeon is a writer who knows how to make that empathetic confession to readers. By Kang Yu-jung

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Reviews Fiction

What Use Is the Average Joe? The User Manual for Cheol-su Jeon Seok-sun, Minumsa Publishing Group 2011, 228p, ISBN 9788937483745

The name “Cheol-su” is one of the most common male names in Korean society. Within the ever-intensifying struggle for survival, the Cheol-sus—once looked at as common, “disciplined people,” who “lived without a greater plan”—have now become some of the most unfortunate of our society. If there isn’t a unique quality to someone like the Cheol-sus of our time, then finding success in our cruel society will become difficult. “The User Manual for Cheol-su” is the story of one young man who is able to find his own guide to life in a world that undervalues the average Joe—or the average Cheol-su, as it may be. Cheol-su is an unemployed 29-yearold. He can’t find a job; he has no success in love, and is nothing to his family. He is treated as some type of inferior product. In order to rid himself of the feeling of inferiority that follows him wherever he goes, of the feeling that no one can seem to find a use for him, he decides to write a user manual for himself. Written for a world that looks at people as consumer goods, he counters: “Okay, fine. But I am a far more useful product than you think, a product you can appreciate.” As this sad young man

writes a user manual about himself in order to find his own usefulness, we discover that this tale is far more than the story of your average out-of-work young man. It is a portrait of modern man, perpetually dissatisfied despite his constant efforts to gain recognition as a “slightly better commodity” in a world that regards people as mere consumer goods. Perhaps all of us experience the agony of not being able to find our true usefulness in life. “Living in the red ” is a harsh principle of competition and an all-toocommon phrase. This story is more than the story of an out-of-work young man. It is a novel for all those who have lost their own personal user manual. Although the commodification of man is an unfortunate reality, it would seem as though finding our own instructions for use may not be a bad thing. Too often we lose track of our user manuals, forgetting just how multi-faceted we are. Could it be that we already have this information somewhere inside ourselves? By Jung Yeo-ul

Welcome to the Real World Good-bye, Mazinger Lee Seung-hyeon, Silcheon-munhak Publishing Co., Ltd. 2011, 287p, ISBN 9788939206625

Lee Seung-hyeon is a writer new to the literary scene as of 2011 and Good-bye, Mazinger is his first novel. Aside from going to school and performing his public service in the military, Lee spent much of his time in a factory, and to add to his interesting resume is his career as a mixed martial arts fighter. This is a book that deals directly with his experience of having worked in a factory. Good-bye, Mazinger is t he ma in character’s coming-of-age story, moving from the main character’s adolescence to adulthood and telling the tale of the various troubles he faced in that process. For the main character in his third year of high school, school seems like a prison where senseless violence is enacted against him, and he is given the nickname “Mazinger” (after the Japanese manga series). For this 66 list_ Books from Korea

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character, grown-ups are not the only figures who treat the Mazingers of the world unfairly, but he fears that perhaps everyone in the world might become the same type of adult. This protagonist, wanting so badly to escape from his school environment, takes a job at a factory before even finishing school. The factory is of course a dreary place where there’s an ever-present danger of having one’s hand cut off. The author, Lee, however, takes what could have been a depressing, cynical narrator’s tale and writes it with great humor. This protagonist—when whipped by his teachers, when exchanging blows with his co-workers, or when describing the various characters he meets in the factory— does not let the otherwise decrepit situation get him down and, instead, his descriptions of these events breathe fresh air into the novel. As the story becomes entangled in the mysterious suicide of the main character’s former manager, Mr. K ang, the main character bids a heartfelt adieu to the “small,

youthful days of his wandering life,” and departs into the greater world. The death of Mr. Kang and the wounds left behind serve as an opportunity to realize the narrator’s connection to the rest of the world. By Park Hyekyung

Steady Sellers

Death Reborn I Have the Right to Destroy Myself Kim Young-ha, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. 2010, 134p, ISBN 9788954611770

Kim Young-ha’s I Have the Right to Destroy Myself (1996) connects reality and illusion and life and death in the way a Möbius strip creates a cur ved surface with an indistinguishable inside and outside. His novel shakes the dichotomous perception of reality vs. illusion and life vs. death to the core. The novel poses the question: If humans desire life, couldn’t they also desire death, which is a part of life? Can’t our desires advance beyond life and reach the realm of death? In I Have the Right to Destroy Myself, life, illusion, death, and desire travel across each other’s boundaries. The protagonist ask s, borrowing Shakespeare’s words, “Then is it sin to rush to the secret house of death ere death dare

come to us?” The protagonist/narrator of I Have the Right to Destroy Myself is a suicide designer. “I” seeks out people who are lonely and depressed over the emptiness of life, and recommends suicide. He coaches them and runs errands for them in order to make it happen. For the protagonist, suicide is a way of artistically condensing a boring, messy life, a ritual for the aesthetic perfection of life. Tw o w o m e n s u c c e e d i n k i l l i n g themselves. Judith (Seyeon) works at a bar and has a habit of having sex with Chupa Chups in her mouth. She’s dating K, a superspeed cab driver, but seduces his older brother C, who’s a video artist. She has car

sex with C during a snowstorm one day and disappears without a trace. She kills herself in a planned gas explosion with the help of the narrator. Mimi is a performance artist. Mimi, who has never seen her own performance, asks video artist C to film her performance. W hile watching her performance on video in her bathtub, Mimi slits her wrists. The protagonist gave advice on her suicide as well. After overseeing their suicides, the protagonist goes on a trip and fictionalizes their short lives. I Have the Right to Destroy Myself makes significant allusions to three paintings: “The Death of Marat” by Jacques-Louis David, “Judith” by Gustav Klimt, and “Death of Sardanapalus” by Eugène Delacroix. All three paintings have death motifs and function as the subconscious cause and object of the narrator, Mimi, and Judith’s fascination with death as an aesthetic. They also represent the themes of the novel, end of the revolution, eroticism, and bio-politics. “The Death of Marat” symbolizes the end of the revolution through the death of a radical politician of the French Revolution, Marat. “Judith,” which depicts Judith smiling with Holofernes’ severed head in her hands, is a reference to Georges Bataille’s concept of eroticism, namely the ecstasy felt in close approximation of death. “Death of Sardanapalus,” which depicts Sardanapalus killing his courtesans before the fall of Babylon, is a metaphor for the bio-political situation in contemporary society where the matter of an individual’s death is subject to government rule. Kim Young-ha’s critique of society has in its undercurrent a critique of contemporary civilization. As Michel Foucault pointed out, contemporary society is founded on the Lacanian foreclosure that has its roots in reason and power. Just as madmen were alienated and institutionalized in the process of establishing modern social order, contemporary society was established by systematically excluding death from the masses’ metaphorical circulation. But as many scholars point out, contemporary civilization built on the “death of death” is in reality ruled over by the culture of death. As critic Nam Jin-woo so aptly puts it, the death aesthetic of Kim Youngha is a resistance against a world that has castrated death. Kim triggers a progressive imagination that breaks “normalcy” apart by smuggling death back into the territory of contempora r y societ y. His shre wd language f lows against the current into death, and leaves a sharp wound in the dull consciousness of today’s living dead. By Kim Dongshik

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Reviews Nonfiction

Apologizing Isn’t for Losers Anymore The Art of Apology Kim Hoh and Jeong Jaeseung, Across Publishing Company 2011, 317p, ISBN 9788996588702

Corruption flares up from politics to the economy, society and culture, and almost everywhere else. Across the world, endless lies and excuses are forged to cover up mistakes and wrongdoings, with dirty deals sealed in dark corners. Incompetence and shamelessness pervade in so many sectors that it’s no easy task to tackle the issue of healing this sickly modern city. To find an answer, South Korea’s top brain and neurology researcher and top communications expert have joined forces. Their joint answer is none other than a “cool apology.” Pe o p l e t e n d t o m a k e m i s t a k e s . Recognizing the mistakes and offering a sincere apology is easier said than done. W hy do people helplessly fa ll into a deeper trap by making up lame excuses? The authors resort to a perspective based on evolutionar y psycholog y to crack open the underlying rea sons behind such a reluctance to apologize. They also introduce specific cases in which irresponsible lies could backfire terribly in an era of digital transparency and realtime sharing of information aided by the Internet and social networks. Above all, the book is largely concerned about what constitutes a “cool” apology and the methods required for delivering sincere apologies. Po p s o n g s a r e r e v e a l i n g a b o u t apologies. Elton John’s refrain “Sorry

seems to be the hardest word,” and the band Chicago’s refrain “Hard to say I’m sorry” are illustrative example showing that people believe the act of saying ‘I’m sorry’ seriously hurts their self-respect. The undesirable upshot is that people falsely believe they’ve truly offered an apology by saying the dreaded sentence reluctantly. The biggest misunderstanding about apologizing is none other than a false belief that saying ‘I’m sorry’ solves the problem once and for all. On the contrary, a halfbaked or misguided apology could make matters far worse. Saying ‘I’m sorry’ is just an expression of regret and the beginning of an apology, the authors note. People have to express the reason why they feel sorry in detail, who is responsible for the sorry situation, and what should be done to prevent it from happening again. T here a re t hree expressions t hat should not be used when one tries to offer an apology. First, don’t use “but” and “however” because these words change the tone towards the opposite direction and usually set the stage for offering excuses, not an apology. Second, “If that’s how you feel, I’m sorry,” is far from a sincere apology. This conditional sentence is telling the counterpart that you are willing to offer only 50 percent of an apology. Third, using the passive voice like “A mistake has been made” should be avoided as well. The passive voice is clearly to shift

the blame somewhere else, an act that can hurt the feelings of the counterpart who deserves a straightforward apology. U.S. president Barack Obama said: “And that's part of the era of responsibility. It's not never making mistakes; it's owning up to them and trying to make sure you never repeat them and that's what we intend to do.” The authors posit that apologizing was reserved for the so-called “losers” in the 19th and 20th century, but it will be the language of leaders in the 21st century. The choice for readers is clear: Are you willing to be recognized and reborn as a leader who has the courage to offer a sincere apology, or to plunge into the bottomless abyss of lies and excuses? By Richard Hong

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Reviews Nonfiction

Transforming Negatives into Positives Resilience Kim Joo-hwan, Wisdomhouse Publishing Co., Ltd. 2011, 311p, ISBN 9788960864375

L i fe a lw ay s c ome s w it h pit f a l l s a nd c h a l le n g e s . S ome p e ople t u r n t he s e obstacles into something to celebrate; others find themselves stuck in a well of despair resulting from the hurdles they confront in life. The former group usually has an internal springboard that transforms ne g at ive de ve lopment s i nto p o sit ive ones. The book defines such an ability as “resilience.” L ee Sang-mook, who is ca lled the “Korean Stephen Hawking,” is a case in point. Lee, currently professor of earth and environmental science at Seoul National University, was a promising marine geology researcher who earned a Korean government scholarship and received a doctorate degree from the prestigious MIT. In 2006, Lee was in a serious car accident during a geological survey in California which resulted in his paralysis from the neck down. However, he embraced the tragedy as it was and returned to his academic career after just six months of rehabilitation, demonstrating a remarkable resilience. Lee observed that he has become a scholar who gets the spotlight

on the global academic stage thanks to the debilitating accident, calling himself “a lucky guy.” British aut hor J.K . Rowling, who has created the internationally popular Harry Potter series, is a figure armed with great resilience. She once said, “I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter, and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” The book a rg ues t hat ‘a ba la nced human relationship’ is at the heart of resilience, offering various methods and tips aimed at expanding relationships, broadening communication and empathy, and developing a positive smile and grateful attitude. By Richard Hong

Self Esteem Unlocks a Child’s Growth Child's Self Esteem Kim Min-tae and Chung Ji-eun, Knowledge Channel 2011, 277p, ISBN 9788952762078

“A Child’s Personal Life,” a sensational educational documentary aired in 2008 by EBS (Education Broadcasting System), has also been made into a book with the same title. Based on recent studies in psychology and pedagogy, this book identifies five major elements in a child's growth: secrets of the brain, differences between sons and daughters, the multiple intelligence theory, morality, and self-esteem. The most important of all is self-esteem. It is not an overstatement to say that self-esteem is what determines a child's life. Education in Korea, which impressed even U.S. President Obama, has placed emphasis on academic competence. It has produced some success, but not without negative repercussions. A Child's Self-Esteem is a book that advocates shifting the focus of education from improving the child’s scholastic achievements to inspiring the 70 list_ Books from Korea

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child’s self-esteem. If pride is a state of mind where one desires respect in comparison to others, then self-esteem is a state of mind where one esteems and loves the self as it is. In this state of mind, therefore, one does not feel superior or inferior to others in comparison with the self. Children with high self-esteem can accept their failures when they make a mistake. They can also respect others who are not better than them. The book explores how a nd when a child's self-esteem is formed and the behavioral patterns of a child with low self-esteem, and gives advice. If a child constantly hesitates and/or falters in speech, thinks that falling behind is normal, and is too passive and submissive, then suspect that the child has low self-esteem. Once a child’s self-esteem is formed before seven years of age, it will control the child for the rest of his or her life. But don’t be disappointed if your child is older than that. It is not impossible, but just takes longer, to increase a child's self-esteem as long as the parents change their parenting

attitude. This book is another reminder that the key to parenting is the parents, not the child. By Han Mihwa

Reviews Nonfiction

Take It Easy, Mom and Dad Anxious Mother and Indifferent Father Oh Eun-young, Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. 2011, 343p, ISBN 9788901122816

There are a few international bestselling book s that explore innate dif ferences between men and women: Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps and Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. Another book on the same subject has been written by a Korean author: Anxious Mother and Indifferent Father. If the former books were about the differences between men and women in love and marriage, then Anxious Mother and Indifferent Father highlights the need to recognize and accept differences between men and women in parenting as well. This educational book identifies the trouble caused when this need is not met and kindly instructs the reader on how to deal with situations case by case. The author Dr. Oh Eun-young, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, presents episodes based on her extensive experience as a counselor, and her feelings and thoughts about what should be done to help her clientele. When it comes to parenting, the parents of this generation are much more interested and enthusiastic than those of earlier

generations. They don’t hold back time or money, either. But they are still unsure and nervous about whether they are being good parents or not. In a family, this uneasiness is manifested as a worrying mom and an indifferent dad, naturally causing trouble between the couple over parenting issues. The greatest virtue of this book is not that it provides solutions to certain behavioral problems of a child but that it leads the reader to reflect on their mindsets as parents. To this end, this book draws on research in evolutionary psychology and brain science to analyze parents of the present day and also note how the values of parents differ from generation to generation. By Han Mihwa

Philosophy Plays with Fire Practice of Philosophy Suh Dong-wook, Banbi 2011, 332p, ISBN 9788983712929

“Philosophy is following Prometheus’s teachings, always a fire. It bothers our mind like a light bulb and keeps us from sleeping,” says poet and philosopher Suh Dong-wook, professor of philosophy at Sogang University. As such Suh introduces philosophy as fire in this book, a fire that takes away our sweet slumber and instead offers us bright agony. This is a compilation of articles that were serialized in the “Forest of Knowledge” corner on a portal site and were received with great enthusiasm by netizens. In this book, philosophy escapes the stuffy and boring classroom and plunges into daily life. It has resumed its inherent task of awakening our sleeping reason and strengthening the power to think and put thought into practice. This book shows us what philosophy is, why it is important, and how to practice philosophy.

Practice of Philosophy is divided into philosophical theories and philosophical p r a c t i c e . Pa r t O n e , “ P h i l o s o p h i c a l Theories,” explains the complex theories of modern philosophers in an easy and clear way. Spinoza, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Freud opened the “modern” in philosophy; Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas, were central in phenomenology a nd ex istentia lism; a nd L evi-Strauss, Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze, and Derrida, formed the foundation of the theories of structuralism and post-structuralism. In Part Two, “Philosophical Practices,” there are questions and answers about many topics we come across in everyday life such as existence, truth, money, love, the body, and offer the joy of practicing philosophy. This is an excellent guidebook that leads us in the interesting world of philosophy. By Richard Hong

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Reviews Nonfiction

Deep Thoughts Made Easy Time to Think Philosophically Kang Shin-joo, Sakyejul Publishing Ltd. 2011, 346p, ISBN 9788958285342

Time to Think Philosophically might come off as a thought-provoking essay collection by a wise philosopher. Apt quotations give insights into the history of philosophy and other features in the book testify to a highly advanced depth and ease. But the author, Kang Shin-joo is, at the age of just 44, a “young” philosophy scholar. For his relatively young age, Kang does not attempt to preach by comparing old ideas and current reality, nor does he commercialize the great thinkers to cater to today’s readers. As with other scholars who gain recognition in non-academic fields, Kang is categorized as a “popular philosopher.” As such, he demonstrates his deep academic knowledge with a high level of writing skills. The book takes on 48 subjects that can easily turn up in everyday life. Kang introduces original philosophy texts from the East and West along with his own commentary and advice. Readers may well find their problems are not so different from academic issues analyzed by great thinkers such as Nietzsche and Lacan as they dig into the book. One’s self at work,

at home, and among peers might each be different; in this confusing context, who and what is the true self? This selfdoubt is almost universal, and the author joins the conversation by introducing a Roman philosopher Epiktetos in a form of philosophical counseling: “Remember that you are an actor in a drama, of such a part as it may please the master to assign you.” This type of commentary might not solve all the problems in life; however, such advice certainly offers solace, and when this happens, one realizes that life is essentially a representation of philosophical thinking. T he b o ok a pp e a r s t o h a v e m a d e meaningful progress in getting philosophy back to where it should be, about the everyday life of ordinary people. By Bae No-pil

Emotion Rules in Marriage Husband and Wife Lee Jong-mook, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. 2011, 305p, ISBN 9788954615815

Whether in the past or the present, the way people live does not seem to have changed much. While human reason today is building a tower of civilization that is not comparable to anything in the past, how about the way a man and a woman meet, marry, and live together? How much of that process has changed compared to 100, 200, 500, or 1,000 years ago? Lee Jong-mook, author of Husband and Wife and professor in Korean literature in Classical Chinese at the Department of Korean Literature, Seoul National University, states, “A couple love and separate according to their emotions rather than logic.” The fact that the way a husband and wife live is more influenced by emotions than reason is not so different between the past and the present. In diverse records of our ancestors we can find the aspects of a universal life in which a man 72 list_ Books from Korea

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and a woman meet, form a connection, fall in love, become husband and wife, and argue due to misunderstandings and conflicts. Relationships between women and men are often said to have been strict during the Joseon era which was ruled by Confucian ideology. By the age of seven, children of the opposite sex could not even sit together. Men and women had to keep a distance from each other until their marriage was arranged, then marry without seeing their prospective partner’s face, and live together for the rest of their lives. As we read this book, however, that does not necessarily seem to be the case. The author makes an interesting interpretation that makes us nod in agreement. He says: “The reason they emphasized that a boy and a girl should not sit together after they had reached the age of seven makes it appear as though there must have been a number of incidents caused by free love.” Marriage during the Joseon era was not limited to an individual. The propriety of marriage that linked marriage with the management of the state and the future

suggests too much for today to disregard it as an old-fashioned custom. By Bae Young-dae

Reviews Nonfiction

Diving into the Core of Jeju Journey to Jeju Island Joo Kang-hyun, Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. 2011, 455p, ISBN 9788901125435

It may not be an exaggeration that Journey to Jeju Island covers almost everything related to the island. The book is certainly not a c ompi lat ion of t r avel t ips a nd superficial observations readily available on the Internet. Rather, it’s a comprehensive guide to Jeju Island’s history, culture, and ecology. Fifteen key words including wind, rocks, women, female divers, tangerines, and volcano open a door to the innermost terrain of the exotic island. Joo Kang-hyun, professor emeritus at Jeju National University, casts a refreshing spotlight on Jeju as an “artificially made” island. Many of the island’s symbols and images have been continuously built and reconstructed. As far as Korea’s nature is concerned, Jeju is a unique volcanic island, whose written history traces back thousands of years. The ecolog y of the island is beautifully preserved in its hills, mountains, and the surrounding sea. Jeju is also an island of tradition, with historical sites scattered throughout. It’s also the very place where a series of revolts broke out, inviting harsh crackdowns by the government.

The opening of the book is dedicated to Jeju’s signature wind. The island’s history has been driven by winds. Examples include the peculiar Jeju-style roofs and “olle,” a local dialect for a narrow stone pathway connected from the street to the front gate of a house. The wind also brought all sorts of new things to Jeju. In addition, marine plants such as canna flowers, cactus, crinum, and new birds including pittas and Eurasian Spoonbill made their way to Jeju through the wind. Some Jeju villagers were stranded on the shores of the Philippines, Okinawa, and Taiwan. Countless foreign boats were stranded in Jeju. Hendrick Hamel, who was shipwrecked on Jeju in the mid-17th century, was just one of many, routine cases. “I thought what’s needed is a book that can play as a guide for those who want to dig deeper into the core of Jeju culture, not just its surface,” Joo says. All in all, the author seems to have achieved his goal. By Bae Young-dae

What Young Adults Really Need On Young Adult Literature Park Sang-ryool, Naramal 2011, 200p, ISBN 9788993041552

Korea’s publishing industry, faced with a protracted slump, is now rediscovering the value of the young adult market. Suddenly, both large and small publishers are churning out humanities titles specifically designed for adolescents and young adults, almost at a reckless pace. The question remains: Are these books really suitable and desirable for the target readers categorized as young adults? The role of literature should be more delicately defined for adolescents as they tend to feel they are going through a turbulent period in their life. The book suggests that young adult literature has to redefine its domain and direction, and publishers and authors alike should make concerted efforts to better communicate with young readers. The author Park Sang-ryool has been writing novels for young readers for more than 10 years. As a main editor for the

quarterly magazine Young Adult Literature, Park is widely regarded as an authority on this particular genre. In this book, he objectively identifies key issues and puts forward proposals aimed at strengthening the literary establishment. Today’s adolescent readers certainly absorb more books than ever. Unfortunately, they are not exposed to quality titles that free up their imagination and offer thoughtprovoking topics on life and existence. Instead, they are forced to study books designed for helping them pass college entrance exams. These titles are nothing if not literary junk food: instant gratification may be followed by greater risks in the long term. Park laments the current situation, arguing that the pure joy of reading should be returned to young readers. Trends come and go, so literature for young adults should be geared toward essential issues and ideas. Young adult literature should provide a chance for readers to develop and sharpen their worldview. Restoring sincerity to literature may be the first step to help

today’s young readers chart their own course in life. By Richard Hong

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Reviews Children's Books

Small Encounters Amount to A Lot

Red String Shin Aehee, Tomato House Co. 2011, 48p, ISBN 9788992089890

Inyeon is a popular term in the Korean vernacular. Inyeon, which originates from the Buddhist concept of hetu-pratyaya, is similar in basic meaning with “cause” but rather different on a fundamental level. Whereas “cause” is a word that describes an external reason that is factual and scientifically provable, the meaning of inyeon combines the internal reason (in) and external reason (yeon) of why things happen. According to Buddhist philosophy, all existence is made and unmade by inyeon. Buddhism teaches that upon deeper exploration of the true nature of existence, one comes to the conclusion that all things— even inyeon—can be reduced to nothingness. But for those who hardly know what’s in store for them tomorrow or even today, they can’t help but treasure inyeon, for the meaning of one’s existence is formed by a web of inyeon. There’s an old saying in Korea that goes, “Brush against someone’s sleeve, and that’s inyeon.” The depth of inyeon is measured in geop, and when one “brushes against someone else’s sleeve,” one has 500 geop. One geop is the amount of time it takes for droplets of water to completely break down a rock the size

of a house, so 500 geop is made up of an unimaginably long chain of events. The small encounters one has with others take on great meaning. Once one becomes aware of the gravity of inyeon that exists between people, no one is “just another person.” This book is about the inyeon between a jester and a mannequin in a shop window. Kuru the jester comes out to the town square like any other day to perform his tricks when he realizes that he has a red string tied to his pinky finger. The string is stuck to his hand and won’t come off. So he follows the string to find its other end tied to the pinky finger of a mannequin. Kuru instantly falls in love with the mannequin in a beautiful dress. Even though the only thing tying the two together is a flimsy red string, Kuru wishes to have a closer relationship with her. So he tells her that he’d like to be her friend, and gives her a note with pictures on it in an attempt at communication. He shows her his handkerchief magic trick. In spite of his efforts and sincerity, the mannequin does not so much as move. The relationship begins to move forward when a young girl

buys the dress the mannequin was wearing. Seeing the naked, scarred mannequin shivering in the cold, Kuru feels so bad that he doesn’t know what to do with himself. The mannequin asks Kuru for help, her voice traveling past the glass window via the red string. Kuru knits a cape with the red string that connected them. He succeeds in putting the cape on the mannequin. The inyeon between Kuru and the mannequin thus grows from a string to a heartwarming friendship. Kuru’s hard work creates a relationship that is worth five, fifty thousand geop. This story was adapted as a stop-motion animated feature that won the best short animation award at the Minas Gallery Short Film Festival in Maryland, in the U.S. Writer Shin Aehee is also a budding animated film director who participated in the AICAD “New York Studio Program” in 2009. By Kim Ji-eun

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Reviews Children's Books

Dreaming of Dinosaurs Dinosaur Warrior Bean Han Sangho; Illustrator: Hong Kyungnim BIR Publishing Co., Ltd., 2011, 493p ISBN 9788949171081

Dinosaur Warrior Bean is interesting in many ways. First, Han Sangho is currently a produc er who h a s m ade nu merou s documentaries. His work Dinosaurs of the Korean Peninsula in particular received favorable reviews and won many awards. Han has a scholar’s expertise when it comes to dinosaurs, which is reflected very well in Dinosaur Warrior Bean, his first fiction. Second, he has successfully placed dinosaurs in a faraway future setting on Earth. People usually imagine that science technology will be highly advanced in some uncertain future. However, this book is based on the premise that civilization on Earth will be completely obliterated after a natural disaster called the “great flood.” After the great flood wipes out the Earth, completely new continents and civilizations are created. What is most surprising is that dinosaurs, which went extinct a long time ago, are revived exactly as they were in the Mesozoic Era. Three thousand years after the great flood, human life on Earth is completely different from the present. Boys and girls

Listen to My Problems Too! Grandma Gam’s Wonderful Bag of Stories Lee Miji; Illustrator: Kim Mi-youn, Sigongjunior 2011, 99p, ISBN 9788952762337

Grandma Gam, a mysterious old lady w ho l i s ten s to a nd s olve s c h i ld ren’s trivial worries, appears in the portrayal of children’s interesting ever yday life. Grandma Gam comes to visit the Azalea class at Happiness Elementary School with a big bag full of stories. The children in the class have their own big and small problems. One does not want to go to school because he is scared of the teacher and is tired of reading. Some still pee in bed during the night even as first-grade elementary school students, and some just watch television every day. These problems may seem trivial and might not amount to anything from an adult’s point of view, but they are serious worries for the children who are actually experiencing them. What can possibly be done? Grandma Gam ignites their curiosity by making nonchalant remarks and telling 76 list_ Books from Korea

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them stories that are just right for them. To a child who does not want to go to school, she talks about a teacher who does not want to go to school, and to a child who pees in bed at night, she shares a story of a special spell. However, Grandma Gam does not offer solutions from beginning to end as to what the children should do. Her stories are loose and full of holes, so how to respond to her story is entirely up to the children. Grandma Gam seems to be quite different from the fairies that offer glass shoes or pick out beans from ash. But we are impressed when we see children who listen to the story then figure out what they have to do. Children always tend to achieve much more than what adults expect. By Kim Min-ryoung

find it natural to rear dinosaurs with care and the “dinosaur battle” which takes place based on the rapport between dinosaurs and children is a sport loved by everyone in the world. Living with his father, Bean has wanted to become a dinosaur warrior since he was very young, but despairs when he fails to enter the dinosaur school. But he forms a relationship with a mysterious white dinosaur Taro, meets old Master Han, an expert in dinosaur battle who has been living in seclusion, trains hard, and becomes a true dinosaur warrior. Detailed information on a number of dinosaurs harmonizes with a critical view of civilization, and the future world is portrayed so vividly that one can almost touch it. Above all, the process through which a young boy achieves his dreams after overcoming many obstacles rivets readers. By Kim Min-ryoung

Reviews Children's Books

No Greater Talent than Hard Work Chaekssitgi Day Lee Young-seo; Illustrator: Jeon Mi-hwa Hakgojae Publishing Co. 2011, 34p, ISBN 9788956251592

This picture book is part of the “Hakgojae Generation to Generation” series, which deals with rituals and festivities such as birth, hwangap (60th birthday), dol (first birthday), and bookwashing. This book deals with a ritual called “chaekssitgi,” a small party after finishing a book. Children who were learning elementary materials such as The Thousand Character Classic and Minor Learning would treat their teacher and classmates to rice cakes and food after they finished a book. Chaekssitgi Day is about Mongdam’s first bookwashing. Mongdam is trying to memorize a sentence: “Engrossed in reading at a bookstore on a busy street, in my pockets… my pockets…” over three scenes that depict someone sowing seeds, another ha r ve st ing melons a nd watermelons, a nd someone pick ing chestnuts, with each standing for spring, summer, and autumn. Mongdam is not the brightest, but Mongdam’s father is always proud of Mongdam’s penchant for reading, and reminds him that he dreamed of Laozi before Mongdam was born. Mongdam

devotes himself to reading and finally gets to do his first bookwashing. In the scenes of Mongdam reading, budding leaves, f lowers, seeds, a nd a snowman indicate the passing of spring, summer, winter, a nd fa ll, a nd the 12 animals of the zodiac indicate the passage of many years. Iridescent rainbows are a recurring theme that reflects Mongdam’s hopes and dreams. Mongdam is the childhood name of K im Deuk-sin (1604-1684), a famous Joseon era poet. He was slow as a child, but he read and reread good writing and compiled a list of 36 books he read more than 10 thousand times in Doksugi (Record of Reading and Counting). The book reveals that there is no greater talent than hard work and persistence. By Eom Hye-suk

When Friendship Is Everything My Best Friend Kang Jeongyeon; Illustrator: Kim Mihee BIR Publishing Co., Ltd., 2011, 191p ISBN 9788949121352

One of the most important tasks for a teenager is to find a confidante or best friend. Friendships from that stage in life often continue through the rest of one’s life. For teenage girls who have just begun to exert their independence from their parents, peer groups and friends are more important than life itself. This is reflected in the popularity of friendship as a topic for children’s stories. My Best Friend is one such story. My Best Friend is about Solhee and Sanha, two friends who live one floor apart in the same building and have been best friends since infancy. Solhee has a disability in her legs a s a result of a child hood accident, and Sanha’s mother passed away when she was young, but nothing can crush their spirits—the duo is confident and honest in everything they do. They fight

boys who taunt girls, cut each other’s hair, and plan a secret trip without their parents. This book deta ils t he s weet da ily episodes of the two teenage girls until a crisis occurs toward the end of the book. Solhee’s father’s work must relocate the family to a place far away. But the two girls see the sudden separation as an opportunity to grow. So how do they overcome the despair of parting and turn it into the beginning of a new phase in their lives? You’ll have to find out for yourself. By Yu Youngjin

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Reviews Children's Books

Going It Alone I, b and Book Kim Sagwa, Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2011, 167p, ISBN 9788936456399

Living in a very small city along the coast, Rang is beaten repeatedly by “Washington Hat” and other middle school students of a similar age. Only “b” remains on his side but they have a falling out after Rang exposes b’s secret during the class. B has a younger sibling who is ill and they are always struggling with poverty. Tired of his life, b decides to live life as it comes, bullies his brother, and starts to hang out with Washington Hat. One day, a tormented b jumps into the sea but instead of dying, finds Rang in the water. Rang, who has jumped into the sea because he wanted to become the sea, meets b by a miracle and they decide to stay with an adult named “Book” who only reads books. A few days later, Rang and b follow Book to the now unused City Mental Hospital and meet Washington Hat there. Rang gets beaten just as before but this time hits Washington Hat’s head with a rock then passes out himself. After hospitalization, Rang goes back to school and b, Book, and Alone all go their separate ways. Believing that nothing

Gang Boy Grows Up Five Days of That Summer Lee Joon-ho, Sakyejul Publishing Ltd. 2011, 193p, ISBN 9788958285632

Middle school student Choe Dam may look ordinary but he’s a member of the school gang called “Iljin.” On his birthday, Dam’s friends in Iljin extort money from others and give him a pair of jeans and an MP3 player as a birthday present. The next day, when this act is discovered, they all lie and say Dam made them do it. Betrayed by his friends and scolded by his father, Dam leaves home and goes to the countryside where his grandfather lives. Expert in medicinal herbs and ecology, his grandfather makes Dam clean the attic rather than reprimand him, hoping that Dam will come to an understanding on his own. While cleaning the attic, Dam finds old books and begins to read the classics from the East and the West. Bored, Da m goes out to gat her strawberries but is bitten by a snake and loses consciousness. At that moment, the 78 list_ Books from Korea

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red squirrel Dam used to bully appears and leads him to a strange world through a door in the herb storehouse. Dam meets various animals and figures from the classics and finds himself either betrayed or having to run away from them. He sees himself as a naked king and feels the love of family that protects him when he changes into a bug. Through the process, Dam learns that the things he does without thinking can hurt other people and animals. Back in reality, Dam realizes that he has to solve the mess he has made on his own and finds the strength to begin again. At the same time, this novel is in line with Korean classics in that Dam realizes the mistake he has made in reality through a dream. It stimulates the youth readers’ interest by using a fantasy. That it does not portray the issue of school gangs in a gloomy way is also an advantage. A clear writing style and quotes from many children’s stories also make this novel very readable for older elementary school students. By Kang Mi

good will happen anymore and not wanting anything anymore, Rang thinks the only thing left to do is to become an adult. Though Rang wants to become the sea and b a fish, the reality in the novel is tedious and stifling. But life is perhaps something “everyone has to endure alone” just like a song Rang happens to listen to. This book should not be read based on the narrative. Even the topic is not important. The only thing that matters is the style. The author mesmerizes the readers with short sentences and vivid imagery at every moment. The names of the characters are also unusual. Na (“I”) and b, pronounced as nabi in Korean with the meaning of “butterf ly,” and the adult named Book, make reading interesting and contribute to the theme of the novel. It may be far off from the typical Korean youth novel but it offers curious sensations of beauty and sadness. By Kang Mi

Steady Sellers

A Milestone for Korean Children’s Books My Classmate Young-dae Chae In-seon; Illustrator: Jung Seon-hui Jaimimage Publishing Co. 1997, 48p, ISBN 9788986565508

My C l a ss m a t e Yo u n g- d a e h a d suc h a significant impact in children’s literature that the history of children’s books in Korea is divided into “before” and “after” the publication of this book. The publication of My Classmate Young-dae in 1987 marks the beginning of storybooks for children ages seven through 10. My Classmate Young-dae opened the f loodgates for a new category of books that came to be known as “lower level elementary school books.” Books with lush, beautiful illustrations, printed in a large format to contain it all, and imaginative stories cater to the worldview and thoughts

of the target age group of lower level elementa r y school students, played a pivotal role in the Korean children’s book renaissance. T he i mpac t a nd i n f luenc e of t he illustrations and design of My Classmate Young-dae was immense. The very fact that a children’s book could have such high aesthetic qualities raised Korean children’s books to international levels. The illustrations not only complemented the narrative, but they also had an artistry that could stand on their own. Using traditional Korean painting techniques, Jung Seonhui’s illustrations had a watery, translucent

touch that bolstered the book’s value. The narrative was a departure from typical didactic allegories or romantic portrayals of childhood, while maintaining a realistic and warm perspective on the problems and conflicts children face in everyday life. The protagonist, Young-dae, lost his mother early on and goes to school in smelly, filthy clothes. To make matters worse, he is taunted for his slow actions and words. His classmates gang up and bully him, so much so that he gets a black eye and a bloody nose. It is hard to believe that 10year-olds would do such atrocious things, but Young-dae takes it all in stride. He never fights back or cries, but just glares at the bullies. A few months pass and Young-dae’s class goes on a trip to Gyeongju, the ancient capital. On the first night of the trip, the children hear someone fart in the room and make fun of Young-dae, saying, “The motherless moron farted!” Young-dae breaks down and bawls out loud in the pitch dark room. Once he starts to cry, Youngdae, who had never once cried, cannot stop crying. Indifferent toward Young-dae’s problems until then, the teacher punishes everybody. All the children begin to cry as they take their punishment until there isn’t a single dry eye in the room. The next day, the class monitor who had called Youngdae a “motherless moron,” walks up to him on the bus and pins a souvenir badge to his shirt. Upon seeing this, the other children also come up to Young-dae one by one to pin their badges on him as if performing a ritual. After the incident, Young-dae is accepted into the group. He wears clean clothes and plays with the other children. At the conclusion of the book the narrator of the story, Young-dae’s desk partner, declares that Young-dae has become “the most precious student in class.” A story that reflects today’s problems of ostracism and expresses warmth and acceptance for marginalized children, My Classmate Young-dae has been a wellloved classic for over 10 years. Beautiful illustrations that lovingly depict a young boy in pain and the subtle storytelling of the young first-person narrator are the driving forces that have made My Classmate Youngdae a steady seller. By Yu Youngjin

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Meet the Publishers

Gimm-young Publishers, Inc. With its ever-faithful founder behind it, Gimm-Young Publishers leads the way in publishing books on Korean culture.

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As always, Park Eun-ju, head of Gimm-Young Publishers Inc., did her 108 Buddhist bows and chanted the Diamond Sutra at dawn before going to work. It is a daily routine, of which she has not missed a single day for 27 years beginning in 1984, a year after she started her publishing company. Perhaps that is why some people tease her by asking if “Gimm-youngsa” is a name of a temple, for the last syllable “sa” (company) is a homonym that also means temple in Sino-Korean. All this does not mean Park Eun-ju is Buddhist. It just exemplifies her principles and goals for running a publishing company. It is also an indication of her resolve as not to be swayed by greed and conceit, and to run her company in a respectful way; that is to say, she will respect readers and her employees by carefully choosing the books she publishes. No doubt all publishing companies operate under similar slogans, but testimony from her employees—that Park Eun-ju never speaks down to anyone in the company and that she has never missed a day of her 108 bow meditation for the last 27 years—prove to what extent she practices her beliefs. The very first book published by Gimm-Young Publishers was a translated book called Intern X, a memoir by a medical intern. Only two books were published that year. But 30 years later, Gimm-Young Publishers has published a total of 1,600 books and has grown into a large publishing house. Every Street Is Paved with Gold: The Road to Real Success by Kim Woo-Choong, the former CEO of Daewoo, and Doctors by Eric Segal, were two of their bestsellers that have sold over a million copies. However, beyond

superficial details, Gimm-Young Publishers prides itself in having published many books on Korean culture. The following three are the recommended books for foreign readers who are interested in learning more about Korea. Far Countries, Neighboring Countries: Korea is a comic book by Rhie Won-bok who is currently professor at Duksung Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s University and tops the list. In a nutshell, this book is a foreign reader-friendly guidebook to Korea. Rhie, who has done an outstanding job of introducing the politics, economics, and culture of other countries to Korean readers, is equally impressive in explaining Korean culture to foreigners. The book covers various topics, such as the characteristics that distinguish the Korean from Chinese and Japanese culture, as well as the history of how Korea developed into one of the top 10 international economic powers after liberation from Japanese colonialism, and the precipitous journey toward unification of the two Koreas; all this is told through a compelling narrative. If Kim Jeong-ho, also known by his pen name Gosanja, had first compiled the map of Korea during the late Joseon era, then Far Countries, Neighboring Countries: Korea could be aptly referred to as the map of both the Korean consciousness and the collective unconscious. The second recommended book is The Great Soul of Siberia by an EBS TV producer, Park Soo-yong. The book is based on a documentary film that was broadcast by EBS. On the surface, the book tells a 20-year pursuit of a female Siberian tiger nicknamed Bloody Mary that spanned three generations. However, the story of an indigenous tiger that lives in Manchuria and the Korean peninsula is a metaphor for the Korean people who have had to fight battles, be subjected to many challenges, and undergo ferocious struggles. Bloody Mary was another name for the 16th century Queen of England who was known for creating a bloodbath in the areas where she was out hunting. Through the viewfinder and words of the documentary filmmaker, who believes that Nature should be an object of scrutiny and not dramatization, one can meditate on life and death. The third book on the recommended list is another comic book. It is Sik-Gaek by Hur Young-man and shows Korean food and cuisine in a most appealing way. Through captivating literar y themes such as the growth of the protagonist and the confrontation with his antagonist, readers are quickly drawn into the narrative. Sik-Gaek, which was serialized in a daily newspaper, comprises a total of 27 volumes and 135 episodes, covering an enormous menu ranging from mustard kimchi, spicy kingfish, skate, seasoned cockle dish, pickled whole garlic, to numerous other dishes from all eight major regions of both Koreas. It is a veritable encyclopedia of indigenous Korean food from all parts of the country, and is a must read for readers who have an interest in Korean food and diet.

2 3 4 5 6

1. The History of Joseon Dynasty Tea Culture Jung Min 2011, 750p, ISBN 9788934950332 2. The World of Korean Trees Park Sang-jin 2011, 608p, ISBN 9788934946915 3. The Great Soul of Siberia Park Soo-yong 2011, 435p, ISBN 9788934954859 4. Slow Growing Kang Se-hyoung 2010, 355p, ISBN 9788934940067

5. The Women Who Bore Kings Choi Sun-gyoung 2007, 234p, ISBN 9788934926689 6. Sik-Gaek, Culinary Excursion Throughout Korea

Hur Young-man 2011, 345p, ISBN 9788934954569

7. Gansong Jeon Hyeong-pil Lee Choong-ryul 2010, 408p, ISBN 9788934939429

Some other recommended books on Korean culture and history published by Gimm-Young Publishers are The History of Joseon Dynasty Tea Culture by Jung Min, Gansong, Jeon Hyeong-pil by Lee Choongyeol, The Women Who Bore Kings by Choi Sun-gyoung, Slow Groming by Kang Sehyoung, and The World of Korean Trees by Park Sang-jin. By Uh Soo-woong

books by Gimm-young Publishers that have been published overseas

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New Books

Recommended by Publishers

Korean editors have handpicked their favorite titles among the collections from their own publishing houses. The following list contains hidden gems in Korea’s publishing industry. For further information, please contact the agents directly. Fiction

Poetry

Temptation, Vol.1

The Armband

Goodbye, Lazard

Plutoed

Kwon Ji-ye, Minumsa Publishing Group 2011, 304p, ISBN 9788937483776

Yun Heung-gil, Hyundae Munhak 2011 (revised edition), 319p ISBN 9788972754978

Bae Bong-ki, Moonji Publishing, Co., Ltd. 2011, 223p, ISBN 9788932022192

Lee Jae-hoon, Minumsa Publishing Group 2011, 148p, ISBN 9788937407925

Bae Bong-ki, a writer who has gained a reputation in children’s and youth literature, asks questions about reality and the world in connection with friends and loved ones. Five stories complied in this collection tackle the concerns about ‘now, we, and here’ with various approaches.

Lee Jae-hoon expresses his wish to the primitive origin of existence through a lively imagination, conjuring up a space of fantastic and fairy tale-like colors. The title of the collection, “Plutoed,” is a neologism referring to how Pluto lost its planet status in the solar system. By becoming a Pluto himself, the poet moves out of the orbit of urban life characterized by mechanical regularity.

Temptation is an exploration of social desires, sex, and love among people who are forced to fight to survive in a capitalist society of the 21st century. Temptations of all stripes are laid bare in this engaging novel, with characters opting for animalistic survival instincts, sensual desires, power, and money. Copyright Agent: Michelle Nam michellenam@minumsa.com 82-2-515-2000 (Ext.206) www.minumsa.com

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A wealthy businessman has secured the rights for a reservoir and assigns another man to take care of the fish farm built in the reservoir. The author deploys the armband as a key literary motif to describe the subtle conflicts between villagers in a way that sheds light on the violent nature of political power and its suppression of the populace in the aftermath of the Korean War. Copyright Agent: Won Mi-yeon yeanmot@hanmail.net 82-2-2017-0293 www.hdmh.co.kr

Nonfiction

A Person Who Is Not Here

Doctor Simpleton

Shim Bo-seon, Moonji Publishing, Co., Ltd. 2011, 148p, ISBN 9788932022291

An Suhyeon, Beautiful People 2009, 263p, ISBN 9788991066700

Shim Bo-seon, a critically acclaimed poet who is also widely loved by fans, has published his second poetry collection. The poet focuses on the activities of love. What we urgently need, the poet says, is not the serene solitude of the arts but the connection with others. Instead of silence, he argues that people should embrace self-change in favor of companionship.

In 2006, the author died prematurely at age 33 he was fulfilling his military duty as an army surgeon and viewed himself as a servant of God. This book chronicles the life of a young man who aspired to live like Jesus by way of being a doctor. Through this posthumous work, readers can remember him and reflect on their lives.

A Country Doctor’s Self Revolution Park Kyungchol, Woongin Think Big Co., Ltd. 2011, 400p, ISBN 9788901130460

This book contains messages about how young people today ought to communicate with the world, what kind of effort they should make for self-growth, a record of the author’s many struggles, and how he learned to live by trial and error. The author delivers painful but necessary lessons for the youth.

The KBS documentary producer, who previously filmed the “Mekong River” and “The Mongolian Route,” did a year-long field excursion of the sandy rivers in Korea. The book is a eulogy for the sandy rivers in Korea, a travel guide to the only remaining sand river, as well as a heartfelt appeal for us not to forget the existence of a special river. Copyright Agent: Michelle Nam michellenam@minumsa.com 82-2-515-2000 (Ext.206) www.minumsa.com

The Architecture of Seoul: A Walking Tour, Vol.1

The Middle

I Choose to Think Positively

Kim Jay-woo, Vision & Leadership 2011, 248p, ISBN 9788990984920

Jo Shin-young, Vision & Leadership 2011, 320p, ISBN 9788990984913

You Tae-yeung, Vision & Leadership 2007, 240p, ISBN 9788990984364

You are a creative and resourceful person who is capable of change and have the potential to achieve your goals. The author provides step-bystep methods as to how one can live a life that one aspires to, especially for those whom opportunity has knocked on their door.

Gang Ta went to America with the grand dream of playing major league baseball, but ended up drifting in the minor leagues. Through his story, the author tells what it means to be centered, and how one should construct one’s values in order to be able to withstand the tribulations of life. A difficult topic is told in a vivid narrative, and readers learn what it means to navigate life in a levelheaded way.

Success is the ability not to lose one’s passion in the face of repeated failure. The person with the world’s greatest shortcoming is not someone who is weak but is negative. Never give up! You can do it right at this moment! First fix the hole and knit the net again. Then toss the net in the ocean of abundant possibilities.

Son Hyun-cheol, Minumsa Publishing Group 2011, 288p, ISBN 9788937483738

Let’s Begin Anew

Rivers of Sand

Yim Seock-jae, People and Idea 2010, 460p, ISBN 9788959061532

An architectural historian, the author is much loved for his accessible style and knowledge about Eastern and Western architecture. For an entire year, he went around in all parts of the city, which were divided into the 32 most interesting areas, and took almost 800 photographs of the buildings. The book shows 312 buildings and 40 maps. Copyright Agent: Yi Yeon-hee insaedit@gmail.com 82-2-325-6364 www.inmul.co.kr

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Nonfiction

Number-free Economics with Stories & Histories Cha Hyeon-jin, People and Ideas 2011, 464p, ISBN 9788959061785

The author resorts to novels, dramas, well-known paintings, and philosophy to explicate the fundamentals of economics. Using many entertaining examples, the author deftly makes economic theory entertaining and accessible. Copyright Agent: Yi Yeon-hee insaedit@gmail.com 82-2-325-6364 www.inmul.co.kr

The Global Cultural War

Café Seoul Second Story

Kang Joon-man, People and Ideas 2010, 416p, ISBN 9788959061594

Yi Hyeon-ju, Bookway 2011, 264p, ISBN 9788994291079

The history of the cultural battles of the last 10 years, in which the nations around the world fought the U.S., is presented through 12 historical case studies with relevant questions. The author states that it is important for Koreans to look beyond their national boundaries and cultural domain and look at the greater global culture war in order to gain a balanced perspective and vision of how a hegemonic culture shapes our daily lives.

This book introduces gem-like cafes in Seoul hidden away in alleys. Readers can experience the joy of discovering delightful little coffee shops where delicious coffee and tasty food are served. It is an excellent guide to Seoul cafes for those who love drinking coffee in chic, cool, cozy or idiosyncratic settings.

The Feast of Literature and Philosophy Yang Un-deok, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. 2011, 384p, ISBN 9788932022154

Is it literature? Or is it philosophy; that is the question. A prominent Korean philosopher responds to philosophical questions through a dialogue with literature. In this book it is possible to have exciting meetings with modern philosophers such as Lacan, Derrida, Heidegger, and Foucault, as well as literary figures like Poe, Kafka, Borges, La Fontaine, and Holderlin. Copyright Agent: Choi Dae-youn cdypress@moonji.com 82-2-338-7224 www.moonji.com

84 list_ Books from Korea

Vol.14 Winter 2011

In the Current of the Times Kim Woo-chang, Hangilsa Publishing Co., Ltd. 2011, 888p, ISBN 9788935662319

This is a compilation of 156 columns by Kim Woo-chang, a prominent humanities scholar, which were printed over a span of six years in a daily newspaper. In his remarkably introspective style he has proposed the ideal path for Korean society to take, and writes on diverse subject matter, such as politics, social issues, and culture. Copyright Agent: Ahn Min-jae anjuri@hangilsa.co.kr 82-31-955-2039 www.hangilsa.co.kr

Stop Living on This Land, Go to the Everlasting World of Happiness. Live There Forever. Woo Myung, Cham Publishing Corp. 2011, 380p, ISBN 9788987523231

Woo Myung, who received the Mahatma Gandhi Peace Prize, writes and illustrates in a beautifully succinct way as to what is Truth, the purpose of life, the soul of a person versus cosmic consciousness, and the ways in which one can enter the world of God. Copyright Agent: Lee Gwon-ja 12142043@hanmail.net 82-2-325-4193 www.maummonthly.com

Discovering the Soul of Classical Music

Korea’s Modern Era Through Paintings

Lee In-hae; Illustrator: Baik Soon-shil HangilArt, 2011, 472p ISBN 9788991636576

Lee Choong-ryul, Gimm-Young Publishers, Inc. 2011, 296p, ISBN 9788934950882

A Western painter, Baik Soon-shil, and poet and editor Lee In-hae, have been collaborating for 10 years on a project called “Ode to Music.” The two artists have reinterpreted 200 musical masterpieces, and have chosen 100 musicians and their most famous pieces for this book. Copyright Agent: Gu Tae-eun hangilart@hangilsa.co.kr 82-31-955-2041 www.hangilsa.co.kr

This book is an encounter with modern Korean history through pictures that have recorded crucial events since Korea’s independence. The hidden part of Korean history is disclosed by way of a persistent investigation that is supplemented with ample and accurate historical records and pictures. Copyright Agent: Lee Youjeong bookmaker@gimmyoung.com 82-2-3668-3203 www.gimmyoung.com

Graphic Novels

The Social Sciences for You and Me Woo Seok-hun, Gimm-Young Publishers, Inc. 2011, 234p, ISBN 9788934948100

This book introduces the essential concepts of the social sciences, as well as explicating in a reader-friendly and interesting manner the ideas and philosophy of Adam Smith, Emile Durkheim, René Descartes, and Karl Popper, along with current discourses and scholarship. Copyright Agent: Lee Youjeong bookmaker@gimmyoung.com 82-2-3668-3203 www.gimmyoung.com

Vegetarian Diet Revolution Pe Jun, Gimm-Young Publishers, Inc. 2011, 244p, ISBN 9788996377290

The cartoonist Pe Jun, who achieved a fit body, discloses his secret diet by which he succeeded in losing nine kilograms in 45 days. He illustrates his story with comical cartoons of a fresh vegetable diet menu as well as tips for those who have failed in dieting, and a Q & A section to satiate the curiosity of readers. Copyright Agent: Lee Youjeong bookmaker@gimmyoung.com 82-2-3668-3203 www.gimmyoung.com

Travel to a Wonderland Through Photography Kwon Doo-hyoun, ARTinK 2010, 310p, ISBN 9788996440109

“Why does a work of art have to be shown in museums and galleries only?” With this question, photographer Kwon Doo-hyoun shifted from a concrete physical site to the realm of a book to explain the new genre that he works in, called “ambiphoto,” a photograph that looks like a painting. Copyright Agent: Kwon Doo-hyoun ArtinK@email.com www.ArtinK.kr

Science Is My Best Buddy Lee Vin, Haksan Publishing Co., Ltd. 2011, 164p, ISBN 9788925-868943

From this book one can learn about diverse natural phenomena that happen in our daily lives through the eyes of a beginning science student, Jadu. In “Jadu’s Science Class” that appears at the end of each section, important concepts in the main texts are reiterated for the reader’s full understanding. Copyright Agent: Hong Yoo-bin hyb@haksanpub.co.kr 82-2-808-8805 www.haksanpub.co.kr

Children's Books

The Grandma Witch Goes to the Potato Planet Kweon Su-jin and Kim Sung-hwa; Illustrator: Song Hyang-ran Haksan Publishing Co., Ltd. 2002, 79p, ISBN 9788952923066

XOSISTERS

Gulp! Goes Green Snake

The Buildings’ Vacation

Park Sung-soo; Illustrator: Hwang Seong-won Haksan Publishing Co., Ltd. 2011, 189p, ISBN 9788925869681

Lee Yu-jin, Nurimbo 2011, 28p, ISBN 9788958761280

Lee Kumi, Nurimbo 2011, 36p, ISBN 9788958761259

Green Snake eats everything: sunshine, flower petals, spring water...yum! But one day a dark wind blows over everything. The sun goes in hiding, the flowers wilt, and the spring dries up. What will Green Snake eat now? The innocent Green Snake sings the Earth’s praises.

In the heat of summer, all the buildings in the city of Seoul announce they are going on vacation. Gyeongbok Palace, the 63 Building, and all the other buildings do just that, leaving the stunned residents with an empty city…and a surprise!

This is the first in a series of science books for primary school children. Borrowing the format of a fairy tale, the book presents interesting and easy stories. By reading through the series, young readers will gain an understanding of the topics in each volume.

Cheol-hee, known as the toughest boy in a neighborhood in northern Seoul moves to Incheon only to find out that his new school is a girls’ high school. What’s more, he is humiliated when he is knocked out by a curlyhaired girl. But strangely enough, her out of this world punch does not feel unfamiliar. The secret to her punch is...

list_ Books from Korea

Vol.14 Winter 2011

Children's Books

Minarella Yoon Jane; Illustrator: Bak Sae-bom Nurimbo 2011, 36p, ISBN 9788958761266

Chubby little Mina is sad. She was invited to the birthday party of the most popular boy in kindergarten but she has nothing to wear. But a cuckoo springs out of the cuckoo clock and turns her into beautiful Minarella. A lovely tale that relieves the anxiety of repressed children. Copyright Agent: Lee Eun-mi nurimbo_pub@naver.com 82-31-955-7391 www.nurimbo.co.kr

Gwanggaeto the Great and How Goguryeo Took the Continent Kim Young-man; Illustrator: Chang Sunhwan, Marubol Publications 2011, 40p, ISBN 9788956634432

Gwanggaeto the Great, builder of the Goguryeo Empire, boosted troop morale and eventually made Goguryeo the greatest power in East Asia. Bold lines and a simple color scheme perfectly convey the majesty of Goguryeo and King Gwanggaeto the Great. Copyright Agent: Heo Sun-young sunyoung@marubol.co.kr 82-2-790-4150 (Ext. 506) www.marubol.co.kr

Three Balloons

The Pig's Palace

Kim Yang-mee, Sigongjunior 2011, 60p, ISBN 9788952762955

Lee Hyung-jin, Sigongjunior 2011, 42p, ISBN 9788952762702

The family is splitting in two. After deciding who is going to live with whom and dividing the big pieces of furniture, it is not so easy to decide who gets the picture books they grew up with, the vase they made together, or the family photos. This tale reminds us that some things cannot be divided, and that family is always precious.

The Riri series follows the adventures of Riri the piglet, her family, neighbors, and friends, offering wisdom about the world and life. Each book deals with unique themes and may be read separately. Respect for life and the loneliness of being are some of the weighty issues addressed in this lighthearted series.

The Wonderful Apple Tree

Teacher Hates Me

Exchange Diary

One Step at a Time

Park Yoon-kyu; Illustrator: Park Hae-nam Sigongjunior 2011, 36p, ISBN 9788952758569

Lee Geumyi; Illustrator: Lee Youngrim Prooni Books, Inc. 2008, 56p, ISBN 9788961700405

Oh Mikyeong; Illustrator: Choi Jungin Prooni Books, Inc. 2005, 168p, ISBN 8957980296

Lee Miae; Illustrator: Won Youmi Prooni Books, Inc. 2009, 184p, ISBN 9788957981726

Seven families in one small village learn the lesson of generosity. A mysterious Crabapple Boy visits and gives the villagers an apple seed that will feed everyone as long as nobody is greedy. The apple tree grows, but bears only one apple. The fairytale-like prose, coupled with delicate pencil drawings, make this a beautiful picture book.

The author writes about situations children encounter in school with a humor. This collection includes “Teacher Hates Me,” showing how children and their parents react to the fear that their teacher dislikes them, “Finders Keepers,” about how an incident of theft confuses children and how they solve the problem, among other gems.

An exchange diary is for friends to tell each other their deepest secrets. Naturally trust is a major factor. But for Gang-hee, Min-joo, and Yuna, it is not. Their exchange diary is full of faked anecdotes and harmless stories fit for anyone's eyes. When Minjoo comes forward with her secret, however, so does Gang-hee.

This book pokes fun at adults who only approve of “successful” jobs as a dream. Dubon and Nakyoung bond over the fact that their parents disapprove over their dreams. Nakyoung gives Dubon a dream journal, which he uses to plan how to realize his dream of becoming a chef and then puts his plans to action.

86 list_ Books from Korea

Vol.14 Winter 2011

Arirang Park Unkyu; Illustrator: Han Byeong-ho PRUNSOOP 2011, 64p, ISBN 9788971849194

This book is full of information related to “Arirang,” a traditional Korean song. It presents a condensed version of the film “Arirang” rewritten for children and discusses the meaning of “Arirang.” This beautifully illustrated book is the perfect introduction to “Arirang,” a living emblem of Korean culture. Copyright Agent: Song Ji-hyun love-dw0815@hanmail.net 82-31-955-1410 www.prunsoop.co.kr

The Great Flight of Princess Eunbyeolbaki Kim Jung-hwan; Illustrator: Kang Woo-keun PRUNSOOP 2011, 208p, ISBN 9788971846599

Princess Eunbyeolbaki of the Formica japonica tribe meets all kinds of ants through her adventures in this exciting book that shows how ants have ruled the Earth for over 100 million years. It shows how even the smallest insects have a unique way of life and rules for survival, reminding us that humans are not the center of the world. Copyright Agent: Park Hyun-sook anne620@prunsoop.co.kr 82-31-955-1410 (Ext. 306) www.prunsoop.co.kr

Hachim the Paradise Fish Park Unkyu; Illustrator: iwan PRUNSOOP 2011, 216p, ISBN 9788971846582

Hachim the Paradise Fish exposes the plight of domestic freshwater fish that are being driven to extinction by alien species and denounces the grim state of pollution. This life-or-death tale follows the struggle of freshwater fish as they fight to survive the pollution of their environment brought about by environmental destruction. Copyright Agent: Park Hyun-sook anne620@prunsoop.co.kr 82-31-955-1410 (Ext. 306) www.prunsoop.co.kr

My Mom Is an Alien

Jiwoo the Wanderer

Hidden Sound Games

Park Jigi; Illustrator: Jo Hyeongyun Beautiful People 2008, 168p, ISBN 9788991066250

Baek Seung-yeon; Illustrator: Yang Gyeong-hee, Baram Books 2007, 136p, ISBN 9788990787472

Ha Shin-ha, Baram Books 2011, 136p, ISBN 9788994475233

One day Sol’s mom suddenly goes bald and tells her that she is really an alien. Thanks to her alien mom, Sol becomes more aware than ever of how precious the small things in life are. Sol learns how to say goodbye to her mother who must go back to Planet Santaros in this coming-of-age story.

Jiwoo strays from his way to school one day to peek inside an abandoned house, where he meets an old man wrestling with a goblin. That’s where his adventures begin. Inspired by the playacting done by the author with her son, the imaginative story is also easily adapted to the stage.

Hidden Sound Games tells the story of how one day Jihye and her family are suddenly confronted with their true feelings. The strict-looking librarian is a mischief-maker at heart, and the well-behaved child harbors feelings of rebellion against her mother. This book encourages readers to listen to their feelings and accept them for what they are. Copyright Agent: Nam Kyung-mee windchild04@hanmail.net 82-2-3142-0495 cafe.daum.net/barampub

Cultural Heritage of Korea for Learners Writing Factory, Beautiful People 2011, 256p, ISBN 9788965131069

This is the 14th volume in the Learners series, introducing children to a wealth of historical artifacts and monuments that embody the wisdom of their ancestors, helping them learn about their culture and history. This is a wonderful guide to the traditional culture of Korea written for children. Copyright Agent: Yun Sora books777@naver.com 82-31-955-1001 www.books114.net

Why Do Mommy and Daddy Work? Hahn Jin-soo; Illustrator: Jung Seung-hee Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. 2011, 36p, ISBN 9788901125336

This book introduces children to different kinds of jobs and the idea of working for a living. The first step in teaching children about economics should be the concept of money and how people make it by working. This book also teaches children how to find fulfillment in work itself. Copyright Agent: Yolanda Kim rights@wjbooks.co.kr 82-2-3670-1002 www.wjthinkbig.com

list_ Books from Korea

Vol.14 Winter 2011

Children's Books

Here Come the Greens Park Hyun-hee; Illustrator: Jeon Jin-kyoung Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. 2011, 36p, ISBN 9788901130088

Here Come the Greens encourages kindergarteners to take part in social issues. The book follows children and their families as they do their homework, which is searching for “how to make this world a better and more beautiful place.” The author writes about three problems easy for children to understand: pollution, food, and selfishness. Copyright Agent: Yolanda Kim rights@wjbooks.co.kr 82-2-3670-1002 www.wjthinkbig.com

Blood Chaebo; Illustrator: Yoon Hae-won Ahyun Publishing House 2011, 36p, ISBN 9788958781455

Blood isn’t just something scary. It flows through our veins and brings nutrients and oxygen to all parts of our body. Blood is the reason we are alive. Just like the way water rots if it cannot flow, we become sick if something blocks the flow of blood in our veins. The same is true for plants and animals, although their blood might be different from ours. Copyright Agent: Jeon Jeong-sook jeonjjs@naver.com 82-31-949-5771 www.ahyunbooks.co.kr

88 list_ Books from Korea

Vol.14 Winter 2011

Wei Sheng the Stubborn Man Kim Jeong-ho; Illustrator: Noh Seong-bin Book21 Publishing Group 2010, 32p, ISBN 9788950923921

This is the third volume in the Children’s Library of Wisdom series bringing classical philosophy closer to children. The story tells the tale of Wei Sheng, a man famous for keeping his word. Wei Sheng was so honorable that he died keeping his word. Thus while his tale celebrates integrity, it also warns against inflexibility.

The Right and the Left

One Hour

Chaebo; Illustrator: Kang Hyun-kyeong Ahyun Publishing House 2011, 36p, ISBN 9788958781448

Chaebo; Illustrator: Kim Jin-hee Ahyun Publishing House 2011, 36p, ISBN 9788958781509

People divide things they see into right and left. Everyone has a side they are more comfortable with. There are rules about left and right everywhere: the clothes you wear, setting the table, which side of the road to walk on. Most things are made for righthanded people because there are more of them, but there is nothing wrong about being left-handed.

Time is divided into hours. An hour is a twenty-fourth of the time it takes for the sun to rise, set, and rise again. Hours are also used to mark the pace of time. An hour is the same amount of time wherever and whoever you are, but you can do many different things with it. This book reminds us of how precious time is. Copyright Agent: Jeon Jeong-sook jeonjjs@naver.com 82-31-949-5771 www.ahyunbooks.co.kr

Astronomy with King Sejong, Vol. 1

One Minute Younger

Teddy Bear, Daddy Bear

Jo Seongja; Illustrator: Sim Yunjeong IANDBOOK 2011, 100p, ISBN 9788992830911

Kim Sook-young, Bear Books 2011, 36p, ISBN 9788993242485

Yoon Sang-cheol; Illustrator: Park Soonchul, Daeyouhakdang 2011, 255p, ISBN 9788963690346

This book introduces the reader to oriental astronomy, opening up a wealth of knowledge about the heavens. The many illustrations that accompany the myths and folklore about the stars make this book accessible. Copyright Agent: Lee Youn-sil daeyoudang@hanmail.net 82-2-2249-5630 www.daeyou.net

Serin and Semin are fraternal twins born one minute apart. Serin is one minute younger than her brother Semin. Their friends tease them because they are always together, this book shows the strong bond between the twins and how much fun they have together. Copyright Agent: Jung Aeyoung iandbook@naver.com 82-2-2248-1555 www.iandbook.co.kr

Working daddies are often too tired to play with their children on weekends. Their children always wish they had more time to play with them. This book is a lively interpretation of their wishes. Teddy Bear makes all kinds of droll expressions in this captivatingly illustrated book. Copyright Agent: Choi Hyun-Kyoung bearbooks@naver.com 82-2-332-2672 www.bearbooks.co.kr

Monsters Disappeared from Earth! Park Woo-hee, Bear Books 2011, 44p, ISBN 9788993242515

This book shows how monsters disappeared from Earth. The monsters had no place to hide because the Earth had grown too hot and sick. Will we ever see monsters on Earth again? A powerful message is presented with vividly drawn monsters that appeal to the reader’s curiosity, combining an imaginative plot with an original layout. Copyright Agent: Choi Hyun-kyoung bearbooks@naver.com 82-2-332-2672 www.bearbooks.co.kr

Kim 9,900 Won Song Eun; Illustrator: Choi Jung-in Blue Bird Child Publishing Co. 2007, 132p, ISBN 9788961550260

Geon-ha is nicknamed “Kim 7,000” when he fails to pay back the 7,000 won he borrowed from a friend. His teacher intervenes, saying Geon-ha must pay 100 won in interest every day. Based on the author’s experience, this book tells the story of a teacher who wants to impress the value of money and trust upon his pupil. Copyright Agent: Rosa Han rosa.han@yolimwon.co.kr 82-2-3144-3704 www.bbchild.co.kr

The Noise Monster

Dinner at Frog’s

Flower Shoes

Wi Cheong-hyun; Illustrator: Lee Beom-jae Gesunamu Publishing House 2011, 36p, ISBN 9788989654667

Baek Sok; Illustrator: Oh Chi-Geun Tomato House 2011, 32p, ISBN 9788992089845

Kim So-yon; Illustrator: Kim Dong-sung Blue Bird Child Publishing Co. 2008, 156p, ISBN 9788961551045

How much attention do children pay to their parents? And how many parents take their children’s words seriously? Nothing makes you feel lonelier than having no one listen to you. This book reminds us of the importance of paying attention to other people and how difficult it is when nobody understands you.

Illustrator Oh Chi-Geun’s ink drawings with touches of color accompany this children’s poem by poet Baek Sok, one of the most lyrical users of the Korean language. The allegorical tale told by the animal characters leaves plenty of food for thought for growing children and provides a fresh look at reality for adults.

The three stories in this book are set in the Joseon era. The characters are a gentlewoman whose family has been charged with treason, an orphan from a slash-and-burn farming family, a travelling peddler taking care of his sick mother, and a coal peddler who learns about the world from a Catholic in exile. Flower Shoes depicts their touching friendships.

The New Thousand Character Classic

When You Came into the World

What Did I Pick?

Chung Hyun-joo, Hakgojae Publishing Co. 2010, 48p, ISBN 9788956251103

Sun Anna; Illustrator: Um Mi-keum Hakgojae Publishing Co. 2010, 36p, ISBN 9788956251332

The Thousand Character Classic was the first book that introduced children to hanja, or Chinese characters, in China, Korea, and Japan. It is a 1,000character long poem about the rules of the universe, the changing of the seasons, and simple, meaningful truths. Experience 1,500 years of wisdom in this classic, now with beautiful illustrations. Copyright Agent: Cho Ju-young hakgojae@gmail.com 82-2-745-1722 www.hakgojae.com

This book celebrates the joy of a family when a new baby is born. Beautiful illustrations reminiscent of Korean folk paintings accompany the text that follows the family’s watchful care over the baby until he turns 100 days old. This book tells children how all of them are unique and precious. Copyright Agent: Cho Ju-young hakgojae@gmail.com 82-2-745-1722 www.hakgojae.com

An Soon-hye; Illustrator: Hong Yoon-hee Hakgojae Publishing Co. 2011, 44p, ISBN 9788956251585

What Did I Pick? celebrates a baby’s first birthday. Korea has a tradition of celebrating a baby’s first birthday, called doljanchi, that is very much alive to day. The baby is given objects that tell what kind of future he will have depending on what it picks including a pencil for cleverness, rice for wealth, and a string for long life. Copyright Agent: Cho Ju-young hakgojae@gmail.com 82-2-745-1722 www.hakgojae.com

list_ Books from Korea

Vol.14 Winter 2011

INDEX Title Original Title Publishers Copyright Agent E-mail Phone Homepage

19p

29p

45p

The Days of Sungkyunkwan Confucian Students (Seonggyungwan Yusaengdeurui Nanal) Paranmedia Park Daeil paranbook@gmail.com 82-2-3141-5589 paranbook.egloos.com

The Poet (Siin) Minumsa Publishing Group Michelle Nam michellenam@minumsa.com 82-2-515-2000 (Ext. 206) www.minumsa.com

A Country Doctor’s Self Revolution (Sigoruisa Bakgyeongcheorui Jagihyeongmyeong) Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. Claire Yang shy07@wjbooks.co.kr 82-2-3670-1168 www.wjbooks.co.kr

The Painter of Wind (Baramui Hwawon) Mllionhouse Publishing Inc. Kim Joon-gyun millionhouse@naver.com 82-2-541-1277 cafe.naver.com/millionhouse The Immortal Yi Sun-shin (Bulmyeorui Isunsin) GoldenBough Publishing Co., Ltd. Michelle Nam michellenam@minumsa.com 82-2-515-2000 (Ext. 206) www.minumsa.com My Sweet Seoul (Dalkomhan Naui Dosi) Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. Choi Ji-in jiin@moonji.com 82-2-338-7224 (Ext. 7111) www.moonji.com

28p, 30p An Anonymous Island and Other Stories (Ingmyeongui Seom) Munhaksasang Co., Ltd. Yoon Hye-jun munsa@munsa.co.kr 82-2-3401-8543 www.munsa.co.kr

28p The Song of Songs (Aga) Minumsa Publishing Group Michelle Nam michellenam@minumsa.com 82-2-515-2000 (Ext. 206) www.minumsa.com Our Twisted Hero (Urideurui Ilgeureojin Yeongung) Minumsa Publishing Group Michelle Nam michellenam@minumsa.com 82-2-515-2000 (Ext. 206) www.minumsa.com A Portrait of Youthful Days (Jeolmeun Narui Chosang) Minumsa Publishing Group Michelle Nam michellenam@minumsa.com 82-2-515-2000 (Ext. 206) www.minumsa.com Immortality (Bulmyeol) Minumsa Publishing Group Michelle Nam michellenam@minumsa.com 82-2-515-2000 (Ext. 206) www.minumsa.com

90 list_ Books from Korea

Vol.14 Winter 2011

34p, 37p Bye, Elena (Annyeong, Ellena) Changbi Publishers, Inc. Choi Ko-eun copyright2@changbi.com 82-31-955-4359 www.changbi.com

48p

34p

50p

The Autobiography of a Girl (Geu Yeojaui Jaseojeon) Changbi Publishers, Inc. Choi Ko-eun copyright2@changbi.com 82-31-955-4359 www.changbi.com

An Affair, of No One (Yeonae, Haneun Nal) MunyeJoongAng Park Minjoo mlounge@joongang.co.kr 82-2-2000-6169 www.joongangbooks.co.kr

Sohyeon Jaeum & Moeum Lim Hong-yeol erum9@hanmail.net 82-2-324-2349 www.jamo21.net

South Gate (Kkochui Nara) Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. Kim Mijeong mijeong@munhak.com 82-31-955-2662 www.munhak.com

35p The Long Road (Meon Gil) Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. Kim Mijeong mijeong@munhak.com 82-31-955-2662 www.munhak.com

42p

Mr. Monorail Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. Kim Mijeong mijeong@munhak.com 82-31-955-2662 www.munhak.com

51p A Contrived World (Eotteon Jagwiui Segye) Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. Choi Ji-in jiin@moonji.com 82-2-338-7224 (Ext. 7111) www.moonji.com

880 Thousand-Won Generation (Palsippalmanwon Sedae) Redian Media Co., Ltd. I Gwang Ho madger@naver.com 82-2-780-1521 www.redian.org

The Hint Is “Brother-in-law” (Hinteuneun Doryeonnim) Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. Choi Ji-in jiin@moonji.com 82-2-338-7224 (Ext. 7111) www.moonji.com

43p

52p

I Will Support You No Matter What Kind of Life You Choose (Nega Eotteon Salmeul Saldeun Naneun Neoreul Eungwonhal Geonnida) KL Management Joseph Lee josephlee705@gmail.com 82-10-6239-9154 smpk.co.kr

44p Youth, It's Painful (Apeunikka Cheongchunida) KL Management Joseph Lee josephlee705@gmail.com 82-10-6239-9154 smpk.co.kr

Divine Orbit (Sinui Gwedo) Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. Kim Mijeong mijeong@munhak.com 82-31-955-2662 www.munhak.com Seven Cat Eyes (Ilgop Gaeui Goyangi Nun) Jaeum & Moeum Noh Yoolee feelsky666@jamobook.com 82-70-8656-9595 www.jamo21.net

63p An Afternoon of the Faun (Moksinui Eotteon Ohu) Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. Kim Mijeong mijeong@munhak.com 82-31-955-2662 www.munhak.com

65p

71p

77p

Snake (Baem) Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. Choi Ji-in jiin@moonji.com 82-2-338-7224 (Ext. 7111) www.moonji.com

Practice of Philosophy (Cheolhak Yeonseup) Banbi Kim Hee-jin odradek@minumsa.com 82-2-515-2000 (Ext. 244) banbi.tistory.com

My Best Friend (Seulpeul Ttaen Maeun Tteokbokki) BIR Publishing Co., Ltd. Sujin Lena Park sujinpark@bir.co.kr 82-2-515-2000 (Ext. 350) www.bir.co.kr

The History of the Hamburger that Was Nothing to Anyone (Nuguegena Amugeotdo Anin Haembeogeoui Yeoksa) Minumsa Publishing Group Michelle Nam michellenam@minumsa.com 82-2-515-2000 (Ext. 206) www.minumsa.com

72p

78p

Time to Think Philosophically (Cheolhagi Piryohan Sigan) Sakyejul Publishing Ltd. Kang Hyunjoo kanghjoo@sakyejul.co.kr 82-31-955-8600 www.sakyejul.co.kr

I, b and Book (Na b Chaek) Changbi Publishers, Inc. Choi Ko-eun copyright2@changbi.com 82-31-955-4359 www.changbi.com

Husband and Wife (Bubu) Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. Kim Mijeong mijeong@munhak.com 82-31-955-2662 www.munhak.com

Five Days of That Summer (Geuhae Yeoreum, Datsae) Sakyejul Publishing Ltd. Kang Hyunjoo kanghjoo@sakyejul.co.kr 82-31-955-8600 www.sakyejul.co.kr

73p

79p

Journey to Jeju Island (Jeju Gihaeng) Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. Claire Yang shy07@wjbooks.co.kr 82-2-3670-1168 www.wjbooks.co.kr

My Classmate Young-dae (Nae Jjakkkung Choeyeongdae) Jaimimage Publishing Co. Kim Oh-hyun kim1226112@naver.com 82- 31-955-0880 www.jaimimage.com

On Young Adult Literature (Cheongsonyeonmunhagui Jari) Naramal Park Sang-ryool moosan@hanmail.net 82-10-3107-1090

81p

66p The User Manual for Cheol-su (Cheolsu Sayong Seolmyeongseo) Minumsa Publishing Group Michelle Nam michellenam@minumsa.com 82-2-515-2000 (Ext. 206) www.minumsa.com Good-bye, Mazinger (Annyeong, Majingga) Silcheon-munhak Publishing Co., Ltd. Yi Sanghyun silcheon@hanmail.net 82- 2-322-2161 www.silcheon.com

67p I Have the Right to Destroy Myself (Naneun Nareul Pagoehal Gwolliga Itda) Global Literary Management Kent D. Wolf kent@globallit.com 1-212-929-3161

68p The Art of Apology (Kulhage Sagwahara) Across Publishing Company Lee Kyeongran acrossbook@gmail.com 82-70-8724-5877 www.acrossbook.com

70p Resilience (Hoeboktallyeokseong) Wisdomhouse Publishing Co., Ltd. Kwon Minkyung ohappyday@wisdomhouse.co.kr 82-31-936-4199 www.wisdomhouse.co.kr A Child's Self Esteem (Aiui JajongamKnowledge Channel) Knowledge Channel Kim Kyeong-seop whitetv@sigongsa.com 82-2-3487-1660 www.sigongsa.com

71p Anxious Mother and Indifferent Father (Buranhan Eomma Mugwansimhan Appa) Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. Claire Yang shy07@wjbooks.co.kr 82-2-3670-1168 www.wjbooks.co.kr

75p Red String (Ppalgang Kkeun) Tomato House Co. Kim Mihee island@hangilsa.co.kr 82-31-955-2088 www.sonyunhangil.co.kr

Slow Growing, etc. (Naneun Ajik Eoreuni Doeryeomyeon Meoreotda) Gimm-Young Publishers, Inc. Lee Youjeong bookmaker@gimmyoung.com 82-2-3668-3203 www.gimmyoung.com/english

76p Dinosaur Warrior Bean (Gongnyong Jeonsa Bin) BIR Publishing Co., Ltd. Sujin Lena Park sujinpark@bir.co.kr 82-2-515-2000 (Ext. 350) www.bir.co.kr Grandma Gam’s Wonderful Bag of Stories (Gamhalmeoniui Sintongbangtong Iyagi Bottari) Sigongjunior Amélie Choi amelie@sigongsa.com 82-2-2046-2855 www.sigongjunior.com

77p Chaekssitgi Day (Chaek Ssinneun Nal) Hakgojae Publishing Co. Cho Ju-young hakgojae@gmail.com 82- 2-745-1722 www.hakgojae.com

list_ Books from Korea

Vol.14 Winter 2011

Afterword

The Global Reach of Korean Literature In early October, I had the honor of participating in the Paju Book City Forum. The city of Paju is unlike anything in the world, a vibrant community dedicated to the promotion and insightful discussion of literature. We are all lucky to have such a city. While in Paju, I spoke about Korean literature in the international marketplace, identifying to the best of my ability the key factors in publishers’ decisions to acquire foreign-language titles. Unfortunately, there is no magic formula or mathematical equation that enables the publication of more translated literature. In the end, it is the stories that sell themselves. Of course, an author who is focused on making connections to other writers and readers worldwide plays a big part as well. Once isolated, now open; once considered insular, now cosmopolitan, Korean society is in a stage of evolution where it is no longer reacting to outside influence but is instead processing it and interpreting the world in its own way, and its artists are producing stories with a global reach while still maintaining a distinct Korean identity. Kim Young-ha is currently one of the most widely published Korean authors in the world, having been published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the United States, Philippe Picquier in France, Ambo/Anthos in the Netherlands, Heyne and Koncursbuch in Germany, Futami in Japan, Huasung in China, Kwiaty Orientu in Poland, and Metropoli d’Asia in Italy, among many others. Foreign rights contracts are pending or recently finalized with Tranan Publishing House in Sweden, Humanitas in Romania, bajolaluna in Argentina, and Baltos Lankos in Estonia. That’s a global reach greater than many popular American novelists! Kim’s position as one of the most widely published Korean authors has its origins in the independent foreign publishing houses that specialize in Asian literature, like that of France’s Philippe Picquier. These so-called “specialist” publishers are often the first to introduce Korean authors to foreign readers, and once that readership is established, it becomes more likely that another publisher in another territory, sometimes a major conglomerate, will acquire the book. And each foreign rights sale, in turn, begets another rights sale. This cumulative effect is an important factor in establishing an author internationally. Certainly, the ongoing support of LTI Korea and their translation work have made placing Kim Youngha with some of the world’s most respected publishers an easier prospect, but in the final analysis it is the quality of the work itself which determines a publisher’s decision. It is the chilling voice of the ice-cold narrator in I Have the Right to Destroy Myself, the perplexing question of identity that haunts the protagonist of Your Republic Is Calling You, and it is the passions of Koreans both noble and peasant in Black Flower that draw in readers worldwide. Not to be ignored is Kim’s ability and willingness to promote his work abroad. Over the past few years he has traveled extensively, making promotional appearances in such countries as the U.S., France, Germany, and Poland. His recent stay at the Iowa Writers Workshop and his current yearlong position as visiting scholar at New York City’s Columbia University further cement his reputation as a Korean writer who recognizes the importance of engaging with readers worldwide and establishing an international publicity platform. As Kim Young-ha and writers like Shin Kyung-sook become more popular internationally, it is only a matter of time before more Korean authors are introduced to worldwide audiences. I am delighted to be part of this initial introduction and look forward to promoting more Korean literature in the future. By Kent D. Wolf * Kent D. Wolf is a literary agent at Global Literary Management. One of key players who helped Kim Young-ha debut in English-speaking publishing markets, Kent is interested in literary fiction, among others, and has been handling the international licensing of titles from various countries for the past 15 years. He had worked at Harcourt, where he headed the rights department, selling titles by Nobel Prize-winning Günter Grass, José Saramago, Umberto Eco, and other renowned writers.

92 list_ Books from Korea

Vol.14 Winter 2011

FAQ What is list_Books from Korea, and where can I find it? list is a quarterly magazine packed with information about Korean books. Register online at www.list.or.kr to receive a free subscription.

Can I get it in English? The printed edition of list is available in English and Chinese. The webzine (www.list.or.kr) is available in English, Chinese, and Korean.

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Vol.14 Winter 2011

Special Section

Spotlight on Korean Pop Culture Interviews Novelist Yi Mun-yol Novelist Kim In-sook Spotlight on Fiction

“Together with a Chicken” by Jung Young-moon The Place

Korea’s Best-loved Book Festivals Theme Lounge

Youth: Waiting for Your Time to Bloom

ISSN 2005-2790