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  [SPANISH] New Families

  As in her novel Concerning My Daughter, for which author Kim Hye-jin is best known not only in Korea but in several countries thanks to multiple translations, her 2022 novel Counsel Culture also places the theme of care at the center of the conversation. In Concerning My Daughter, one of the protagonists is a caretaker for the elderly. In Counsel Culture, the protagonist has worked as a psychotherapist for ten years. In principle, their common task is to help and—to some extent—protect. Nevertheless, for different reasons, both fail and the terrible ostracization that results disrupts their previously stable lives.      Besides working at a therapy center, Im Haesu, the protagonist of Counsel Culture, is a consultant on a television program where she gives her professional opinion on a variety of topics. One day, Haesu thoughtlessly repeats a talking point that the screenwriters have given her about an actor while on air. Her comment is just one of the many already in circulation about this actor’s chaotic behavior on set and his strained relations with his co-stars. But to her surprise, her opinion becomes the final blow to his online public crucifixion. The actor commits suicide and the shoal of digital commentators line up against Haesu to destroy her reputation and career. The words carelessly spoken on air return to Haesu like a boomerang, leaving her perplexed. “She learned that a few words or one line was enough to stab a person in the heart. In the days following the incident, she died hundreds, thousands of times looking at her phone and her computer screen.”       Her husband, her best friend, her neighbors, her boss, her colleagues—everyone distances themselves from her. The author masterfully reveals all of this very slowly, through the letters the protagonist writes day after day. Letters that never reach their conclusion much less the mailbox. Letters in which       Haesu strenuously tries—but fails—to explain her behavior to her closest relations nor manages to confront those who have done her harm.      Haesu wanders through her neighborhood at night, using the darkness to avoid being recognized. On one of her errant walks, she meets a girl and shortly after, the two of them join efforts to save a stray cat which, like Haesu, wanders through the streets scared and hurt. Here is where another of Kim’s recurring themes appears. The woman, the solitary girl, and the sick and hungry cat quickly form an unconventional family, even more so than the one in Concerning My Daughter. And it’s the girl who becomes the head of this quite unusual family. She makes suggestions and gives guidance in coordinating the rescue project, despite living a solitary life at home and being excluded at school. It is she who names the cat “Turnip.” Not long after, an enormous ginkgo tree on the edge of the neighborhood becomes home for the three of them where  they gather in the afternoons. In this tree, they set a trap to catch the cat and take it to the vet. “The ginkgo tree becomes something of a place of worship to Haesu. The time she spends there waiting for Turnip brings her calm. She does not know where this calm and peace are coming from. Sometimes she stays past sundown, until darkness settles in.” The waiting in this green sanctuary cures her, to the point she finally decides to meet the wife of the deceased actor. Their meeting teaches Haesu how powerful words can be, something she had not fully grasped in her previous life as a therapist.       Kim Hye-jin’s novels move on a scale that some might consider minor. Even her transparent writing, transmitted with serenity and efficacy by her translators, can give the false impression of lightness. There is no epic catharsis, nor lessons. Rather, her book deals with a discovery of themes that concern us today—the nature of care, the reach of language in the age of social media, the intangibility of forgiveness—through ordinary fumblings in the dark and new ideas of family. Kim tells us that if we give these factors sufficient attention, perhaps we can find the path of return. Translated by Lucina Schell  Andrés Felipe SolanoWriter, Gloria (Counterpoint, 2025)

  by Andrés Felipe Solano

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  [TURKISH] Exploring Technological Frontiers and Human Fragility

  Djuna’s Counterweight, translated into Turkish by Derya Çelik, immerses readers in a speculative narrative where corporate ambition, technological innovation, and personal reflection intersect. Known for their philosophical science fiction works, Djuna uses the futuristic setting of Patusan, an island transformed by a space elevator project, to explore identity, memory, and ethical dilemmas by asking whether humanity can retain compassion in a world increasingly driven by technological progress.      The novel opens with a child who receives her mother’s ashes but rejects them, saying, “That’s not my mom. It’s just ashes.” The ashes later become part of a firework display, accompanying a digital simulation of the mother created through augmented reality. The story also combines existential and technological themes, exploring what it means to be human in a world where reality and simulation blur: What happens to memory and identity in a digitized world? Can technology bridge emotional gaps or does it only accentuate the isolation inherent in human relationships?       The first-person story is driven by the narrator’s relationship with Choi Gangwu, a seemingly ordinary technician who serves as the central character. Initially suspected of supporting the Patusan Liberation Front due to his love of butterflies, Gangwu complicates expectations by showing how bureaucracies whittle people down to mere numbers. Djuna’s signature thoughtful pacing fosters reflection on these tensions, inviting readers to slow down and engage deeply with the characters’ choices.      The construction of the space elevator on Patusan displaces locals, rendering them as a marginalized minority within the new system. Djuna cleverly turns the space elevator into a metaphor, representing both the promise and burden of progress. The protagonist’s interactions with Gangwu reflect this tension, as the latter oscillates between his beloved butterflies and his navigation of corporate hierarchies. The fragmented monologues provide insight into the private lives of central characters, allowing the exploration of their regrets, decisions, and epiphanies. Gangwu, for example, contemplates his dual identity as both a rebel and a corporate employee, embodying the tension between individual freedom and institutional constraints. The butterflies symbolize a yearning for simplicity in a world overtaken by corporate agendas.      The novel’s translation by Derya Çelik preserves Djuna’s poetic prose, balancing philosophical inquiry with narrative tension. Çelik’s skillful rendering captures the subtle nuances of Djuna’s world-building, making the story accessible to Turkish readers without compromising its depth. Through detailed descriptions of both physical and emotional landscapes, Çelik brings out the tension between the vastness of Patusan and the characters’ internal struggles. Djuna challenges readers to engage with the text on multiple levels—emotional, philosophical, and intellectual.      The novel also challenges the established social order. Gangwu struggles with indecision and societal expectations despite his technical skills, while the protagonist displays resilience in navigating personal and corporate dilemmas. Djuna subtly critiques how societal structures often limit individuals, trapping them within predefined roles, much like the space elevator confines the movement of bodies and materials. Gangwu’s journey reveals that survival in a hyper-technological world demands not only technical skills but also emotional adaptability.      The big reveal comes when Gangwu meets Neberu O’Shaughnessy, a spy disguised as an ally. O’Shaughnessy is shot and killed before he can extract Gangwu’s implanted data using a “Worm extractor.” O’Shaughnessy’s death raises questions: Was Gangwu manipulated all along, or did he unknowingly harbor critical information? The novel concludes ambiguously, implying that if there are ghosts that influence us, perhaps we, too, can learn to haunt them in return. This leaves readers a faint glint of hope amid the darkness that even in tyrannical regimes, resistance might still be possible.      Beneath the surface focus on the space elevator and the geopolitical conflicts it creates, Djuna’s real concern is directed at the human and moral quandaries brought on by technological development. By following Gangwu’s journey, the novel stresses that even in the age of corporate capitalism and technological innovation, love, curiosity, and compassion are paramount. The story offers a glimmer of hope that humanity can build authentic bonds under the weight of so much change.      Djuna’s Counterweight invites readers to consider the consequences of unchecked ambition while celebrating the quiet, human moments that persist in the shadows of progress.   Sümeyra Buran Writer and Professor 

  by Sümeyra Buran

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  [JAPANESE] Stories to Invite the Future

  “Invite (you) into the world”—in Chung Serang’s Take My Voice, this lovely phrase is used to refer to the birth of a child. To borrow this expression in part, the stories in this collection could be called “stories to invite our future.”      Even among Chung’s works, these stories feature exceptionally strong science fiction elements such as a detention center that contains people who pose a threat to other humans or a world isolated by a zombie pandemic. All these stories were first published in Korean in the 2010s, yet they seem to foresee the COVID-19 pandemic that shook the world in 2020 and the chaos that ensued. However, their real value doesn’t simply lie in their futuristic vision.      For example, the memory-enhancing pill from the short story “Little Baby Blue Pill,” which enables one to remember everything for only three hours, is marketed for use by families hoping to treat relatives with dementia. However, its misuse soon becomes rampant; it unexpectedly boosts the success rate of acquiring one’s object of infatuation, and revitalizes the quality of scripts in the corrupt entertainment industry. At the same time, it makes the torture carried out by authoritarian regimes and in war zones even more brutal, mass-produces traffic accident deaths and suicides, and critically damages the brains of children of the next century.      “It changed everything and, at the same time, nothing could be changed,” says the narrator. I believe this ambivalent phrase to contain both a bitter irony about our history of simplifying complexity into either zeros and ones for the sake of efficiency, suppressing the small voices of those who lived in the in-between. At the same time, it holds an  equal amount of sincere prayer.      “Reset” stands out as a defining work. After urban civilization is devoured by a sudden horde of giant worms, the few surviving humans withdraw from the surface and build a civilization with low environmental impact in the long underground tunnels left behind by the worms. They stop eating meat and realize the cruelty of enclosing other animals; produce only as much energy as necessary; and eliminate waste by circulating resources within the city. What awaits after this literal reset is a world that seems to embody only the best solutions  for the planet and humanity. In order to maintain  population levels, reproductive behavior and even the emotional dynamics and desires surrounding it are tightly monitored. According to the younger post-reset generation, “I don’t feel like doing anything with anyone around me.” Later, the reader realizes that the very emotions and desires that have been purged from the individuals in these stories are also   the same drives that will save them from the depths of despair.      There can be no such thing as a “right answer” in this SF vision of the world.  Whatever the justification, if we try to optimize society, then that is not rational or functional—in other words, the soft parts of the human heart—is gradually marginalized and discarded. Mechanically repeating such efficient measures offers no guarantee that a world where mutual care and compassion will still exist. That is why Chung sharply pierces our complacency to reveal the harm and violence which we have tolerated both now and in the past, while also portraying faint traces of affection and fragile connections  that carefully, delicately, and honestly sketch a landscape colored with humor and tenderness, even if only for a moment .      A perceptive critical sensibility underpins the unexpected settings of each short story in this collection. In addition to tough, incisive insights into environmental issues and bioethics, the stories offer illuminating and constructive perspectives on gender.       Above all, the fantasy elements of this book expand the range of the reader’s own imagination in all directions, by revealing in a meticulous and multi-layered way the workings of human beings, which can never be reduced to numbers. This is precisely the process required to build our future—a future in which we can pass the baton from me to you, from one to another.      Ultimately, I believe that the most important characteristic of human beings is to be “lost” within the disorientation of a dystopian world. It is telling that the final piece in this book is “The Medalist’s Zombie Years.” The tough protagonist, a former archery medalist who has survived a zombie apocalypse,  wrestles with the emotional burden of confronting her already zombified lover until the last possible moment. She is lost because she has not given up until the very end—on him as a person, on what she can do for him as a fellow human being, and on the idea of humanity itself. Chung Serang’s fantastical visions are woven to remind us to never give up on what it means to be human. Translated by Meri Joyce Kuramoto SaoriLiterary Critic

  by Kuramoto Saori

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  [POLISH] Metamorphosis of the Other: A Queer Sci-Fi Thriller

  In recent years there has been a growing interest in contemporary South Korean fiction which constantly seeks new means of expression. A number of Korean novels have been published in Polish translation. Walking Practice was translated into Polish by Łukasz Janik and is remarkably successful at reproducing the style and form of the original Korean version.      Dolki Min is the pen name of an essayist and writer who is considered one of the greatest enigmas in the contemporary South Korean literary scene. His identity is shrouded in a veil of mystery, which is the result of his deliberate efforts to create a mysterious atmosphere around him. His biographical note has never been made public. What’s more, Dolki Min has never revealed his face and wears a mask during media appearances. As he insists, the author’s persona should not carry much significance for the reception of his work.      Dolki Min’s debut novel, Walking Practice, is a paranormal sci-fi thriller with an explicit queer message. This short novel is about Mumu, an extraterrestrial from outer space who landed on Earth fifteen years earlier due to an invasion of his home planet. Of indeterminate gender, Mumu finds themself trapped in an unfamiliar refuge and is strongly affected by Earth’s gravity. In order to survive in a new, hostile environment, the alien shifts into a human form, taking on bodily shape (male or female) as is most advantageous at a given moment in order to capture human prey. They hate walking on two legs, as their original alien form has three legs and one arm, and climbing up the stairs is torture. Another distressing moment for Mumu is having to travel on crowded public transportation with a big backpack stuffed with tools they use to murder their victims.       Mumu feeds themself on human flesh and by taking advantage of the hook-up culture that pervades today’s fast-paced world, Mumu meets their unsuspecting victims using dating apps. After a casual sexual encounter, Mumu kills and devours them on the spot or takes leftovers to their crashed spacecraft they use as house, nestled somewhere in a dense forest. Mumu loathes humans, although feeling lonely and isolated they cherish an inner longing for brief moments of intimacy. Their goal is to blend in with human society without getting caught, but at the same time, to survive by eating humans.       The author of this queer novel employs the science fiction genre in order to criticize gender role models and the exclusion of disadvantaged groups in modern societies, including South Korea, through the lens of an alien. The reader is not spared appalling descriptions and blunt language, moments that verge on vulgarity and obscenity. This intriguing and at times disturbing novel contains interesting (though not necessarily easy to understand) formal experiments: when Mumu’s body is deformed, the text does the same; it becomes slightly distorted, expands and contracts according to the first-person narrator’s mental state. The author uses clichés and templates from science fiction, erotica, horror, thriller, gore, confession, and chat records. He also uses emoticons, highlighted words and graphic signs.       We may perceive Walking Practice literally as a fantasy thriller story about a murderous and paranoid alien among defenceless earthlings, or metaphorically as a subversive queer story about social gender fluidity, bisexuality, exclusion, phobias, humiliation, rejection, and lack of acceptance. The attentive reader will certainly notice the hidden social commentary on gender identities, otherness, and contemporary human relationships. The novel’s genre may be classified as sci-fi horror with a queer and transgender message and a penetrating critique of the obsolete social structures and anachronistic mental attitudes that exclude those who are queer and resist conformity.      In challenging conventional narratives, Dolki Min’s novel transcends the boundaries of genre fiction, offering a raw critique of societal norms surrounding gender and identity. His bold, unconventional approach has established him as a voice for marginalized communities, further enriching the dialogue on queer representation in global literature.   Anna Diniejko-WąsLiterary TranslatorAssistant Professor, University of Warsaw, Poland

  by Anna Diniejko-Wąs

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  [ENGLISH] Dog’s World

  “Was it the right decision to bring Choco home?” asks Yuna, the narrator of Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s Dog Days. Choco is a malnourished and neglected Border Collie who lives outdoors in a dilapidated cage. She sits day in and day out exposed to the elements. Her owner barely pays her any attention. When Choco’s owner offers her to Yuna and her husband Hun, they don’t bring her home right away. Instead, they work to earn her trust. Hun visits Choco every day in her cage. He sits outside her open cage in the cold until she’s eventually willing to come out.      When she finally leaves the cage, Yuna and Hun wonder about how she experiences the walk to her new home: “When was the last time she’d smelled the soil? Or smelled the scent of decomposing leaves? Or the bugs crawling under the leaves?” This potent moment is marred by an unglamorous arrival at home. Yuna and Hun’s other dogs, Carrot and Potato, play rough with Choco, even though they’re both neutered. Most worrisome, after living in such poor conditions outdoors, Choco is in extremely poor health. It’s not clear if she’ll even survive the transition to her new home. However, spending any more time in the outdoor cage would have undoubtedly been a death sentence for her. So was it the right choice? Unnerving (and often unanswerable) questions like this arise for Yuna and Hun throughout Dog Days. In lush brushstrokes, Gendry-Kim presents a portrait of the dilemmas of being a dog owner.       Long before they adopted Choco, there was Carrot. Yuna and Hun bought Carrot, a Welsh Corgi, from a pet store in Seoul to help Hun cope with the passing of his grandmother. But it is also true that Carrot came into their lives partly by chance—as Yuna admits, if the other Corgi in the shop had been handed to them, “that pup would have become ours instead.” Introducing their first dog into their home was not an easy adjustment. Carrot is anxious around other dogs and bites Yuna. They eventually get him neutered, and worry if that was the right decision. They debate sending Carrot to Dog Training Center because of his biting, but worry about stories of mistreatment, including one center where “The facility’s owner had beaten the dog with a pipe for excessive barking.” In all these moments, Gendry-Kim presents Yuna and Hun as an uncomfortable amount of power over the lives of their pets. They are completely in control of Carrot’s fate, but never entirely sure if what they’re doing is best for Carrot. This amusing behavior will be familiar to any pet owner.       One day, Yuna and Hun make a major change for the sake of Carrot. They move from Seoul to the countryside, partly to give Carrot more room to roam and (hopefully) thrive. At first, their new life outside the city seems close to idyllic. They go for long walks with Carrot on quiet country lanes. One of their elderly neighbors, Mr. Han, offers them a spot on his property so they can start a vegetable garden. They also adopt another puppy after it’s left on their doorstep, which they name Potato.       But then Hun discovers a trio of dogs in a shed on Mr. Han’s property. They soon disappear, without any explanation. Other dogs disappear in their neighborhood, and the book takes on some of the unnerving qualities of a horror novel.       All is made clear with the arrival of the Dog Vendor, a truck with a loudspeaker that blares: “Dogs and puppies wanted! Goats wanted!” Yuna captures how their once pleasant country life immediately becomes a nightmare with the appearance of the truck: “During the summer right after the rains, the sound of the loudspeaker would fill the air, making me anxious about what the dog butcher might do to our puppies. Sometimes, I felt as if I were the one in danger.” In this pivotal moment, a switch is flipped, making the characters and readers realize that the killers are all people you know and see every day. That kindly neighbor Mr. Han who let Hun and Yuna garden on his land? He turns out to be a major local dog butcher. In no time, the quandary for Yuna and Hun is clear to the reader: which dogs can they save? Often, it’s not many. This brutal realization makes Yuna and Hun’s tenderness toward their pets moving rather than frivolous.       In her afterword, Gendry-Kim reflects on the difficulties of addressing dog butchering in Korean culture, and the risks in doing so to an audience that would understandably react negatively:       My greatest concern while writing this book was the risk of racial discrimination against Koreans or Asians abroad due to its content, a fear stemming from my own past experiences. I’ve experienced comments like, “Don’t           you eat dog? Go back to your country. . .” The last thing I wanted to do was to reinforce those stereotypes.  In facing the grisly, unsettling details of dog butchering head on, Gendry-Kim provides a service to readers to contextualize a cruel but dying tradition. She also reminds readers of the emotional importance of dogs in the lives of owners like Yuna and Hun. Throughout Dog Days, we see Yuna and Hun put their lives second to the needs of Carrot, Potato, and Choco. On the other hand, we are also given glimpses into how the dogs help to heal Yuna and Hun’s emotional wounds. At one point, Yuna speculates that Hun is especially attached to Choco because of his own difficult childhood. This scene serves as another reminder for the reader of how much weight these dogs carry in our lives.       Again and again in Dog Days the question is asked: what is best for a dog? Often, the answer is far from clear. But, again and again, Yuna and Hun give themselves fully to finding out.   Lucas AdamsEditor and writer

  by Lucas Adams

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  [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

  by Maria Wiltshire

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  [TURKISH] When AND How Does a Human Become Human?

  “Will artificial intelligence bring the end of humanity?” This is one of the main questions explored in the novel Veda, a question that everybody, from pop culture creators to contemporary philosophers, have been sharing their opinions about.     But first, let us put this question aside and think about the process that brought us here whenever humans faced technological advances in the past: Will computers replace human beings? Will railroad transportation be the end of horse-and-cart? Will the printing press finish clerical scribes? Following the Industrial Revolution, the conflict between humans and machines has taken center stage. Since the day the first machine appeared, humankind has been asking the same questions, although in slightly different ways. The current version is: Will artificial intelligence bring humanity to an end? We will only be certain to answer this from experience, not by prediction.     In Veda, Young-ha Kim essentially asks the same question and gives his answer in different ways. We are talking about the “existential” adventure of Cheol, a humanoid in the novel who lives on an AI development campus. He decides to cease his isolated life and face the realities of the outside world through his experiences with other humans and robots. While Kim follows this plot, he gives quick nods to earlier science fiction works, utopia/dystopia texts and films, and sometimes he even adds paragraphs to convey the infinite reaches of intertextuality. Many preceding texts include Utopia by Thomas More and, more indirectly, Emile, or On Education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The endeavour of creating a “human being” reminds one of Frankenstein and, because the AI campus is not what it seems, of Brave New World; readers may also think of post-apocalyptic, sci-fi films such as The Terminator and The Matrix. As in The Truman Show, we explore the consequences of limited contact with the outside world, and the existentialist dilemma of the humanoid character will call to mind Blade Runner.      In addition, Cheol’s fate has similarities to that of Pinocchio, carved from wood by Master Geppetto, both characters who believe themselves to be human before they finally become so. Without forgetting that Karel Čapek’s Rossum’s Universal Robots introduced the word “robot,” Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot forms a reference point for Veda as do many other texts.     In Cheol’s dialogues with his “father” as well as with other robots, humanoids, clones and humans, the writer searches for answers without neglecting the philosophical, ethical and sociological aspects, and proposes his own thesis (since humanity is already over) while “adding on” to the existing body of work.     For instance, Cheol asks many of the same questions that philosophers have pondered throughout the history of humankind: conscience, trust, courage, public awareness, individualism, free will, loving and being loved, remembrance, sorrow, death. Occasionally he thinks about the philosophy of religion. There is only one place where these questions lead: When and how does a human become human? As we dig deeper, we notice that the novel that best represents Veda is The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Just like Dorothy, Cheol is forcibly swept away from his familiar settlement. The Tin Man, The Scarecrow and The Cowardly Lion accompany Dorothy just as Min, Seon, and Dharma do with Cheol. And Cheol, just like Dorothy, wishes to return “home” because only then will his story be completed.      Kim indirectly addresses the central question of his book, suggesting that to become human, one needs a story. The various paths Cheol takes, the stops he waits at, and the twists and turns that alter his course all contribute to an ongoing story, crafted along the way. This continuous narrative is the key element that defines humanity.     Whether one is aware or not, the experiences one has lived and collected, shared with others, and partially remembered by others, contribute to the ongoing story that defines humanity. The nature of that story is shaped throughout the journey. Veda leads its readers to believe that, although humanity may have ended by the time Cheol’s story begins, there may still be hope for humankind as long as there are stories to be told.  Çağlayan Çevik Editor and Journalist

  by Çağlayan Çevik

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  [FRENCH] The Age of Her Arteries

  The Old Woman with the Knife is a masterpiece of irony. Not an obvious, grating irony, but rather the genuine, existential and formal irony that is characteristic of works that belong to the realm of ‘literature,’ regardless of the genre (in this case, crime).     Here is Hornclaw—referred to as ‘Granny’ for reasons of deference. The geographical and chronological aspects of the novel are clearly set: contemporary Korea in the shadow of an economic recession. But sociologically, it is not so clear: this ‘Granny’ uses a knife rather than knitting needles. Hornclaw’s profession seems incompatible with her age and the fragile respectability that this confers. She is a contract killer—or, to use the jargon that seems to have spread throughout society like an invasive plant, she is an ‘operator.’ The writer Gu Byeong-mo herself is like a seasoned contract killer. From the outset, she aims at—and hits—what is the pulsating heart of any good book, namely irony.     What could be more ironic than a character who specialises in the body, an expert in the vulnerability and mortality of this machine made of muscles, nerves and vital centres, having to face the deterioration of her own body? It is not without irony that time has caught up with someone who is in the business of putting an end to the time allotted to others. Nor is the fact that an expert in the elimination and eradication of others should, in turn, find herself confronted with forgetfulness and the slow erosion of her memory.      Time and age have forced Hornclaw to become more introspective, and like a trap that ensnares the animal that wanders into it, the sins she has committed form the basis of her punishment. We can leave aside moral and metaphysical considerations. As a novelist, Gu is not particularly interested in spelling these out in literal terms: it is up to us, if we have the time and the inclination, to do the work. However, we should keep in mind the idea of just desserts, of poetic justice, of judgment passed with a single word.     With her body feeling the weight of the years, Hornclaw’s past resurfaces and, like a virtuoso clockmaker, Gu sets in motion the complex and perfectly interlocking mechanisms of a story of resurgence and revenge. The first commandment of crime fiction reviews (‘Thou shalt not reveal’) prevents me from saying any more. Suffice it to say that revenge is a sub-species of judgment.     Judgment is not limited to these solemn forms that I have just mentioned. It proliferates in many different forms and is everywhere. It has infected the corporate world, including the agency where Hornclaw works, where there is relentless evaluation of colleagues and their skills. It affects how Korean society sees itself, or more precisely, how it sees one segment of itself: elderly people. It affects how they are classified and perceived—from undesirable to acceptable, from honorable to useless.     There is something Kafkaesque about The Old Woman with the Knife, and indeed, Kafka is mentioned in the book. There are echoes of the writer from Prague both in the inescapable inhumanity of Hornclaw's agency, and in Hornclaw's obsession with wrongdoing. But there is also something of the film, Kill Bill. The action scenes, brilliantly executed, are themselves subject to the law of practical judgment: what should be done, and how should it be done? The language is surgically precise, sometimes literally so, but interspersed here and there with evocative observations which take us into a strange and poetic other world.      And what of the suspended judgment, the indifference towards the lives and suffering of others that characterizes the ‘operator’? We remember Gromov in Chekhov’s Ward No. 6 exclaiming: “If organic tissue is capable of life it must react to every stimulus. And I do!” And in The Old Woman with the Knife, we read: “a stirring, as faint as a foetus’s first heartbeats, began deep into Hornclaw.” Hornclaw is judged because she belongs to the world of humans. Translated by Pascale Sutherland Damien AubelWriter (Marest, 2023)Literary and art critic for Transfuge

  by Damien Aubel

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  [POLISH] To Become One with the Whole—But Not the Way You Like It

  Even if sometimes you feel your life is stuck and you don’t know where to go anymore, it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. Maybe it’s just the way your life turned out. For all those who struggle to come to terms with today’s intractable world with its exhausting, everyday struggles, Won-pyung Sohn has a story which just might speak to this generation.     Kim Ji-hye is doing pretty well. She’s young, smart, educated, and she just got her first internship. She may not be paid very well, but it’s still a legitimate start. What could possibly go wrong? Well, for one thing, she is merely one among others. Many, many others. It is as if mediocrity had been assigned to her at birth. Born in 1988, a time of tremendous social and economic changes in South Korea, Ji-hye fails to excel. She graduated from a lower-tier university and gets a job at the age of thirty as an intern at a company-sponsored learning center.  Her job, even though it allows her to work in the area of arts and culture, mostly consists of photocopying lecture materials and arranging classroom chairs. She lives in a shabby basement apartment, the only one she could afford. Even her name Jihye (meaning “wisdom”) turns out to be yet another ironic disappointment. Because it was a popular name at the time, parents ended up giving their daughters the same name, to the point where she simply gets called ‘Ji-hye B’ at school. In short, the future doesn’t look very bright for someone with her background.     Things appear to take an unexpected turn the day a new colleague gets hired at work—a young man named Gyu-ok. Ji-hye has seen him before: a couple day earlier, he was at the same café she was, and had made a scene, embarrassing one of the most prominent lectures who works at the center. Everything gets even stranger when they both join ukulele lessons and meet two other men who also blame the world for not offering them much and instead taking from them.     At their regular meet ups at a local bar, this peculiar group of new friends decides to take revenge on the world, hoping to pave the way for others to resist the suffocating social structures surrounding them. Can such a dream, however, fuelled by resentment and copious amounts of alcohol, lead to a happier, more fulfilling life? One where justice prevails and self-realization wins over conformity?     Sohn’s characters will speak to many readers, as they are clearly meant to represent a wide array of people. In a world of cutthroat competition, where being a good person is just not enough, where only the rarest and most brilliant individuals make it to the top, the frustrations felt by Ji-hye, her companions, and the rest of humanity are more than relatable. The constant battle between individual dreams and mass conformity is represented in the book by the juxtaposition of Ji-hye’s new friends with her other colleagues (and including her brother). The first group cries out for justice and change in the world, reminiscent of the Korean independence movement’s fighting spirit at the end of the twentieth century. The latter group just parrots the mainstream line and argues that it’s better to conform, for it leads to an easier life where everything ends up as good as it’s going to get—so long as one surrenders to the oppressive rules set by society.     The story given to us by Sohn may or may not tell us whether defying the world order can actually succeed. However, it surely represents a generation forced to live under the enormous pressure of performing at the best of their abilities, while preserving the status quo for the sake of a stable, complacent life. This book is a bitter critique of the modern world that seems to have little to offer to younger generations who are desperate to seek their own place and purpose in it.    Łukasz JanikLiterary Translator

  by Łukasz Janik

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  [ENGLISH] Looking to a Brighter Future

  When I picked up Dawn of Labor, I knew nothing of Park Nohae. In that way, I was the same as the collection’s original readers, back when Park’s poetry was first published under a pen name in Korea in 1984. Now forty years later, this seminal work is available to English readers in a new translation from Brother Anthony of Taizé and Cheehyung Harrison Kim. Transcending oceans, languages, cultures, and four decades of distance, Park’s words still echo today as strong as ever.      These words speak of labor, and of the harsh conditions factory workers found in Korea during the 1980s. It’s hard not to be moved by the thought of Park, the quintessential worker-poet known as “the faceless poet,” writing these words in pencil on tissue paper between long hours doing factory work. What urgency must he have felt! I think too of the zeal with which the readers met his work, his fellow workers, his countrymen, who considered these poems so essential to their understanding of their own struggle that they turned them into songs that spread across the country. Others had written of life inside the factory before, but Park’s writing was different—he was one of them.      Growing up in Beolgyo, a small farming village in the southern part of Korea, he went to Seoul to seek a better life, but was met with the brutal conditions of factory labor. He wrote of the grease that coated the machines the workers used, which in turn seeped into their lives, into their beings. He often described the bodies of his fellow workers as bruised, broken, and maimed despite their young ages. He wrote of lives lost to the implements of their labor, severed hands buried at the base of the factory walls after the workers couldn’t bear to give them to the victims’ families, in a way where you feel the sorrow of the workers as much as the physical pain of the victim.     These poems are visceral, but their true strength lies in Park’s grasp of the emotions of the workers as much as in his understanding of the severity of their working conditions. In “No Way to Stop,” he writes:      I run with all my strength,     but the farther I go, the more distant I am      Workers are a “spinning top,” clothes are “wrung ever drier.” In this constant churn, “Gone are my eyes’ shine, my smile, and my thoughts.” Yet the true cruelty is the endlessness of this struggle. He notes that “more frightening than any whip / is the fact that I must live.” I have never seen a factory floor, but I too have felt like my labor had no value, like no matter how hard I worked, I couldn’t get ahead. In my moments of deepest despair, this is what grips me: what else is there to do but live?     There must be more to life than endless labor. I’m sure it was this yearning that led Korean workers to rally around Park’s writing. The depth of Park’s empathy extends beyond just his brothers in labor and towards his sisters as well. In “Record of My Journey with Men,” Park writes from the perspective of a woman tracing back not only her relationships, but her journey from sida (a factory apprentice) to team leader. It is in this poem we start to see Park’s greatest gift: not only portraying the crushing factory conditions or the sacrifices the workers were forced to make but gesturing towards something better, something like hope:      the company grew big,     from a hundred workers to fifteen hundred,     but all I have left are a rented room with a deposit worth half a million won,     a cassette player purchased with monthly installments,     and a worn-out twenty-five-year-old body.      As the demands made upon them increase, the workers rally, convincing the narrator “that if we unite, we can win,” and it’s in this space, linked arm and arm with her brothers and sisters, “eyes moist with tears,” that her “heart becomes a peaceful land for the very first time.” In this peace, she realizes that she can go on, that life holds something more, and she finally feels love begin to bloom.     I don’t share the exact concerns of Park’s narrators, but I too have worried about wages, about where I am going. But even beyond the galvanizing energy in these poems of liberation, there’s a depth and tenderness I didn’t expect. Rather than feel something coldly dogmatic that you might see in a pamphlet advocating for workers’ liberation, Park’s poetry sings. In this new edition, the poems are printed in both English translation and the original Korean so bilingual readers can appreciate them further. Brother Anthony and Kim have to be commended on their translation, portraying the subtlety and nuance of Park’s words so they continue to resonate all these years later. Park’s writing is beautiful, full of images I know I’ll carry with me. In a poem called “Spring,” he writes how “the yearning memory of her hometown quivers / like the waves of rising heat.” This longing, this homesickness is warm, but also fragile; a mirage, as likely to break as it is to come true. Yet the faces of her siblings “are clear as azalea petals.” It’s in holding these images we too know we can keep going, that things will change.      We are invited to consider the lives and working conditions of the laborers of Park’s day, but it’s the beauty of his rendering and this possibility for hope that etches this struggle into my heart, just as much as his depictions of pain, suffering, and loss. But this is only the first step, Park tells us, as the collection’s title poem suggests. The “dawn” Park anticipated shows us there is much work to be done, a new kind of labor, a work towards revolution, progress, and equity in both work and society. Park doesn’t simply describe the issues, but points towards a new day, a new future, one decided and built by us, rather than on others’ demands. Unfortunately, it’s a call that continues to be relevant, but luckily still resonates. But now, all these years later, we can see that what Park fought for has come to pass. It’s happened before, and it will happen again:          Right through the middle of uncertainty,     resolutely, resolutely,     we shall advance.— From “For a Peaceful Evening”   Ian J. BattagliaWriter, Literary Critic 

  by Ian J. Battaglia

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  [DUTCH] Genre-Defying Honesty

  One of the things I appreciate most about translated literature—something that makes reading across borders invaluable, if not indispensable—is the way in which it allows the reader a glimpse of life in unfamiliar parts of the world. As translation is an act of empathy, so too is reading in translation. This holds true for fiction and, perhaps even more so, for non-fiction. I was reminded of this while revisiting Baek Se Hee’s I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki, in which the author offers a glimpse of life as she knows it. A refreshing mix of dialogue and micro-essays, Baek’s candid take on mental health is as genre-defying—memoir? self-help? psychology?—as it is thought-provoking.       In her prologue, Baek describes the impetus for writing this book as twofold: first, to  search for others who feel similarly to her—feelings caused in part by dysthymia, or persistent depressive disorder—she decided to stop endlessly looking for them and see if others would recognize themselves in her. Given the tremendous success of her book, both nationally and internationally, I’d like to believe that many people do. And for those who don’t, Baek adds, her work might help them better understand those who do. Second, she sees her book as an artistic practice, referring to art as a channel of hope and a way to “stir someone’s heart.” It is precisely this creative flair that removes any negative suspicions the reader may have about the type of book they are holding. A far cry from mind-numbing strands of “self-help” in the conventional sense of the word (“Do this and get better!”),  I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki stands its ground as a work of literature in its own right. I should also add that According to Chicago style, it should be Pelckmans’s choice to hold onto the original cover illustration, a gorgeous creation by graphic designer DancingSnail, helps to elicit the literary character of the book.      The format that Baek goes on to explore is equally original as it is stimulating. Most chapters start with a short anecdote or reflection that introduces a new topic. The main body of each chapter consists of dialogues between Baek and her psychiatrist followed by a short essay. These conversations, however, are not presented as stand-alone snippets, but as a carefully curated whole, weaving together a narrative that the reader glides through from start to finish. To be sure, for an essayistic work on the complexities of mental health, this book is quite the page-turner.And what makes it such a gripping read is Baek’s level of honesty. Through her session transcripts, Baek literally invites the reader into the room with her therapist. The pitfall that she deftly avoids in her essays is the tendency to present “takeaways” and “lessons learnt.” Yes, things are learnt over the course of her therapy sessions, but I would be hesitant to call these “lessons.” Therapy—if I may speak from personal experience—teaches you something about yourself as a person. It is a welcome fact then that Baek eschews the didactic approach altogether, instead mulling over her findings in a much more subtle vein and leaving it up to the reader to take and pick as they choose. One is free, at all times, to disagree with Baek—or her psychiatrist, for that matter. I for one certainly felt like I saw things differently every now and then. Such is the nature of any conversation on mental health. To use a phrase recurrent in the book, “black-and-white-thinking” has hardly ever served anyone well. Steering clear of any attempt to profess universal truths, Baek’s essays are sharp, perceptive, sometimes humorous, and always engaging.      In short, a book discussing topics such as self-image, anxiety and codependency in a more genuine way than I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki is probably hard to come by. Its format is captivating and label-resistant. Although some readers might feel initially thrown off, Baek’s nuanced style brings us around. Without fail, she invites us to relate and rethink. Going back to her reason for practicing art and writing this book, I’ll confess: my heart was stirred. Mattho ManderslootLiterary Translator

  by Mattho Mandersloot

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  [GERMAN] Think Again in Novel Form

  After leaving her job and husband, Yeong-ju opens a bookshop in the district of Hyunam-dong. Although the location does not at first seem ideal for a bookshop, she sets her heart on it upon noticing that the hyu (ýÌ) in Hyunam-dong is the Chinese character for “rest”. Rest seems to be exactly what the characters in this novel long for. Yeong-ju herself suffers from burnout; Min-jun, the barista in the bookshop, falls into depression after he can’t land a secure job despite having been a straight-A student all his life;  Jung-suh, Yeong-ju’s most loyal customer, is in a constant state of anger due to unfair work conditions; Seung-woo, a blogger and author, quits his exhausting job as a programmer; Ji-mi, the owner of a coffee-roasting company, finds herself lost in a self-destructive marriage; and both high-school student Min-cheol and his mother Hee-ju feel overwhelmed by their roles as son and mother.       Yeong-ju’s bookshop brings these characters together and provides a safe space to reflect on their life decisions. It’s not a place where problems are miraculously solved, but a place that encourages people to rethink. This means the hyu doesn’t imply inactivity but rather the leisure to have time to think. Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop is not a novel that caters to our cognitive laziness by offering simple truths; it challenges us to question old views and open up to new ones. Although Yeong-ju is full of self-doubt, she treasures stories that guide her to places she never expected.       The novel explicitly refers to more than twenty books and films to stimulate thinking on certain problems. For example, at one point the barista Min-jun and Yeong-ju discuss whether it makes sense to follow a dream. Is following an unachievable dream a waste of one’s life?  Or can following a dream itself be so fulfilling that it might be worthwhile to devote your whole life to it, whether you reach it or not? Yeong-ju then cites Hermann Hesse’s Demian and suggests that no dream is permanent. Since each dream is replaced by a new one, we shouldn’t cling to any of them. This is a typical example of a discussion among members of the Hyunam-dong Bookshop community.       These discussions don’t end with a clear answer, but they do encourage both the characters and the reader to keep thinking. Although Yeong-ju is the central figure of the community, she is not a voice of wisdom that tells the others how to lead their lives. Many conversations don’t even involve her. For example, at one point Min-cheol asks Seung-woo whether people should pursue what they like to do or what they are good at. After Seung-woo gives several suggestions, Min-cheol concludes that the point is not to feel relaxed and carefree. Sometimes, it seems we just have to accept a complicated situation and its ensuing confusion, and continue to ponder it.       At other times, it’s books or films that help the protagonists find their answers. Despite his growing reputation as the barista at the bookshop, Min-jun still wonders why his life is so difficult and nothing seems to work according to his original plans. After the film screening of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After the Storm at the bookshop, he identifies with the film’s protagonist Ryota, a former writer turned private detective crippled by a gambling addiction as he struggles to reconcile with his ex-wife and son. Min-jun realizes that life might have been so difficult for Ryota because it had been the first time for him to live life. This realization brings him some comfort. How can something be easy when we do it for the first time?      Adam Grant’s bestselling book Think Again encourages us to break out of our cognitive laziness and stay curious about the world. Although the comfort of conviction may seem more inviting than the discomfort of doubt, questioning ourselves and “thinking again” is the only way to open our minds and to learn. We can read Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop as Think Again in novel form. The remote bookshop feels like an oasis that invites us to rest and to think again. The pillars of this oasis are the love of books and the community of book lovers that is not exclusive but waiting for us. Who knows when the time will come when we need a story in our life to help us think again?    Barbara WallAssociate Professor of Korean Studies,University of Copenhagen

  by Barbara Wall