Publisher Oxford University Press hails Activism and Post-activism as the first-ever English language work on the birth and development of South Korean nonfiction film. Drawing on more than 200 films and videos, Jihoon Kim’s trailblazing book charts the history of documentary filmmaking in the South from its early “activism” period in the 1980s to what…
Therapist Haesoo Lim used to appear on television to provide her professional opinion on matters in the news. But after speaking about a famous male actor, her career took a nosedive when the actor committed suicide. Haesoo not only lost her job, but her marriage also fell apart. Kim Hye-jin’s new novel Counsel Culture, translated…
Janet Poole, a professor at the University of Toronto, in Patterns of the Heart and Other Stories has translated into English a collection of works by Choe Myong-ik, a writer whom she calls in her introductory essay an “exquisite architect of the short story form”. Following her essay, Poole presents nine stories, five from the…
Examining the omnipresence of grief and revolution in South Korea for women and the queer community, as well as the whole nation after the sinking of the MV Sewol in April 2014, Hwang Jungeun’s dd’s Umbrella presents twin novellas from the perspective of two distinct narrators.
This whip-smart, darkly funny, and biting debut follows a psychologist with a savior complex who offers shelter to a recently cancelled K-pop idol on the run. Sang Duri is the eldest member and “visual” of a Korean boy band at the apex of global superstardom. But when his latest solo single accidentally leads to controversy,…
In what ways can or should art engage with its social context? Authors, readers, and critics have been preoccupied with this question since the dawn of modern literature in Korea. Advocates of social engagement have typically focused on realist texts, seeing such works as best suited to represent injustices and inequalities by describing them as…
If one seeks to characterize “Asian-American writing” as something other than just the ethnicity of the author, one might well land on Gina Chung’s short story collection Green Frog as a sort of case-in-point, if not a model.
Film and television that satirize South Korea’s class division has garnered considerable audience and critical attention in recent years, notably the award-winning Parasite (Bong Joon-ho, 2019) and the record-breaking Squid Game (Hwang Dong-hyuk, 2021). Less well known internationally, however, is literary fiction that takes aim at South Korea’s social hierarchy. Im Seong-sun’s The Consultant, first…
Since the early 1950s, over 125,000 Korean children have been adopted in the United States, primarily by white families. Korean adoptees figure in twenty-five percent of US transnational adoptions and are the largest group of transracial adoptees currently in adulthood. Despite being legally adopted, Korean adoptees’ position as family members did not automatically ensure legal,…
In August, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter to complain about how US regulations are holding local sunscreens back compared to the rest of the world. And while she didn’t name any specific country, the video featured headlines that did name one nation: South Korea. On social media, Korean cosmetics are now viewed as the…
When Lee Yeongju burns out at work and leaves her husband, she finds solace in pursuing her childhood dream of opening a bookshop. Her goal is to bring joy to other readers in Seoul and to get back into reading, a pastime she enjoyed back in middle school before she got caught up in the…
A walk down any shopping street in South Korea reveals countless images of glamorous celebrity women, endorsing skincare products from the windows of stores such as Olive Young and Innisfree. Seoul’s affluent Gangnam neighborhood is crowded with buildings filled with competing plastic surgeons, and decorated with commercials with before/after photos showing the starkly unadorned next…
After many years of cutting a fairly small figure in the larger affairs of the world South Korea has spent the past decade transforming its profile among the middle powers, especially in the Asian region. Ramon Pacheco Pardo sees this as the result of a quiet but determined strategy combining economic clout, “soft power” cultural influence,…
Yu Miri in her novel The End of August tells an extraordinary tale: the saga of her Korean family and the story of their nation. Her story spans space and time, giving voice to both the living and the dead. It is a tale of Korea, from the brief, failed attempt to stand at the…
A sprawling, multigenerational epic, Hwang Sok-yong’s Mater 2-10 tells the story of a working-class Korean family and details their struggles against the tides of the 20th century, from the Japanese colonial era through the division of the Peninsula to South Korea’s economic boom. Their agitation for workers’ rights spans the generations, as does the unique…