한국문학번역원 로고

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Cover Feature [Essay] Reflecting on Han Kang As one of her many thousands of readers around the world, I have enjoyed witnessing the ongoing recognition for Han Kang's extraordinary body of work. In January 2016, when Human Acts was published in the UK, one poet and translator wrote to me: “I do think it is a major book, a landmark, a new kind of book about political violence and its effects. It adds to our sense of what it is to be human.” The Vegetarian is still best-known work in the Anglosphere, thanks to being awarded the International Booker Prize back in 2016. The prize was in its first year, which meant that Human Acts also fell within the eligibility window. It surprised me that the judges chose The Vegetarian out of the two—books about historical, national traumas have traditionally been favoured by such prizes. Initially, I found it a shame that Human Acts was overshadowed, especially as this was the more recent work, which showcases Han’s development as a writer and is generally considered her masterpiece

Magazine Vol. 65 Autumn 2024 We live in Seoul, yet we do not know Seoul. Each day we open our eyes, skip breakfast, rush to work with feet always pounding as if being pursued, compulsively check our subway maps, and plunge into a writhing crowd of uncaring, unfeeling strangers to become strangers ourselves. This is a day in Seoul. I am shocked when strangers to the city—perhaps deceived by the “Global Korea” slogan—claim to admire life here. “Seoul” as created by Hallyu in the proliferation of K-culture seems to be some completely alien space-time that shares our city’s name, a period and place we have never experienced. Are we really talking about the same city?

Featured Writer [Interview] Parallel Worlds, Not Knowing, and the Art of Gaping Bo-mi, I’ve long admired your work, both as a reader and translator. Your ability to create such singular stories has always astonished me, and I’m grateful for this opportunity to talk more in-depth with you. Your work often features parallel worlds and alternate realities. In your debut collection Bringing Them the Lindy Hop, a son dies in the opening story, “Blanket,” but survives and reappears in the last story. The young couple in “Blanket” become the protagonists in a story from a different collection. You’ve said that you “never forget that even characters who appear briefly have their own lives” and you’d like readers to approach your fiction as if they’re reading about real people. What draws you to parallel worlds and alternate realities?

Featured Writer [Fiction] The Substitute Teacher On sunny afternoons, when the child woke from his nap, Ms. P would take him by the hand and head outside. The neighborhood, which was filled with luxury condos, had a nice playground in the middle of the complex, but Ms. P always walked to the nearby park just beyond. As she neared the park, holding the hand of this boy, this five-year-old with a bowl haircut and big monolid eyes, she felt again the pure joy these moments gave her. In the center of the park, there was an open area with a manicured lawn where children could run and play. Ms. P spread out her mat on the edge of the grass and sat down with the boy. Nearby, young women had also brought their children to the park and were chatting in small groups or watching their children play. Ms. P exchanged polite nods with them but kept to herself. When the boy asked, “Can I go play?” she smiled and nodded. Once he dashed off, she took a book from her small canvas bag and began to read. Sometimes she would stop reading to watch the boy

Featured Writer [Review] Some Women Are Not Welcome In 2011, a bright new talent, Son Bo-mi, emerged on the Korean literary scene. That year, she published six impressive short stories, including “Blanket,” “Bringing Them the Lindy Hop,” and “Downpour.” Her work was so fresh and unique that it shook the aesthetic landscape of Korean fiction. What drew such attention and enthusiasm to a debut writer? Her writing seemed unrelated to the traditional belief in realism, which claims to fully understand how everything in the world is connected. It also didn’t align with works that dramatized personal experiences as psychological tales, nor did it define itself as historical realism or as depictions of inner worlds. Instead, her sentences, devoid of moral judgments and emotional flourishes, featured a dry, impersonal style with subtle wit and a blend of fact and fiction, signaling a neutral, minimalist approach. Korean literature had now gained a writer who boldly declared, “I have no qualms about writing what I don’t fully know,” as she wrote

Cover Feature [Cover Feature] Atop the Foot of the City I was born in Seoul. I have lived in Seoul all forty years of my life. I have dreamed of life outside the city on occasion, but never managed to take the leap. Part of it was probably a subconscious obsession with Seoul, which stemmed from watching my parents from the mountains and the seaside carve out a place here with great difficulty. But more influential was the fact that I didn’t have the confidence to live outside this city. I didn’t know much about life out there, and even after learning something of “not-Seoul” from books and YouTube, I was still too afraid. Finding work outside Seoul, too, was an obvious and significant challenge.

Cover Feature [Cover Feature] Becoming a Cog in the Emergency Room 1. I work at a university hospital in Seoul. In exchange for my labor, I am paid a salary that I use to cover my rent and living expenses as a Seoul resident. However, my job is somewhat peculiar—I work in the emergency room, the busiest part of a university hospital. My contract with this institution as an emergency medicine specialist and clinical professor requires me to spend thirty hours a week in the ER. While I have other additional duties, my primary responsibility is patient care. Upon fulfilling these terms of my contract, I receive a fixed salary.

Cover Feature [Cover Feature] Let’s Meet in O Someone I know once made the following remark to me: “Don’t you think your stories are a bit. . . Seoul-centric?” At the time, I assumed that this acquaintance of mine had just recently learned about the concept of “Seoul-centricism” and was looking for a way to make use of this newfound knowledge when he came across my books. His comment seemed to stem from the fact that most of the characters in my novels were Seoulites who wander the streets of Jongno, Gwanghwamun, and the Mapo district, frequenting the hotels, cafes, and independent bookstores in those areas. I felt a momentary urge to argue with him but refrained. I didn’t want to spoil the mood and had an inkling that it would just lead to a pointless argument. I made an effort to change the subject with a string of jokes, and in hindsight, I think it was very wise to not speak my mind

Korean Literature Now

INTERVIEW Parallel Worlds, Not Knowing, and the Art of Gaping by Janet Hong

INTERVIEW Interview with Kim So Yeon: Continuing until We Become Our Outsides by Lee Jenny

INTERVIEW Face to Face with Choi Eunmi by Jung Yong-jun

COVER FEATURES [Essay] Reflecting on Han Kang As one of her many thousands of readers around the world, I have enjoyed witnessing the ongoing recognition for Han Kang's extraordinary body of work. In January 2016, when Human Acts was published in the UK, one poet and translator wrote to me: “I do think it is a major book, a landmark, a new kind of book about political violence and its effects. It adds to our sense of what it is to be human.”     The Vegetarian is still best-known work in the Anglosphere, thanks to being awarded the International Booker Prize back in 2016. The prize was in its first year, which meant that Human Acts also fell within the eligibility window. It surprised me that the judges chose The Vegetarian out of the two—books about historical, national traumas have traditionally been favoured by such prizes. Initially, I found it a shame that Human Acts was overshadowed, especially as this was the more recent work, which showcases Han’s development as a writer and is generally considered her masterpiece (many are now saying this about her latest work, whose English translation by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris—We Do Not Part—will be published in early 2025).      I haven’t read those books for many years, I think not even since I translated them. In the wake of the Booker, there was a lot of criticism of me and my translation, claiming that errors were due not only to inexperience but to a lack of respect and care. It was savage and personal and worse behind the scenes. At the other extreme, my translation was over-hyped in order to downplay Han’s own artistry. I was preoccupied with the literary world's violent racial inequality, where whiteness had eased my passage into the industry and contributed to my work being so disproportionately praised and visible, and I didn’t really understand the misogyny at play, or how to speak about both things at once. (To my knowledge, The White Book contains no mistakes, but the fact that it deals with the death of a baby means I haven’t been able to read it since becoming a mother. I read We Do Not Part yesterday and found that Han's narrative voice sounds just as I remember it from my own translations. So perhaps I didn't ‘distort’ her after all.)    In all this time, I’ve come to a deeper understanding of why I became a translator in the first place. Written language is my mother tongue, the place where I can achieve the clarity of precision that is almost sacred to me, and where patterns of stress and intonation produce an effect which I find pleasurable and meaningful. In an article for Asymptote, I described the process of reading / translating Han Kang (an inextricable binary for me) as one of being “arrested by razor-sharp images which arise from the text without being directly described there.” Like many autistics, I experience a form of synaesthesia, and language itself is vivid, has colour and taste and heft.    When I think of Human Acts, the images that come to my mind all cluster in the courtyard of the hanok in Gwangju. Water “crackling” into the tin pail. It took me a long time to get that word. Dong-ho feeling “lacerated,” behind the door as he listens to, or imagines, Jeong-dae’s sister crossing the yard. Toothpaste suds dripping from her brush. Images which capture the extraordinary sensory experience of being alive, of being young and in love.       From The Vegetarian, the only phrase I can recall directly is “armoured by the strength of her own renunciation.” From a young age, I felt that social conventions—of being made to speak, of being made to eat—are violence. (The editors of this article have pointed out that I misremembered the line from The Vegetarian. In 2013, the word I chose was power, not strength.)    My favourite thing about the Nobel has been the chance to read interviews with some of Han’s many other translators. I was especially struck by Sunme Yoon describing how she came to translate La Vegetariana (several years before the English translation) in defiance of the South Korean literary scene, which in 2007 was “dominated by old-school men immersed in a very socially conservative society” who ignored or denigrated the book as “extreme and bizarre.” I am one of the many women who have found Yeong-hye’s story to be neither extreme nor bizarre. Like her sister In-hye, I almost envy her magnificent irresponsibility.    In all its languages, The Vegetarian is a work which invites a particularly personal form of reading, the kind that those ‘old-school men’ would disapprove of, among a particular kind of reader— ‘sick women’ who refuse to be well in a world that violates and debilitates; “impressionable young girls” mocked for their fannishness; anyone who might defiantly reclaim some of the labels given to Yeong-hye—crazy, excessive, hysterical. Looking back, I think this is also how I translated it—with affinity coinciding with respect for alterity, agency, and unknowability, as well as protectiveness for how Yeong-hye would be read, knowing the prevalence of the reductive and frankly racist reading of ‘passive Asian woman struggles against (uniquely Asian) patriarchy.’ I love that a book described as “magnificently death-affirming,” and which is also, as more than one queer Asian has expressed to me, so queer, has such a high profile.     And Human Acts is not overshadowed. It was a bestseller when published in South Korea in 2014, and it is the book that BTS superstars were referencing when they tweeted their congratulations to Han and said they had read her book during their military service. This year, translated in twenty-five languages, it is being read in a different, and yet similar light to The Vegetarian. It describes Gwangju as “another name for whatever is forcibly isolated, beaten down, and brutalized, for all that has been mutilated beyond repair.” It has been personally moving for me to encounter so many readers connecting Gwangju to Gaza. I am inspired by their committed, intelligent reading to use my royalties from Human Acts to support Palestinian liberation, and grateful to every reader for making those royalties possible. Deborah Smith worked at Tilted Axis Press between 2015 and 2022. She has also translated several books from Korean, mainly by Han Kang, Bae Suah, and Kim Hyo-eun. She has been living in North India since early 2020 and is currently writing a critical memoir on translation, whiteness, misogyny, disability, and empire.

REVIEWS [RUSSIAN] Love Brings Hope in This Post-Apocalyptic Story Choi Jin-Young’s novel To the Warm Horizon, translated by Alina Kolbiagina, presents a storyline in which a group of people is forced to flee their homes by a deadly virus. It is a familiar type of story to Russian readers not only because of Stephen King and other widely translated Western writers who produce such novels, but also thanks to the success of Russian writer Yana Vagner’s To the Lake in 2011. But this Korean post-apocalyptic story is a different cup of tea: while King’s and Vagner’s narratives are more fast-paced, this book requires a much slower reading. This story serves as a reflection, almost a diary, of the characters’ attempts to analyse their pasts at a moment of tragedy; a soul-searching tale of what their lives could have been like, had they made different choices.     The book consists of a series of monologues where Dori, Jina, Ryu, and Gunji invite us into their inner worlds as they escape from their native Korea to Russia  while the pandemic is taking over the world. In the foreword of the book, Choi says that she deliberately wanted to place the characters in “the most enormous country on the planet,” and that she wanted them “to hold a flag, so even from the sky it would signal that ‘a human being is right here, in this place!’” It seems Choi wants us to study and observe the individual at a time of crisis—and the landscape here plays the part of a vast space that helps bring out the feeling of loneliness. She moves characters from a densely populated place into this huge “sandbox” to have a closer look at what they would do, and to reflect on existential identity and the consequences of life choices.      At first glance, the focus in the book is on the pandemic and its aftermath—poverty, famine, crime, and chaos—but these actually serve as the backdrop for the internal transition the characters go through. Each of them analyses their past and realises how loveless their lives have been. Ryu reflects on how she used to neglect her own needs (“I always wore thin jackets into the winter until I got ill, because I never had time to take my warm winter coat to the dry cleaners.”). Having never looked after herself and having never felt loved (“Do we actually know anything about love?”), she regrets marrying a man who doesn’t show any affection or interest towards her.      The voices in Choi’s book are predominantly female, and her heroines are courageous and self-sacrificing, valuing the lives of their loved ones over their own. Men, on the other hand, are often either indecisive or violent: Dan, Ryu’s husband, cries and asks her to return to Korea because he is scared; Dori’s father joins a gang of marauders and bandits to survive, explaining that this is the only way he can save Dori’s life; Jina’s father hits Dori, blaming her for the deaths of several family members, and Jina’s uncle sexually assaults her. The only exception is Gunji, an orphaned boy from Jina’s village who later becomes a compassionate young man. He protects Dori from Jina’s family but ends up being disowned.     The characters that have a chance at being saved are the ones who care about others and who protect their loved ones. Their desire to keep running further away from the disaster—“there, over the horizon, where the sun sets”—is fuelled by their ability to love. Jina, Dori, Ryu, Gunji, and even Miso, Dori’s little sister, dream of making their loved ones happy. Ryu, having told her husband that she doesn’t love him, realises that his survival is more important to her than the words she said, which actually held no meaning. Gunji, having survived losses and hardship at such a young age, simply dreams of catching fish, collecting fruit, and giving them to the person he loves. Wanting to make someone happy is present even at a subconscious level. Without knowing its meaning, Dori keeps humming a song that she heard on the radio—“Ma rendi pur contento” which means “Only make her happy.” Choi Jin-Young offers us the hope that love will prevail and humanity will survive, despite the disasters. Otherwise, why would she end the novel with the words, “I love you”?   Maria WiltshireTranslator and Russian language tutor

Book for You

READINGS A Novel Reading by Son Bo-mi "The Substitute Teacher"

READINGS A Poetry Reading by Poet Kim So Yeon "Second Floor Guest Lounge"

READINGS A Novel Reading by Lim Chulwoo

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