nanoomi

On Facebook, that most academic of sites, in a discussion with a famous author about North Korean diasporic fiction. Famous author asks the question, “What North Korean diasporic literature am I aware of?”. My answer and the conversation is quite brief as I wrack my brains to try to come up with examples of it. We both note Kim Young-ha’s Your Republic is Calling You and Jia: A Novel of North Korea, by Kim Hyejin. Then there is Krys Lee’s short story Drifting House(in the collection of the same name), which is a brilliant example of North Korean diasporic fiction. More names pop into my head as the days go by. Read the full story

Talking with Krys Lee, the author of the new and excellent collection of short stories Drifting House, can be a little bit surreal. On the phone she is energetic and cheerful (even as, in our interview, she was fighting off a cough), and it is difficult to reconcile that personality with the solemn, often tragic tone of her short stories.

Still, KTLIT was ecstatic to interview author Lee, on a short break in her ongoing book tour, because her stories manage something quite difficult – they both represent the ongoing national issues often covered in Korean modern literature AND manage to be completely character/plot-driven stories of lives, generally on the edge.

Ms. Lee is a bit of an unusual subject for KTLIT as she writes in English, but having read her work and knowing her history (and a bit of Korean history as well), I’d argue she is one of the best “translators” Korean fiction has had ( I have to put Kim Yong-ik in that same category).

In any case, the interview:

Krys Lee Interview for iPhone or Download

If you’re going to buy this book in Seoul (which you absolutely should as Seoul is a grand city in which to purchase books!), be aware that this book is so popular that it has actually sold out at Kyobo (so reports author Lee in a Facebook message). There are at least 4 copies at What the Book (despite the website indicating that it must be ordered), and it should also be available at Bandi & Luni and Youngpoong.

If you are an international reader, it should be available at you local bookstore, and it is certainly available through Barnes and Noble and  Amazon.

The other day I caught the 401 bus, just to see where it ran. After a bit, it went by COEX in Gangnam, which contains a reasonably sized Bandi & Luni. So I hopped off.  After a cup of coffee in a Caffe Bene, I went down to Bandi & Luni look for some exciting new translation I hadn’t previously seen.

I went to the “translated Asian literature” section, which was one panel of a bookcase.

I was utterly dismayed by incredibly small number of books in translation. There were three big books that I had never heard of, The Dwarf by Cho Se-hui, two books by Kim Young-ha, a soft and hard cover version of Shin Kyung-sook’s Please Look After Mom. And that was it. The total.

In fact, there were more books by Korean-Americans than by Koreans (don’t get me started on the risible notion that Korea seems to have that Korean-Americans are somehow actually Koreans and should count in with native Koreans when book numbers are totalled), with Chang-Rae Lee having all his books represented.

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This is post four of a multi-post series on Korean GLBT Literature, featuring a Q&A with Gabriel Sylvian, the founder of The Korea Gay Literature Project.

An interesting transcript of an interview with Haun Saussy (Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago) which took places at the Asia Institute Seminar at the conclusion of  December 2011. This is from Emanuel Pastreich‘s blog Korea: Circles and Squares, which became immediately lovable to me when I read Pastreich’s About page which says about the author, “He runs a bog known as “Korea: Circles and Squares.” Now THAT is either a bit of completely knowing yourself or an amusing typo.

In any case, the piece begins with a rather philosophical bit of discussion about awareness of the ‘other,’ world-history, philosophy and world-literature. But about two-thirds of the way through they get to issues of Korean literature in translation. Read the full story

I found a combination of thoughts from Professor Kim Seong-kon of SNU quite intriguing (for out-of-country folks, you should know that Korea University education is quite hierarchical and SNU is considered the cream of the crop, and thus what their professors say is either influential or represents considered wisdom). He was discussing the laudable LTI Korea/Dalkey Archives publication collaboration of 25 Korean works:

An email from LTI Korea tells us that we’ve won an “Award of Excellence” in their recent Korean Literature English Essay Contest. The essay was on Kang Yong-sook’s Brown Tears, an excellent and redemptive story of confusion, separation, and community in 1970′s Seoul (obviously, although never stated). Interested readers of that story can find the pdf here (and it is worth reading).  The Award Ceremony will be on the 6th of December, and anyone in Seoul is welcome to come out and hoot and whistle at my name.

The “winning”  (is 3rd place winning?) essay is reproduced below. Read the full story