Written by: Hye-Young Pyun | Translated by: Sora Kim-Russell Millennials are often accused of destroying a lot of things, but they have also been attributed to the resurgence of so much lost art, such as vinyl records and pixel-art video games. In literature, one of the greatest writers to receive a second life is Franz Kafka. More and more frequently we are seeing...
Some of the best films (certainly some of the best horror) have been coming out of South Korea for years now. A lot of people I’ve spoken to don’t know where to start and The Vengeance Trilogy (although excellent) isn’t to everyone’s tastes. Here are some of my favourite South Korean films, in no particular order. The Taxi Driver (2017) My...
Bad Friends | Ancco | Translated by Janet Hong They say a picture speaks a thousand words, and yet even as a fan of comics and manga I’ve always placed more value in a thousand well-chosen words than a single image. But Bad Friends has taught me that, perhaps, the meaning of the phrase is that sometimes a picture, in complete silence, can say all the words we’d...
“People with no experience of God tend to think that leaving the faith would be a liberation, a flight from guilt, rules, but what I couldn’t forget was the joy I’d known, loving Him.” John Leal, whose name is always written and spoken of in full, was detained in a North Korean gulag. Upon release – as a man transformed, he returns to his old university in the...
The world is taking notice of South Korea with the explosion of K-pop groups like BTS. While there is a slim chance you will meet Jungkook, Jimin, or J-Hope in Korea, you can book a private Seoul tour with a just as equally-handsome man. What is Oh My Oppa? Oh My Oppa is a private tour company that lets you rent a Korean oppa, or big brother, for a private tour of...
Endless Blue Sky by Lee Hyoseok | Translated by Steven D. Capener The wealth of information we’ve lost over the years – through war, suppression, occupation, and simple accident – is staggering. Coupled with this loss is our largest barrier against the freedom of information: language. So much of what we can learn about a culture hinges on its availability in our own...
Eat Korean Barbeque Like a Pro Korean Barbeque is an internationally-popular dish. But what is the best way to eat it? Here are some friendly tips you should know the next time you visit a Korean barbeque restaurant. If you’re in Korea looking to eat barbeque, look for a restaurant with air vents! A traditional Korean barbeque restaurant will have air vents over each...
Kyung-sook Shin | Translated by Anton Hur Kyung-sook Shin (author of Please Look After Mom) is a giant in the world of Korean literature, and rightly so. In fact, her own translator for this novel, the wonderful Anton Hur, mentioned in an interview that her novel The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness is a ‘perfect microcosm of Korean society’. This kind of praise has been...
August is Women in Translation Month, and given how much we humans enjoy lists, especially ones containing multiples of five, we were very excited to create our ultimate list of who we believe to be some of the ultimate women of today’s Asian literary world (at least those that have so far been translated into English). For a long time women’s voices in...
The Summer is very much upon us and it is hotter than I ever imagined it could be in Korea at the moment. As the summer turns to Autumn, here’s our next list of the best upcoming fiction by Asian and Asian-American authors. The Court Dancer | Kyung Sook-Shin ‘Set during the dramatic final years of the Korean Empire, the new novel from Man Asian Literary...
