[_list: Books from Korea] Vol.5 Autumn 2009

Vol.4 Summer 2009 A Quarterly Magazine for Publishers

Vol.5 Autumn Autumn 2009 2009 Vol.5 A Quarterly Quarterly Magazine Magazine for for Publishers Publishers A Special Section

Self-help Bestsellers Interviews Writer Park Wansuh Psychoanalyst Kim Haenam Publisher Jill Schoolman The Place Incheon, Gateway to Korea Theme Lounge Korean Cookbooks

ISSN 2005-2790

ISSN 2005-2790

Vol.5 Autumn Autumn 2009 2009 Vol.5 A Quarterly Quarterly Magazine Magazine for for PP A

The 3rd International Translators’ Conference

To get the latest scoop on Korean books

First held in 2007, the International Translators’ Conference is an annual conference hosted by LTI Korea to provide a venue for translators and scholars to discuss issues on Korean literature translation and exchange information.

The International Translators’ Conference is also a great place for Korean literature translators, translation theorists, and publishers to mingle and build mutual support.

Date: September 23-24, 2009 Place: Coex Conference Center Room 330, Seoul, Korea Theme: Strategies to Improve Translation Quality

Browse through the quarterly list _ Books

from Korea

Great!

You have Chinese and English editions!

Where can I find them?

You can access list online at www.list.or.kr.

You can also sign up for a free subscription at our website.

Evaluation of translation and education of translators.

Wow! I’ve learned so much about Korean literature through list.

What if I can’t wait three months for the next issue, and want to learn more now?

The relationship between writer, translator, and editor, and the translator’s authority.

You can subscribe to the email newsletter,

Defining a “good translation.”

Problems that arise in the process of translation.

Korean Books Letter, Participants

to find out about new Korean books every two weeks.

Lee O-Young (Korea | Writer and Korean literature scholar, Former Minister of Culture)

How are the contents of Korean Books Letter different from list?

Jung Hyeonjong (Korea | Poet)

Every two weeks, you can receive information on a wide variety of books that are not covered in list.

Subscribe to the newsletter at koreanbooks@klti.or.kr

Yang Hanju (Germany and Korea | Translator, Professor of Korean studies

at University of Bochum Department of East Asian Studies) Ko Hyesun (Spain and Korea | Translator, Professor of western languages, Spanish at Dankook University) Kim Yoonjin (Korea | Head of Projects Division, LTI Korea) Defeng Li (UK and China | Chair of Centre for Translation Studies, SOAS, University of London) Albrecht Huwe (Germany | Korean Translation Studies, University of Bonn) Jenna Johnson (USA | Senior Editor, HMH and Editorial Manager, Mariner at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) Geneviève Roux-faucard (France | Professor at L’École Supérieure d’Interprètes et de Traducteurs, Paris 3) Denis Bousquet (Canada | Chair of Canadian Translators, Terminologists, and Interpreters Council) Xu Jun (China | Vice-president of Scientific Council, Nanjing University) Quan Helu (China | Professional translator, Professor of Korean Studies at Jilin University)

For more information, contact Yana Kim: yana@klti.or.kr 82-2-6919-7752 www.klti.or.kr

Splendid! How do I look into publishing a book I came across in the magazine or newsletter?

Take advantage of the detailed, practical information available at

www.koreanbooks.or.kr.

How is www.koreanbooks.or.kr different from list and Korean Books Letter?

Korean publishers can directly update information on books that may be of interest to foreign publishers, so you’ll always get the latest news on Korean books.

Also, you can find information on Korea Literature Translation Institute’s Overseas Marketing Grants and Publication Grants.

It is a convenient way to access a wealth of information in a variety of ways!

Find all this, and more, at the KLTI web site:

www.klti.or.kr

Foreword

Why Psychology Books?

Ancient Futures: Lessons from Ladakh for a Globalizing World is written by Helena Norberg-Hodge, a Swedish linguist and environmental activist. Ancient Futures has been a steady seller in South Korea over the years, to the extent that Korea has recently seen the publication of Ancient Futures for Children.

The book raises important questions about the whole notion of progress and human peace and happiness by examining the development of Ladakh, the western Himalayan land known as “Little Tibet.” The epigraph to the chapter titled “Doctors and Shamans” states: “Illness is caused by a lack of understanding.” Norberg-Hodge observes that in traditional Ladakhi society there are very few signs of neurosis.

In the modern city, however, there are many cases of people seeking medical help, simply because they are not understood.

A lack of understanding, fierce competition, and sudden societal changes can throw people into confusion. People simply cannot improve their lives at the same rate of IT development. Despite technological advances and social change, it remains difficult for people to constantly adapt to the new world, and people’s sense of bewilderment and alienation will only grow as the world becomes more modernized.

If past literatures have brought comfort and opportunities for reflection, now in the third millennium, psychology books offer understanding and healing. They are geared towards every age group from young to old, covering a diverse range of subjects from cultural and educational psychology to behavioral economics.

30-Year-Olds Ask Psychology sheds light on the deprivation of the generation affected by the 1997 IMF crisis. Psychology of the Men in Their 40s not only helps middle-age men overcome a midlife crisis, but also outlines the way to success. Other cultural psychology books, such as Charming People Are Different by 1% and Frame, are immensely popular as well.

As the number of young, self-absorbed people who are inexperienced with creating meaningful relationships increases, we are also seeing a rise in the popularity of psychology books on relationships and dating. Like this, fields of psychology are ceaselessly expanding to include books on every subject, such as child psychology and developmental psychology.

In this issue, we’ve tried to address the boom in psychology books that is sweeping across not only Korea, but also the rest of the modern world. To those who are plagued by a lack of compassion and understanding, it is our hope that psychology books may bring greater help and more comfort than an antidepressant pill.

By Han Mihwa (editorial board member)

Copyright ⓒ 2009 by Choi Suk-un (Puppy Poo Granddad)

list_ Books from Korea Vol.5 Autumn 2009 1

Frankfurt, Meet Korean Books

LTI Korea is exhibiting over 60 books in diverse languages at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Also, information on current translations and translations available for publication will be on display.

Date: 2009.10.14 (Wed.) ~ 18 (Sun.) Place: Frankfurt Book Fair Korean Booth, Hall 6.1 D905 Korea Literature Translation Institute is a government-funded organization committed to increasing the awareness of Korean literature and culture all over the world.

Some of the major responsibilities of LTI Korea include awarding grants for the translation and overseas publication of Korean literary works and supporting international exchange programs in the field of literature, educational programs for literary translators, and fellowships for scholars of Korean Literature. www.klti.or.kr Contact: kallas@klti.or.kr

Ein Geschenk Eines Vogels (A Gift from a Bird) Eun Heekyung, Pendragon (German) Lluvias (The Rainy Spell) Yun Heung-gil, Ediciones del Ermitano (Spanish) Che Cosa Ci Fa un Morto Nell’ascensore (Whatever Happened to the Guy Stuck in the Elevator?)

Kim Young-ha, ObarraO (Italian) Mujin in Nebel (Journey to Mujin) Kim Sung-ok, Edition Peperkorn (German) De Schaduw Van de Wapens (The Shadow of Arms) Hwan Sok-yong, De Arbeiderspers (Dutch) There a Petal Silently Falls Ch'oe Yun, Columbia University Press (English)

Contents Autumn 2009 Vol.5

01 06 08 10

Foreword Trade Report · News from LTI Korea Bestsellers Publishing Trends

Special Section

Self-help Bestsellers:

12 For Life 14 For Men 16 For Readers in Their 20s and 30s 18 For Love 20 For Children

Interviews

22 Psychoanalyst Kim Haenam 28 Writer Park Wansuh

Excerpts 26 Psychology Answers 30-Year-Olds by Kim Haenam 32 “His House“ by Park Wansuh

Overseas Angle

34

38 40 42

Interview with Jill Schoolman, Publisher of Archipelago Books The Old Garden by Hwang Sok-yong Land by Pak Kyongni New Poems from “The Ambassador of Sijo“

Writer's Note 43 Kim Yeon-su

The Place 44 Incheon, Gateway to Korea

Theme Lounge 48 Korean Cookbooks

Reviews 52 Fiction 58 Nonfiction 68 Children’s Books

Steady Sellers 57 All the Beautiful Children 73 I Died One Day

Meet the Publishers 74 Changbi Publishers, Inc. 76 Yeowon Media 78 Index 80 Afterword

Contributors Kim Jinwoo serves as a reporter at the culture desk of The Kyunghyang Daily News.

Anna Lui

is the rights director at Seven Stories Press in New York.

publishing. Her written works include Bestsellers of Our Time and This Is How Bestsellers Are Made 1, 2. She is also an editorial board member of list_Books from Korea. cializes in bibliotherapy. The director of the Haje Bibliotherapy Research Center, she has written Books, Open My Child’s Heart and Open Sesame–Bibliotherapy that Opens My Child’s Heart.

editor-in-chief of Bo-Leaf Books, a small press specializing in Korean and Korean American literature. She has a PhD from the University of California and has taught at Reed College, Yonsei University, and the University of Rochester, where she was a Susan B. Anthony Fellow.

Jung Yeo-ul is a literary critic. As of

Eunsuk Joo is a photographer. She

received an MFA from Yale University in 1997 and a BFA from the School of Visual Art in 1995. She currently lives and works in New York City.

Kim Sujung is a writer of children’s

is a columnist and an adjunct professor at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. She has written Excursion to New Sciences and Rachel Carson.

viewer. He has written It’s Good, It’s All Good and Chang Hajoon’s Korean Economy.

elor’s and master’s degrees in Journalism at Ewha Womans University, and is currently in charge of literature and book reviews at the culture department of The Munhwa Ilbo.

had worked as a journalist at The Hankyoreh newspaper since 1988 to 2004. Since 2005, she has been living in New York as a librarian at the Korean Cultural Service New York.

Kim Zaehi

Jie Seung-ho is a professional inter-

Choi Hyunmee received her bach-

Kim Meekyung

books, and also works as a critic and translator. Her work includes My Hometown and Brave Little Mouse, and she has translated works such as Children's Literature Comes of Age and The Pleasure of Children's Literature.

Anne B. Dalton is publisher and

2008, Jung lectures at Seoul National University and the Korean National University of Arts.

Kim Dongshik

is a literary critic and a professor of Korean language and literature at Inha University. He is a contributing editor for the journal, Literature and Society. He is also an editorial board member of list_Books from Korea.

Ko Mihye

4

for The Kyunghyang Daily News in 2005.

She worked in the judicial team at the society department of the newspaper for three years. She transferred to the culture department in October of 2008 and currently specializes in literature.

Nan Haixian is an editor at National-

ities Publishing House, and spent several years editing texts translated from Korean to Chinese.

Park Suk-kyoung works as a translator and children’s literature critic. Park is a member of the editorial committee for the Changbi Review of Children’s Literature.

Pyo Jeonghun

is a book reviewer, columnist, translator, and freelance writer. He has translated 10 books into Korean and wrote: Books Have Their Own Destiny, A Short Introduction to Chinese Philosophy, and An Interview with My Teacher: What is Philosophy.

joined the Yonhap News agency in 2004 and worked in the Gangwon report department and stock department before transferring to the culture department in March of 2008 to specialize in literature.

Ku Doolrae

served as an editor at Thinking Tree Publishing Co., Ltd., Munhakdongne Publishing Corp., and Haenamu Publishing, a science book publisher. She has been working at The Hankyoreh 21 as a journalist.

Richard Hong

is a book columnist and the head of BC Agency. He translated 13: The Story of the World’s Most Notorious Superstition, appeared on KBS 1 Radio’s “Global Today,” and writes columns for The Korea Economic Daily and Posco News. He is also an editorial board member of list_Books from Korea.

Woo Jongmin is a professor of psy-

Heinz Insu Fenkl is an author, edi-

tor, translator, and folklorist. His first book, Memories of My Ghost Brother, was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers book in 1996 and a PEN/ Hemingway finalist in 1997. Fenkl’s most recent book, Korean Folktales, published

by Bo-Leaf Books, is a collection of traditions myths, legends, and folklore.

at the Hankook Ilbo. He studied Korean Literature in Classical Chinese Language and Literature at Sungkyunkwan University, joined the newspaper in 1999, and worked at the sports, society, and business desk before transferring to the culture desk in 2007.

Lee Yeong-gyeong started working

Han Mihwa writes on the subject of

Haje is a clinical psychologist who spe-

Lee Wangku is a literature journalist

Lee Kijin is the assistant director of the

Kim Ji-eun is a writer of children’s

stories and a critic of children’s literature.

She currently lectures on theories of fiction writing for children in the Department of Creative Writing at Hanshin University. She is also an editorial board member of list_Books from Korea.

list_ Books from Korea Vol.5 Autumn 2009

society department at The Dong-A Ilbo.

A licensed craftsman cook in western and Korean food, he is also a food journalist.

He has written Men, to the Kitchen!

chiatry at Inje University, Seoul Paik Hospital. He taught at the University of Maryland as a visiting professor, and was chosen to be a member of the Delta Omega Honor Society, an honorary society in public health. He has written Mental Fitness and The Psychology of Men.

Jung Yewon

studied interpretation and translation at GSIT, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. Jung has interpreted and translated for Bain & Company, Korea and various other organizations, and is currently working as a freelance interpreter/translator.

Kim Eungsan Shin Junebong is a journalist in the

literature department of the JoongAng Ilbo. He received his master’s degree from Goldsmiths, University of London in 2008, and is interested in theoretical analyses of literature, cultural phenomena, and customs. He is also an editorial board member of list_Books from Korea.

Yi Hyun-Shik is a literary critic and

graduated from Seoul National University in German literature and also studied at the Free University of Berlin. He earned a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature.

Kim Hee-young is a freelance trans-

lator. She is currently working on the translation of a collection of the experiences of comfort women titled Histories Behind History.

the executive director of Incheon Foundation for Art & Culture. He has written Road to Culture City (2004), The Study on Modern Literature as an Institutional History (2006).

Translators Andrew McCullough is a graduate

of the East Asian Languages and Civilizations Department at the University of Chicago. He has just finished the Korean Literature Translation Institute's intensive translation program.

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR_ Kim Yoonjin MANAGING DIRECTOR_ Park Kyunghee EDITORIAL BOARD Kim Dongshik Kim Ji-eun Shin Junebong Han Mihwa Richard Hong

MANAGING EDITOR_ Choi Hye-in

Min Eun-young

studied translation at the Graduate School of Interpretation and Translation at Ewha Womans University. She has translated books and articles on traditional Korean culture.

Sora Kim-Russell

EDITORS Kim Stoker Krys Lee EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Kim Jisun

works as a consulting editor for The Korea Journal and as a freelance translator. She was the recipient of the 2005 Korea Times Literature Translation Contest’s Grand Prize in Poetry and the 2007 Korea Literature Translation Institute's New Translator Award for her translation of Kim Junghyuk’s “Eskimo, This Is the End.”

ART DIRECTOR Choi Woonglim

Son Sumin has translated many books

PRINTED IN EAP

H. Jamie Chang received her under-

Suzanne Burrows majored in theater

Janet Hong is a writer and transla-

Yang Sung-jin

tor living in Toronto, Canada. She won the grand prize for her translation of Ha Seong-nan's "The Woman Next Door" in the 32nd Korea Times Modern Literature Translation Contest, and was the recipient of a grant from the Korea Literature Translation Institute. She is currently completing the final year of her MFA in creative writing.

PUBLISHER_ Kim Joo-youn

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF_ Kim Heaseung

from English to Korean and from Korean to English for Schweitzer Korea. In 2004, she was awarded the Commendation Prize in the Korea Times Literature Translation Contest for her co-translation of Go Eunju’s “Cocktail Sugar.”

graduate degree from Tufts University.

She is a Bostonian/Busanian freelance translator.

Vol.5 Autumn 2009 A Quarterly Magazine for

OVERSEAS PUBLICATION COMMITTEE Paek Eunyoung Joseph Lee Rosa Han

Yi Soo-hyung is a literary critic and

a senior researcher at the Seoul National University Academic Writing Lab. He studied contemporary literature, and teaches at Hongik University, Seoul Institute of the Arts, and Korea National University of Arts.

Vol.5 Autumn 2009 A Quarterly Magazine for Publishers

at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. She is a freelance editor who currently resides in Seoul. is currently a staff reporter at the culture desk of The Korea Herald, covering Korean movies and books.

DESIGNERS Kim Mijin Lee Jaehyun Jang Hyeju PHOTOGRAPHER_ Lee Kwa-yong

list_ Books from Korea is a quarterly magazine published by the Korea Literature Translation Institute.

All correspondences should be addressed to the Korea Literature Translation Institute at Mudongmaeul-gil 26, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea 135-879 Telephone: 82-2-6919-7700 Fax: 82-2-3448-4247 E-mail: list_korea@klti.or.kr www.klti.or.kr www.list.or.kr Copyright © 2009 by Korea Literature Translation Institute ISSN 2005-2790 Cover illustration from Journey to the Soul of Latin by Kim Byoung-jong

list_ Books from Korea Vol.5 Autumn 2009 5

Trade Report

Korean Literature Makes Advances in Global Publishing Following on the heels of works of literature by Korea’s most famous writers such as Ko Un, Hwang Sokyong, and Yi Mun-yol, the works of modern authors are steadily being introduced to the international publishing market.

So far no Korean writer has become explosively popular, but they have all received favorable reviews by the foreign media, and little by little, are proving the great merit of Korean literature.

The Painter of Wind by Lee Jungmyung, which has been hailed as opening a new chapter in Korean fact-based fiction, and

has enjoyed enormous popularity in Korea as a television dramatization, has been published in Japan by Hayakawa Shobo. This work tells the story of two great Korean artists of the 18th century, Kim Hong-do and Shin Yun-bok, captivating readers with its passion for art and its realistic depictions. In addition, foreign rights have been recently sold to Ribun Shuppan Co., Ltd. in Japan for God’s Potter, which gives a fictionalized account of the life of a Korean potter who was taken forcibly to Japan in the days of the Japanese invasion of Korea in 1592. Foreign rights have also been sold to China’s The Peoples

Children’s Books Capture the Chinese Market Korean children’s books are steadily being exported to China. Seven of these books include The Confidence for Children from the Wisdomhouse Publishing Co., Ltd. children’s self-development series, Math Odyssey Series, Books 1-4, and The Holes in My Body, and five other books from Chondungbooks Science Picture Books Series.

Korean children’s books have become so massively popular in China recently, that Chinese publishers only have to see the words “for children” to express interest in a copyright contract. Moreover, Korea was chosen as Guest of Honor for the 2009 Bologna Children’s Book Fair, proving that the quality of Korean children’s books is comparable to that of any country in the world.

In particular, Korean educational manhwa bring in a considerable sum in foreign currency sales on the world market alone. Foreign rights for the Why series has been bought by countries such as China, Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia, and France, and export royalties alone are bringing in nearly 300 million Korean won a year, while another “million seller” educa-

6

tional manhwa, the Comic Survival Science series, has been bought by China, Thailand, Taiwan, Japan, France and others, selling over 3 million copies worldwide and earning 700 million won in royalties per annum. Moreover, educational manhwa series such as the Treasure Hunting series have also been published in China recently, further boosting popularity.

Korean children’s picture books are also being published steadily in China. Liu Jaesoo’s Ye l l ow Um b re l l a , w h i c h w a s selected as the New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book in 2002, is already being hailed as an international children’s picture book; it was published in China

by Jieli Publishing House in May 2009. This book, which wordlessly presents the fantastic forms of beautiful umbrellas opening on a rainy day, was highly appraised by the Chinese media. It asked, “Is there a picture book more beautiful than this?” A music CD that goes with the pictures in the book helps lead the children into a fantasy world.

Foreign rights have been sold to Sangin Publishing Company in

list_ Books from Korea Vol.5 Autumn 2009

Taiwan for Child of the Sky, Child of the Earth, a new and unique Chinese character book by Choi Sookhee, author of the picture book It’s O.K., which won acclaim when it was selected as Illustrated Book of the Year at the 2005 Bologna Children’s Book Fair.

By Richard Hong

Literature Publishing House for Take Good Care of Mom by Shin Kyung-sook, a top bestseller in Korea in 2009, and with Kwiaty Orirntu Publishing Company in Poland for Kim Young-ha’s Empire of Light, which was highly acclaimed in France after its publication there at the beginning of the year. In addition, Journey to Mujin, a compilation of nine short stories

by Kim Sung-ok, and The Last 4.5 Seconds of My Life, consisting of eight short stories by Sung Suk-je, have been published by Edition Peperkorn, which has introduced over 40 works of Korean literature to Germany, including Choi Inhoon’s The Square and Jeon Sangguk’s Abe’s family.

By Richard Hong

‘Fantastic’ Successes in Japan Which Korean work of literature has sold the most copies in Japan?

In 2002, on the tide of the massive “Korean wave,” Winter Love Song recorded sales of over one million copies. Shortly after that, the Korean wave abated rapidly in Japan, and has reached the point where it is now quite difficult to sell foreign rights to Japan.

Nonetheless, one can say that the progress in Japan of the Korean literary genre in particular is, at present, looking very promising.

Lee Yeongdo’s Dragon Raja: The Complete 12 Volumes, published

by Iwasaki Shoten, quietly sold over 500,000 copies, competing well with Japanese literature.

Dragon Raja, the “father of Korean fantasy,” which started life as a serialization on a cyber Telnet network

in 1998, has sales of over a million copies in Korea alone, and has sold copyrights to China and Taiwan too. Iwasaki Shoten also plans to publish Lee’s following work, Future Worker, in Japan next year, and Dragon Raja fans are already showing considerable interest.

In addition to literature, Japanese publishers have recently been showing great interest in Korean self-development books. The foreign rights for Dreaming in the Attic, the main work of the young writer E Jisung, a school teacher turned self-development book author, has been sold to Sunmark Publishing, Inc., one of Japan’s most prestigious publishing houses, and is due to hit Japanese bookstores in August 2009. In this book, citing examples of various people,

E describes a rule for success that he calls “R=VD,” which is short for “If you have a vivid dream, it will be realized.”

Japanese publishing companies are also showing a steady interest in Korean books on beauty, health, and dieting, and in June this year Softbank Publishing signed a copyright agreement for Flesh-devouring Black Beans, which tells how the author, in despair because he weighed over a hundred kilograms, lost 50 kilograms in just four months by eating black beans.

Softbank Japan says that it plans to translate and bring out this book quickly for the many young Japanese readers who are interested in dieting.

Photographer;” two of the best Poems from 2007, “Listened to the Sound of Emile Bell” by Kim Sun-woo, and “A Flock of Birds Transcribed” by Wi Sun-hwan, and other notable works, all in English. Available at over a thousand publishers, Korean studies departments, and Korean studies centers at foreign institutions, New Writing from Korea can be subscribed to at mill@klti.or.kr.

Japanese literature and Korean literature.

The Beijing Forum, second in the forum series, is scheduled to be held at 2 p.m. on September 8th at Peking University; it will provide a venue for dialogue on the “encouragement of Korean literature publication in China through exchanges between publishers and writers in Korea and China, and building friendship.”

There will be presentations on this topic, followed by a panel discussion on literature with Kim Won-woo, Ha Sung-ran, Cao Wenxuan, and Hong Ying.

The KLTI New York Forum will take place in October. LTI Korea hopes to find specific, effective ways of introducing Korean books to local readers through the KLTI Forum Series.

in Korea. As participants of the LTI Korea Residency Program for International Writers, a program that offers Asian, South American, and African writers opportunities for various cultural exchange events and exposure to Korean arts and culture, the four writers will reside in Korea until November. They will engage in various exciting events such as meeting Korean writers, attending conferences and seminars, going on literary trips, and taking Korean lessons at the Korean Language and Culture Center at Korea University from July 6th through September 11th. Four Korean writers chosen for the Overseas Residency Program for Korean Writers, Kim Do-eon, Kim Sun-woo, Gong Sunok, and Kang Sok-kyung, left for the United States, New Zealand, Germany, and Turkey, respectively, in August to write and raise awareness of Korean literature abroad. For any questions, you can contact Justin Bae (82-26919-7744 asdzxc011@klti. or.kr).

By Richard Hong

News from LTI Korea

Publication of New Writing from Korea Vol. 2 The second volume of New Writing from Korea, an annual publication of the latest trends and accomplishments in Korean literature, will be published in September. This volume contains seven short stories and 21 poems by seven novelists and 11 poets.

Anglophone readers can enjoy three stories and six poems on the theme of poverty; two of the Best Novels from 2007, Kwon Yeo-sun’s “To Believe in Love,” Han Yujoo’s “Black and White

KLTI Forum Series Held around the World The KLTI Forum is to be held in five major cities–Tokyo, Beijing, New York, Berlin, and Paris–to provide experts devoted to the advancement of Korean books an opportunity to discuss strategies on the distribution of Korean books in their respective regions.

The first of the series, the Tokyo Forum, took place on July 13th, immediately following the Tokyo International Book Fair. Twenty or so translators, publisher representatives, and Korean studies scholars met at Hosei University to exchange ideas on how to build a good bridge between

Residencies for International Writers In June 2009, four foreign writers–Cortes Marins Patricia Barbara (novelist, Brazil), Gehan Mohamed Omar El Said Badawy (poet, Egypt), Asenjo Genevieve Lampasa (writer, the Philippines), and Mohammad Tarik Zeyad Adeeb (writer, Jordan)–arrived

By Choi Hye-in

list_ Books from Korea Vol.5 Autumn 2009 7

Bestsellers

What We’re Reading

Shoot Me in the Heart

The Crucible

The Evening of the Cat’s Return

Fiction

It Turns Out, It Was Love

Nonfiction

Take Good Care of Mom

Misil

My Happy Way to Work

Shin Kyung-sook, Changbi Publishers, Inc., 2008 299p, ISBN 978-89-364-3367-3

Kim Byul-ah, Munidang, 2005, 348p ISBN 978-89-7456-270-0

Ven. Pomnyun Sunim, Gimm-Young Publishers, Inc. 2009, 219p, ISBN 978-89-349-3458-5

A full-length novel published at the end of 2008, Take Good Care of Mom sold over 900,000 copies in the span of half a year, once again proving the popularity of Shin Kyung-sook, the author. The book alternates between the points of view of three people–the daughter, the oldest son, and the husband–regarding the disappearance of the mother, revealing the life of the mother and the inner thoughts of the family members in a poignant way. The popularity of the book, some say, is partly due to the economic crisis in 2008, which led people to reflect on their families amid the hardships in life.

A historical novel set in Shilla, a nation that existed 1,500 years ago on the Korean peninsula. The book is an account of the life of Misil, a woman who stood at the center of a power struggle, captivating men of influence with her beauty. The popularity of the TV mini series based on the novel has led to a renewed popularity of the novel, which was published in 2005.

People living in today’s society spend most of their days at work. Their days would be full of unhappiness if their work life wasn’t satisfactory. Although Buddhism is generally preached in the mountains, it would be good, some think, to convey its teachings to people working in cities. Ven. Pomnyun Sunim who received the Ramon Magsaysay Award, dubbed the Nobel Peace Prize of Asia, took on the task. He suggests Buddhist solutions to real-life problems, such as difficulty in human relationships, uncertainty of the future, imbalance between home and work life, and an excessive workload.

Angels and Demons, Vol. 1 Dan Brown, Moonhak Soochup Publishing Co., Ltd. 2008, 407p, ISBN 978-89-8392-305-9

The Shack William P. Young, Segyesa Co., Ltd., 2009, 432p ISBN 978-89-338-3040-6

A full-length novel, with elements of fantasy, The Shack is about a man who is healed through his encounter with Jesus after his youngest daughter is abducted and murdered.

Another bestseller by The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown, Angels and Demons features protagonist Robert Langdon, Harvard professor of religion. The popularity of Angels and Demons gained momentum with the 2009 release in Korea of the film under the same title, featuring Tom Hanks. The plot unfolds at a rapid pace as the characters go in search for anti-matter, a powerful source of energy, and as various events, such as the election of a pope, take place.

Breaking Dawn: Twilight 4

The Forbidden Book of 1,000 Years

A mystery novel surrounding a murder case about the mind games between a high school math teacher and a college professor, who are college alumni.

Kim Jin Myung, Saeum, 2009, 328p ISBN 978-89-8853-701-5

A new full-length novel by Kim Jin Myung, the author of The Rose of Sharon Has Blossomed, a bestseller about the development of nuclear weapons by the governments of North and South Korea. The novel asserts that the ancient nation of Han, founded by the people of Korea around the 16th century, B.C., was a powerful nation on par with China, contrary to what historical records say. The assertion is based on pieces of information extracted from various history books, which is presented in the work as evidence.

Shoot Me in the Heart Jeong You-jeong, EunHaeng NaMu Publishing Co. 2009, 346p, ISBN 978-89-5660-299-8

This is a full-length novel won the Segye Times Literary Award, with a reward of 100 million won. The book, a comic account of the escape of two patients from a mental hospital, is also slated for film production.

8

Writing Can Change Myself

list_ Books from Korea Vol.5 Autumn 2009

Stephenie Meyer, Book Folio Co. 2009, 824p, ISBN 978-89-3783-254-3

The fourth installment in a series of novels about romance between humans and vampires.

Yogisha X no Kenshin Keigo Higashino, Hyundae Munhak Co., Ltd. 2006, 404p, ISBN 978-89-7275-369-8

The Crucible Gong Ji-young, Changbi Publishers, Inc., 2009, 292p ISBN 978-89-364-3370-3

A full-length novel about an actual serial rape case that took place in a small town, in a facility for the hearing impaired.

The Evening of the Cat’s Return Song Chanho, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. 2009, 135p ISBN 978-89-320-1957-4

A collection of poetry criticizing the simplicity of a mechanical civilization through a fable-like imagination.

Writing Can Change Myself Lee Man-kyo, Greenbee Publishing Company 2009, 384p, ISBN 978-89-7682-106-5

In Korea, an IT powerhouse, books on the analog form of writing have become surprisingly popular.

Writing, the exclusive territory of intellectuals in the past, has become more universalized with the growing trend of blogs. This is an era of so-called practical writing. This book goes beyond practical writing. The author, a novelist, poses intense questions and answers on why people should write, based on his lectures on writing which began in 2006. The book embodies the idea that writing leads to reflection on one’s life, and to taking the first step in becoming a new, different self.

The Natural Dinner Table That Saved My Life Song Hak-oun, Kim Oak-kyung Friend Media Publishing Company, 2009, 191p ISBN 978-89-0514-37-0

Cancer can be cured through a natural food diet!

This is a book based on the experience of one of the author, who was given six months to live after being diagnosed with rectal cancer that had spread to the colon and lymph glands. What the author chose in the face of death was a natural food diet. A natural food diet consists of ingesting food in its natural state, minimizing cooking as much as possible. A hundred recipes for healthy, natural food are included in the book, which reflects the great interest Koreans have in proper eating habits.

100℃: A Burning Memory Choi Kyu-seok, Changbi Publishers, Inc., 2009, 212p ISBN 978-89-364-7166-8

A graphic novel about the democratic uprising of June 1987, a turning point in democracy in Korea. Choi Kyu-seok, a young writer, brings history back to life through this humorous and touching work.

These list totals are based on sales records from eight major bookstores and three on-line bookstores from May to June 2009, provided by the Korean Publishers Association.

The books are introduced in no particular order.

If I Could Study All Day, Just for One Day

100℃: A Burning Memory

Do You Really Want to Be a Scientist?

Ignoramus Samdigi

Junior Knowledge Channel-e1

Children's Books It Turns Out, It Was Love

Tomorrow‘s Experiment King

Tomorrow, I’ll Be a Champion, Too

Han Bi-ya, Prunsoop Publishing Co. Ltd., 2009, 300p ISBN 978-89-7184-817-3

Gomdori Co., I-SEUM(Mirae N Culture Group Co., Ltd) 2009, 185p, ISBN 978-89-3784-227-6

Bae Ai, Sunglim Books, 2009, 183p ISBN 978-89-7124-097-7

The latest work by Han Bi-ya, the most beloved writer in Korea. The author has led a fast-paced life, going from being a traveler to the back regions of the world to an emergency rescue team leader at World Vision, an international NGO. Now in her 50s, the author never ceases to take on new challenges. This time, she’s going to Tufts University to gain expert knowledge in the field of humanitarian aid. The book contains private anecdotes told by the author at home, after leaving her position at World Vision. Nevertheless, it is full of the sound energy of one who has walked vigorously on her two feet.

A graphic novel about the scientific principles of heat and energy, learned through inference and experiments.

Difficult scientific principles are explained in an easy to understand manner, tied in with a detective story that creates a sense of tension, helping readers keep their interest in the book.

A coming of age tale in the form of a graphic novel about a vivacious girl named Doyeon, who takes on the challenge of becoming a gold medalist in figure skating, like Kim Yuna.

CEO Ahn Cheolsoo: What We Need Right Now Ahn Cheolsoo, Gimm-Young Publishers, Inc. 2004, 260p, ISBN 978-89-349-1720-5

Junior Knowledge Channel-e1 EBS Knowledge Channel, Sigongsa, 2009, 216p ISBN 978-89-527-5539-1

A book of knowledge for children, carrying the contents of a series of 10 minute documentary program, broadcast to great acclaim on an education channel. Short as it is, the book contains deep insights on knowledge beyond common sense.

A record of the future and vision as seen by Ahn Cheolsoo, one of the most respected CEOs in Korea.

Formerly a doctor, he came to establish in 1995 the Ahn Lab, a computer virus laboratory, in the process of creating a computer vaccine. Dr. Ahn is a rare leader who demonstrates what true success is by competing with honesty and integrity in a business world rife with deception. The book contains the author’s thoughts on the minds of individuals and organizations in a global era. The book’s ranking shot up after the author’s appearance on a TV program.

Do You Really Want to Be a Scientist?

Youth Is Invincible A prescription for the heart from Lee Oi-soo, a novelist and an alchemist of the soul, to the youth who have lost their passion.

Most works by Hwang Seon-mi, which describe the big and little worries children have at school and home in an honest, lively manner, are very popular. This one, in particular, delivers keen pleasure, remonstrating teachers who categorize a child’s behavior simply as right or wrong, and disciplining them accordingly.

A Once-in-a-lifetime Chance

The Dust Monster, Duspy

Lee Oi-soo, Hainaim Publishing Co., Ltd., 2009, 280p ISBN 978-89-7337-060-3

Beop Jeong, The Forest of Literature, 2009, 390p ISBN 978-89-9590-498-5

A book of Buddhist writings by Beop Jeong, regarded by the Korean people as a spiritual mentor. The title of the book signifies that everything exists only once in life.

If I Could Study All Day, Just for One Day

Kim Seong-hwa, Yi Yunhwa Pulbit Pubishing Co., 2009, 132p ISBN 978-89-7474-925-5

The childhood stories of scientists. The book shows how curiosity and imagination leads to inquiry and discovery.

The Bad Boy Stickers Hwang Seon-mi, Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. 2009, 95p, ISBN 978-89-01-06859-6

Why? Scientific Events Park Sang-uk, Lee Tae-hoon, Cho Hyang-suk, YeaRimDang Publishing Co., Ltd., 2009, 157p ISBN 978-89-302-0670-9 73400

A graphic novel about the history of science, with a selection of 100 of the most important scientific events in the history of humankind.

Gram Gram English Grammar Expedition Jang Youngjun, Sahoi Pyoungnon Publishing Co., Inc. 2009, 177p, ISBN 978-89-5602-976-4

A graphic novel explaining important concepts in English grammar, tied in with an adventure story.

Ignoramus Samdigi Won You-soon, Lee Hyun-mee Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd., 2009, 94p ISBN 978-89-01-06860-2

A heartwarming tale about Samdigi, a lonely, illiterate child, who settles down into school life with the help of friends.

Helping Each Other Baik Suk, Yoo Aero, Borim Press, 2008, 51p ISBN 978-89-433-0450-8

A picture book with puns that demonstrates what a joyful thing it is to help and share with each other.

Yi Yeon-sil, Hansol Education, 2009, 44p ISBN 978-89-5355-983-7

A picture book about “Dust Goblin,” a goblin that finds lost objects stuck in a corner of the house somewhere. Dust Goblin is a good friend to children who lose things easily and feel troubled over their loss. This book takes readers on a journey to the Dust Town, with the Dust Goblin as a guide.

Park Cheol Beom, Dasan Edu 2009, 280p, ISBN 978-89-637-0007-6

A book about how a boy from a poor family, who was always last in class, gains admission to Seoul National University, the most prestigious university in Korea.

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Publishing Trends

Reading Through Hard Times

firmation that one always has family to fall back on in times of hardship. The popular sales of Gong Ji-young’s I Will Support You No Matter What Kind of Life You Choose and Dr. Chang Young-hee’s The Miracles in My Past, The Miracles in My Future also reflects Korean readers’ search for a shelter from the storm.

By Richard Hong

Book Sales and Trends in the First Half of 2009

The year 2009 was ushered in by fear and terror. Grim economic projections, the foreign exchange market more breathtaking than a roller coaster ride, and the unpredictable outcome of the economic crisis did not allow readers a moment’s peace to settle down with a good book. In the early half of 2009 when the repercussions of the financial crisis overwhelmed the world, American and European readers devoured Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series and Stieg Larrson’s Millenium trilogy. To escape from the frustrating reality around them, readers spent hours engrossed in vampire romance or following the clues and trails of gripping crime investigations. Self-help was the genre of choice for Japanese readers. The book market was inundated with books on study methods and the brain as “Survival Reading,” and reading to survive the economic crisis became the fad.

Korean readers, on the other hand, sought out books that offered comfort and healing. If books such as Stickleback and Father reminded Koreans of their fathers and brought tears to their eyes during the foreign exchange crisis at the turn of the century, mothers have been the most popular characters through this crisis. Novelist Shin Kyung-sook’s Take Good Care of Mom became the number one bestselling novel by reminding readers of their mothers. The appeal of this book may have been the af10

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Kyobo Books, the largest Korean bookstore chain, published its statistics on book sales and trends according to buyers’ demographics for the first half of 2009. The reports on reader preferences published by Kyobo Books have the authority of those published by Kinokuniya of Japan and Barnes & Noble of the United States.

The growth rate of the industry in the first half of 2009 was 6.6 percent, which is lower than last year’s figures. By genre, there was a significant increase in literature while management and self-help suffered a great decline. These statistics reveal Korean readers’ need to find reassurance and comfort through literature in a time of recession. Children’s book sales, which had been climbing steadily since 2000, showed a small drop, demonstrating parents’ hesitation. In contrast, the small increase in cookbook sales, which had been falling in recent years, reveals that readers these days are gravitating toward cheaper homecooked meals instead of dining out.

The number one bestseller across genres is Shin Kyung-sook’s Take Good Care of Mom. Women took up 70 percent of the sales, 67 percent of which was women between 20 and 40. These numbers show that women between 20 and 40 are the most avid readers in Korea.

Novels that were later adapted into movies have been going strong in recent years. Twilight, The Reader, The Sacrifice of Suspect X, and Blindness have all made the bestseller list, contributing to the success of the genre.

In management, only one book made it into the top 50 bestseller list: Four Bank Accounts. Most people who bought this

book were in their 30s. While twentysomething Koreans who are busy preparing and applying for jobs tend to buy novels such as Take Good Care of Mom and TOEIC practice exam books, thirty-something Koreans, as is expected of the most economically active demographic, are partial to books on investment, such as Four Bank Accounts, in addition to novels.

Lastly, readers under 40 have been buying fewer books in recent years whereas book purchases among the 40 to 70 demographic have been gradually increasing. As did the Dankai Generation of Japan, the 386 generation (university activists in the 80s) of Korea may be forming a new generation of readers as they move into their 40s and 50s.

By Han Mihwa

Mourning Fever Spreads to Book Market As the saying goes, “Those who disappear leave their names.” This saying needs a slight modification in the Korean publishing market these days as all those who have recently passed away have left books of their own writing.

This year, Korea lost four people who were loved and respected among its people: the late Cardinal Stephen Kim Sou-hwan, the stalwart of Korean religious communities; Professor Chang Young-hee of Sogang University, the greatest Korean essayist; and former President Roh Moo-hyun, who was known for his efforts to bring political reformation. In addition Korea’s former president Kim Dae-jung, passed away on August 18th. The funeral halls overflowed with a monumental number of mourners, many of whom had little connection to the deceased but came to reflect on the lives and humanity of the deceased and express their fervent sorrow. The fever spread like wildfire around bookstores as books related to the deceased have made the bestseller list.

Cardinal Kim Sou-hwan’s autobiography, The Story of Cardinal Kim Sou-hwan, sold over 100,000 copies after he passed away, not counting the copies that sold before he passed away. The Miracles in My Past, The Miracles in My Future, by Professor Chang Young-hee, who continued to write about hope despite her physical dis-

The Many Faces of Travelogues

ability was published posthumously after she succumbed to cancer. Her book became a number one bestseller three weeks after it hit the bookstores, selling 150,000 copies.

Roh Moo-hyun’s book, Honey, Could You Help Me, which nearly went out of print, also became a number one bestseller. Books written by those affiliated with Roh have also made the bestseller list. Also, in light of the public mourning of Kim Dae-jung’s death, the collection of his autobiographical essay’s Once Again, Toward Another New Beginning and Companion by his wife Lee Hee-ho are in particular demand.

Many believe that this mourning fever reflects the sense of loss Koreans society is currently grappling with. The death of those who represented principles and values has created a sadness that induces idolization of the deceased, who were similar to each other in the non-traditional paths they took to fame, their exceptional compassion toward the marginalized, and sincerity toward fellow human beings. Readers search the books for humanist values that will give them the momentum to overcome the grim realities they face. Well aware of these needs, publishing companies are preparing books that will further examine the values the deceased lived by. It will be interesting to observe where this marketing of mourning will take us.

Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist, once said, “A journey is the best way to learn.” Skip the famous museums and head over to the run-down bars, he says. Whether Coelho’s advice had anything to do with it, traveling unconventionally and writing a book about it is a current fad in Korea.

The popular use of blogs has given rise to a good number of vagabonds who like to share their travel stories through blogs, which may have led to the trend.

Vagabonds no longer hang around the Louvre or l’Arc de Triomphe. Instead, they share little anecdotes one expects to find in someone’s journal and stories of people they met during their travels. In many cases, images such as photographs or pictures carry more weight in the books than does the text. Rather than hitting all the cultural heritage sites, these nomads decide on the purpose of their journey in unconventional ways and will go almost anywhere.

Vagabonds have all sorts of different reasons to travel. Café Tokyo depicts a twentysomething woman’s trip to Japan in search of coffee shops, rather than glamorous tourist attrac-

tions, where she found Tokyo’s everyday life and repose. Minhee’s European Quest for Cheese is the record of 60 days and a 10,000-kilometer drive all over France and Switzerland, all in search of cheese. Minhee’s Italian Quest for Pasta is its sequel. Some vagabonds go backpacking with their small child. The Wind Will Take Us There and Hakuna Matata, Shall We Dance chronicle the journey of a mother and her child to Turkey and Africa, respectively, in search of new worlds.

Walking tours are an especially hot subject among these travelogues. Many writers have walked around Santiago de Compostella and published their travel essays, one of them being My Santiago, Walking Alone Yet Together, by Kim Heekyung.

A new traveling trend is “fair travel,” an environmentally friendly way of traveling.

These writers choose to stay in fair travel lodges with the locals instead of checking into fancy hotels, and travel on foot or by bus instead of flying. Building Hope on the Road!—Ethical Travel Guide Book was put together by Imagine Peace, the first Korean organization to practice fair travel.

By Han Mihwa

By Kim Ji-eun

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Special Section

Self-help Bestsellers

For Life Korea has recently seen a rise in popularity of books that deal with business management, as well as pop psychology. We will explore the interests of readers by examining current literary and publishing trends, and take the opportunity to showcase some of the psychology books that are receiving a lot of attention.

These days, there is an increase in the number of business persons who take classes or are involved in various activities after the long hours they put in at the office.

Businesspeople, who want to improve their skills and gain more experience during these unstable economic times, are seeking business management books. When the economic situation is constantly changing, many people believe they can rely only on themselves, and they join study groups and organizations through portal sites and blogs in order to improve and educate themselves.

There is a saying that speaks to this phenomenon: “Farming by day and studying by night.” The Korean businessperson today works for his wage during the day but works for his future at night. As Korea becomes more and more urbanized, people need practical solutions that can be applied to real life situations, rather than theories that gradually boost their knowledge.

Amongst all the practical guides, Koreans are mainly seeking books that have a basis in psychology while offering realistic solutions to problems. Psychiatrists and psychologists, who are the authors of most of these psychology books, have become familiar figures in society over the last several years. Although psychiatrists may have once been uncomfortable figures to shy away from, psychiatrists have started to appear frequently in the mass media. If a social issue arises, the light that a psychiatrist can shed on the event by offering the psychological cause and background of the issue can be invaluable. Public opinion regarding psychiatrists has transformed to such an extent that now we even have celebrity psychiatrists.

There is also a high interest in psychology these days. We have observed in other countries that when living standards increase, there is a greater demand for “pop psychology” books. For the last 20 years, Korea has attempted to explain problems by looking at the fabric of society or the great discourse surrounding social structures, but recently, there has been a move towards analysis at the micro level, of exploring an individual’s behavior and the causes of that behavior, rather than abstract notions.

This shift in interest can be explained by the socio-economic changes that have taken place. We’ve passed the era where merely 12

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pumping out countless products will ensure success in business. We must now calculate how and how many products we are to sell before we proceed, and if we wish to determine whether the consumer will purchase the product, we first need to know the mind of the consumer. Since it is through marketing that we garner people’s interests and thus achieve success, businesses now research the different ways to attract consumers. Likewise, businesspeople look for ways to win the attention of their colleagues.

Which person is more likely to gain consumer interest: the one who does business with a smile or the one who does business with a frown? The answer is obvious. The key to success lies in being able to control one’s feelings, have a positive attitude, and stay motivated. In order to captivate others, we must first understand ourselves and be able to control our own emotions.

Even though we may not be as educated or wealthy as we would like to be, we’ll be able to draw colleagues to us by discerning their underlying intentions, motivations, and behavior, and this will ensure not only our survival, but our future success. These are some of the reasons why psychology books are receiving a lot of attention. Some of the pop psychology books that are currently loved by Korean readers are introduced below.

Mental Fitness

A successful company can collapse overnight if the CEO cannot control his emotions and becomes greedy. A student with a high IQ can do badly on an exam if he suffers from anxiety. However with mental strength, a person can easily overcome any kind of stress and difficulty.

A professor of psychiatry, Woo Jong-min, is the author of Mental Fitness. Having studied at the School of Public Health at John Hopkins University in the United States, he has developed the notion of mental fitness, and introduces creative concepts and skills to strengthen one’s mind. Just as we require basic strength, flexibility, cardiopulmonary function, and muscle strength to improve our physical fitness, our minds need restorative mental energy, flexibility and adaptability, emotional control, positive

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1. Mental Fitness Woo Jong-min, Wisdom House Publishing Co., Ltd. 2007, 259p, ISBN 978-89-6086-031-5 03320

3. Psychology of Habit Kwak Geum-joo, Woongjin ThinkBig Co., Ltd., 2009, 230p ISBN 978-89-01-06367-6 03302

2. Gratifying Business Psychology Ha Jeehyun, Chungrim Publishing Co., Ltd., 2004, 327p ISBN 978-89-352-0566-4 03320

4. Frame Choi Incheol, Book 21 Publishing Group, 2007, 213p ISBN 978-89-509-1154-6

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5. Charming People Are Different by 1% Lee Minkyu, Thenan Publishing Co., 2009, 259p ISBN 978-89-8405-322-9 13320

* Since 2009, the book’s copyright is reserved by Kungree Press

thinking, and the ability to build harmonious relationships. This book suggests strengthening five domains of mind and presents 12 practical steps to achieve mental fitness and renew energy amidst the busyness of life.

Gratifying Business Psychology

Businesspeople must constantly walk the tightrope as they deal with all sorts of personality types. What they need is emergency solutions they can immediately put to use on the job site.

Written by a psychologist who specialized in psychoanalysis, this book is full of important details about depth psychology and interpersonal relations.

By utilizing familiar scenarios and cases most businesspeople would have experienced, Ha Jee-hyun proposes fresh solutions to worries and dilemmas. People all have their own distinct characteristics and essentially live in their own world. In order to understand people in a short period of time, it is crucial that one knows how to categorize them according to their different personality types. By focusing on each different personality type and tendency, the author tackles the communication problems that exist in relationships.

Psychology of Habit

People tend to worry that they have bad habits. They feel that their bad habits are the reasons why they are unable to adapt well to change and continue to experience difficulty in finding alternative solutions to problems. Kwak Geum-joo, a developmental psychology professor, warns that if we cannot control our habits, our habits will take over our lives. A habit is a behavioral pattern acquired and simplified in order to solve an important task by human beings who are naturally limited in capacity. Once this pattern has been established, it is harmful to continue this pattern when circumstances change, for it can run the danger of hindering change. In other words, the most effective path to transformation is to change one’s habits and welcome new ones. The greatest innovation in life is to overcome one’s habits.

Frame

People view the world from their own perspectives. Through dark lenses, the whole world seems dark and gloomy. We cannot help but organize and interpret the world through our particular frames of reference.

Choi Incheol, a psychology professor, suggests ways of using our frames of reference so that we can lead happier, fuller lives. A positive outlook can bring happiness and a negative outlook can create foolish behavior. Frames of reference can also affect our financial decisions and future. Choi suggests 10 fresh outlooks a person can have to lead a wise and happy life.

Charming People Are Different by 1%

People want the attention and care of other people. Everyone has a fantasy of becoming a charismatic person who is naturally attractive and appealing. This is perhaps the reason why this pop psychology book continues to be a bestseller in Korea.

Lee Minkyu, who studied clinical psychology, asserts that if we are to change merely one percent of our point of view and behavior, our lives will be completely transformed, like the butterfly effect that claims the wings of a single butterfly can cause a change of events leading to large-scale alterations of events. How are we to manage this one percent that seems easy enough to do in theory, but is so easy to forget and difficult to put into practice?

Where does the problem lie? Lee states that the problem lies within the individual. Albert Einstein once defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” All we need is a one percent change. Through practical and realistic methods, the author encourages the reader to change just one thing, for that will be the change of everything.

By Woo Jong-min (professor of psychiatry, author of Mental Fitness)

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Special Section

Self-help Bestsellers

For Men Live like a man? Or, live like myself? Under the pressure to look like a strong father and a competent husband, men cannot confide their feelings to their closest family members.

However, in books about middle-age men, men are portrayed quite differently: confused, vulnerable, and at a loss.

Finding contributors is one of my responsibilities as an editorial staff for a magazine. The magazine that I worked for three years ago had a column about female sexuality in which women talked candidly about sex and dating. It was a huge success. So, we decided to cover male sexuality as well and run the two columns in alternation. However, finding a suitable columnist was not easy. At that time, most of the columns on male psychology were either about sexual exploits or about success stories at work. They were either lewd or banal. Three years later, things have changed. There are a lot of “nice guys” who do not refrain from talking about their embarrassments. Their whinging, neediness, and cries of pain make them more human than those “real men” who are puffed up with pride, self-importance, and a sense of their own competence.

The Psychology of Men is based on the counseling cases conducted by the author, who is a professor of neuropsychiatry at Inje University Seoul Paik Hospital and is the director of its Stress Research Institute. Woo diagnoses middle-age Korean men as having “collective autism.” Although their hearing is fine, they are deaf to the sound of their own voices. Those who are capable, analytic, and insightful enough to survive in the jungle of office politics still do not even understand the workings of their own minds. When their wives feel depressed or want to have a heart-toheart conversation, they do not even notice or they just ignore them. Increasingly, they feel lost and vacant inside. The Psychology of Men is a list of 41 prescriptions for the symptoms of collective autism. The title of chapter 1, “Free Yourself from the Shackles of Manliness and Be Happy as You Are” is the point of the entire book. Chapter 2, titled “Men, Be a Happy Egoist” preaches that men should gain control of their lives, and be freed from guilt, worry, and the need for approval.

Psychology of the Men in Their 40s is about therapy sessions in which the two authors were the client and the therapist, respectively. Once, before he started therapy, Lee Kyungsu was standing on a subway platform watching the approaching train and thinking how easy it would be to end his painful life just by tipping his body slightly onto the subway tracks. He thought to himself, “It would be painful only for a brief moment, but would I be there to feel the pain?” He did not look up at the sky because 14

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the clear blue sky made him feel his gloom even more vividly. In his new workplace, where women outnumbered men, he could not find his place among the close groups of female colleagues. He became so irritable that one day he lost his temper at his wife when he found that his new pants were too long for him. Another day, he was so saddened by the songs that he was listening to in his car that he had to pull over to the side of the road to cry. He was 40 years old, and that was when Lee came to meet his therapist Kim Jinse. The psychiatrist was not as much affected by his client’s imagined attempt to throw himself in front of the oncoming subway train as by his comparison of himself to “a red snapper in a fishbowl with its eyes wide open and its mouth eternally opening and closing, opening and closing…” The two men met once a week for 10 weeks, not in the psychiatrist’s office but in restaurants and bars. The result was a failure in one point (he quit his job) and a success in others (he is planning a trip to Europe with his family and he is now enjoying every moment of his life). Besides the therapy sessions, Lee also talks about his personal experiences, such as his mixed feelings toward his younger friends and the suffering that he experienced at his oppressive father’s deathbed.

In I Regret Having Married My Wife, the author analyzes himself and other Korean men in a very frank manner. Even, the book’s title itself is very straightforward. On hearing the title, the author’s wife asked him, “Do you really regret having married me?”

He answered, “Yes, once in a while.” Then his wife said, “But, I’m satisfied with our marriage, every once in a while.” The author defines his marriage as a union of a man who sometimes regrets and a woman who is sometimes satisfied. The subtitle is also explicit: “Cultural Psychology of Perpetually Immature Men.” The author himself is a cultural psychologist. In effect, the counselor came out as a subject for self-counseling. His views of middle-age Korean men are not much different from those of Woo Jong-min in The Psychology of Men, who diagnoses men as having collective autism. The only difference is that he talks more candidly and does not hesitate to use his cases as examples. He confesses that recently he took a liking to big-bosomed actresses. Labeling this new taste as a “regression to big bosoms,” he finds its cause in the absence of joy in everyday life–in other words, the absence of play, which is a

The Psychology of Men

Psychology of the Men in Their 40s

I Regret Having Married My Wife

Woo Jong-min Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. 2009, 315p, ISBN 978-89-01-09389-5

Lee Kyungsu, Kim Jinse Wisdomhouse Publishing Co., Ltd. 2007, 306p, ISBN 978-89-6086-040-7

Kim Chung-woon, Sam&Parkers 2009, 300p, ISBN 978-89-92647-67-0

way of communication that starts in the bosom of one’s mother.

There is more evidence of the regression: the marathon fad and popularity of drinking boilermakers. The author names the phenomenal popularity of marathon training among middle-age Korean men as a “masochistic confirmation of one’s existence” that originates from an inability to communicate. The autistic males also resort to mixing liquor in order to get heavily drunk before they have to talk about themselves.

In I Regret Having Married My Wife, the author confesses his fantasy about fishnet stockings as well as big-bosomed actresses, but he does not forget to save face by suggesting simple but peaceful ways to enjoy ordinary moments of life, like gazing at carefree people strolling around the fountain plaza at Seoul Art Center. On the contrary, Psychology Comes Knocking at Men’s Hearts does not make any attempt to create positive images. Without the slightest affectation, the men in this book reveal the weakness of men unheard of from anyone but those of the same gender. One of them tells a story of his cowardly meanness: One day, when he discovered that his wife had finished his last bottle of soju, he retaliated by putting her favorite soap bar in a washbasin and taking it out to the garbage bin in the yard. And yet, he grew anxious and restless out of guilt. He could not sleep until he had spotted the washbasin beside the refrigerator in the kitchen. Frailty, thy name is man! Here is another man’s story: When he furtively glanced at the beautiful woman living next door, his wife plainly remarked, “Beautiful, isn’t she?” Not only that, but she also told the woman, “My husband says you’re beautiful” as if the word “jealousy” was not in her dictionary. Afterward, however, the man and the woman next door became conscious of each other. The man no longer went out in a threadbare t-shirt and dirty gym pants. The woman stopped yelling at her child the moment she heard the sound of her neighbor’s door opening. Their innocent guise and petty feelings make the reader smile as if peeping into a glimpse of one’s own vanity. No matter how hard they try to appear otherwise, most men have a surprisingly tender spot in their hearts. Unlike general assumptions made by most women, many men feel extremely shy and uncomfortable in a hostess bar, for example. A man who is brazen enough to crack lewd jokes and

Psychology Comes Knocking at Men’s Hearts Yun Yongin, ChungRim Publishing Co., Ltd. 2009, 300p, ISBN 978-89-3520-789-3

make sexually explicit comments in the company of other men finds himself helpless when alone with a woman and succumbs to the first hint of seduction. Men who ask, “Why have an affair with a stranger when you can be as easy with your wife and break wind any time you please?” can be ironic enough to say, “I don’t want to live with a woman who breaks wind whenever she pleases.” The irony may cause outrage in women, but is true nonetheless.

Books on male psychology advise men to give up their obsession with masculinity and feel free to express themselves. Now then, it is women that might feel threatened. If they have to share all the properties of “feminine” sensibilities with men, where will they find their identity as a woman? If men become free enough to express their needs and wants, to whom will women turn to for solace and comfort? Nevertheless, these changes in male attitudes have long been detected in many young Korean men–in what the columnist Fukasawa Maki dubbed “herbivorous men in contrast to their more aggressive, masculine “carnivorous” counterparts. At last, are the aliens going to use the same language? Will the two alien races from Mars and Venus be able to understand each other?

Finally, men and women may soon have real communication over “human” issues.

By Ku Doolrae (reporter for the weekly magazine, The Hankyoreh 21)

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Special Section

Self-help Bestsellers

For Readers in Their 20s and 30s Young people in their 20s and 30s, who do not yet have a full standing in life, are often insecure and restless. They are too old to depend on their parents, and their friends are also knee-deep in their own problems.

Many self-help books are targeted to these confused and lonely young people.

For the last few years, a wide array of self-help books targeting readers in their 20s and 30s were published in Korea, and many of them became bestsellers. Several of them sold hundreds of thousands of copies in the very same year of their publication.

People in their 20s and those in their 30s have such different characteristics that they can hardly be categorized as the same age group. However, in Korea they have just as many similarities as they do differences. Both groups belong to the young generation who are in a transitional phase of life. They have not yet settled down, and it is for this very reason that they have plenty of possibilities as well as anxiety and insecurity about their employment, marriage, and relationships. Self-help books for young people have been successful because the books soothe their loneliness and insecurity while at the same time give them courage to make the most of their potential.

It has not been long since the youth generation of Korea began suffering from this collective state of insecurity and restlessness. Up until the 1980s, Koreans in their 30s used to enjoy a stable social status. Having graduated from college, most of them were married, had a job, and had some money in the bank. Some lucky ones even possessed their own houses. Things have changed since the 1990s. As the economy has faltered, jobs have been getting harder to find. And young people, especially women, have grown up skeptical of marriage, and thus the average age of marriage has risen considerably. Feeling insecure about work, being incompetent with relationships, and hesitancy about marriage is no longer relegated to those who are in their 20s; such worries carry on for another decade or longer. Nothing is certain. People who have achieved more than others are not necessarily satisfied with their lives. A few generations ago, having a stable job, getting married, and having children was considered to be what constituted an ideal life. However, today’s young dream of something different. They have higher ideals of freedom and refined cultural tastes. But the reality is the opposite: They have to struggle to acquire what the previous generations took for granted.

Furthermore, they often feel there is no one left to turn to when 16

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they want to talk about their problems and find reassurance.

Many self-help books are targeted at these confused and lonely young people. In these books, psychiatrists and psychologists serve as mentors to diagnose problems and recommend solutions.

An example is 30-Year-Olds Ask Psychology, published in 2008 with almost 400,000 copies sold in the same year. Written by Kim Haenam, a psychiatrist, the book provides psychological advice to 30-year-olds who lack a clear idea of what they want in life and competence in work as well as love. It deals with their troubles in 35 different topics, such as “What’s wrong with my life?” “What is it that I truly want to do with my life?” “Will I ever fall in love

30-Year-Olds Ask Psychology

Psychology Answers 30-Year-Olds

Kim Haenam Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. 2009, 311p ISBN 978-89-01-07858-8

Kim Haenam Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. 2009, 269p, ISBN 978-89-01-09398-7

again?” The list of topics itself shows the nature of the troubles that young people in their 30s are struggling with.

The success of this book led to the publication of its sequel Psychology Answers 30-Year-Olds in May 2009. This book deals with more practical issues than its predecessor, with 52 topics such as “Don’t let your past rule your present,” “Escape the trap of selfpity,” and “Avoid cynicism about your life and the world.”

For the last few years, novels, soap operas, and movies portraying the tenuous existence of women in their 30s, especially single ones, have been received with great enthusiasm. Considering this popularity, the success of the self-help books with this target readership is not surprising.

Unlike the two books mentioned above, Psychology Chocolate written by the psychiatrist Kim Jinse, is for people in their 20s. By analyzing psychological problems commonly faced by this age group and providing professional advice, this book also landed on the bestseller list. The author states that this specific decade of life may seem like the golden age of youth, but in fact, people in their 20s are lacking so much self-love and self-awareness that they tend to feel anxious when nobody is around. As a result, they are obsessed with their cell phones and personal blogs, constantly projecting themselves onto others and identifying themselves in relation to how others view them. By dealing with the anxiety, depression, addiction, and the absence of communication that people in their 20s face every day, the book has aroused great interest in young readers.

The essay collections 1,000 Sympathies and People Landscape written by the renowned novelist Kim Hyung-kyung have been steady sellers for years. Kim has written about love, heartache, and healing with an almost professional level of knowledge on psychology and psychiatry. She has read voraciously on the subjects since her late 20s and received almost 100 psychiatric sessions in her late 30s. This knowledge and experience is reflected in her novels as well as in her two books of essays. The author takes a different stance from professional psychologists or psychiatrists in that she does not deliver expert advice, but talks about her own stories and shares her feelings with readers in similar situations.

Rather than diagnosing their problems, she tells readers that although we all hurt and have been hurt by others, we can heal ourselves in various ways.

People Landscape is a diary of Kim’s solitary travels to Rome, Paris, and Beijing. Because she set out to travel after having just completed long therapy sessions, everything she sees, including people, landscapes, and works of art, is viewed and interpreted from a psychological angle. Gazing at the landscape of the world in front of her eyes, she looks into her newly awakened state of mind and tries to find a path to healing. 1,000 Sympathies is based on the counseling section of a daily newspaper, for which Kim’s provided thoughtful advice to readers who sent in their questions.

Good Luck! is also a self-help book for young people, but its style is radically different from the other books. The author Kim Oujun has voiced his opinions on his website about a variety of political and social issues. He is well known for his witty, satirical style of writing and his progressive political ideas. This book is also in the form of question and answer sessions. The difference is that the author does not offer compassionate solace but puts the person on the spot by ruthlessly revealing the nature of the problem. With this straightforward approach, the author gives a sobering blow on the head to awaken people so they can squarely face their problems.

These self-help books guide frustrated young people to face their problems on the assumption that brave confrontations lead to a new start. The books encourage them to leave behind their frustrations and to start all over again, telling them, “It’s okay to be yourself and make mistakes.”

After all, these books serve as a path to self-healing for many confused youths, to guide them through the maze of modern life and give them strength to make a new start.

By Choi Hyunmee (reporter for The Munhwa Ilbo)

Psychology Chocolate

1,000 Sympathies

People Landscape

Good Luck!

Kim Jinse Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. 2009 263p, ISBN 978-89-01-08822-8

Kim Hyung-kyung Hankyoreh Publishing Company 2006, 334p, ISBN 978-89-8431-206-7

Kim Hyung-kyung Wisdomhouse Publishing Co., Ltd. 2006, 273p, ISBN 89-5913-164-4

Kim Oujun Prunsoop Publishing Co., Ltd. 2009, 331p, ISBN 978-89-7184-798-5

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Special Section

Self-help Bestsellers

For Love An overwhelming number of young people are either uninterested or unfamiliar with the concept of dating. The opportunity to experience personal relationships is becoming more and more limited. In the past, we might have learned these things from our circle or community, but we must now realize these things on our own.

Capitalism has given rise to dating and romantic love. But today in the capitalist-dominated society, love, and dating face great obstacles. Women, from observing their parents’ generation, now believe that romance cannot be found in marriage. Men, on the other hand, have begun to reject traditional roles as the head of the household. Myths of love and marriage are slowly being shattered.

To help alleviate this problem, universities in Korea have started to offer a steady stream of courses for students who are unskilled in the art of dating. Seoul National University has established a coaching program for dating that is run in the format of group consultations. Yonsei University holds a workshop series titled “Martians and Venusians,” a term taken from the bestselling book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. Ewha Womans University offers crash courses on the subjects of “Dating Happily” and “Dating Language.”

The same sort of phenomenon is also evident in Japan. One young man, unskilled at approaching women, sought help from strangers by posting a message to an Internet forum. When there was an overwhelming number of responses to his thread, these responses were collected into a book called Train Man: Densha Otoko, which has sold over one million copies to date. One possible explanation for its immense popularity is that there is a generation of self-absorbed young adults who, having retreated into a world of games and animation, are inexperienced with dating.

Why have love and romance disappeared? Why are there more and more young people who are unfamiliar with or even indifferent about love and dating? The cause may be a lack of communication and personal relationships. For a very long time, human beings have simply followed a set course prescribed by their respective societies. Decisions about religion, career, and marriage were made according to what the greater community expected. Life perhaps was not as exciting, but it was definitely less stressful.

However with the advent of capitalism, everything changed.

As rational thought emerged, greater emphasis was put on the individual. People were reborn as independent beings in charge of their own destinies. Freedom may have increased, but so did competition and their sense of anxiety. With the collapse of the 18

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community that had been a constant guide, the individual’s sense of alienation was inevitable, and as the world became more modernized, we saw the disintegration of the family. Single-child families became the norm and the opportunity to form personal relationships became even more limited. Because of fierce competition at school and in the workplace, it became more difficult to open one’s heart to another.

As life grows lonelier and more impoverished, a person has no other choice but to choose a more selfish life. This is in order to protect oneself. Consequently one becomes more isolated and helpless. A person may have achieved the freedom to choose but can only enjoy shallow and confined relationships. This is the dilemma of most people living in the modern era.

Because of these reasons, books that deal with rites of passage and give helpful advice for those stepping into adulthood are popular with young adults. It’s true that in the past, people would have learned these things from their community, seniors, and friends, but now they must learn them on their own. Dating, marriage, parenting, death, and much more are all subjects of psychology books.

Books on dating usually have two different angles of approach. The first approach tends to look at dating from a psychological point of view, closely observing how love and attraction are created and sustained. The second approach acknowledges the fact that men and women are simply different, and teaches one how to better understand and approach a member of the opposite sex.

Psychoanalyst Kim Haenam’s book Do I Really Love You? is a collection of essays on the subject of love. Questions such as “What is love?” and “What are the reasons we keep failing at love?” are explored from a psychological perspective. The author considers love as a type of disorder, proposing that the way people select those they’re attracted to is somewhat pathological. What is love at first sight? Kim claims that falling in love with a stranger in one instant means that this particular love has existed deep in the unconscious long before that fateful moment. In other words, love at first sight is only possible because people have attempted to

Do I Really Love You?

Psychology of Love

Rules of Dating

Will You Love Me Tomorrow, Too?

Kim Haenam Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. 2007, 262p, ISBN 978-89-01-07460-3

Lee Chulwoo Thenan Publishing Co. 2009, 251p, ISBN 978-89-91239-44-9

Song Changmin Hainaim Publishing Co., Ltd. 2009, 220p, ISBN 978-89-7337-739-8

Kim Tae-hoon Sigongsa, 2009, 264p ISBN 978-89-527-4507-1

either bury their traumatic experiences or fill the empty void lurking in their hearts. People tend to choose partners who are like their parents. As the book encourages the reader to look deep into the unconscious which is the heart of love, it suggests that love is the attempt to better understand oneself.

Psychology of Love is written by Lee Chulwoo, an expert in social psychology. This book examines the entire process of meeting someone and falling in, then out of love with the person from a socio-psychological point of view. It is a great source of entertainment, filled with insights about the human mind that is inevitably drawn to others. Because this book cites the conclusions of many psychology experiments, it isn’t only for someone who is looking for love, but for everyone who desires to become an attractive, charismatic person. For example, the double mind technique states that one must first praise and then, from a certain point, ignore a prospective partner. The reasoning behind this method is that anyone will become interested when another’s behavior suddenly changes towards him or her. If you are worried about your appearance, remember the social matching theory. This theory claims that people will tend to be attracted to and are more likely to pair off with those who are of the same degree of physical attractiveness as themselves. This is one of the reasons why couples often resemble each other. Also, test results show that excitement and stimulation help increase feelings of love. So if you are interested in someone, you shouldn’t go to a coffee shop, but to a baseball or soccer stadium. As the Spanish like to say: “Whisper love in the bullring.”

A popular book that provides tips on dating is Rules of Dating, a dating clinic in book form. Song Changmin, the founder of a professional dating consultation cybercafé, has taken his correspondence with thousands of people and compiled them into this volume. The most unique element about this book is that it does not contain mere theories, but real life experiences and foolproof methods of dating. The author stresses two very important facts: dating requires skills and one needs to know and understand the opposite sex in order to succeed. It’s a valuable manual that makes readers think that even a block of wood could

achieve success in dating if it prepared and trained according to the author’s suggestions.

Will You Love Me Tomorrow, Too? is a book written by the pop columnist Kim Tae-hoon. The book contains tips about dating from A to Z, but its strength is that it truthfully reveals the secrets of men’s minds that women may not know. For example, women in love often ask, “Does he love me?” The author states that a man, even if he is not interested, will compliment a woman if he has something to gain. However, if he is interested, he will go to extraordinary lengths and shower her with praise. So the author confidently declares: If he is stingy with his love and compliments, he doesn’t love you. Break it off immediately. It’s a book that bluntly reveals men’s true intentions about love and dating.

Whether the book gives psychological explanations or advice on dating, these books convey to the reader that nothing is free in life. Love and marriage may be part of life, but they are won only through effort.

By Han Mihwa (columnist, editorial board member)

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Special Section

Self-help Bestsellers

For Children Today’s children have few siblings or have time to spend with their families.

In fact, modern city life is not an optimal environment for children’s emotional health and growth.

This may be the cause for the recent popularity of books that are intended to help children understand their emotions and control their behavior.

Leave Me Alone!, Why Do You Always Pick on Me?, You Need to Talk!

Park Hyeon-jin; Illustrator: Yoon Jeong-joo, Chondung Books, 2007 ISBN 978-89-90025-32-6 (Set)

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Emotional disorders in children are on the rise in many countries, including Korea. These disorders involve a lack of emotional expression, cognitive distortions, emotional instability, and other related symptoms. Children suffering from these symptoms often behave in a deviant manner or are afflicted with feelings such as anxiety, loneliness, and depression. Children will fare better if they learn how to express themselves in their own homes first so that they can function well when they are in a social setting.

Emotionally competent children tend to develop positive peer relationships and are also able to express their feelings in a way that let adults around them detect any emotional troubles in a timely manner for proper care.

The self-help books for children introduced here have been written based on the work experience of pediatric clinical psychologists. Leave Me Alone!: How to Control Your Own Emotions and Why Do You Always Pick on Me?: Understanding Complicated Feelings are comic books containing situations under headings like, “When you don’t know what to do to make friends,” or “When Mom seems to favor your sister over you.” The specific episodes enable children to understand the feelings they had experienced when in similar situations. The author’s comments are excerpted in the middle of the episodes in order to guide the reader’s reflections on the situation. And the case stories, with blank spaces at the end of each section, encourage children to describe their own feelings and ideas. Another title, You Need to Talk!: Tips for Talks That Bring Peace, introduces conversation skills based on the NVC (Nonviolent Communication) process developed by Marshall Rosenberg, an American clinical psychologist.

Escape School from Worries for Elementary School Students is in the form of letters that a clinical psychologist father writes to his sons. In the voice of the caring father, the book deals with a list of problems most frequently experienced by children. Based on the author’s life with his two sons, the letters are intended to lead children to find a solution to their psychological difficulties. The

Escape School from Worries for Elementary School Students Lee Minsik; Illustrator: Sayhong, Dasan Child 2009, 231p, ISBN 978-89-6370-021-2

Crybaby, a Baby Cloud

The Stubborn Rhino

Kim Cecil; Illstrator: Noh Seok-mee Sakyejul Publishing Ltd., 2009, 36p ISBN 978-89-5828-134-4

Lee Yoonhee; Illustrator: Koo Boonsun Blubird Publishing Co., 2003, 107p ISBN 89-7057-374-7

author’s four-step emotional coaching helps parents to guide their children to talk about what bothers them, express their feelings, recognize what they want, and produce solutions.

Crybaby, a Baby Cloud shows what happens when emotions are suppressed. The animal friends in the mountain village threaten to leave the whimpering Baby Cloud if he ever cries again.

However, the animals realize that they have made a big mistake when they see Baby Cloud turning darker and darker every day by trying too hard to suppress his tears. At last, after having his big cry, Baby Cloud smiles as brightly as the sun. This story tells children that emotions need to be expressed, rather than repressed, to have a healthy state of mind.

The fable series written by Lee Yoonhee help children understand their characters. In The Stubborn Rhino, Rhino always fears that some other animals may attack him, knowing that he has bad eyesight. Therefore, whenever he perceives something moving in front of his eyes, he just attacks it without knowing what it might be. The author shows readers that Rhino needs special eyeglasses because his aggressiveness comes not from his bad temper, but from his poor eyesight. The fable series consists of 18 books about the same number of animals, including The Complaining Hippo and The Proud Giraffe. By connecting the characteristic features of animals with the personality traits of humans, these books lead young readers to understand the originality of their personalities.

By Haje (book therapist, clinical psychologist)

I-Seum Child Psychology Series I-Seum (Mirae N Culture Group), 2009 ISBN 978-89-378-4255-9 (Set)

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Interview

“You are always right, so go out into the world without hesitation.”

Psychoanalyst Kim Haenam

Psychoanalyst Kim Haenam is the bestselling author of 30-Year-Olds Ask Psychology, a book for young people in their 30s undergoing an adolescence of their own. On its release, its recently published sequel, Psychology Answers 30-Year-Olds, also became a bestseller. What is it that has so captured Korea’s thirtysomething readers? Professional interviewer Jie Seung-ho meets with the author.

Nearly 40,000 readers have praised 30-Year-Olds Ask Psychology, a book that applies insights from psychology to the life, work, love, and human relationships of thirty-year-olds, a group that has been relatively overlooked. This fact proves that many thirty-yearolds are mired in a swamp of frustration and despair. Readers of this book say that the experience of reading was like that of a psychological recovery. Kim Haenam, who has achieved the status of mentor to Korea’s thirty-something population, was born in Seoul in 1959, and graduated from Korea University’s College of Medicine. She worked for 12 years in Seoul National Hospital as a psychoanalyst, and now teaches at the Medical Schools of Kyung Hee University, Sungkyunkwan University, and Inje University as a part-time lecturer. She is a full-time professor at Seoul National University’s College of Medicine, in addition to directing Nanoori Hospital’s Psychoanalysis Research Lab. Her published books include Living as an Adult, Do I Really Love You?, 30-Year-Olds Ask Psychology, and Psychology Answers 30-Year-Olds.

Kim Haenam advises those in their thirties, “You are always right, so go out into the world without hesitation. Maybe now you are mired in a swamp of frustration and despair. But every person has the power to recover. So believe in that power, and forge on. What is there to be afraid of? You’re only 30, you can do anything.”

“Try to get into something new before you get any older.

Whether it’s work or a hobby, try throwing yourself into something that gives your life meaning. The experience of having given yourself up to something will help you to overcome any challenges you face later. And it will put the joy of life into your arms.”

Jie Seung-ho: Is there any special reason why you chose to write a book focusing on people in their 30s?

Kim Haenam: My son is also in his mid-twenties. Looking at his friends, or at our patients, there are many people who are working through the anxieties and conflicts of adolescence in their late 20s or early 30s. As adolescence becomes longer and independence starts later, that’s how it’s become. I became interested because I want to think about what is happening to 30-year-olds these days, and because I want to study it.

JS: Do you believe that 30-year-olds now are particularly different from 30-year-olds before?

KH: First of all, in our time there weren’t that many things to worry about in our lives. If that was a time when we took one path and ran steadily ahead, then these days it feels as if 30-yearolds are on another wandering trip through adolescence. Afterwards, they are liberated and individualistic, but when you look inside, it seems that they are amazingly dependant, weak, and easily hurt.

JS: Of course, this might be an extreme example, but on your radio talk show there was someone who asked for advice about someone he had just met. “I don’t know if this girl likes me,” he said. When you answered, “Maybe you’re being too impatient,” they say he got angry. (Laughs.)

KH: I was very surprised as well. When I asked, “How can you know the heart of someone you just met today?” he answered back, “If she likes me she likes me, if not, then not, right?” (Laugh.)

People seem to want to flip off a pain switch. They like someone but fear that they will get hurt if that other person doesn’t like them, so they make relationships based on a “yes or no,” black-

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Interview recurring over and over again they need to try to really enter into that problem.

JS: There must be different social devices through which to resolve things that you’ve suppressed. So, you said that “adults need to have fantasies,” but doesn’t society rather put more limits on people? It seems that doing something like artwork could be an alternative outlet.

Interviewer Jie Seung-ho and Psychoanalyst Kim Haenam

and-white philosophy. If they don’t like you, then just move on.

Nowadays that would be called “being cool.” If you look at it one way, you can see that as someone with a very weak ego. And it’s not only people in their 30. The younger they are, the more severe it is. It’s “all or nothing.” That’s the characteristic of immature people. If they see something good in someone they begin to idealize that person, saying, “That’s my dream partner;” then, when they find something even a little disappointing they enter into devaluation. They become disappointed and they leave. But they can’t stand to be alone, so they keep chasing after love, chasing after their target, always building expectations and being disappointed, repeating this over and over again until it gets very futile.

Later they build a defense system and replace obsessive sentiment with cool-handed enjoyment.

JS: It seems like there are many people who have difficulty because they can’t forget or acknowledge some trauma in their past. Why do we have to drag out and remember painful things from our past?

KH: Well, that’s what I do. We believe that inside each person’s heart is an injured child. If it’s a child who became stuck due to some great trauma when they were young, and who doesn’t develop any more, then that person comes to look at the world through the perspective of the child. If the child’s mother excessively ignored the child, or the child’s father was excessively harsh and the child is very afraid of his father or has some other conflict, then he is unable to develop past that point. Their body becomes that of an adult, but they understand the world through that child’s thoughts and experiences. They think, it’s only natural, I’m just a weak child, and they build a defense around it, but in war you have to know your enemy in order to conquer him. It takes a lot of time to unravel these emotions, but only by doing so can you be liberated from them; you become able to leave the past while saying to yourself, “Right, my mother and father were human just like me.” It’s not about remembering the past and relying on it; it’s about remembering and understanding the past and then moving on. Actually, this isn’t something that everyone can do, or even needs to do. In the case of people whose trauma is so large that they are constantly hurt by it, when a problem keeps 24

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KH: You have to keep making those kinds of outlets in order to solve it in that way, otherwise you get buried in something like the Internet. Then you become more distorted, become tangled up and become aggressive. You cannot find an outlet through which to sublimate, but fantasies are actually very important.

Adults who can’t dream lack imagination and get tied up in the framework, actually waste away into children. Art is a very healthy passage to relieving those things.

JS: There are cases, like in psychodrama therapy, where one immerses oneself in a role, and by changing roles comes to understand the other person’s perspective, and recovers in that way.

KH: It seems to me that the problem today is that there’s no time to be alone and digest. They can’t stand to contemplate alone and be alone. Just like after you eat you need time to digest, the brain is always getting stimuli from outside and it needs time to sublimate those stimuli, organize them, and understand them in its own way. But nowadays the senses get overloaded. All day stuff keeps coming in, and I wonder if it doesn’t seriously reduce one’s thinking capacity. I just want to say: spend some time alone. See, we tell our patients to take two hours a day to be alone as well. If you interfere too strongly and keep trying to help each other out together, the brain actually can’t handle it. In the same way, the typical person needs time for the brain to rest, as well. With stimuli constantly flowing in, maybe your senses might develop, but it seems that your ability to think degrades. What I want to study is how the thinking function regresses when we stimulate the brain without giving it a rest, and I think it will be an important thing to study.

JS: In the book, you use many different terms to describe these kinds of adults, such as the Peter Pan syndrome, mama’s boy, mama’s girl, hikikomori. Are there really that many adults who can’t grow up?

KH: It’s because people get greedier as society grows more complicated and developed. Actually parents teach children that if they aren’t the best, then they’re failures. They don’t teach them how to find a place in society, how to be satisfied with one’s role and abilities, or how to make connections and live a happy life; instead, they teach that if you don’t succeed and become the best, then you’re a failure. For that reason children hide away whenever they fail even a little. Actually it’s a social problem. I think it’s a social atmosphere that we have to fix.

JS: In Stanley Kubrick’s movie A Clockwork Orange there is a scene where they beat up homeless people for no reason.

KH: Weak things are bad, and when we see a weak face, our own weak face is reflected in it so we think that we have to get rid of it. It’s because we’re afraid that we might turn out that way.

Patients tell me some traumatic things from when they were in the national schooling system; their parents would tell them, “If you’re that bad at studying you’ll never become anything more than a street-cleaner.” Of course, someone who cleans could actually be happier than I am! But when you teach children that street-cleaners are failures, then whenever they see someone like that they will see them as a failure. I could turn out that way, they think, I could drop out and become a failure.

The next book she is preparing is about fear. The fear that one might fall behind in the economy, education, or all of modern society has become an anxiety. Survival, rather than success,

1

2

3 4

has become the central issue and people now come under more and more pressure.

JS: You say, “If snobbery started with ambition in the past, then now it takes anxiety as its foundation.” Isn’t this more dangerous? In the case of ambition, people can relate if you tell them, “Ambition can be dangerous. If you follow your ambition you might lose something else.” If it’s anxiety then even when one gains a lot, one compulsively tries to obtain more.

KH: It’s because the possibility of losing everything in a single moment has grown. There’s always the possibility of loss, since everything can return to nothing. Actually, the next book I’m preparing is about fear. Politics rule people through fear. Actually the economy stimulates anxiety in order to sell products, and education uses fear to make children study; everything is controlled and managed and supervised, and it seems like the fear of slipping backwards in this situation is the emotion that controls modern society. When people become anxious they start focusing in on their lives. They don’t have time for happiness or humanity, and there’s no space to look to the people around them–they can’t see anything but themselves. Ambition can be sublimated and spread out. If other people don’t like your ambition then you can change it into a more acceptable kind of ambition, even if you’re just pretending; but anxiety is something that others can’t see. No one can see it but you, and only the issue of survival in that world is a problem. Success isn’t the main issue, survival is. So it’s a more acute problem.

JS: It seems like there are many cases where people become morally mature, or find some sort of catharsis through watching movies or reading books. How do you think consuming this kind of cultural product helps in psychological growth?

KH: Before, I said you should take some time for yourself.

You need time to think and rethink. Actually, there’s no one who reads as much as our patients do. They endlessly search for stuff in books. And they just get more disappointed. They aren’t taking time to understand the meaning between the lines, or to digest it and make it their own. They just read endlessly. And watch movies endlessly. Stimuli needs time to find a home after entering your brain, but before that can happen they’re already watching other movies. Then you can’t digest, and you’re just left with some sensual images. First of all, I don’t think it’s necessary to read and watch so much, and you really need some time to read and think and contemplate. After that, I think you have to try hard to read between the lines every now and then. I hope that we don’t take everything at face value, and do try hard to read into the line of thought that comes out of certain scenes and dialogues.

By Jie Seung-ho (professional interviewer)

1. Psychology Answers 30-Year-Olds Kim Haenam, Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. 2009, 269p, ISBN 978-89-01-09398-7

3. Living as an Adult Kim Haenam, Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. 2009, 259p, ISBN 978-89-01-07858-8

2. 30-Year-Olds Ask Psychology Kim Haenam, Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. 2009, 311p, ISBN 978-89-01-07858-8

4. Do I Really Love You? Kim Haenam, Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. 2007, 262p, ISBN 978-89-01-07460-3

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Excerpt

Don’t Try Too Hard to Overcome Loneliness “You can’t avoid loneliness by being busy, and you can’t avoid loneliness with money.

All humans are lonely.”

- From the TV miniseries “Worlds Within” “And the Lord God, said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him.’” John Milton wrote of this passage from the Book of Genesis: “Loneliness is the first thing which God’s eye named, not good.”

Psychology Answers 30-Year-Olds Kim Haenam Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd., 2009, 269p ISBN 978-89-01-09398-7 03180

By addressing the concerns of 30somethings on 35 topics, 30-Year-Olds Ask Psychology, psychoanalyst Kim Haenam gained widespread popularity, and was later published in China. Her subsequent Psychology Answers 30-Year-Olds offers even more explicit and practical advice.

Out of the 52 topics, the following is an excerpt about loneliness.

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From time to time, rather often, we feel loneliness.

But the strange thing is that no matter how often we feel loneliness, we absolutely never get accustomed to it. Rather, loneliness becomes all the more fearful and something that, over time, we try harder to avoid. Therefore, people devote all their powers to overcoming loneliness, but each time we become trapped in its web. Why is this? Why is it that rather than getting used to it, we fear loneliness even more?

Loneliness breaks tranquility. It makes us feel our naked or meaningless existence. One sufferer expressed this as “the feeling of a block of ice, frozen hard and trapped in hell.” Because of this agonizing feeling people avoid loneliness, and work hard to forget it or try to rid themselves of it by obsessively forging relationships with others.

But in life there are times when you cannot help but be alone, and things that you must decide for yourself. Left in this lonely space, you once again feel how thankful you are for those that were always by your side. And you become thankful for the things that you took so naturally for granted when you didn’t feel so alone. This is a valuable experience that can only be felt when you are left to your own

devices. In this way, loneliness becomes a chance for us to awaken to the fact that we must live in communication with other people.

Moreover, when we are alone we free ourselves from the shackles of thoughts that have become hard and stale. The things we normally never think of, the things that we have never tried come to mind, and we develop our thoughts in a more creative direction.

As such, being alone does not necessarily entail misery. Rather, one of the absolutely essential abilities in life is the ability not to be buried in loneliness when left alone, and to instead fill oneself with creative and bountiful thoughts. That is, the ability to be alone keeps others from monopolizing you, and it keeps you from monopolizing other people. And so, people who are good at spending time by themselves are also better at maintaining intimate relationships with other people.

But sadly for most people, when they feel loneliness they end up falling into a state of anxiety either consciously or unconsciously. Once they fall into anxiety, they continue masking their anxious feelings in any way possible because they don’t want to acknowledge it. But it is too much to repress emotions that already exist.

If you want to avoid this kind of agonizing loneliness then the important thing is to have belief.

You need to believe that when you leave this place where you are alone, there is a world and people who will warmly receive you. But if anxiety and horror close in on you when you’re lonely, it means that you don’t hold this belief.

Jin-woo hasn’t come out of his room for seven years. Ever since he was bullied in middle school, he stopped going to school, and for about two years he lived shut up in his room. After graduating from middle school through an equivalency test, he entered high school, but he didn’t fit in and ended up quitting

after only six months. He once again shut himself up in his room. Once or twice he tried life in society, but he failed every time. In the end, the last time he came out of his room was at the age of 19, and until now he has stayed sequestered there.

Jin-woo is a model hikikomori. Hikikomori is a Japanese term that refers to people who live locked up alone in their houses for more than six months, cut off from society. Hikikomori are people mainly in their 20s and 30s, a time when adults are normally at their most active. Because the numbers of hikikomori are rising rapidly the phenomenon has been considered a social problem for several years.

These people have no friends, and they do not speak with their families. They are shut up by themselves, cut off from all relationships with other people. They suffer every day but do not come out into the world.

It is because they have no faith in either themselves or other people. They think that if they go out into the world, they will inevitably get hurt and become miserable. To them, life is not about “living,” but “disappearing.”

Maybe loneliness is the destiny of humans.

Nevertheless, struggling to overcome loneliness is not only giving up on the essence of existence, but makes relationships with others even more difficult.

Therefore that struggle itself is most agonizing. That said, completely shutting oneself inside a place all alone is also counter to the human need to live in communication with others. We have to lose our fear of loneliness and just naturally accept it. Time spent alone is time to once again feel deeply about your existence and the existence of others. So do not try to overcome loneliness through a futile fight anymore. translated by Andrew McCullough

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Interview

“The era I have lived through is a story in itself.”

Writer Park Wansuh

Park Wansuh, one of the leading figures in the Korean literary world, has made remarkable achievements both in terms of literary sophistication and general popularity. The JoongAng Ilbo reporter Shin Junebong recently interviewed the woman who has captivated Korean readers with vivid reconstructions of her own experiences during the Korean War and insights into human nature.

The poet Ko Un and the novelist Hwang Sok-yong, often cited as candidates for the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the poet Kim Ji-ha, for whom existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre signed a petition demanding his release from prison in 1974, are leading Korean writers who enjoy a degree of recognition outside the country. But there is another Korean writer without whom the history of modern Korean literature would be incomplete, even if she is not well known outside her native country. It could be argued, in fact, that her name belongs above those of Ko, Hwang, and Kim in the roll call of modern Korean writers.

The author in question is 78 year old novelist Park Wansuh, born in 1931 in Gaepung-gun, Gyeonggi-do (province), in what is now North Korea. One of the leading veterans of the Korean literary scene, Park’s achievements both as a writer of literary fiction and a popular author are remarkable.

By the time they reach their seventies and eighties, most writers’ creative desires are no match for those of their youth. Park, however, published two storybooks for children earlier this year and is showing no signs of neglecting writing, her life’s work.

One day in late June, while summer rain soaked the ground, I used the publication of the storybooks as an excuse to visit Park.

She lives in the village of Achiul, in Guri, just beyond the eastern limits of Korea’s capital, Seoul. It’s a quiet place where, unlike the loud monochrome of high-rise apartment blocks in Korea’s big cities, the green of trees and forests dominates and the sound of a flowing stream can be heard. The lawn in Park’s garden smelt fresh, and the apricot tree to one side was dropping small, red fruits around the base of its trunk. Park greeted me with her characteristic broad smile, saying, “I don’t eat the apricots straight away, but store them up in the fridge and make jam with them later on.”

The Three Wishes, one of the two storybooks recently published by Park, is a collection of 10 small episodes. The other book, Thank You for This World, combines Park’s skill as a masterful writer with watercolor illustrations in subdued tones. The book’s hero is Bokdong, a fifth grade elementary school student.

When Bokdong’s mother dies during childbirth and his father

leaves for America in search of a way to make a living, Bokdong ends up living with his grandmother and aunt. Bokdong, thoroughly bright and innocent, is mature enough to understand the perspectives of all the adults around him, including his aunt.

Eventually he travels to America, at his father’s invitation, where he manages to untangle his father’s emotional knots in the few months of his stay. Above all, Bokdong’s story will go down well with readers of his age, thanks to the specific and vivid way it realistically reflects their psychology, their daily lives, and the vocabulary they use.

In fact, Park states in the author’s note that: “It was an actual event in the Korean War (1950-53) that incited me to write this book.” An episode introduced at the end of the book, in the style of a frame narrative, is a heart-wrenching story that is hard to get past without crying. An American officer fighting in the Korean War is on the retreat southwards one winter when under a bridge, he finds the naked body of a woman frozen to death. A newborn baby is crying next to her, swaddled several layers deep in its mother’s clothes. The woman, a pregnant refugee, felt the pangs of labor and had no choice but to give birth to her child before allowing herself to freeze to death in order to save the baby. The officer takes the child back to America with him, adopts it and raises it, sparing no affection; but the child keeps his adoptive father and friends at arm’s length and becomes gradually more tied up in knots. At his wit’s end, the boy’s father takes him to Korea, deliberately choosing winter as the time to visit, and goes to find the grave of the boy’s birth mother. After lying down on his mother’s grave and wailing with grief, the boy resolves to change.

He grows up to become a doctor, develops a new kind of medicine and works to help children in developing nations.

Terrible experiences of the Korean War and a writing style that vividly reproduces them: I will mention these things again later on, but I think they are the nutrients that have fed Park’s growth into a masterful writer with a huge influence in the Korean book market.

Foreign readers may not realize the extent of Park’s power in the Korean literary market. I asked Park about the sales figures

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Interview

Shin Junebong and writer Park Wansuh

for her major works. “As far as I know, Thank You for This World (2009) and Three Wishes (2009) have sold about 20,000 copies each,” she answered. “The short story collection Kindhearted Bokhee, published in 2007, sold about 200,000 copies, and the novel Who Ate All the Shing-ah? (1992), considered one of my leading works, has sold about 1.5 million copies up to now.”

Park also mentioned how “a staff member at Columbia University Press, who wanted to publish Who Ate All the Shing-ah? in translation, claimed there was ‘no way a work of fine literature could sell so many copies’ and went to check the figures again.”

She also added that, “in 2007, at the Seoul International Book Fair, an elderly gentleman from the countryside brought a copy of The Naked Tree, published in 1970, and asked me to sign it.” As expected from a writer known for her modesty, Park revealed the sales figures for her books with reluctance.

Our conversation naturally turned to the question of why, in Park’s opinion, her works are so popular. “How should I know?” she answered. “A lot of works that I have expected to be popular among readers have met a lukewarm response.” She soon added, however, “My stories contain characters of a variety of ages, and I think perhaps readers of various ages generally think the stories are about them as they read.”

“I think the era I have lived through is a story in itself,” said Park. “I have written my books with the thought that they should be colorful, honest testimonies to their time, because a book is something that can remain buried in a secondhand bookshop for any amount of time before being brought out again later to see the light of day.”

Of course, of all the experiences that Park recalls, that of the Korean War is the most powerful. “I’m the kind of person that forgets what she did yesterday,” she said. “But I never forget the things I experienced during the war, even if I don’t write them down.” A general overview of Park’s story is that she was permanently separated from her mother and elder brother. The North Korean army, perhaps judging that Park and her sister-in-law would be useful due to their youth, sent them to North Korea.

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But Park remembered the way her mother had begged her not to cross the Imjin-gang (river) from South to North Korea at any cost, as this would mean that they would never see each other again. Just before crossing the river, Park ran away into the mountains. On her way back to Seoul, where her mother and brother were, Park walked at night to avoid bombing by American planes and hid by day in empty houses, staying alive by surviving on grains of uncooked rice. But when she got back, she lost her brother.

“As I experienced so many things I would never have thought humans could do to each other,” she said, “it seems I was thinking to myself, ‘I must never forget this, I must remember it at all costs.’”

Korean literary critics judge Park’s works to have “the sincerity of I-stories.” Originally from Japan, the “I-story,” is a fictional genre whose works are written like a diary, recording the things that go on around a hero who is unquestionably the author’s other self without the use of any other particular novelistic device. The death of an older brother, for example, is a principal recurring motif that can be found in works such as The Naked Tree and To the Dream of a Mountain.

But not everybody that has been through terrible experiences becomes a writer. “As an elementary school student, I grew up listening to my grandmother, grandfather, and mother telling me Korean children’s stories that had come down through the ages, such as ‘The Tale of Simcheon’ and ‘Janghwa and Hongnyeon,’” said Park. Her mother particularly liked the Chinese roman fleuve, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and not only often told parts of the story to Park, but also liked to speak of those around her as if they were characters in Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

“That guy comes across just like Cao Cao,” she would say, for example. Or she would play around in the kitchen, saying “Cao Cao, take this sword.”

Park’s mother gave her special treatment, unlike most families at the time, which discriminated against daughters. In contrast to the dominant view at the time, which was that educating girls

was a waste, Park’s mother sent her to school so that she was able to enter Seoul National University, later to become the most prestigious university in Korea. She fed Park tasty morsels of food, not normally given to daughters in those days, saying “a girl has to eat good food if she’s going to make good food for her family later on.” Such a caring environment probably provided strong support for Park in becoming a writer. “She has died now, but my mother is still a strong source of support to me,” said Park.

When asked which of her works have been introduced to overseas readers, Park said, “I think it’s very difficult to understand the literature of a country without having an understanding of its history.” As an example, she told of how even in the case of Japan, a country extremely close to Korea in terms of culture and history, it is difficult for her works to be accurately translated into Japanese. “When the prose of my fiction is translated into a foreign language, the particular flavor of the words seems to be lost,” she continued. In which case, it seems that complete understanding and appreciation of Park’s works by foreign readers can only be possible in one of the following two ways: either such readers must acquire by themselves a broader understanding of Korea’s history and culture; or a “perfect translation,” like that described by Walter Benjamin, where a work’s vital poetic features, down to its most mystical elements, are transferred intact, must be produced. Neither of these are things can be achieved in a short period of time.

By Shin Junebong (reporter for The JoongAng Ilbo)

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3

4 5

1. Park Wansuh’s novels published in the U.S.A., Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Hungary, and the France 2. Park Wansuh’s novels published in the China 3. The Three Wishes Park Wansuh, Maumsanchack, 2009, 175p ISBN 978-89-6090-052-3 03810

4. Thank You for This World Park Wansuh; Illustrator: Han S. Oki Kidsjakkajungsin, 2009, 159p ISBN 978-89-7288-939-7 73810 5. Kindhearted Bokhee Park Wansuh, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. 2008, 302p, ISBN 978-89-320-1814-0 03810

1

About Park Wansuh Park emerged onto the Korean literary scene in 1970 at the age of 40 years old, when she entered her novel, The Naked Tree, into a competition run by a women’s magazine. Korea maintains a peculiar system where, in order to gain recognition as a poet or a novelist, one must win a competition held by a literary magazine or newspaper recognized by influential critics and authors. Park made a relatively late debut, in contrast to most up-and-coming writers, who emerge on the literary stage in their 20s. But her supremely active pen power has produced many works, and she is now among Korea’s greatest writers.

After leaving her hometown in 1934 to study in Seoul, Park entered the Korean Literature department of Seoul National University, Korea’s leading institution, in 1950. But the outbreak of the Korean War led to the abandonment of her studies, which she did not resume after the war ended. Her works include short story and novella collections such as Mom’s Stake (1982), The Loneliness of You (1998), and the novels A Faltering Afternoon (1977), Winter Was Warm that Year (1983), Are You Still Dreaming? (1989), Who Ate All the Shing-ah? (1992), and To Dream of a Mountain (1995). According to the records of the Korea Literature Translation Institute, Park’s leading works, such as Who Ate All the Shing-ah? and Mom’s Stake, have been translated into nine languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Hungarian, Swedish, and Dutch.

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Excerpt

“His House” Kindhearted Bokhee Park Wansuh, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd., 2008, 302p ISBN 978-89-320-1814-0 03810

The following excerpt is from the short story “His House” in Park Wansuh’s short story collection Kindhearted Bokhee. The short story was first published in the 2002 summer issue of Literature and Society, and it was the basis of Park’s novel His House, published in 2004. The novel is a semi-autobiographical exploration of the writer’s first great love during her twenties.

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That summer, even in the midst of the North Korean invasion, his older brother managed to maintain a stable status and avoid becoming a target of the purges. Still, as they say, we each have but two legs, and a man can only straddle one line at a time: when the People’s Army beat their retreat, he followed them north. It was a solo defection at first; he left his wife and children behind, along with his elderly parents.

The world, however, was soon turned inside out again, and when the People’s Army returned that following winter, reoccupying Seoul, the older brother showed up too, ready to take his family back with him. His wife and children could have been willing, but his parents were a different story – their youngest had been conscripted by the South during the North’s retreat. In fact, it was his presence in the national army that saved the family from much of the harassment their eldest’s defection would have caused. It was quite a dilemma, no single solution presenting itself, and, in the end, the old couple chose to part ways. They decided that the father would go North with the older son and his family; the mother would remain, waiting for the youngest to come home.

This is how the young man, returning with an honorable discharge and a wound in his thigh, found only his elderly mother left all alone in that huge house. She’d become a snowy-haired old granny in his absence, but he failed to take her in his arms or shed a single tear; instead he berated her, railing at her for staying behind just to reap the rewards of his filial gratitude. How free he would be if only that old woman weren’t around – just thinking about it suffocated him, and he continued to berate her, day in, day out.

Just barely recovered from being turned inside out, the world, in the blink of an eye, was turned upside down again, and then, again, over once more; tossing and turning, rattling around the cracks of this topsy-turvy time, such things happened to our family, too. Just like they happened to his family. After all, when the gargantuan body of a so-called nation flips itself over and over, like a fish in a pan, how many of its subjects can possibly hope to survive unscathed?

So, you see, we never felt even the tiniest bit sorry for one another. The pain we endured was an everyday kind of thing: a table set with rice and kimchi. If there’d been even one family left completely whole, a family with no one dead, no one lost, I don’t know what we would have done; unable to stand the smug complacency of such a sight, we might have hatched a plot to kidnap one of them ourselves – an only son, maybe.

It was a sleepless night for me.

The light of the carbide lamp quivering, pale across his beautiful face; his delicate expression, looking at once haughty and melancholy; his firm body, apparent even through the bulky parka: I felt a dangerous wind well up within me.

Neither one of us ever wasted any energy on feeling sorry for the other, but I think we did sense something: the echo of fate, perhaps, reverberating through our parallel misfortunes. Like a girl who meets a gust of wind in the street and suddenly feels her skirt balloon up around her, I was torn; I yearned to soar, to float up into the air, but at the same time I wanted to yank my skirt back down, to sink to the floor in shame.

To save firewood, everyone in our family slept together in the main bedroom. They were deep in sleep, these few survivors, and I listened to the rhythm of their peaceful breathing: two widows, two little ones. Actually, the relief of hitting rock bottom might have been something quite different from peace; but peace – it’s just so much holier than the grief of the survivor.

And so I stood firm, fighting against my longing for the danger that whirled inside me.

He waited for me almost every day in front of the American army base. The day laborers there were a motley crew, ranging from the truly ignorant to college graduates, but they all had one thing in common; they all had something to hide. Many were draft dodgers. It may not have been official, but with a military uniform and an ID full of curly English letters, all you needed were a few tricks and some big talk to evade any inspections. The worn and the ragged, so unsure of themselves, were always curious about the handsome young man, so suited to his uniform, so healthy, so confident. It would have been better if he hadn’t claimed we were related, calling me his young cousin. No one believed it. Any “disabled” veteran with all his limbs intact became the object of much envy and resentment.

Let them think what they liked – we enjoyed such things.

Our happiness was elevated by such things. The way silks and jewels are pointless if no one sees and envies them, a lover that fails to inspire envy might be no better than no lover at all.

The handsomer he looked, the prettier I wanted to be. I could feel the sap beginning to rise in my body.

He said I was like a pearl.

Pearly eyes, pearly tears, pearly dew, pearly waves... No matter where you put it, it made the word shine.

The winter of that year became the pearl of my life.

Besides Angam Stream, there weren’t many places for lovers to go. We’d both just become university students, but before we ever had a chance to get used to that spot forbidden to high-schoolers, the war broke out, leaving Seoul in ruins. It was sheer luck that the theater survived.

During wartime the theater was never heated. He would kneel down at my side and turn his woolen gloves inside out, putting them over the tips of my feet. If you turn just the palm of a glove inside out, the five fingers stay bunched up inside; when you put that on over the tips of your feet, it doesn’t matter how frozen your toes are – they thaw, softening, warming up gently. I wonder how he ever thought up something so marvelous. It killed two birds with one stone; not only did my toes get warmer, I got to taste the satisfaction of being cherished.

We usually went to Joongang Theater, so more often than not we would launch ourselves out into the streets of Myeongdong once the movie was over. The roads were completely demolished and almost everyone had evacuated the city; even in the residential areas, most of the houses stood empty. The silvery lights of Myeong-dong in wartime felt something other than real. Under those lights, like a pair of fluttering moths, we drank in the freedom of it all.

We found a fancy tearoom to frequent; we discovered an expensive bakery; we learned the fun of shopping for useless trinkets at a Western-style boutique. Myeong-dong had other diversions to offer, too. There was an extravagant, imposing jeweler’s, patronized by the kind of high-class women who set up house with American officers. In one spacious corner of the shop there was a cozy little alcove, decorated like a parlor.

Even from outside you could see the customers there, wearing their sensual makeup, elegantly crossing their legs like western movie stars, delighting in the owner’s fawning. We never did see anyone just look at the wares, so we could never work up the nerve to go inside. But, you see, we didn’t need to; every precious piece of jewelry I marked as my own, standing there, glued to the shop window – it would all be mine someday.

His extravagant promise meant more to me than any jewel.

Translated by Chun Kyung-ja

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â“’ Eunsuk Joo

Overseas Angle

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ⓒ Eunsuk Joo

Marketing Manager Dave at Archipelago Books

Interview with Jill Schoolman, Publisher of Archipelago Books

Breaking Open World Literature to American Readers Jill Schoolman, the chief Executive of Archipelago Books in New York City, is known for her interest in international literature and active publishing record of literature in translation in diverse languages.

Korean Cultural Service New York librarian and journalist Kim Meekyung interviews Schoolman.

At 3rd Avenue & 3rd Street in Brooklyn, there was Jill Schoolman’s publishing company, Archipelago Books. From the outside, the building, almost 100 years old, looked rather modest. It was originally used as a can factory but later renovated into an office building. On the first floor, a mountain of books surrounded her 200 square feet office. There were five people, and only two, including her, make up the company’s staff. Schoolman is the Chief Executive and Dave is a marketing manager; the designer lives in California. There are three interns, but that’s it. Although Archipelago Books is small, the work that they do there is big enough to potentially change America’s book market. Schoolman was the most attractive woman I had met so far in New York. Who is she?

What is she doing? What is the company doing?

Kim Meekyung: I heard that Archipelago Books is very interested in foreign literature and culture. I understand that your company is one of the few publishing companies that publishes foreign language books in translation. Can you explain why you established your company?

Jill Schoolman: Archipelago Books was founded in 2003 as a non-profit press supported by individuals and foundations. I founded this company with the goal of increasing awareness of literary voices from around the world. There is an urgent need to make international literature available to American readers.

According to a recent NEA study, of the 10,000 books of fiction and poetry annually published in this country, only 300 are works in translation. America has grown into an empire that prefers to export rather than import, even when it comes to literature. Our goal is to discover what’s out there, and it is a labor of love.

In part, I started Archipelago because there seemed to be an urgent need. So many important international writers, both living and dead, are simply not being introduced and read here. But, I must admit, it was more out of love than duty. I’m naturally drawn toward literature beyond our borders. It’s what I love to read. Reading is a voyage, and for me it can be as eye-opening (and moving) as traveling abroad.

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Overseas Angle

JS: Yes, our company is a non-profit press. All the profits that come in from book sales or foreign rights sales, we put back into the company to publish our next books. One-third of our income comes from our book sales, and the other third comes from government support: the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts), NYCulture (New York City Department of Cultural Affairs), the New York State Council on the Arts, and from private foundations. The final third comes from private donors and contributors. When I started the press in 2003, there were only two major donors and 15 private donors. All came from my personal relationships. Now we have almost 100 donors and contributors, and steady support from foundations and ministries of culture abroad.

I feel that one of the reasons we’re still afloat today is because we decided to establish ourselves as a not-for-profit company rather than for-profit. It gives us more freedom to publish the books we feel are valuable.

KM: Then in America, are there many similar publishing companies like yours?

JS: There are not many, but there are some important ones.

New Directions, Open Letter, Seven Stories, Copper Canyon, Dalkey Archive, and Graywolf come to mind. Of this group, New Directions and Seven Stories are for-profit while the other three are not-for-profit. Each has a distinctive vision, so it is difficult to compare us, or put us all into one pot.

KM: Can you kindly explain the current situation of translated books in the American book market? (If it's too broad a question, can you recommend a reference article relating to this subject?)

JS: Surprisingly, the number of translated books in the American book market is tiny. This is embarrassing, and limits the reading public's connection to the literary culture in the rest of the world. It results partly from the fault of the literary gatekeepers.

Many editors and publishers in this country are monolingual and are hesitant to rely on outside readers, translated excerpts, or foreign publishers to make decisions. On top of that, there is a selfperpetuating myth among publishers that translations don’t sell.

It is costly to bring over authors from abroad, and radio programs are reluctant to interview authors who need an interpreter. The media tends to pay less attention to world literature, with the exception of Nobel Prize winners and a select circle of recognizable names who have made it onto the map.

At the moment, big publishers are reluctant to focus on authors from other countries, no matter how important they are in their native countries. Many publishers have few editors who read foreign languages so they must rely on the advice of readers, friends, professors, and translators as to which foreign books might capture the imagination of Americans.

In the 1960s and 1970s, translated books were a more central part of the American book market. But since then, international 36

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ⓒ Eunsuk Joo

KM: You told me your company is a non-profit press. Does that mean that you receive no profit from your sales? What is your business strategy?

Archipelago Books, located on the first floor

literature has been marginalized. In the last few years, there seems to be a growing openness, if not hunger, again. The community of publishers, literary magazines, websites, and blogs is certainly increasing. This is exciting.

KM: Then...as the chief executive of your company, can I ask you in which languages you speak fluently?

JS: I am fluent in French, proficient in Spanish and Italian, and am working on a few others. I’d love to spend some time in Korea and other parts of Asia. We’d love to expand our list of titles (and my own knowledge) from that part of the world. It's one of our goals.

KM: Which book was the most popular translated book that you have published until now?

JS: Khoury’s Gate of the Sun. We have sold over 7,000 more copies, and sold the paperback rights. We marketed the book aggressively and were fortunate to receive an early rave review from The New York Times, which set the book up for an excellent reception. It's a rare pleasure to be able to see such an important book getting the attention it deserves.

KM: Your company translated and published the famous 1930s Korean novel Three Generations, by Yom Sang-Soep. How did you decide to translate and publish this novel? Can you explain your decision-making process, and what was the public's response to your publication of this title?

JS: I was working with a young Korean woman, Chi-Young Kim, a few years ago. It was Chi-Young’s mother, Yu Youngnan, who had translated the book. Chi-Young put the book into my hands, but it spoke to me immediately. I was stunned that such a wonderfully human and important classic wasn’t available in English. Yu Youngnan did a remarkable job with the translation.

She had already translated Pak Wansuh’s The Naked Tree (Cornell East Asia Series, 1995). The book has done very well for us. We

sold through the 3,000 hardcover copies and are selling steadily through our first printing of the paperback.

KM: Can you explain to me how you choose the books that you will translate and publish? Do you have any special standards?

How do you get information about foreign language books, and what kinds of information do you rely on? In particular, how do you get information about Korean books?

JS: We don’t have standard guidelines. What I’m most drawn to is an original voice and point of view, and an author that has something urgent or profound to say. I also have an affinity for the terrain where poetry meets prose. Authors and titles make their way to us in a variety of ways: through editors and rights’ directors in various countries, through translators and professors and readers and writers, and by reading excerpts. For Korean books, we are in touch with a few translators and professors, and sometimes I'm able to read Korean books in French. The KLTI has an informative magazine that is often very useful.

KM: If possible, can you tell me your thoughts about the differences between Japanese, Chinese, and Korean literature?

KM: One of the most serious problems in foreign language translation is the fact that there are few translators who are fluent in both languages. Often, when we engage in a translation from Korean to English, we use two people, one who is fluent in Korean, and one who is fluent in English, to work as a team. How do you solve this problem? In order to get a high-quality translation, can you give us some ideas on how you approach it?

JS: I believe it is absolutely vital for the translator to have a feeling for the nuances of both languages in order to do justice to the original. I don’t believe it is possible to capture the spirit of a work without not only being able to understand the words but also feel the tone and the silences of a text. A translator needs to listen with all of his or her senses, and I don’t feel that this can happen as powerfully or beautifully or magically with a middleman involved.

ⓒ Eunsuk Joo

JS: It would be impossible for me to attempt to generalize about their similarities and differences. I’d like very much to delve into and explore the literary traditions of all three countries, and hope I will have a chance to over the years.

Three Generations, Yom Sang-seop Jill Schoolman and Kim Meekyung

KM: What is your dream, in terms of Archipelago?

JS: My dream is that our books will open people’s minds and speak to their hearts, that they might chisel away at stereotypes and awaken curiosity about other cultures and ways of seeing and being. I hope that our books might touch people deeply and serve as catalysts for social change and that they might bring people together.

By Kim Meekyung

KM: How has your business been affected by the recession?

JS: Our book sales have been fairly steady. Over the past year, however, the contributions to the press have ebbed; both foundation support and individual donations have fallen by about 30 percent. We’re doing what we can to put more time and energy into fundraising.

KM: Are you happy and satisfied with your work? Which aspect of publishing do you find the most rewarding?

JS: I enjoy the acquisition process very much, and I also love the process of editing. It’s a pleasure to work with translators to make the texts come alive in English.

Chief Executive Jill Schoolman's Profile Jill Schoolman graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts in English and Film Studies in 1992. She studied English literature at Oxford University from 1989-90. She has been working at Seven Stories Press in the editorial department for three years. She has participated in editors exchange programs in France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, and Turkey. In 1997, her novel Down to the River was published by Philippe Hunt Editeur in Belgium. From 1994-96, she worked as an assistant film editor in Paris and delivered pizzas on mopeds.

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Overseas Angle

The Old Garden Hwang Sok-yong, Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2007, 331p, ISBN 978-89-364-3590-5

The Old Garden,

A Masterful Journey to the Past into History Hwang Sok-yong is often referred to as Korea’s best candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but Hwang’s stories are about truly international characters. Oddly enough Seven Stories Press first learned about Korea’s leading author through his French publisher, Zulma. While editing The Old Garden, his tribute to South Korea’s democratic movement, I found myself checking the French translation and looking up German U-bahn stations, Russian towns, quotations from Bertolt Brecht and Käthe Kollwitz.

The translator and I joked, "How many languages do you need to know to translate a Hwang Sok-yong novel?"

In the midst of today’s fast-paced, globalized world, America’s population remains overwhelmingly and stubbornly monolinguistic. This is especially tragic in terms of literature when one considers the imbalance between how many books are translated from English and how few are translated into English. Some of the world’s greatest thinkers and most talented writers remain un38

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known to Americans. And when Americans do peek beyond their borders, the stories they are exposed to are often reproductions of common perceptions. The Columbian writer writes about violence and crime in Bogotá; the Afghani writer about the repression of women in a Taliban-controlled village. Readers flock to these stories thinking they will gain entry into an exotic, cloistered world. But a post-9/11 world from the perspective of a Korean woman who marries a Muslim man in London? Or about how the fall of the Berlin Wall affects a Korean fighting for democracy in South Korea in the 1980s? These cultural permutations are unheard of. These are exactly the perspectives Hwang Sok-yong brings to light in his works Princess Bari and The Old Garden.

His characters are Korean and his writing has been consistently inspired by the history of his country, but his characters don’t reside in isolation. They are world citizens who are powerfully affected by international politics and respond in kind. Perhaps that

ⓒ Park Jung hoon

is a reflection of the author’s own ability to be a global citizen.

I first met Mr. Hwang in 2005. Gregarious and magnetic with an infectious grin, he was not what I expected from a man who had spent eight years in prison for violating Korea’s national security law. He quickly and easily became part of the Seven Stories family, giving big bear hugs, traveling to readings in the outer boroughs of New York with our publicist, and gladly staying at our publisher’s apartment and introducing him as “Dan, my publisher, and friend.” When Mr. Hwang visited again earlier this year, we were happy to see that he had kept himself very busy in the four intervening years. While the publishing industry is struggling to reinvent itself in a digital marketplace, Hwang Sok-yong merrily described his months writing a novel on his blog and responding to readers every night. In the same breath, he mentioned that he was organizing a peace train with North Korean novelist Hong Seok-jung and Nobel laureates Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio of France and Orhan Pamuk of Turkey.

Seven Stories Press has always been interested in sharing the story that no one else is telling and taking a chance on an author who is bringing a new dimension to a larger dialogue. That’s why Hwang Sok-yong is a perfect fit for us. At the same time, as the author of nine works of fiction, including several bestselling novels that have been made into successful films, no one can doubt his ability to tell a good story.

The Old Garden tells two tales of epic proportions: one is the tragic love story of the two narrators of the novel and the other is a country’s historical struggle for democracy. Against the dramatic backdrop of a period when students and factory workers set themselves on fire and bombed American cultural centers to protest a violent military dictatorship, Hyunwoo and Yoonhee meet and fall in love. Their affair is brief, but life-altering. It is not an exaggeration to call it Hwang Sok-yong’s Dr. Zhivago.

With several of his comrades already captured, Hyunwoo goes into hiding in the countryside with a young art teacher, Yoonhee. The two quickly build their own Eden, an oasis from the outside world, a peaceful garden in a harsh land, but Hyunwoo can’t help but think of his fallen comrades and their unfinished fight against Chun Doo-hwan’s military dictatorship.

Hyunwoo returns to Seoul, but is soon captured and sentenced to life in prison. Because they were never legally wed, Yoonhee is not allowed to see or correspond with Hyunwoo. It is only 18 years later, after Hyunwoo is released and Yoonhee has passed away, that Hyunwoo learns of their daughter.

I first became familiar with Hwang Sok-yong’s writing when we published The Guest, which graphically portrayed the littleknown story of a bloody confrontation between Christian and Communist neighbors. Mr. Hwang has compared the book to an exorcism, with ghosts airing their grievances. Violent, traumatic, and incredibly powerful, it was a painful and fascinating book to edit. When I heard that The Old Garden was a romance, I doubted that the same writer who could graphically portray the very worst in human nature, could also write convincingly about love.

Yet I was proven wrong. The love between Hyunwoo and Yoonhee is honest and real, tender without falling into clichés. Hwang Sok-yong challenges the conventional image of a patient lady-inwaiting and a submissive Korean female by infusing Yoonhee with a fierce independence and a sharp, saucy tongue. Hyunwoo is never too far from her thoughts, but it doesn’t stop her from trav-

eling the world, meeting and developing bonds with intriguing people, and being pulled into a bit of political organizing herself.

While their love story grounds the novel, the reader meets a cast of captivating characters. There is Youngtae, the awkward son of a tycoon, who earnestly (or as Yoonhee teases, “too earnestly”) works to spread the teachings of Marxism. There is Park, a struggling factory worker who Hyunwoo befriends. There is Mari, Yoonhee’s neighbor in Berlin, a lonely drunk who becomes Yoonhee’s unlikely counselor. There is Heesoo, a Korean ex-pat in Germany who is a gentle balm to Yoonhee’s heart for a little while.

Their stories and struggles shed light on an incredible era.

Growing up Chinese-American, my studies in history have always been skewed through the lenses of two global superpowers. For most Americans, our knowledge of Korea is limited to the Korean War and the current threats of North Korea’s nuclear plans. It was a surprise to me when I learned that, according to a poll conducted by Seoul National University, an overwhelming number of Koreans cited the Gwangju Massacre, not the Korean War, as the greatest tragedy in Korea’s modern history. I am incredibly grateful to know the writings of Hwang Sok-yong and, through him, to be introduced to this chapter in Korean history, and to recognize the lives that were shaped by it.

By Anna Lui (rights director of Seven Stories Press)

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Overseas Angle

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Pak Kyongni’s Land:

A Masterpiece that Combines Literature and History Land Pak Kyongni, Nanam Publishing House, 2002, 419p ISBN 89-300-0701-5

The Ethnic Publishing House is one of the four Central Public Interest Publishing Houses that make up the National Publishing House in China. As a publishing institute authorized to publish books on ethnic minorities in China, it publishes many books on minority politics, economics, arts and culture, and academic research. Of the 1,000 titles published yearly, approximately 70 percent are books published in minority languages, such as Mongolian, Tibetan, Uyghur, Kazakh, and Korean. In recent years, over 100 Korean titles have been published, with up to 20 volumes imported from Korea, including Korean language textbooks, literary works, and academic books. The Ethnic Publishing House works to spread the outstanding traditional arts and culture of ethnic groups within China with the aim of creating ethnic brands that preserve the distinctive qualities of each group, and to promote smoother and more diverse cultural exchange and cooperation between different ethnic groups in China and around the world.

It would be no exaggeration to say that Chinese readers think of Korean literature as consisting entirely of Guiyeoni’s online novels, Kim Hain’s popular novels, and novels based on Korean soap operas. The works of some serious writers of modern Korean literary fiction have been translated and published in China, but they have failed to connect with readers, in contrast with Japanese literature, which has enjoyed much more popularity. The readership for serious Korean literature in China has been largely limited to Korean language learners and researchers of Korean literature. The Korean cultural craze that has engulfed China for the past few years has not been able to put Korean literature into the center of the action, and Korean literature in turn has not been up to the task of announcing its presence through systematic, focused translations and publications.

It was in this context that Land by Pak Kyongni, a master of modern Korean literature, was introduced. Volume one of part one has already been published, and the second volume is soon to hit the market. What has made this possible was Pak Kyongni’s unrivaled position in the history of modern Korean literature and the shared history of struggle and misfortune in China and Korea dating from the late 19th century to the mid 20th century. The incompetence of the feudal dynasty, occupation by the Japanese empire, the disillusionment of the common people—amidst these rough waves of history, both countries were faced with the crises of having to choose between survival and destruction, dignity and humiliation, and struggle and surrender. In the meantime, people’s lives continued as slowly and ponderously as ever, while

countless small changes shook them from the roots up. Pak Kyongni’s touching and heartwarming narrative style and her tense and dramatic plot development, which depicts the lives and customs of the common people, and the changes in people and history that are both strangely familiar and unfamiliar, help narrow the gap between Chinese readers and traditional Korean literature, thus helping form emotional and psychological connections between the two groups of people.

Land is told in five parts over 16 volumes. First serialized in 1969, the majestic saga finally ended in August 1994, after 26 straight years. The novel is set during an era of cataclysmic changes, spanning from the 1890s to 1945, in the small village of Pyeongsari in southeast Korea. Centering on Sohi, the granddaughter of the wealthy landowning Choi Champan, and the people around her, the novel features a cast of over 700 characters, including illiterate farmers, shrewd wives, restaurant owners near the village fishing hole, people who are more frightening than animals, such as posoos (hunters), conservatives, radicals, monks and shamans, Donghak rebels, devoted patriots, murderers, and pro-Japanese collaborators. There are people who laugh, people who cry, people who bear grudges, people whose hearts ache from unrequited love, people who lose their sense of humanity because they are blinded by greed, and people who live their lives as humble tillers of the soil only to die suddenly of unforeseen contagious disease. Some fade into the background, leaving only a small ripple, while others set off major changes in the lives of the protagonist and those around her. For all of these characters, sorrow is the common denominator. That sorrow is the grudge that takes root in the hearts of the common people who turn their backs on their homelands and embrace the fate of their ruined country, as well as an expression of that complex Korean emotional state of mind called han. Han, a mixture of sorrow and bitterness, and Pak’s narrative style, run through each volume of Land, creating an exquisite harmony of grandiose scale and fine detail. The book’s power lies in its ability to cause the reader to set the book down, unable to bear the heart-rending events, only to immediately pick it back up again.

One of Pak Kyongni’s novels, The Curse of Kim’s Daughters, has already been translated and published in China. The publication of Land is believed to be an enormous help in terms of understanding Pak Kyongni’s literary ideas and philosophy of life and history. According to Korean literary critic Kang Jinho, “Pak Kyongni’s importance in modern Korean literature will probably be just as significant as the existence of the common people, who are as essential as air or water.”

By Nan Haixian (editor of The Ethnic Publishing House)

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Overseas Angle

New Poems from “The Ambassador of Sijo” Bo-Leaf Books is honored to be publishing David McCann’s Urban Temple, the first book-length collection of sijo composed in English.

Urban Temple: sijo, twisted & straight David McCann, Bo-Leaf Books, U.S.A., 2009, 96p ISBN 978-0-9768086-3-3

At Manhae Village Mystified by the dark light yet eager to try the drum, the great bell, hollow wood fish, bronze hammered plaque that calls the birds, one by one, as the monk calls us we step forward and begin.

Master translator, scholar and above all poet, David McCann wrote his first sijo in Korean in 1966 while he lived in Andong as a Peace Corps volunteer. Now, after 40 years of living with the sijo tradition, studying Korean literature, and translating illustrious poets like Kim Ji-ha, Kim Sowol, Ko Un, and Cho Oh-hyun into English, McCann, a worthy inheritor of a distinguished Korean tradition, presents us with an ambitious, wide-ranging, and pioneering collection of his own work.

In poems that range from the political to the lyrical, Urban Temple celebrates the versatility of the sijo with astonishing dexterity. Like many Korean poets before him, McCann’s explorations of this traditional three-line form, favored by the great 16th century Korean poets such as Yulgok and Toegye, are rich with philosophical insight. McCann’s evocation of place, whether he is writing about Maine, Massachusetts, or Korea, recalls the sense of play and the sparse wonder of the renowned American poet Elizabeth Bishop, who was one of his teachers.

Like Bishop, McCann also finds a profound opportunity for poetic achievement through the rigorous exploration of form. As the title suggests, Urban Temple is also infused with Buddhist themes and brings together poems of grief, longing, and reflection in an unsparing journey of loss and discovery characteristic of the Korean Seon poets.

McCann makes the best of sijo’s inherent flexibility and versatility. In his “straight” sijo he closely follows the orthodox Korean syllabic structure in English, while his “twisted” sijo are playful and often witty innovations that verge on the postmodern.

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Unlike haiku, a form that is routinely taught in American elementary schools, sijo is little known in the West. McCann’s collection will be the first introduction to sijo for many readers; his introductory essay and afterword in Urban Temple bring to life the rich history of sijo , while also explaining the central elements of the form. McCann provides fascinating and nuanced commentary on the poetry of Hwang Chini, among others.

David McCann has earned the name “The ambassador of sijo ” for his educational outreach at places like the Bancroft School, and through such events as the recent international Harvard-Manhae Sijo Festival he organized at Harvard University in the spring of 2009. McCann’s poems have appeared in such distinguished journals as Poetry, Ploughshares, and Prairie Schooner. His recent collection of poems, The Way I Wait For You, was published in 2007. Winner of a Pushcart Prize for poetry, he has also been the recipient of numerous other prizes, grants, and fellowships including the Korean Cultural Order of Merit (2006), the prestigious Manhae Prize in Arts and Sciences (2004), and the Korea P.E.N. Center Translation Prize (1994). He is currently the Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations as well as Director of the Korea Institute at Harvard University.

By Anne B. Dalton (publisher and editor-in-chief, Bo-Leaf Books)

Writer's Note

ⓒ Munhakdongne

The Burger Must Be Ordered Between October and December of 2008, I was in Spain and Portugal participating in the Korea Literature Translation Institute Overseas Residency Program for Korean Writers. I experienced a good deal during my travels, but in this essay, I feel I must talk about how to order a burger. When traveling abroad alone, and I’m sure everybody does this, I often grab a burger. My parents ran a bakery, which in Korea, meant I ate a lot of burgers as a child. By the time I reached adulthood, I had stopped enjoying them. Even so, I gravitate toward burgers when traveling around Europe or the United States because a burger really is the most convenient meal for a traveler.

This is how I order a burger: I look for the golden arches. I follow the large yellow M and walk through the door of the establishment attached to it. I wait for the line to shrink. When I get to the counter, I point at the picture of the set menu that I made a mental note of during the wait.

The employee taps on the set menu button on the cash register, looks up at me, and says something. Fast food restaurant employees all over the world are supposed to ask something at that moment. It might be part of the fast food company policy. If the place in question is Korea, they will ask, “May I get you anything else today?” or “Would you like to try our side menu?” They do not always ask that, but experience over time has led me to expect something like it.

The same goes for when I am abroad. The employees ask me something at that point. Based on experience, I expect the question to be similar to what the employees in Korea ask me. But when I am in a foreign country for the first time, and I have not yet spent a full day there and the employees ask me questions that are not similar to any question I expect, I panic when faced by the unexpected question, at which point the employee’s words begin to sound extraterrestrial. And so I hit a roadblock in my burger-ordering endeavor. The roadblock is the result of my hasty generalization. Wishing to hear only what I want to hear, I have brought miscommunication upon myself.

Once I erase the expected questions and listen to what the employee is saying, I hear the question. It was “Cash or Credit?” in the States, and in Spain, the employee asked, “What kind of bread would you like?” I quickly understood the American’s question, but it took me a while to understand the Spanish employee’s question. No burger joint had ever offered me the choice as to what kind of bread I would like. To understand this question, I must erase all of my prior burger ordering experiences and translate the employee’s question word for word. “Hmm. I would like soft bread, please. That one over there.” If you can communicate in a city you had never been to, you are amazing. Once you have experienced this a few times, you can handle such amazing tasks with relative ease, that is, unless you hop on a plane and fly off to yet another unfamiliar country.

If we cannot order the burger, we starve. But there is nothing painful about not being able to read foreign novels. Unless you possess a fierce literary curiosity, you prefer novels written in your native language to foreign ones. Sentences that flow through your head in your native language are as wearying as the employee throwing unexpected questions at you when reading in a foreign language. Under those circumstances, one cannot demand fierce literary curiosity from foreign readers. Therefore, universal themes are always important. Cultural differences can be overcome only when there is a familiar theme. That is to say, the burger must be ordered. The special revelation that you can pick your buns in Spain – that comes later.

By Kim Yeon-su Kim Yeon-su is a Korean novelist. His major works include Song of the Night; Whoever You Are, No Matter How Lonely; I’m a Ghost Writer; and When Still a Child. He has received the Daesan Literary Award with I’m a Ghost Writer, the Dongin Prize with When Still a Child, and the Yi Sang Literature Prize with “Five Pleasures of Those Who Take Walks.”

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The Place

Incheon, Gateway to Korea Opened to the world in 1883, the port city of Incheon was the site of a decisive turn in the Korean War, when General MacArthur landed UN troops there in 1950.

In 2001, it became the home of world famous Incheon International Airport.

This year, the Global Fair & Festival Incheon, Korea is being held from August to October 25, 2009, and the Asian Games will also be hosted there in 2014.

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ⓒ Hyun Ji Hoon

1

2

1. Black Flower Kim Young-ha, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp.

2004, 356p, ISBN 89-8281-714-X 2. The Diary of Kim Gu Kim Gu, Dolbegae Publishers 1997, 472p, ISBN 978-89-7199-255-5

The city of Incheon occupies a strategic point of entry into Korea on the Yellow Sea, 40 kilometers west of Seoul. Currently known for Incheon International Airport, Korea’s most well-known airport, the city was also the site of the Battle of Incheon, a decisive move led by General MacArthur in the Korean War. As of 2009, the population of Incheon stood at 2,750,000, making it the third largest city in Korea behind Seoul and Busan.

But as recently as 1883, when the port of Incheon was forcibly opened by Japan and the West, it was just a small fishing village with just over 2,000 residents. The population increased by over 1,000 in just 120 years after the port opened, and the small fishing village was completely transformed into a modern city. As a result, Incheon accompanied the glory and shame of Korea’s modern history more than any other city. It was both a foreign concession under Japanese, Chinese, and western powers, and the port from which many Koreans left as migrant workers. Kim Youngha’s novel Black Flower depicts the lives of those people who left as migrant workers from Incheon. People left their hometowns and flooded to Incheon in the hopes of finding work building the harbor and railroad. Even prison convicts were mobilized to help

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The Place

ⓒ Good Morning Incheon

Incheon‘s Chinatown / Harvesting salt

build the harbor. Special facilities were needed to enable commercial ships to enter the port, where tide levels vary dramatically.

Kim Gu, who played a leading role in the founding of the Republic of Korea and who was also known by his pen name Baekbeom, also labored in Incheon before escaping prison. In his biography, The Diary of Kim Gu, he captures the appearance of Incheon in the early days of the opening of the port.

Since modernity entered Korea through Incheon with the opening of the port, traces of western modernity were left behind.

The first modern park, church, school, and other buildings can still be found in the heart of the city, including the houses where western, Chinese, and Japanese residents lived. Though much was

Chinatown Oh Jung-hee, Hollym Publishers, 2007, 151p ISBN 1-56591-206-3

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destroyed in the Korean War, the city contains relatively more relics of this era than any other city in Korea.

With the end of World War II, Japan conceded defeat and retreated, and Korea was divided into North and South. With national division and the Cold War, Incheon Port could no longer fulfill its role as the center of the western coast of the peninsula.

Then, in 1950, the city was leveled during the Battle of Incheon.

The UN forces’ amphibious landing changed the tide of the Korean War, but destroyed the city in the process. Oh Jung-hee’s Chinatown depicts the poverty that took hold in Incheon after the war. Through the coming-of-age story of a girl who moves with her family to Incheon, Chinatown takes a critical look at the backdrop of the Chinese concession that was formed during the opening of the port, and astutely captures from a female point of view the destitute lives of the Chinese who were pushed out of their own country and the Koreans who flowed to the city in search of work.

Starting in the 1960s, then President Park Chung-hee, who aggressively pursued industrialization, focused on Seoul and Incheon as key sites for the realization of his goals. He created the so-called Seoul-Incheon Manufacturing Zone, built an expressway, and concentrated the factory district on reclaimed land from Incheon’s coast and salt flats. The population grew as young people left farms to move to the city in search of factory work.

Living conditions in the city could not keep pace with this highspeed development and the rapid pace of industrialization. The city was congested and lacked housing, roads, schools, and parks.

Problems associated with industrialization began to arise. The air became polluted, and workers began to demand respect for their rights. Eungang-si, the city depicted in Cho Se-hui’s A Dwarf Launches a Little Ball, was based on Incheon. The “dwarf ’s” children fight with capitalists while working in factories in Eungangsi. This gray city looks like a hopeless place, but as the author points out, it is fundamentally a city of love. The story is a clear allegory for how hope can never be abandoned so long as people have love for each other. In addition, the bestselling young adult

ⓒ Good Morning Incheon

ⓒ Good Morning Incheon

Incheon port

Also, the Asian Games will be held in Incheon in 2014, and the Global Fair & Festival will be held this year. These large-scale events plan to demonstrate Incheon’s new direction as a city of the future. Incheon is a dynamic city, indeed. Even now, some talented writers somewhere could be using their imagination and exquisite prose to capture this city on paper.

By Yi Hyun-shik (literary critic, Incheon Foundation for Arts & Culture executive director)

A Dwarf Launches a Little Ball Cho Se-hui, Iseonggwa Him, 2008, 351p ISBN 978-89-951512-0-4

novel Children of Gwaengiburimal is also set in Incheon. Gwaengiburi is the unusual name of a coastal village in Incheon. The story is both a realistic and heart warming portrayal of the happy lives of the children who live in this poor neighborhood. In this novel as well, Incheon is depicted as a city of minorities living in the shadow of Seoul.

Currently, Incheon is preparing to take a new leap. New infrastructure is being built to clear away the shadow of industrialization. The entire city is being revitalized. The new city of Songdo that is being built is aimed at becoming an international city, and the city is taking on an ultramodern appearance. In addition, the old heart of the city that was formed during the period of the opening of the port is being culturally revitalized, as represented by the Incheon Art Platform. The port warehouse district is being transformed into art studios, which are set to open in October.

Children of Gwaengiburimal Kim Joong-mi, Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2001, 274p, ISBN 89-364-3344-x

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Theme Lounge

Korean Cookbooks Culinary experience leads to healing effects

The following are my favorite Korean books whose subjects include world-renowned kimchi, temple food, royal cuisine, and local dishes. These books introduce the distinctively Korean foods and culinary delights that hint at the future direction of healthy diets for people around the world.

1. Seonjae’s Temple Food Seonjae, Design House, 2005, 240p ISBN 978-89-7041-917-6 2. Korean Food Odyssey Chung Haekyung, Thinking Tree Publishing Co. 2007, 267p, ISBN 978-89-8498-791-3

1

2

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ⓒ MBC

I have been a news reporter at The Dong-A Ilbo for the past 20 years, and when it comes to food coverage, I become deeply excited.

In 2005, I obtained the government’s official Korean food cooking certificate, and two years later I gained a western food cooking certificate. That’s how I got the nickname, “Cook Reporter.” All of this helps me pay more attention to notable dishes, culinary innovation, and renowned restaurants.

Back in August 2005, I received a phone call from a Buddhist monk at Magoksa (temple) located in Gongju-si, Chungcheongnam-do (province). He told me over the phone that Lee Young-ae, who played a starring role in the Asia-wide hit TV drama “Daejanggeum,” would visit the famous temple for two days. It’s certainly worth writing about, he said, and asked me to report on her visit.

Lee Young-ae played a central character in “Daejanggeum,” a blockbuster drama series that featured Joseon Dynasty’s royal cuisine and medical sciences. The drama made its way to Japan, China, the United States, and Europe, on the strength of its unique themes and powerful dramatic effects. Since it introduces Korean royal food and medical sciences in unprecedented detail, it is natural that it captured the imagination of many foreign viewers. When the drama gained great popularity, Japan’s state-run broadcasting station NHK decided to run the series for the Japanese local market. Ahead of the planned broadcast in Japan, NHK was preparing a documentary about Lee’s stay at a Korean temple as well as temple food. I reported on the NHK documentary and Lee Young-ae’s stay at the temple, which later created quite a buzz.

But why did NHK opt for a Korean temple when it wanted to introduce Lee to Japanese viewers? Perhaps the Japanese broadcaster’s decision was based on the fact that temple food is key to the Korean culinary sensibility, and “Daejanggeum” is chiefly concerned with Korean food. Lee played a female court doctor as well as the main chef for the royal family in the drama, which depicts Korean sentiments, Korean food, and Koreans’ views about health.

A variety of Korean books published in recent years are shedding light on the implications of Korean food and Koreans’ concerns about a healthy diet.

The royal cuisine and temple food

Lee Young-ae, the heroine of “Daejanggeum”

featured in “Daejanggeum” are explained in detail in Korean Food Odyssey, written by Hoseo University professor Chung Haekyung and Seonjae’s Temple Food, written by the renowned Buddhist monk Seonjae. Professor Chung studied Western dietetics, but has confidence in the global appeal of Korean food. He divided the book into three chapters: the core of Korean food; Korean food and its history; and the aesthetics of Korean food.

Professor Chung explains that the dramatized “Daejanggeum” character is both a scientist and a medical doctor. He says that a cook should make efforts to consider not only taste but also other factors such as the location where the raw food is produced and the food’s impact on a human body. In other words, the cooking in “Daejanggeum” symbolizes the ultimate combination of all the related knowledge of food and health. Making a dish and eating it could be part of medical treatments, according to Professor Chung.

Professor Chung claims that the key aspect of Korean culture is none other than Korean food. In the book, he introduces bibimbap, a favorite dish for Koreans.

Bibimbap is a combination of various vegetables and meats, and the subtle mixture of different tastes (sweet, sour, salty, bitter, spicy) based on the countr y’s traditional philosophy about how the c o s m o s w o rk s . A b a l a n c e d t a s t e , a s

delicately illustrated in the exquisite bibimbap, also represents well-being.

Seonjae’s Temple Food was first published in 2000. The book is a compilation of various temple dishes that Monk Seonjae introduced on a Korean TV program he hosted for one year on a Buddhist network.

He is currently promoting temple food while running a temple food and culture center. The book, composed of four chapters named after four seasons, covers a range of temple foods in harmony with spring, summer, fall, and winter.

The book does not cover any extreme tastes, opting not to cover any spicy, salty, or sour food. In the spring chapter, the author introduces a delicacy made of artemisia. In addition, he never fails to mention mouthwatering handmade knifecut noodles and steamed rice cakes mixed with artemisia. Salted vegetables made of shepherd’s purses is also an item that is bound to stimulate one’s appetite. In the summer chapter, the author highlights food made of pumpkin and corn, both of which are readily available in Korea.

Taro, which gets harvested in the fall, can be used for many different dishes. Taro is also effective in lowering the temperature in the stomach and other internal organs, and equally useful for relieving constipation.

Taro’s key component is carbohydrates, and it also comes with glucose, fructose, and a dozen amino acids and potassium. That is

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Theme Lounge

Kimchi Odyssey Kim Man-jo, Lee Kyou-tae, Design House, 2008, 383p ISBN 978-89-7041-987-9

why taro is widely known as a restorative.

In the fall, the preferred menus include mung beans and mushrooms against the serene backdrop of a temple.

Winter also comes with a variety of food items, including a bowl of rice or noodles, whose ingredients are preserved potatoes, lotus leaves, and lotus roots. Lotus leaves stand for heaven in Buddhism. Rice wrapped in lotus leaf is a typical temple food rich in vitamins and iron. Other ingredients such as glutinous rice, red beans, and lotus root are said to relieve fatigue and enhance relaxation. A regular diet of lotus leaf rice can help improve overall health and prolong lifespan.

Although the book is concerned about Korean food, it offers smooth and easy-tounderstand explanations about the health and medical effects of temple food.

In 2002, the Korean squad made it to the semifinals in the Korea-Japan World Cup Soccer Championship, shocking many people across the world. The Korean players defeated Italian and Spanish counterparts in dramatic matches that were full of surprises.

Many observers said that kimchi helped the Korean soccer players pull off such impressive results in 2002. In 2003 when the SARS scare was spreading around the world, Koreans showed little anxiety 50

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because its impact was almost nonexistent in Korea. Some experts claimed that such exceptional immunity of Koreans against SARS is perhaps due to kimchi, which contains garlic.

Researchers and scientists around the world are scrambling to study kimchi. But what is kimchi, after all? The answer is clearly explained in Kimchi Odyssey, jointly written by Kim Man-jo and Lee Kyou-tae.

American writer Alvin Toffler discussed the importance of the third taste for humanity.

The first taste came from salt, and the second taste came from spices and condiments. The third taste is none other than fermentation.

Kimchi highlights the potential of f e r m e n t a t i o n . K i m Ma n - j o , a f o o d researcher living in the United States, has studied kimchi in and out in the past 50 years. His nickname is appropriately “Kimchi Doctor.”

The book illustrates Korean kimchi’s history and related customs. Also included are extensive natural science and geographical knowledge concerning kimchi.

The author strongly argues that kimchi is the very future of human food.

An academic journal article analyzed The New York Times’ reports on Korean food in the past 10 years. The journal

shows that the influential American newspaper produced a total of 110 news articles on Korean food in the time period, 80 percent of which were related to kimchi.

Most articles in question dealt with the health effects of kimchi, touting it as one of the top five food items in the world.

Recently, a newspaper article covered the popularity of a fusion dish–Korean kimchi and Mexican taco–in Los Angeles. Indeed, kimchi is attracting attention from a large number of people across the world, and Korea is now keen to globalize kimchi.

For those who want to learn about major Korean dishes in detail, Han Bokjin’s 100 Dishes Korean People Should Know is a great choice. The author is an expert in the field as she has earned a certificate in the royal cuisine of the Joseon Dynasty.

Han has made efforts to taste and learn about food outside of Korea. Her globetrotting, however, resulted in her heightened perception of the true taste and elegant style of Korean food. The book lists almost all the major Korean food items including soups, broths, stews, rice cakes, preserved foods, meat, fish, vegetables, and side dishes. The book also provides photos and recipes for each item. What’s more important is the author’s in-depth knowledge about Korean food and culinary

culture. She cites ancient documents and va r i o u s s o u rc e m a t e r i a l s i n t e l l i n g , interesting stories about Korea’s traditional food. It is recommended that one should get the ingredients ready and follow the recipes in the book, which will certainly lead to a healthy experience.

Hur Youngman has gained a reputation with his culinary explorations in Le Grand Chef, a comic series that deals with Korean food and culinary culture in detail. He first serialized the cartoons in The Dong-A Ilbo, and thanks to its strong popularity, the series was turned into comic books, a highprofile movie, and TV miniseries. Le Grand Chef is said to have broadened the horizons of local perceptions of food and culinary culture.

In the serialized comic books, he portrays a wide range of Korean food, restaurants and geographical features through heartwarming stories.

The topics include the salted dry mackerel culture in Andong, Gyeongsangnam-do (province), the secret behind a Korean mother’s culinary talent, and the popularity of Korean rice wine called makgeolli.

All the more surprising is the fact that Le Grand Chef is a result of field research by the author himself and staff members at the publishing house. They checked all the food items in person, using their five senses.

This Korean food title, therefore, differs from its Japanese counterpart, such as Kami no Shizuku (The Tears of God) and Tsukiji

1

Uogashi Sandaime (Three Generations of a Fisher Market). Kami no Shizuku is centered upon wine theories, and Tsukiji Uogashi Sandaime focuses only on a fish market in Tokyo. Le Grand Chef , in

contrast, ventures out throughout Korea in search of the essence of Korean food and relationship between Koreans and their food.

The books mentioned above explain what makes Korean food distinctive and how Korea’s culinary tradition has been linked with histor y and culture. In addition, they showcase how Korean culinary culture has contributed to the prevention and treatment of diseases, leading to a healthier and happier life.

By Lee Kijin (reporter for The Dong-A Ilbo)

1. 100 Dishes Korean People Should Know Han Bokjin, Hyeonamsa Publishing Co., Ltd. 2005, 538p, ISBN 978-89-323-1291-0

2

2. Le Grand Chef Hur Youngman, Gimm-Young Publishers, Inc. 2008, ISBN 978-89-349-2786-0 (Set)

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Reviews Fiction

Seoul, 2016: Five Years after Korean Unification The Private Life of the Nation Lee Eung-joon, Minumsa, 2009, 261p ISBN 978-89-374-8256-4

Sixty-six years after division, North and South Korea are suddenly reunited.

But how will the gulf be overcome between the ideologically overzealous North and the thoroughly materialist, capitalist South? This novel gives a vivid portrayal of the imaginary near future.

Talk of Korean reunification gives rise to ambiguous feelings among South Korean citizens. On the surface they might say that it is what they dream of and wish for, but inside lie the fears about what might happen if reunification actually took place. Lee Eung-joon’s novel, The Private Life of the Nation, is set in an imaginary unified Korea. What will it be like? How will the people think? Lee’s novel gratifies the curiosity of South Koreans living in today’s era of national division.

Reunification comes unexpectedly upon North and South Korea in May 2011, 66 years after national division. The scale of the chaos following this premature reunification is incomparably greater than that of Germany 20 years earlier. The 1.2 million former members of the disbanded North’s Korean People’s Army (KPA) form a social underclass or gather into gangs of thugs. The huge number of North Koreanmade conventional weapons that disappeared, one way or another, in the clumsy process of disarmament has made Korea, which previously had no gun crime, into something like an LA slum. Wealthy South Koreans head for the North, each fighting to buy up as much of the neglected land there as possible, while a string of lawsuits is initiated by Southerners trying to get back the land they owned in the North before the Korean War. Women formerly of North Korea’s ruling class fall into jobs like bar work and cleaning; in the South, meanwhile, the population is so tightly gripped by panic that rumors circulate that a homi-

cidal maniac is going around scooping out and eating the hearts of Southerners.

The novel is set in 2016, five years after reunification, and depicts the betrayal, conspiracy, and fierce power struggles that go on inside the Daedonggang (the river that runs through Pyeongyang, the former North Korean capital) society, made up of former members of the KPA. The society is led by three strong characters: The boss, O Namcheol, has shown the prowess of his business skills after unification by taking Kim Jong-il’s secret overseas stash of assets and using it as capital to start up his operations. He has now risen to become the godfather of the underworld in the South. A madman reminiscent of Dr. Hannibal Lecter, O harbors dark designs to incite an uprising by North Korean-born refugees in the South on the “Day of the Sun” (April 15; birthday of former North Korean leader Kim Il-sung). Former army officer Ree Gang, the group’s second-in-command, is the grandson of one of the founding fathers of North Korea and used to head an ultraelite military unit there. Unable to cope with the disparity between the ideological fervour of his former homeland and the reality of out-and-out materialist capitalism in the South, Ree has turned to drugs. Cho Myeong-do, third-in-command, was of abysmally low social status under the North Korean system of grading its citizens, but has driven his way relentlessly to the top, thanks to his unswerving loyalty to the boss. A nasty, hard-hearted character that treats those close to him as slaves and

those not close enough as enemies, Cho’s insecurities concerning his background lead him to clash with Ree Gang at every opportunity.

With its hyperrealist portrayal of a perfectly plausible near future, this novel is a warning that, without mutual understanding between North and South, reunification will not be a rosy dream but will come upon both sides as a disaster. The work also achieves universality, thanks to its in-depth depiction of the suffering faced by people thrown suddenly into the dehumanizing reality of capitalism.

Another enjoyable aspect of the book is the skill with which Lee, who is also a film director, depicts a cruel world of violence, where those showing disloyalty to the group are done away with on the quiet and their bodies incinerated, like a well-directed film noir. Lee’s capacity to sublimate the spectacle of a raw, flesh-on-flesh fistfight into poetic sentences, like, “His failed handiwork described a curve, disappearing into the darkness, and was soon replaced by a new one, flying back out of it. Ree’s rhythm collapsed; he was left floundering,” is enough to draw admiration. In an interview following the publication of this work, the author explained by saying “Reunification brings us misfortune. But I wanted the book to say ‘I (South/North) was happy to meet you (North/South)’.”

By Lee Wangku

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Reviews Fiction Kim Soom and Kim Ae-ran, two young and promising writers, also select older, run-down parts of Seoul in lieu of glittery skyscrapers for their stories, “My Secretive Neighbors” and “Insects,” respectively.

Both writers portray the alienation of people in modern cities through a style of grotesquerie and surrealism.

For readers, this collection offers a double bonus: the most loved female writers in Korea today brought together in one book, and an enter taining glimpse of the Hangang (river), Namsan (mountain), Bukchon (village), and other major parts of Seoul rendered in fiction.

By Ko Mihye

Popular Female Writers Explore Seoul Seoul: The City in Fiction Kang Youngsook, et al. Kang Publishing, 2009, 268p ISBN 978-89-8218-127-6 03810

Seoul: The City in Fiction is a collection of short stories written by the most popular female writers in Korea today, all based on the common theme of ‘Seoul.’ Nine distinctive writers, including both newcomers and veterans to the literary scene, participated in the anthology: Lee Hye-kyung, Ha Seongnan, Kwon Yeo-seon, Kim Soom, Kang Youngsook, Lee Shinjo, Yoon Sunghee, Pyun Hye-young, and Kim Ae-ran.

Some of the writers were born and raised in Seoul, others grew up elsewhere and moved to the city as adults, and still others lived in Seoul for a time before moving somewhere else. Just as the nine writers’ relationships with Seoul are diverse, the Seoul they depict in their stories also varies.

For people from other cities, the Seoul depicted in Lee Hye-kyung’s “Bukchon” is a place that is not easy to love. Seoul with its many newcomers, as is the case in any capital city, is far from being a true hometown, and Lee portrays this image of Seoul through the protagonist, who lives like a vagabond and cannot settle down. The Seoul in Ha Seongnan’s “April Fool’s Day, 1968” is a space where many people’s futile ambitions are pooled. The protagonist peppers his life with lies and tall tales in order to survive in a city filled with vain desires.

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In the Vast Plains of Mongolia Wolf Jeon Sungtae, Changbi Publishers, Inc., 2009, 301p ISBN 978-89-364-3709-1 03810

Jeon Sungtae’s Wolf is centered on the tales of Mongolia, which lies on the “border” between civilization and wilderness, modernity and anti-modernity. Six of the 10 short stories are set in Mongolia. The author’s experiences in Mongolia serve not merely as a travelogue of an exotic tourist destination but as “a forceful suggestion for changing one’s life.” The author Jeon

Sungtae expresses the special inspiration he felt in Mongolia as follows: “Mongolia gave me extraordinary pain and inspiration. The loneliness I confronted on those vast plains, still preserved in their original state, lingered in me as if I had returned from beyond the edge of the world. Of special interest to me was Mongolian society which had transitioned from socialism to a market economy, and which, oddly enough from time to time acted as a mirror reflecting our own society.”

“Moknan Restaurant” depicts the historical conflict between North and South Korea in small and large incidents set in a North Korean restaurant in Ulaanbaatar.

“Southern Plants” depicts the South Korean citizens’ instinctual fear and anxiety about defection and North Korean defectors. Through the anecdotes of a poet sojourning in Mongolia, “Korean Soldier” uncovers the militant culture that remains unresolved in all of us. “The Second Waltz” closely explores Mongolia’s past and present through a woman called Nyami who is fettered by her symbolic role as the “woman of the fatherland” for Mongolians since the early days of socialism. “Chinese Firecracker” deals with the life and death of homeless children, also a problem in Mongolian society. “Wolf,” the title story in the collection, talks of the permeation of capitalism into the Mongolian plains and the resultant destruction of nature and the life of the plains. “The River Crossers” contains realistic descriptions of the harsh reality faced by North Korean defectors and their escape. “Kids Need Money Too” contains the personal experiences of the author who grew up surrounded by nature in the countr yside. “Has Anyone Seen My Shoes?” humorously sketches the sadness of one man who has a wife in both North and South Korea.

To the author Jeon Sungtae, Mongolia is both the past and future of humanity.

Along with scenes of wilderness rarely found in industrialized capitalist societies, his story vividly depict the wild desires of people living in a society that has yet to turn capitalistic. In “Wolf,” the reader sees the author’s resolve not to forget the mysteries of a primitive civilization in his civilized society. The author’s Mongolian experience does not stop merely at Orientalist feelings or nostalgia for a primitive world, but is firmly anchored in both Mongolia’s and Korea’s present. If a novel can enable the reader to wander while remaining seated, then Wolf will act as a superb guide on this invisible journey.

By Jung Yeo-ul

Reviews Fiction

Realistic Tales of Fantasy The Elephants Have Come Kim Ih-eun, Minumsa, 2009, 308p ISBN 978-89-374-8260-1 03810

The healing she gives to the reader is not like sudden surgery or medication, but rather resembles a slow dietary treatment or meditation regimen. Although this type of healing is protracted and takes place on a subconscious level, its effects are sustained: “This is much more powerful than anything you have experienced. It will heal all of your wounds from the past, as well as the lingering pain etched all over your body.” Instead of working on some kind of cure-all remedy, don't we need the courage to face our pain? Don't we need to tune our ears to be sensitive enough to discover the language of the escaped elephants in their wails? For they too, like us, are precious creatures that feel pain, love, and melancholy.

By Jung Yeo-ul

Kim Ih-eun's The Elephants Have Come is a unique novel that combines text and photos. The book excites the reader's imagination much like a fantasy novel. In “The Tale of a Woman with Growing Breasts,” a woman’s breasts grow every time she cures others by absorbing their injuries into her own body. Also, in “An Alien on the Run,” mask storeowner belatedly realizes that he has always been wearing an invisible mask.

In the title story, “The Elephants Have Come,” elephants break out of the city’s many amusement parks en masse. To stop the fleeing elephants, a gigantic fence is put up around the entire city. Nonetheless, no matter how sturdy the fence, it seems unlikely that the elephants can be captured.

Are such stories possible only in fantasy?

Kim Ih-eun's fiction creates a time of fantasy, but none of it is unbelievable. Her descriptions of fantasy are so realistic that after finishing her novel one feels as if the stories are actually happening somewhere.

Her stories seem to whisper into the readers’ ears, “This is not an absurd idea. Think about it. Aren't we lonely, fearful, and desperate enough to imagine something this sad? We grow distant from the truth of our bodies by hiding our wounds and pain out of shame. By refusing to admit honestly that ‘we’re hurting,’ aren’t we depriving ourselves of a chance to heal?”

To Understand an Artist The Washing Place Lee Kyung-ja, Munidang 2009, 249p, ISBN 978-89-7456-420-9 03810

Park Su-geun's oil painting, “The Washing Place,” gained a lot of attention in 2007 when it sold for a record 4.5 billion won at a Korean art auction. Shortly thereafter, while undergoing intense attacks as to its authenticity, it the painting once again became a hot topic of conversation.

Although Lee Kyung-ja's novel The Washing Place, based on the life of artist Park Su-geun (1914-1965), does begin from the time when the forgery controversy about the painting first emerged, it does little in the way of creating a puzzle to satisfy the curiosity of gossips. Rather, in a quiet voice, this novel follows the traces of Park Su-geun's life which has become so removed from the public eye because of those disturbing scandals.

Lauded as the most Korean artist after his death, Park Su-geun is known for representing the simple, untainted lives of ordinary people in extremely simplified forms and lines, and through granite-like texture and hues, to capture the goodness and sin-

cerity of humankind. In the novel, Park Su-geun is portrayed as a painter who was too poor to receive a formal education but never gave up studying art on his own, and who, despite failing to receive recognition from his contemporary art critics, painted ceaselessly, without an easel, on canvases spread across the floor of his home. On the other hand, he is also depicted as a good husband who loved and cared for his wife a great deal, helping her around the house whenever he could, and as a good father who often shared stories with his children.

Of course Park Su-geun's life could not have been this untroubled. In the novel, the twists and turns of his life appear in the form of discord in his relationship with his son. To his son he was merely an untalented artist that painted only paupers whose features were hard to make out and who did not even seem beautiful in any way; and because of his lack of talent, he failed to sell his paintings and therefore, failed to keep his wife and family from going hungry. However, this son, once so disapproving of his father and hopeful only for financial success, came to understand that his father valued warmth from within over outward splendor, and thus followed in his father's footsteps in the pursuit of painting.

Through the son's confession of his struggle to accept his father, readers are also able to embrace Park Su-geun, both artist and man. This process of understanding and reconciliation may also serve as an opportunity for meaningful change for the author Lee Kyung-ja, whose previous novels have focused on the violence of patriarchy and the resultant wounds.

By Yi Soo-hyung

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Reviews Fiction

The Remains of Civilization, the Aftermath Wolf's Word Kim Ujine, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp., 2009, 285p, ISBN 978-89-546-0790-2 03810

Wolf's Word by the young twenty-something author Kim Ujine who debuted in 2004, is a debut collection of nine short stories starting with the author's first published story as well as the title piece of the compilation, “Wolf 's Word,” and others like “Settlers of the Light,” “Witch,” and “Voice.” One appraisal of this debut collection lays out the core characteristics of Kim’s fiction with praise for her fresh creativity and grotesque depictions: “In a stream of short sentences, which have omitted artificial conjunctions, she amply dishes up these grotesque scenes.”

In her novels one can witness death everywhere. If humanity hopes to avoid extinction, it must connect with past generations, and through this, propagate civilization. This is the minimum requirement.

Her novels are filled with the deaths of children and adults everywhere: “Violent death spreads like an infectious disease, but there is no way to identify the source of the illness or who carries it. In fact, no rhyme or reason about it can be discovered whatsoever. There are no indications or symptoms. It's like the disease is falling from heaven like some sort of bombardment.”

In another scene, Kim portrays the impact of the violent deaths on people: “Public opinion boiled up to the con56

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clusion that if the wolf disappears, violent death, too, would vanish. As soon as a tangible goal arises people become active and combative in dealing with reality. Rage becomes increasingly more vehement and a strange vigor is revived in the village. . . .

Through grim determination, the mother clad in a rubber suit now looked no different from the wolf.”

In “Wolf 's Word,” as the number of people suffering violent deaths without reason becomes increasingly more frequent, the remaining people engage in a desperate struggle for survival. Can they be saved from death? However, almost comically, the people who have found the cause of these violent deaths in the wolf express a madness-filled rage towards it. In terms of stopping the deaths, it is merely a powerless rage that doesn't aid them at all. Rather, this rage gives rise to irony in that it snatches their last remnants of humanity from them, making them no different from the wolf. This type of allegory appears in an enlarged form in a scene contained in “Settlers of the Light,” where pretenses used to prevent a terror attack, which no one is sure when it will occur, lead to the death of a city. The author's creativity, which is shrouded with death, reveals a concealed aspect hidden on the other side of civilization that leads to a regression of the civilization process. That truth is an uncomfortable truth, a truth that is dangerous enough to terminate civilization and turn it into ruins. One can't help but wonder about the next step of this author who is stitching together these fragments of truth.

By Yi Soo-hyung

Over There across the River The Republic of Uzupis Ha Il-ji, Minumsa, 2009, 294p ISBN 978-89-374-8255-7 03810

This is the tenth novel of Ha Il-ji, a novelist who has expressed the devilish nature of man and the absurdity of the world through his unique form of narrative experimentation since coming on the literary scene in 1990 with The Road to the Race Track.

Through a tale of a man who wanders in search of an imaginary country, Ha deals with issues of truth and fiction, time and space, and memory in a narrative in which reality and fantasy and the past and present are mixed up.

A middle-aged Asian man named Hal is looking for Lithuania in order to go to his homeland, the Republic of Uzupis, which recently gained its independence after being occupied by a neighboring country. His purpose is to bury his father’s ashes in his hometown. However, the journey is not without obstacles. Many deny the existence of the Republic of Uzupis, and Hal often finds himself unable to communicate because few understand English.

Although he finds someone who speaks the language of Uzupis, not only the proof of the republic’s existence, but also another obstacle stands in his way just as he is about to approach the true Uzupis. The riddle of Uzupis, which once seemed like it would never be solved, is slowly unraveled as Hal goes to a village of Uzupis nomads.

There, as he observes the past, present, and future repeat and overlap, he comes to understand that Uzupis does not exist in reality but in fact only in people’s memory.

Uzupis, which means “over there across the river” in Lithuanian, is a world of nirvana not found in reality. This place that transcends time and space is like the origin of existence that can never be reached.

The Republic of Uzupis of this story, which calls to mind a Mobius strip with no beginning or end, actually shares its name with an artists’ village in Lithuania's capital, Vilnius. And Ha is in fact the Korean ambassador to this village. In this sense, the novel can also be read as the journey of a wandering writer in search of the origin of art.

By Lee Yeong-gyeong

Steady Sellers

Are You Living the Life You Chose?

All the Beautiful Children Choe Sihan, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd., 2008, 203p ISBN 978-89-320-1935-2 43810

This book is about the wanderings, agonies, and conflicts of teenagers. Their questions are always difficult for adults because they ask about things that adults try not to think about.

All the Beautiful Children is a coming of age novel that deals with teenagers by subtly describing the troubles and worries they endure in the school system. Since its first release in 1996, it has gone through 25 reprints and sold over 50,000 copies, situating it as a bestseller in the genre of young

adult literature. A chapter of this book was even excerpted in a high school literature textbook. The latest edition was published in 2009 with its story and style skillfully revised.

Choe Sihan, a Korean literature professor at Sookmyung Women’s University, has published novels steadily since 1982. This book is the fruit of his interest in literary education for youth.

The author describes teenagers’ difficulties in school, their worries, and reflections

about their lives, and their adolescent wanderings through the voices of the average student. Through five interconnected stories written in a diary style format, Seonjae the protagonist reveals his inner concerns that are typical for teenagers his age.

Generally, either model students or problematic students draw attention in school.

The author, however, pays no attention to these students. Instead, he focuses on the quiet, ordinary students. For example, Seonjae, whose parents have passed away, lives with his married sister and brother-inlaw. His friend Yunsu is the laughingstock of his class because of his stammer.

So, what do Seonjae and Yunsu want?

They want to live their lives their own way, not the way that their parents, school, or country force them to. When it comes to their literature class at school, they want to learn how to think for themselves after they read books instead of being taught about the books. They ceaselessly ask themselves who they are and what kind of life they want to lead because they realize they are the masters of their own behavior and thoughts. Yunsu says, “Until when was I a child, and until when will I be a teenager? I have been a human being from the moment I was born. My home is wherever I am. Even if I wander, that’s my life. I will not ask for forgiveness because of the life I choose.”

Questions from teenagers always give adults a hard time because they are the same questions that they themselves have either forgotten or tried to ignore. All the Beautiful Children, asks both teenagers and adults if they are living the life they chose.

These young boys, who struggle to live their lives respectfully and to the fullest extent possible under an oppressive school system, are so impressive that they linger in the readers’ mind for a long time.

By Kim Dongshik

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Reviews Nonfiction

The Power of Hope, Tempered Through Pain The Miracles in My Past, the Miracles in My Future Jang Young-hee, Samtoh Co., Ltd., 2009, 235p ISBN 978-89-464-1748-9

“I don’t want to tiptoe around, being afraid of awakening a bad fate.

If you don’t awake a bad fate, what about a good fate?

You don’t awake the good fate either. Instead, I will stride with confidence, awakening not only my bad fate, but a good one as well.”

The Miracles in My Past, the Miracles in My Future is the last essay collection by the renowned Professor Chang Young-hee who passed away in May, sending ripples of sadness across the nation.

Chang had sent her book manuscript to her publisher in late March and reviewed her final draft in the hospital until the last moment, until she passed away on May 9th. The book was printed a day after.

In her childhood, polio left her unable to use her legs but she went on to become a distinguished scholar of English literature and a writer whose insightful essays and columns of humanity and unwavering spirit of hope inspired millions of readers.

Her teaching and writing career were abruptly halted when she was diagnosed with cancer. However, defying her physical handicap and cancer, including chemotherapy treatments, she made every effort to get back to her students in 2005.

Despite her drastically weakened health, she wrote bestselling collections of essays such as Walking through the Forest of Literature, Only Once in My Life, and The Miracles in My Past, the Miracles in My Future published by Samtoh. Her essays are examples of what all good writing should be. They entertain us as we read and leave us thoughtful. Each essay begins with delight and ends with wisdom. Through her books, Professor Chang creates a charming mix of insight, humor, sharp observation, and refreshing candor.

The daughter of famed English scholar, Professor Chang Wang-Rok of Seoul National University, Chang Young-hee was

Artist Kim Jomson’s painting, “To Chang Young-hee“

a passionate scholar. Always smiling like a girl, she represented the ultimate value of loving family, students, and all neighbors.

She also was widely known to have passed on hope to the disabled, to other patients, and also to students.

She once said in her column last December, “I will overcome my illness with hope and will get back to my students next spring. My mind and body are tired but I

will keep my words and carry out the hope.”

She remains a person who won’t be forgotten, and thus as an individual who never truly died.

By Lee Mi-hyun

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Reviews Nonfiction

The Art of Home-making

grain.

Lee uses her own handmade items instead of ready-made factory articles.

These handmade objects that require precious time to create also become special gifts. Lee loves to embroider dishtowels, and decorate fans with flowers, butterflies, and dragonflies using mulberry paper. She doesn’t give away such gifts on special days only, but whenever she feels like it; every moment in Lee’s life is a moment of sharing gifts. Her life itself has thus become a kind of gift. In this way, ordinary moments in everyday life become moments of enlightenment.

People ask her at times what it is that she really does. She is a hanbok designer and a bojagi artist. In reading this book, however, one comes to realize that what she really does is share what is in her heart through her hands.

By Han Mihwa

Hyojae’s Lifestyle Lee Hyojae, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp., 2009 212p, ISBN 978-89-546-0780-3 03810

Lee Hyojae, the author of Hyojae’s Lifestyle, is the Martha Stewart or Tasha Tudor, of Korea. She’s a bojagi (wrapping cloth) artist who turns all kinds of objects into art by using wrapping cloth alone, though she doesn’t work on such a large scale as big as that of the Claudes, who wrapped the Pont-Neuf Bridge in cloth. Lee is also a wedding hanbok (traditional Korean dress) designer, who inherited the hanbok shop that her mother once ran.

The book contains essays by the author, a homemaker who creates beauty out of small things found in everyday life, and finds a nature-friendly beauty in her own life as well. Through photos of her living space and handmade creations, in addition to her essays, she reveals her unique way of life.

There is no end to household chores.

They are not as creative as other kinds of work, and one is not compensated properly in the way that one deserves for doing them. This is also why most homemakers talk disparagingly of their work. Household chores, however, are raised to another level when taken on by Lee; not only do they turn into acts of creation, but they become a form of meditation. Rocks that can be seen anywhere become unique dining pieces–plastic bottles, which normally go into the wastebasket, become receptacles to hold 60

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The Beauty of Korea's Four Seasons Picturesque Travel Spots in Korea Park Kang-sup, Ahn Graphics, 2009, 335p ISBN 978-89-7059-411-8

kind can never be seen in Mongolia or the Grand Canyon. Park Kang-sup, the author, is a veteran journalist who has worked for a daily paper as a travel journalist. Based on his experience of traveling to every corner of Korea he has handpicked some of the less explored regions that make one’s heart throb just by standing there.

Korea is blessed with four distinct seasons. People of Korea in the past did not need a calendar to tell that the seasons were changing. They felt spring coming on when they saw apricot and other flowers come to blossom. They knew summer was approaching when the barley fields turned golden with ripening barley. They welcomed in autumn the leaves falling one by one, and felt the deepening of winter while looking at snowcapped mountains. People of Korea today, of course, refer to the calendar to see the seasons come and go, but through this book, they can enjoy the beauty of the four seasons that Korea prides itself on.

Since the landscape of Korea changes with the seasons, each season offers a unique travel experience. The book, therefore, introduces 32 travel spots of Korea, fit for each season: villages overflowing with flowers, including golden forsythia, in spring; thick pine forests with no sunlight seeping through in summer; the haven of Baikal Teals that have come to take shelter from the harsh Siberian winter; and snowcovered green tea fields and winter mountains filled with snow blossoms in winter.

The picturesque photos, and the words full of appreciation for the feast of nature, show that no man-made thing surpasses nature.

By Han Mihwa

Korea is a little country on the eastern end of the Asian continent. Naturally, endless grass plains like those of Mongolia are not to be found in this land. Neither are aweinspiring canyons, such as the Grand Canyon. No daunting, gigantic structures, such as the Great Wall and pyramids, can be seen in this country. What makes the traveler take his coat off, however, is not the wind but the sun. Greatness may inspire the human heart with awe, but it does not come with the delicacy that can touch the heart in a subtle way. The nature of Korea boasts a delicate, soft beauty, though it may not be as great as that of the Mongolian grasslands or the Grand Canyon.

Picturesque Travel Spots in Korea is a book that displays, like works of art, the beauty of the nature in Korea, of which

Reviews Nonfiction

Travels in Africa with a Young Son Hakuna Matata, Shall We Dance?

Oh Sohi, Bookhouse Publishers, 2009, 551p ISBN 978-89-5605-314-1 03810

“Hakuna matata” means “no problem” in Swahili. Hakuna Matata, Shall We Dance? is a travel sketch of an eight-year-old boy and his mother’s backpacking trip in Africa.

The title, however, presents a problem.

Africa isn’t a place in which you can say, “There’s no problem, so let’s dance.”

Traveling with an eight-year-old child further complicates the problem. There’s malaria, for one thing, which leads to the death of 10 percent of those infected even after treatment, and which can develop into a fatal condition within 24 hours of outbreak. Security is a problem as well, with terrorist attacks that result in bloodshed.

Still they say, “hakuna matata.” Perhaps worry is only for those who stay behind.

Oh Sohi, the author, plunges herself, along with her son, into Africa, as if all those worries regarding Africa are of no consequence. During their trip through southern Tanzania, Lake Victoria, Uganda, Rwanda, and finally out of Africa, they meet the people of Africa.

This, in fact, was not the first trip taken together by the mother and son. In

2003, the author took her son to Turkey when he was 36 months old, and returned to publish a book titled The Wind Will Carry Us There. After that, she continued to travel with her son. Every time they went on a trip, people worried. Some even called her crazy. They shook their heads, saying that it was a waste of time and money, and that the boy wouldn’t even remember a single thing about the trips.

Traveling with the boy wasn’t easy, of course, but it wasn’t impossible, either.

Instead of making excuses for not being able to travel because of her son, Oh experiences life through travel. The boy also learned to enjoy traveling, playing soccer, and dancing with local kids. Wanting to practice what she had learned through her travels, Oh decided to donate half of the royalties from the book to World Vision.

As some have said, the boy may not remember his childhood travels, but this does not worry his mother. What’s more important than memories is attitude. Her child may forget the names of the places, but his experiences will build his attitude in an authentic way. Oh believes that the role of parents is to help their children feel that they are alive.

Instead of being filled with historic relics and the scenery of Africa, the book contains sketches of the people, and the spirit of the mother and her eight-year-old son, who experience Africa with every fiber of their being.

ety? It’s time to ask ourselves: What is it that we really want? Is it more money or a better life? The Economics of Life asks us to reflect on a better life. To live a better life, and to create a beautiful society in which everyone lives together in harmony, we must first humble ourselves. We can respect others and help them come alive only when we are humble.

Professor Kang, a prominent economist and intellectual, practices the economics of life in his own life. He explains that the neo-liberalism we have sought after is an economics of death. He states, “Our economics today is an economics of moneymaking which moves on the motivational power of competition and profit, and an economics of death. Amid fierce competition in which the rule of the jungle prevails, people become dehumanized and lose sight of true happiness.” The economics of life in this book refers not only to living, but to “helping human beings and nature come alive.” Thus, seeking an economics of life means breaking the chains of the vicious cycle of death, and entering into a cycle of good. The economics of life, consisting of the principle of saving lives, of sustainability, of autonomy, of reciprocity, and of need, is an economics of hope that will lead us all to a better life.

By Richard Hong

By Han Mihwa

Reflections for a Better Life The Economics of Life Kang Su-dol, Person & Idea Publishing Co., 2009, 327p ISBN 978-89-5906-106-8

There was a time when everyone was desperate to become rich. “The wealthy” and “a billion won” were key words for bestsellers in bookstores nationwide, and the phrase “become wealthy!” echoed on TV commercials. What remains now from the wealth craze that swept through our soci-

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Reviews History

The Historical Role of Oceans Civilization and the Sea Jou Kyungchul, Sanchurum, 2009, 411p ISBN 978-89-90062-35-2

Since the beginning of the Age of Discovery in the 15th century, powerful men have controlled the sea, leaving civilians unable to traverse the ocean freely. As a famous western history scholar in Korea, Jou points out that the globalization and modernization that has arisen since the Age of Discovery is no more than the globalization of violence. Europeans explored the world via the ocean, exploiting and pillaging as they went: Spain destroyed the Inca civilization, Portugal enslaved many Africans, and England colonized India. Various local cultures around the world perished and many traditional religions were destroyed by the guns and swords of the explorers.

At the same time, the author judges that such globalization leads to new changes through unprecedented cultural exchanges. He said, “The Age of Discovery was an age of violence all over the world, which, consequently, caused horrible destruction.

However, it also produced creative consequences.” This book covers the history of cultural interchanges by sea and its influence on the formation of the modern world. For example, he explains that the sailors, who worked under daily surveillance, suppression, and the then-new concept of the division of labor and standard62

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ization, became pioneer factory workers.

He also mentions that thanks to the development of a slave system and the discovery of new farming fields in the New World, sugar–which was produced on a large scale–became a cheap supply of calories for the common people. That played a decisive role in establishing a capitalistic economic system.

Jou’s emphasis on the importance of the Indian Ocean grabs the readers’ attention. He says, “The Indian Ocean has been the center for the Eurasian continent’s maritime trades. India, China, Southeastern Asia, the Middle East, and Africa traded with each other through the Indian Ocean.

Since modern times, whoever controlled the Indian Ocean was an important factor in deciding which direction world history would flow.” Along with the recent economic prosperity of India and China, the geopolitical importance of the Indian Ocean is being restored.

The author also branches off on various topics regarding the ocean, such as the state of the ocean around the world before the Age of Discovery, the development of various navigational technologies and vessels; the reality of sailors’ lives, including their trade and currency, the maritime wars they participated in, and the pirates they were plagued by. Though there are other books about the ocean during the Age of Discovery, this book’s Asian perspective makes it unique.

By Pyo Jeonghun

Papermaking made its way to the Middle East during the Battle of Talas in 751 C.E. Among the Chinese prisoners of war was a papermaker. However, some argue that papermaking made its way into the Middle East long before then, in the first century B.C.E. This book depicts the history of paper from its birth to its dissemination. The author follows the route of dissemination, examines sites and artifacts, and interviews countless experts. Distinct from research based on secondary sources, the book's greatest strength is the primary sources that the author collected during his travels along the Paper Road. The book also provides a rich collection of plates from the sites, adding to the palpability unique for a book of its genre.

An interesting fact is that Koreans made greenhouses out of paper during the Joseon Dynasty approximately 550 years ago. They used paper and oil to build a structure in which they could grow vegetables in the winter. The Korean paper greenhouses were exceptionally functional with good light and easy humidity control.

Papermaking passed through the Middle East and reached Europe during the 12th century C.E., while it was introduced to Korea at the end of the second century C.E. The history of paper in Korea is a venerable one. The history of paper is synonymous with the history of human civilization, which makes the Paper Road the road of civilization itself.

By Pyo Jeonghun

The Palpable History of Paper Paper Road Travels Pyun Il-pyung, MBC Production Co., Ltd., 2009, 324p ISBN 978-89-960478-7-2 03900

While most believe that papermaking was the invention of Cai Lun from ancient China, archeological discoveries show that paper existed before Cai Lun did. Even if Cai Lun was not the one to invent papermaking, there is no doubt that he contributed to the advances in papermaking.

Reviews Culture

Travels into Art and History Journey to the Soul of Latin

by Kim Byoung-jong Kim Byoung-jong, Random House Korea, 2008, 280p ISBN 978-89-255-1648-6 03810

A city of fatal captivation. A place that beckons men of macho masculinity like a vulgar woman. Where salsa and slogans mingle like percussion and rap. Where even paint scraped off by storms carries the air of an expressionist painting. The Caribbean changing colors 12 times a day. Where little boys with dry, bare backs throw themselves into the folds of the ocean, into a corner of the Atlantic. A phantasmagorical city where the pungent smell of rum and cigars, the black-and-white photos of Che Guevara, and music that clings to your soul tangle in the air.

The 83 paintings transform this book into a rare blend of essays and paintings, and literature and art.

By Pyo Jeonghun

Hit the Road for Libraries The author, a leading artist in Korea and a popular essayist, has exhibited to positive reviews at a dozen international art fairs such as Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain (FIAC) and Art Basel. His works are part of permanent collections at various museums such as the British Museum in London. Journey to the Soul of Latin is a collection of his paintings and pictures from his travels around Cuba, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and Chile. The author says, “To me, Latin America was a mass of rapture and a teacher of color. It was an indefatigable soul and the land of spirits. And most importantly, there were people living on that land, people from the past I had forgotten.”

The author’s trip was not a mere foray into sightseeing, but a journey that led him to the imprints left by a colorful array of individuals including Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Che Guevara, and Eva Peron, among others. By chronicling their lives, the book also deals with the culture, arts, history, society, and politics of the region. In one instance, the author recalls his impression of Havana, Cuba:

The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World Choe Jungtai, Hangilsa Publishing Co., Ltd., 2009, 275p ISBN 978-89-356-5822-0 03800

The author, a librarian himself, went on a pilgrimage to 15 libraries in six countries.

He shares his journey in his recently published book. A few of the libraries he visited include the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress in America, the German National Library, the French National Library, the Czech National Library, the Abbey Library of Saint Gallen in Switzerland, the Admont Benedictine Monastery Library in Austria, and the W i b l i n g e n Mo n a s t e r y L i b r a r y a n d Heidelberg University Library in Germany.

As a pilgrim of libraries, he says that a library is not a grave of books but a palace of books. Hence, he believes that a library should be beautiful because it is not simply just a place where books are stacked, but where people interact with books and exchange knowledge and information.

The author suggests conditions that constitute a world-famous library. First, the library building should be beautiful.

Second, the library should have more than one million books. Third, the library should have books or documents about historically important events. And last, the library should have ancient high-quality prints or manuscripts printed using early printing techniques.

What meaning did libraries have in medieval times in the West? When intellectuals traveled to a new place, they visited the local library first. The aristocracy, clergymen, and scholars sought out libraries to expand their knowledge about culture, to collect needed information, and to rejuvenate their souls. The libraries in the monasteries are like time capsules that have preserved mankind’s intellectual legacy.

While New York City is on the cutting edge of modern civilization, the New York Public Library is built with stone in a Greco-Roman style–the origin of Western culture. The “Steel King” Andrew Carnegie contributed to developing this library by donating 5.2 million dollars in 1901.

The Library of Congress is renowned for its ancient architecture. This high tech library is also famous for its library system and data classification system. The Korean section contains over 210,000 books, including old maps made between the 19th and 20th centuries, textbooks issued in 1950 during the Korean War, and many other rare data.

This book teems with photos of libraries that the author himself took. He also explains the history, the aesthetic features of the buildings, and important events or people associated with each library. This book will be a treasured gift for all book lovers.

By Pyo Jeonghun

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Reviews Self-help mistake success for growth. Success and growth, however, are two completely different things, and when the purpose of life is changed from “success” to “growth,” a great paradigm shift occurs. The book tells us that human beings, who are a part of nature, have a natural instinct to grow, and that they can be truly happy when they accept the fact. To live a life of growth, we must face ourselves with a new perspective, ridding ourselves of the confusion in our hearts that is the result of an obsession with success and excessive competition. Instead of comparing ourselves to others, let us ask ourselves, “How much have I grown compared to yesterday?” The answer lies in the question.

By Richard Hong

Self-awareness Beyond Success Growing Moon Yo-han, Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd., 2009 286p, ISBN 978-89-01-09415-1 03320

A striped caterpillar is crawling somewhere.

It follows the path of other caterpillars, without even knowing where they are headed. An enormous pillar can be seen in the distance, and the striped caterpillar gets closer and closer to the pillar. When the caterpillar finally reaches the pillar, it turns out to be a huge tower of caterpillars entangled together. Still, the caterpillar begins to climb the tower, believing that there must be something at the top. As the caterpillar steps over other caterpillars to reach the top, the tower grows bigger and bigger.

Moon Yo-han, a psychiatrist and the author of the bestseller Goodbye, Laziness, states that our society today can be compared to this scene from Hope for the Flowers by Trina Paulus. We live in a society of infinite competition, which considers success the supreme value in an era of winner-take-all.

For what do we struggle with such intensity? And must we despair because of such intensity?

The book urges us to live differently from the way we have previously lived. It states, “The purpose of life is not to win, but to grow and to share.” So many people 64

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boss. His advice on dealing with a difficult boss is, “If you can’t avoid it, enjoy it!”

Encountered one-on-one on a personal level, no one is difficult; it is the workplace that creates “difficult relationships.” A competent person is someone who can deal with such difficult relationships in a wise manner.

A child accompanies his mother to a grocery store. While his mother shops around, the child stands still, staring at a box full of red cherries. The owner of the shop, an old man, says, “Would you like some cherries? Take a handful.” The child, however, stands there without a word, looking at the old man. The mother chips in, saying, “Yes, take some. It’s okay, since he offered.” Still, the child does not budge.

In the end, the old man scoops up a handful of cherries himself and offers them to the child. The child finally thanks him and takes the cherries, cupping them in his two hands. On the way home, the mother asks the child why he didn’t take the cherries until the old man took some in his hands and offered them to him. The child said, smiling, “His hands were bigger than mine.” This is a famous anecdote about Andrew Carnegie, the steel king in America. The boss’s hands are bigger than yours. It is a wise person who can take advantage of this fact.

By Richard Hong

How to Deal with a Difficult Boss The Boss Goo Bon-hyung, Sallim Publishing Co., 2009, 296p ISBN 978-89-522-1052-4

How satisfied are you with your current job? If you’re not satisfied, what is the foremost reason? Many people suffer because of difficult relationships, especially because of a difficult boss. The Boss, written by Goo Bon-hyung, a prominent business consultant, is a book on how to deal with a difficult boss. Goo has firmly established himself as a major auto-entrepreneur of Korea, but during the 20 years he worked for a company, he experienced firsthand the importance of human relationships, and in particular, one’s relationship with one’s

Reviews Graphic Novel

The Solitary Pastimes of a Quirky Cat Eraser Kwon Yoonjoo, The Open Books Co., 2009, 161p ISBN 978-89-329-0864-9 03810

Snowcat is a timid, quirky cat whose specialty is playing alone. Through several book publications, including Snowcat's Playing Alone, Snowcat has come to typify a new generation of youth who enjoys spending time alone rather than mingling with others against their will. A new word, guichanism, (from the adjective guichanta, which means negligent) has been coined as a result of these books, which depict in a witty manner the loneliness and the sense of isolation felt by people in modern society.

The protagonist of Eraser, a new work by the author of Snowcat’s Playing Alone, is none other than Snowcat, the writer’s other self. The stories in this book unfold in various modes, such as illustrations using achromatic colors and photographs.

The main themes of the book, once again, are solitude and loneliness, as illustrated in the anecdote in which Snowcat goes to a restaurant alone, and is shown to a table for one in the furthermost corner.

There are, however, anecdotes that demonstrate deep reflection on the self, and relationships with others, which indicates progress from previous works that consisted of sketches of personal interest.

An eraser is an object with which things are removed. In the title piece, “Eraser,” Snowcat, who has been scolded by her mother, begins to erase herself. In the episode titled “The Use of an Eraser,”

Snowcat erases herself while sitting in a corner as everyone else brags about themselves, or talks behind other people’s backs.

Through a unique structure and idiosyncratic illustrations, these episodes unfold with reflections on disappointments in relationships, and hope and despair experienced in life.

The author does not overlook the small pleasures of everyday life. Some humorous episodes include one in which Snowcat sees a pretty vase, but turns away because she doesn’t have enough money; she can’t walk away from it, however, and only her head comes back. There’s another episode in which she runs out of batteries, and gets recharged by going to a café for a cup of coffee. And then there are the illustrations: in one of them, there is nothing other than two eyes showing through a pile of snow on a tree, which is a portrait of Snowcat; in another, Snowcat is shown as a three-dimensional paper doll that picks itself up again, even after being trampled on by enormous feet. This book of inventive illustrations is truly remarkable for its unique ideas.

By Kim Jinwoo

The Tale of a Serial Killer The Neighbor Kang Full, Munhak Segyesa Publishing Co., 2009 ISBN 978-89-7075-453-6 (Set)

the murder.

The book unfolds with stories of the victim’s stepmother, who regrets not having fully accepted her new daughter, of a pizza restaurant employee who suspected the existence of a serial killer but was hesitant to take action, of a luggage shop owner, and of an apartment security guard.

Tension builds up through the alternating stories about the neighbors who don’t do anything, either because they don’t want to be bothered, or because they don’t want to intrude, and about the serial killer who, just out of sight, continues to commit murder.

Through the serial killer who murders without remorse, the author depicts the dark side of modern society where people have stopped communicating with their neighbors. He also warns us about our lack of interest in one another. The voice of the author, who says, “If only we had taken one more step…” is fraught with significance. However, though the writer perceives these ordinary people as both victims and murderers, he does not entirely give up on them. Though the serial killer is “our neighbors,” it is also the neighbors who put a stop to further sacrifice.

Although the book deals with the chilling story of a serial killer, the author imbues it with his characteristic warmth.

He emphasizes the importance of the power of ordinary individuals who don’t turn their backs on what is going on around them. The book is a skillful combination of a thriller and a touching tale about the sorrows, worries, and love of people today.

By Kim Jinwoo

Kang Full, a major figure in the Korean web-toon scene whose work always becomes the talk of the town, is back with a story about a serial killer.

“My dead daughter has been coming home after school everyday for a week,” begins The Neighbor. A high school girl is murdered by a serial killer, and while the neighbors hesitate to take action for reasons of their own, the murders continue. The author sets the calendar back 10 days, showing what happened up to the point when the girl was murdered, and what went on with the neighbors who become aware of the existence of the killer. Then he reconstructs in detail the events that unfolded during the three days after the 10th day since

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Reviews Graphic Novel

Graphic Novel Takes on Renaissance Art The Story of Renaissance Art Kim Tae-kwon, Hankyoreh Publishing Company, 2009 260p, ISBN 978-89-8431-335-4 03900

and Leonardo da Vinci, the masters of the Renaissance era; and about Lorenzo Medici, the greatest patron of artists. The book is not simply an informative graphic novel, but a book of fascinating information. For instance, the complex family lines of Lorenzo Medici, and his relationships with the artists, are skillfully explained in a limited space through several examples of works, word balloon conversations, and compressed scenes.

The book is especially unique in that it experiments with juxtaposing artistic works and cartoons. Artistic works appear in word balloons in some cases, and in others, cartoon characters stand against the backdrop of a work of art. For example, the author explains the Medici family line by cutting out the figures that appear in Botticelli’s “Adoration of the Magi” one by one, and points out Botticelli, who is looking at the audience from a corner.

By combining artwork and cartoons, The Story of Renaissance Art offers a new experience beyond that of reading art history simply through text. Just as Kim referred satirically to the U.S. invasion of Iraq as a “modern crusade” in The Cartoon History of the Crusades, the author has interspersed the book with witty remarks and anecdotes.

By Kim Jinwoo

The Story of Renaissance Art is the latest work by the author of The Cartoon History of the Crusades, which received high praise for taking Korean informative graphic novels to a higher level. The author, who took readers back to the Middle Ages through The Cartoon History of the Crusades, takes them this time to the world of the 15th and 16th century Italian Renaissance, the most resplendent era in the history of art. The author sketches scenes from the Renaissance by presenting Giorgio Vasari, a 16th century artist who wrote The Lives of the Artists, as a boy detective who puts pieces together, as in solving a mystery.

The book, which starts out in the year 1546, the year in which Georgio Vasari began writing The Lives of the Artists, is based on the knowledge and insight accumulated over time by the author, who studied aesthetics, and is supported by a solid structure. It contains stories about major figures and works that opened up the Renaissance era, such as the story about the competition between Donatello, Ghiberti, and Brunelleschi, pioneers of early Renaissance art; about Botticelli, a captivating artist full of mystery; about Michelan-gelo 66

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In Praise of Awkwardness For the Truly Awkward Park Kwangsoo, Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd., 2009 267p, ISBN 978-89-01-09155-6 03810

Everyone is awkward at something. Some are awkward at love, and others are awkward at parting. Yet others are awkward at conversation. But is being awkward something to be so ashamed? What matters is to have the strength to go forward, loving yourself, awkward as you are.

For the Truly Awkward is the first book of cartoon essays to be published in five years

by Park Kwangsoo, who is famous for creating a unique character named “Sinpori,” using an original calligraphic style, and reviving a language that appeals to readers.

The author, who has won the hearts of 2.5 million readers with Kwangsoo’s Thoughts, conveys a heartwarming message of support to those who are truly awkward in life and in love.

The book is a confession by the author, Park, as well. He admits that he’s still awkward at everything, even though he is past 40. His first marriage ended in failure, and he went into substantial debt after starting a business. On top of that, he has always suffered from an inferiority complex because he believes himself overweight and homely.

Park, however, does not deny his awkward self. He encourages people to accept themselves the way they are, saying, “Is there anyone in the world who isn’t awkward? No one knows what tomorrow will bring, and today is a new day for everyone!”

The message for the awkward is conveyed through illustrations, photographs, and words. The author speaks words of comfort, such as, “No flower in the world blossoms without being shaken to and fro.

If you’re being shaken right now, it’s okay.”

He also says that it’s okay to take a break now and then: “As I try to pick myself up again after falling, my other self says to me, ‘You don’t have to try so hard. You’ve been through enough.’”

When people feel less than good enough, despite trying their best, they need the courage to face the struggles of life. The author states that we don’t need to be ashamed of our awkward selves today. He further states that we should enjoy the sense of inadequacy now, for tomorrow, we might not be able to feel it the same way again.

By Kim Jinwoo

KLTI Grants for Prospective Publishers 2009 KLTI Overseas Marketing Grants

2009 KLTI Overseas Publication Grants

Areas of Funding Publication marketing events and advertisements

Applicant Qualifications Any publisher who has signed a contract for the publishing rights of a Korean book

Applicant Qualifications Publishers who have published Korean books in translation and are planning to hold promotional events Grant Amount - Roundtrip airfare and accommodation expenses for the author, expenses for events and advertisements, etc.

- The amount will be determined by KLTI after due consideration of the marketing plan and scale. * The grant will be provided directly to the author or to the overseas publisher in two payments, before and after an event.

How to Apply Register as a member on the website (www.koreanbooks.or.kr) and complete the on-line application form.

Application Documents All documents should be scanned and uploaded on the application page of the website.

1. Introduction of the publisher, along with its history and past publications, including any previous books related to Korea 2. A copy of the contract between the publisher and the translators 3. A copy of the contract between the publisher and the copyright holders 4. The translator’s resume Other Information to Include 1. Detailed event plan 2. Publication cost 3. Total cost of event (marketing or promotion) 4. Requested grant amount Application Schedule Submission period: any time throughout the year Grant notification: April, July, October, and January Contact Name: Kim Ji-eun Email: grants@klti.or.kr

Grant Amount - Part of the total publication expenses - The amount varies depending on the publication cost and the genre of the book.

- The grant will be awarded after publication.

How to Apply Register as a member on the website (www.koreanbooks.or.kr) and complete the on-line application form.

Application Documents All documents should be scanned and uploaded on the application page of the website.

1. Introduction of the publisher, along with its history and past publications, including any previous books related to Korea 2. Publication plan including the dates and budget for translation and publication in detail 3. A copy of the contract between the publisher and the translator 4. A copy of the contract between the publisher and the copyright holders 5. The translator's resume Application Schedule Submission period: any time throughout the year Grant notification: April, July, October, and January Contact Name: Kim Ji-eun Email: grants@klti.or.kr

Reviews Children's Books

Playing with Nature Wave Suzy Lee, BIR Publishing Co., Ltd., 2009, 34p ISBN 978-89-491-1205-3 74800

A woman and her young daughter come hand in hand to the seashore. At the shore, the child, with a big grin on her face, lets go of her mother’s hand and runs toward the water. This is how the picture book Wave begins. This picture book is comprised of only the child and the waves; it has no words. Instead, it portrays an innocent, happy child, dynamic waves, a group of lounging seagulls, and the joy of imagining the story for the readers.

At first, the child feels nervous and afraid of the water. She tries giving it a threatening look. Finally, she carefully dips her foot in. When all of her fear and hesitation are gone, she splashes about in the water. Then a wave higher than the child surges upon her. Surprised, she runs quickly and looks back triumphantly. However, before long, another big wave catches her; she gets completely drenched. Then she notices that some beautiful seashells were carried in by the wave and a huge smile spreads across her face. She proudly shows her mother the shells and she turns to play in the water. When it is time to go home, she waves her hand at the wave as if to promise that she would return.

That is all this simple but beautiful picture book is about. The child playing on the shore may remind readers of their own memories when they were young, or of their own children playing. They may marvel at the illustrator’s great skills that perfectly portray the happy, angelic face and gestures of the child, the dynamic movement of the water, and the beautiful wing strokes of the seagulls. They might get lost in their admiration of the simple but bold pictures of vertical, horizontal, and radiant compositions. Or readers may be lucky and find something beyond their wildest imaginations.

The child is about to leave her mom and move forward into the world; the shapeless, chaotically colored grey-blue water is a fascinating but fearful world for her. The child on the left page hesitatingly looks at the world on the right, but it is not easy to enter. The seagulls flying around her seem to be her alter egos. They sometimes fly away just before the child runs.

But they play an important role of uniting the two pages, which are purposefully divided, and leading her into the new world. The seagulls seem to symbolize the power of nature; this scene shows the readers that an instinctive and fundamental power that exists in nature helps human beings to overcome their fears.

Finally, the child crosses the boundary and moves toward the wave without hesitation. The wave welcomes and plays with her. However, nature, or the world, is not an easy playmate. The scene where a big wave crashes down on her is overwhelming.

When the child and the seagulls are nowhere to be seen, it indicates that a child out in the world will have to give in to the world sometime. The ego shrinks and the world controls her. The next page, however, shows that after the moment of crisis, she

gains confidence again. In addition, the once-scary world rewards the child for overcoming the risk: pretty seashells are scattered around her.

Suzy Lee, who successfully portrayed the truth of life and the world through a child playing, is one of the most famous illustrators not only in Korea, but also overseas. Rights to her picture books have been sold to Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Brazil, and Japan. The New York Times selected Wave as one of the year’s ten bestillustrated children’s books in 2008. What kind of children’s world will she show us next time with her special skills to wordlessly describe the inner mind?

By Kim Sujung

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Reviews Children's Books

Children Who Make Their Dreams Come True The Vagabond Puppet Troupe Kim Joong-mi; Illustrator: Oh Jung-hee Little Mountain Publishing Co., 2009, 319p ISBN 978-89-89646-57-0 73810

ken-hearted for various personal reasons.

These troubled children gather together to create stories, make puppets and the stage, and practice hard. This process and its results cannot be learned from a school, for the value is immeasurable.

Though the characters are fictional, the book is based on fact. The author, a longtime activist in the slums of Korea, is renowned for her bestselling book in 2000 about a group of children looking for hope, Children of Gwaengiburimal.

This book is a sequel of Children of Gwaengiburimal. Kim helped isolated, forgotten children to support each other and dream about a better future through cultural activities. The performance was her final solution to help the children. Though they originally knew nothing about puppet shows, they developed their skills and won a prize at an international puppet contest.

The puppets, actors, and audience share their difficult lives, console each other, and, together, become happier. This is not just a dream. It is a quiet revolution that will change this superficial, selfish world.

By Park Suk-kyoung

A weekly news magazine recently splayed its cover story with the title, “Korean elementary students have no dreams.” This is only natural for children who grow up looking after adults who only care about their own business according to their neoliberal point of view. Actually, more and more children say their dream is to become a top student by beating their friends, become a successful entrepreneur, or at least win the lottery and become rich; in such scenarios, only “me” exists. To make such dreams come true, children have to give up the present happiness they deserve to enjoy.

Fortunately, there are children who dream big and try their best to make these dreams come true. These children are the heroes of this book. As members of a puppet troupe, they travel to every corner of Korea carrying the puppet stage on their truck, and meet the poor and the lonely.

They perform puppet shows not because they are told to, but because they want to console those who suffer for many different reasons; the members themselves are bro70

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may continue into the following generations. Those who have survived war hate the enemies for taking their loved ones’ lives. However, those who died have probably solved their misunderstandings and forgiven each other in the world of the dead.

Perhaps.

“Two Friends in a Barley Field” is a magical story about two families who have hated each other for the last 50 years, since the outbreak of the Korean War, and finally make peace one night after the visit of some very special guests. Through this story, where the living and the dead communicate in a comical way, the readers encounter the true meaning of peace, and the love of neighbors.

This book includes two other short stories. One of them is “Post Box” in which two boys and an old woman, who lives alone and takes care of stray cats, share their stories and feelings through the means of a post box. In one corner of the big city where anonymity is taken for granted, the friendship that grows between the senior citizen and the young children is touching.

The other story is “Bin the Black Plastic Bag.” The bag protagonist, Bin, explores the world with the ambitious plan to become meaningful and useful to someone. In the end, the plastic bag, one of the least environmentally friendly products, protects some seeds from the cold weather, enabling them to shoot new buds, revealing an ironic but profound ending.

The witty illustrations complement the tone of the stories. Kim Yongchul, a renowned illustrator in Korea, easily and precisely conveys unversal emotional stats.

By Park Suk-kyoung

With Wishes for Peace Two Friends in a Barley Field Lim Eojin; Illustrator: Kim Yongchul Munhakdongne Publishing Corp., 2009, 95p ISBN 978-89-546-0809-1

Right now, for various reasons wars are raging around the world. The men in power who have caused these wars may have their justifications. However, those who have lost family and friends are full of hate without knowing why these wars have happened.

Wars can cause brothers, friends, or neighbors to become enemies and the hatred

Reviews Children's Books

Hapless Heroes and Their Mistakes Lee Yujeong, the Perfect Yoo Eun-sil; Illustrator: Byun Young-mee Prunsoop Publishing Co., Ltd., 2009, 148p ISBN 978-89-7184-627-8

want to hide. Though we can overcome some weaknesses if we try hard enough, there are some that we are born with that we cannot do anything about. This book has five stories about various weaknesses.

The author tells readers to accept their weaknesses and not be ashamed of them, and as a result, communicates a rare self-introspection towards social inequality.

Yoo Eun-sil is a young, creative author who has garnered a strong fan base. She cares more about the children in need more than those who have everything. The characters in her stories are always brave and cheerful though they don’t live under the best conditions. The Bunting Boy is another famous collection of short stories in which the author’s affection toward humanity shines through.

By Kim Ji-eun

One day, she goes to a rehabilitation center for alcoholics in hopes of taking her father home, but she is not even allowed to see him. On her way home alone, she feels exhausted and hungry so she ends up stealing a grocery delivery basket full of food from a neighbor. After gorging, she is full but does not feel well. Eventually she passes out from acute indigestion. Her neighbor finds her and takes her to the hospital.

Gongju apologizes to her neighbor for taking the groceries. After that, she finds a part-time job so she can buy groceries and eat more slowly.

Gongju gets soaked from the shower of life since she has to live alone without her parents. She could have avoided the downpour by telling others about her situation, but she did not. Even though she had to endure physical hardships without anyone’s help, she matures quickly from the drenching experience. This book, about a heroine who experiences difficult conditions and finally grows up, received the Changbi Publishers’ Grand Prize for creative books for elementary school students.

By Kim Hyunsook

When we can’t find something we use every day, we feel very frustrated. Remember how you felt when you couldn’t find the keys in your bag while standing in front of your door? A scholar was said to have bought the same book three times because he couldn’t find where he had put it in his bookshelves.

Yujeong, the heroine, is a child with a bad sense of direction. When her family moved to a high-rise apartment complex, she had to tag along with her younger brother so that she wouldn’t get lost on the way home from school. Though she knows the address, it is not enough to help her navigate through the complicated area; all of the apartment buildings and the alleys look alike to her.

Lee Yujeong, the Perfect is a short story for children in which Yujeong has a hard time after she gets lost on her way home. It is embarrassing for an 11-year-old child to get lost, so Yujeong tries hard to find her way home by herself. However, the more she tries to remember the way, the more confused she becomes. Fortunately, she bumpes into her private tutor. But then the tutor says, “Glad to see you. Where’s your place? I would’ve been lost without you.”

Everyone has weaknesses that they

A Young Heroine Proves Herself Gongju Pigs Out Lee Eunjeong; Illustrator: Jung Moonju Changbi Publishers, Inc., 2009, 163p ISBN 978-89-364-4249-1 73810

The book’s heroine, Gongju, eats a lot of food very quickly during lunchtime at school because she cannot afford to eat at home. Her mother has left the family, and her father has not been home for some time. Gongju’s classmates are unaware of her situation, so they tease her by giving her the nickname “Shower Meal,” which means sudden gluttony in Korean. Gongju endures the teasing because she believes that once her father comes back, all of her troubles will be over. In the meantime, she has no one to confide in.

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Reviews Children's Books

A Day in the Life of a Writer

and lingers in the clear images that express the simple but moving life of Kwon Jeongsaeng.

By Kim Hyunsook

Puppy Poo Granddad Jang Ju-sik, Choi Suk-un, Sakyejul Publishing Ltd., 2009 37p, ISBN 978-89-5828-360-7 77810

Friendly Fathers Here Comes Dad Lee Song-hyun; Illustrator: Yang Jung-a Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd., 2009, 212p ISBN 978-89-320-1958-1 73810

culturally unrefined. His son Junyoung feels bad because people do not think highly of his father. However, his father is proud of himself and his job as a dance instructor. When Junyoung’s class prepares for a waltz performance at school, his father is invited to teach them and finally becomes popular with Junyoung’s classmates. Junyoung’s shame concerning his father gradually changes to pride.

Another father also appears in this book: Junyoung’s grandfather. As the principal of Junyoung’s school, he does not like his son’s liberal lifestyle. The grandfather is an example of the first generation type of father, as he values authority. However, thanks to dance and the love of family, the three generations of men come to understand each other and live in harmony. In particular, Junyoung’s refined, friendly dad, who understands Junyoung’s first crush and dances holding hands with his son, incites readers to reflect on the ever-changing role of Korean fathers. Here Comes Dad won the Mahaesong Literature Award, a distinguished children’s literature award in 2009.

By Kim Ji-eun

Puppy Poo Granddad is a story about Kwon Jeong-saeng, the famous Korean children’s book writer. Kwon’s first story book, Puppy Poo, which was published after he was already quite old, was so loved by many children that his nickname became “Puppy Poo Granddad.” In the book, Puppy Poo seemed useless at first, but in the end he sacrificed himself to help a beautiful flower bloom. The book was also made into Korea’s first clay animation, which included background music by the famous musician Yiruma. It drew a lot of attention not only in Korea but also abroad, and is beloved by readers of all ages.

Kwon passed away in 2007; in his honor, children’s book author Jang Ju-sik wrote a storybook describing his life. Kwon Jeong-saeng was not just a great writer. He made a deep impression on people by living a nature-friendly life with great integrity, donating his royalties to his young readers, and letting a mouse that came looking for warmth from the cold winter stay in his room. With anecdotes like these, the book explains the background of why Kwon’s stories are warm and impressive, as if told by the old neighbor next door. Choi Sukun, the illustrator, depicts traditional Korea using a simple brushstroke technique.

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A new trend in Korean children’s literature is the appearance of friendly fathers. Due to the influence of Confucianism, Korean family culture has largely been patriarchal in structure. Even in children’s books, fathers are usually depicted as stern, rigid, and powerfully authoritative. Various kinds of conflicts occur between mothers and children while fathers just sit like spectators or dole out clichéd advice. If we can call these kinds of fathers the first generation of fathers, then in the beginning of 2000, depictions of a second generation of fathers emerged who demonstrated much less authority. Fathers had lost the authority they had in the past while Korea was suffering from an economic recession and was bailed out by the International Monetary Fund. A series of stories that explored the distress of these fathers was published.

Some fathers in the stories even ended up leaving their homes because of their unbearable anguish.

Here Comes Dad depicts a third generation of fathers in Korean children’s books.

The father in this book teaches tango, rumba, and salsa at a private school. The general image of dance instructors, except for traditional Korean dance teachers, is not a positive one in Korean society, as many people think such forms of dance are

Steady Sellers

What Is the Meaning of My Death?

I Died One Day Lee Kyunghye, Windchild, 2004, 191p ISBN 978-89-90878-05-2

A friend’s death leaves unbearable pain in his young, sensitive friends. However, Jaejun left behind a question about the value of life as well as pain.

Lee Kyunghye’s book, I Died One Day is a famous steady seller in the genre of Korean young adult literature. Though the title refers to death, the novel’s theme is about the value of life. Jaejun, a middle school student, dies in a motorcycle accident.

Jaejun’s friend Yumi starts to wonder what Jaejun was really like and what his life

meant. With the help of Jaejun’s diary, Yumi tries to rebuild the life Jaejun had lived.

The emotional issues of adolescence, a period commonly known for its angst, are not new to literature. However, this book indefatigably explores the inner psychology of disobedience in an honest way. Most

adults talk to adolescents in a commanding tone, telling them the dos and don’ts as if to control their lives. The fact is that adolescents are not interested in the model life that adults emphasize; they are more interested in their own development, friendships, and finding their identity.

There is no commanding tone in this book. In the eyes of adolescents, adults are no longer trustworthy; teachers teach without regard to the students and parents are too busy with their own problems to think about their children. The adolescents themselves are not satisfied with their aimless wandering. Yumi was an optimistic girl who wasted her teenage years by believing she would at least enter high school at the end of her wanderings. Then her best friend Jaejun passed away before going to high school–a time period she had assumed that they would share. Jaejun’s death gives unbearable pain to his sensitive young friends. However, he left behind questions about the value of life as well as pain. Yumi concludes, “I have to grow up and live life to the fullest, not only for me, but also for my friend, who no longer can.” It is also the first true decision that she gives to herself.

First published in April 28, 2004, this book has been read for over five years. Lee Kyunghye’s outstanding stories include the fantasy story Last Bat Princess, Migaya. She excels at describing a character’s inner psychology. Her latest stories have drawn attention once again; they are parodies of traditional Korean stories.

Many Korean teenagers, under extreme pressure to enter prestigious universities, are told what to do by adults. However, there are more than a few who escape from such competition and work hard to grow as independent people. For these few, Jaejun and Yumi’s honest attitudes towards life could be encouraging. That must be why I Died One Day continues to gain new fans.

By Kim Ji-eun

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Meet the Publishers

Changbi Publishers, Inc. The journey from an activist conscience to becoming a publishing powerhouse

The history of Changbi has a close relationship to the Korean democratization movement. Constantly at odds with the military autocracy, the company was under government censorship and constraint, its quarterly journal was forcibly discontinued, and its publishing license was once revoked. Changbi was able to shed its image as an unwavering freedom fighter when a civilian government took power in the 1990s. Since then, Changbi has transformed into a publisher of many bestsellers and into a patron of young adult literature.

Chang-bi staff

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The name Changbi still holds political resonance among Korean intellectuals. While Moonji, the publishing company considered to be the other major presence in the Korean literary landscape, placed a greater emphasis on literature for art’s sake, Changbi stood on the polar opposite side and contemplated the social role of the arts.

As an extension of this effort, the quarterly journal, Quarterly Changbi (Creation and Criticism), vigorously introduced discourse on the most pressing issues of the times ranging from politics, economy, and international relations to history and literature.

It goes without saying that Changbi’s political stance conflicted with the agenda of the oppressive political climate of the 1970s and 1980s. The history of Changbi is riddled with dissent against government censorship and constraint up to the end of the

Thirst by Kim Ji-ha, the most prominent Korean resistance poet. The government confiscated the copies and summoned Lee Si-young, then editor-in-chief, for questioning. Lee recalls, “In a time when authors paid out of their own pockets to get their books published, Changbi Poetry series introduced a system that allowed a publisher to print and sell a poetry chapbook that appeals to the general readership and even make a profit.”

There was more trouble for Quarterly Changbi in 1989 when it published Hwang Sok-yong’s essay on his trip to North Korea, “People Live There.” This was after the journal had once been discontinued by the new military government in 1980, and cost the company its publishing license at the time, forcing it to reinvent itself in

1980s. In the midst of chaos, Changbi was still able to enthusiastically publish politically correct works of literature through the series of collected poetry, Changbi Poetry (Changbi Shiseon), and Changbi New Works (Changbi Shinseo). From the 1990s and beyond, Changbi has been publishing more books for a popular readership and developing a more inclusive list of genres.

The first issue of Quarterly Changbi, printed in 1966, marked the birth of Changbi. In the words of poet Lee Si-young, who served as a senior advisor for Changbi, “Changbi was a publishing movement started by progressive intellectuals under Park Chung-hee’s military dictatorship as part of the democratization movement in the 1960s.” Literature, of course, was in the center of the movement.

Changbi published its first book in 1974 when Changbi Publishers, Inc. was founded. The first volume of the Changbi New Works series was a translation of The Social History of Art (Sozialgeschichte der Kunst und Literatur) by Arnold Hauser.

Hwang Sok-yong’s collection of stories, The Land of Strangers and Lee Young-hee’s critique of the imperialist nature of the Vietnam War, The Logic of Conversion: China and Korea of Asia, followed. Changbi Collected Poems series began with Shin Kyung-rim’s Peasants’ Dance in 1975. Many famous poets such as Jeong Hee-sung, Jeong Ho-seung, Kim Yong-taek, and Gwak Jae-gu made themselves known through the series. Some of the volumes – C h o Ta e - i l’s Ho m e l a n d a n d H w a n g Myung-gul’s Korean Children were deemed seditious and consequently banned. The most exciting event in the history of the series was the publishing of With Parching

order to find inventive ways to return to the market.

Changbi shed its image as an unwavering freedom fighter in 1990 with the publication of A Novel: Tong-eui-po-gam by Lee Eun-sung. This book created a deluge of period novels in the Korean publishing market and helped Changbi resolve its longstanding financial problems. The book of poems, At Thirty, the Party Is Over by Choi Young-mi, and essay collections, My Exploration of Cultural Heritage by Yu Hong-june, and A Taxi Driver in Paris by Hong Se-hwa were also bestsellers.

In 2000, Children of Gwaengiburimal

by Kim Joong-mi altered the landscape of Korean young adult literature. In 2008, Shin Kyung-sook’s novel, Take Good Care of Mom sold 900,000 copies, and The Crucible by Gong Ji-young, another renowned writer, was published this year, contributing to the company’s reputation as one that is financially secure as well.

Changbi also created The Changbi Prize in Fiction and The Changbi Prize for Literature of Young Adults in 2007 in search of great works yet to be discovered.

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Wizard Bakery, Koo Byung-mo Wandeuki, Kim Ryeo-Ryeong The Land of Strangers, Hwang Sok-yong The Crucible, Gong Ji-young Take Good Care of Mom, Shin Kyung-sook Ten Thousand Lives, Ko Un 7. Changbi Discourse Series 8. Quarterly Changbi 1.

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Meet the Publishers

Yeowon Media

Sharing the wisdom of peace and co-prosperity with the global community Yeowon Media is a publisher that specializes in illustrated storybooks for children. Their philosophy, “Sharing the virtue of peace and co-prosperity with the global community through cultural and arts exchange,” is demonstrated in the way their books are made: production and text come from Korea, but the illustrations are often a collaborative effort of artists from all corners of the world.

TanTan Story House

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Thousands of languages are spoken on this planet today, but only a few have their own unique script. In 1446, Koreans were able to accurately decipher the sounds in their ow n l a n g u a g e w i t h t h e c re a t i o n o f Hunminjeongeum (hangeul) a phonetic alphabet to represent spoken Korean. But during the 19th century, Koreans found themselves caught up in the storm of colonial repression at the hands of the Japanese, and were denied the right to use their own traditions, including written and spoken language, for over 30 years. They were only left with a wasteland on which they built everything from the bottom up. This was also a time when Koreans had their first taste of European culture and ironically began to idolize it, memorizing and emulating everything they could get their hands on in order to catch up with the rest of the modernized world. Now they have one earnest wish to share not cars or electronics, but the ancient philosophy of peace and co-prosperity with the global community through the exchange of culture and arts.

Yeowon Media is considered to be a Korean publisher that acts on this wish more enthusiastically than others. The company has never been able to offer a lucrative deal to a famous author with a solid readership base, nor has it advertised itself through media, but Yeowon Media has already carved a niche for itself in the publishing world as a publisher that produces the most excellent children’s illustrated storybooks in Korea. The secret to their success is that they never lose sight of whom they are working for: children who will transform the world into a much better place 20, 30, even 40 or 50 years from now. Yeowon dreams that its books will be used throughout a child’s life as a tool to build an emotional and, intellectual foundation on which the child will gain skills to grapple with pressing issues such as the crisis of the ecosystem as brought on by the rapid advancement of technology, or frequent encounters with unfamiliar cultures and ingrained prejudices.

expect a much more remarkable depiction of vibrant nature from an illustrator who lives in a place where the sun shines with splendor.

Yeowon Media does not stop at simply publishing children’s books. Tantan Storyhouse, located in the Paju Publishing Complex, helps children organically learn how to apply what they have learned from books to practical use. Through activities that aid the comprehensive understanding of the book, children walk away with more than the experience of a mere reading education. Hundreds of kindergarteners from the area visit in hoards to play and learn at the Tantan Storyhouse, which has turned into something of a local attraction.

By placing the future of mankind in the hands of young avid readers in the age

of multimedia, Yeowon Media, I sincerely anticipate, will continue to take their mission to all corners of the world, especially the ones most in need.

By Kim Zaehi (columnist)

Yeowon Media, a publisher specializing in children’s picture books, continues to produce TanTan picture book series. Besides the ever-popular TanTan Theme Story and TanTan Mathematics Children series, the TanTan story series produced collections covering a wide range of topics such as integrated, linguistic, logic, nature, science, people, history, economy, society, music and the arts for children ages zero through thirteen.

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TanTan Story House Theater / Yeowon Media staff 5

Yeowon Media’s dreams and visions have resulted in books that are distinct from other storybooks–books that have gone on to receive favorable reviews beyond their expectations from Korean and foreign experts. For instance, the 12-volume science books, which were published

by Fischer Verlag as the TanTan Science Children series, received praise from the German media as “original in its stimulation of young curiosity,” enabling the series to be introduced to young readers in Europe, Central and South America, and Africa. At the 2009 Bologna Children’s Book Fair, Yeowon’s fame carried over from the previous year as Math in an Art Museum received the Bologna Ragazzi Award, and the illustrators of Row after Row and If I Become Mayor were named “2009 Selected Illustrators.”

The planning and text of Yeowon Media books come from Korea, but the actual process of making their books often involves a collaborative effort with illustrators from around the world. This production strategy comes from the belief that there are great illustrators in all parts of the world who can bring a story to life, and that the experience of lines and colors that represent different cultures will be a great way to nurture children’s artistic sensibilities. For instance, one may be able to

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1. Ivan the Fool Park Kyong-ah; Illustrator: Lee Kyoungkook 2. Row after Row Kim Ye-shil; Illustrator: Joung Ji-yee 3. The Backwards Green Frog (Japanese) Lee Sangbae Illustrator: Kim Donsung 4. Where Do Turtles Swim To (French) Jang Soomin; Illustrator: Lee Yunhee 5. I Am Not a Lazy Person (French) Hyun So; Illustrator: Cho Eun-young 6. Half A Loaf-Halfy (Japanese) So Jungae; Illustrator: Han Byungho Han

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7. Do Tigers Eat Grass? (French) Ahn Hyeonjeong; Illustrator: Jeong Se-yeon Jeon 8. The Flying Birds Han Eunsun; Illustrator: Kim Jukyoung

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9. Math in an Art Museum Park Chansun; Illustrator Kim Yunju 10. Grandpa Taxi Driver Carries Happiness Shin Hye-een; Illustrator: Lee Hyujin 11. If I Become Mayor Kim Cecil; Illustrator: Lashin Kheirieh

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INDEX Title Original Title Publishers Homepage Copyright Agent E-mail Phone

13p Mental Fitness Maeumnyeok Wisdomhouse Publishing Co., Ltd. www.wisdomhouse.co.kr Kwon Minkyung ohappyday@wisdomhouse.co.kr 82-31-936-4199 13p Gratifying Business Psychology Tongkwaehan Bijeuniseu Simnihak Kungree Press Kim Hyunsook kungree@chol.com 82-2-734-6591 (Ext.3) 13p Psychology of Habit Seupgwanui Simnihak Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. www.wjbooks.co.kr Yang Sook-hyun shy07@wjbooks.co.kr 82-2-3670-1168 13p Frame Peureim Book21 Publishing Group www.book21.com Kang Sun-young rights@book21.co.kr 82-31-955-2194 13p Charming People Are Different by 1% Kkeullineun Sarameun 1% Ga Dareuda Thenan Publishing Co. www.thenanbiz.com Alice Moon alice@thenanbiz.com 82-2-325-2525 (Ext.505)

15p The Psychology of Men Namja Simnihak Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. www.wjbooks.co.kr Yang Sook-hyun shy07@wjbooks.co.kr 82-2-3670-1168 15p Psychology of the Men in Their 40s Maheunui Simnihak Wisdomhouse Publishing Co., Ltd. www.wisdomhouse.co.kr Kwon Minkyung ohappyday@wisdomhouse.co.kr 82-31-936-4199 15p I Regret Having Married My Wife Naneun Anaewaui Gyeolhoneul Huhoehanda Sam&Parkers www.smpk.co.kr Kim Yi-ryung yr_kim@smpk.co.kr 82-2-324-0395

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15p Psychology Comes Knocking at Men’s Hearts Simnihak Namjareul Nokeuhada ChungRim Publishing Co., Ltd. www.chungrim.com Sera Lee zorba99@chungrim.com 82-2-546-4341 16p 30-Year-Olds Ask Psychology, etc.

Seoreunsari Simnihagege Mutda Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. www.wjbooks.co.kr Yang Sook-hyun shy07@wjbooks.co.kr 82-2-3670-1168 17p 1,000 Sympathies Cheongaeui Gonggam Hankyoreh Publishing Company www.hanibook.co.kr kim Yun-jeong simple@hanibook.co,kr 82-2-6383-1603 17p People Landscape Sarampunggyeong Wisdomhouse Publishing Co., Ltd. www.wisdomhouse.co.kr Kwon Minkyung ohappyday@wisdomhouse.co.kr 82-31-936-4199 17p Good Luck!

Geontureul Binda Prunsoop Publishing Co., Ltd. www.prunsoop.co.kr Kim Mijung iledor@prunsoop.co.kr 82-31-955-1410 (Ext.128) 19p Do I Really Love You? Naneun Jeongmal Neoreul Saranghaneun Geolkka Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. www.wjbooks.co.kr Yang Sook-hyun shy07@wjbooks.co.kr 82-2-3670-1168 19p Psychology of Love Simnihagi Yeonaereul Malhada Thenan Publishing Co. www.thenanbiz.com Alice Moon alice@thenanbiz.com 82-2-325-2525 (Ext.505) 19p Rules of Dating Yeonaeui Jeongseok Hainaim Publishing Co., Ltd. www.hainaim.com Park Sujin sujinpark@hainaim.com 82-2-326-1600 (Ext.302) 19p Will You Love Me Tomorrow, Too? Naeildo Nareul Saranghal Geongayo?

Sigongsa www.sigongsa.com Amelie Choi amelie@sigongsa.com 82-2-2046-2856 20p Leave Me Alone! etc.

Na Jom Naebeoryeodwo Chondung Books www.chondungbooks.com Oh Se-kyung osekyung@empal.com 82-31-955-5015

list_ Books from Korea Vol.5 Autumn 2009

21p Escape School from Worries for Elementary School Students Chodeunggomintalchulhakgyo Dasan Child www.dasanbooks.com Lee Jungsoon twotwo@dasanbooks.com 82-2-703-1723 21p Crybaby, a Baby Cloud Agi Gureum Ulbo Sakyejul Publishing Ltd. www.sakyejul.co.kr Kang Hyunjoo kanghjoo@sakyejul.co.kr 82-31-955-8600 21p The Stubborn Rhino Eokjidaewang Koppulso Blubird Publishing Co. www.bbchild.co.kr Rosa Han rosa.han@yolimwon.co.kr 82-2-3144-1300 21p I-Seum Child Psychology Series I-Seum gamjeong series I-Seum (Mirae N Culture Group) www.i-seum.com Wei Lina twins@i-seum.com 82-2-3475-3941 25p, 26p Psychology Answers 30-Year-Olds Simnihagi Seoreunsarege Daphada Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. www.wjbooks.co.kr Yang Sook-hyun shy07@wjbooks.co.kr 82-2-3670-1168 31p Thank You for This World I Sesange Taeeonagil Cham Jalhaetda Kidsjakkajungsin www.kidsjakka.co.kr Park Hyunyee kids@jakka.co.kr 82-2-336-2871 31p The Three Wishes Segaji Sowon Maumsanchack www.maumsan.com Kwon Halla halla@maumsan.com 82-2-362-1451

31p, 32p Kindhearted Bokhee Chinjeolhan Bokhuissi Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. www.moonji.com Seo Eun-mi kaiseo@moonji.com 82-2-338-7224 (Ext.111) 37p Three Generations Samdae Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. www.moonji.com Seo Eun-mi kaiseo@moonji.com 82-2-338-7224 (Ext.111) 38p The Old Garden Oraedoen Jeongwon Changbi Publishers, Inc. www.changbi.com/english Lee Soonhwa copyright@changbi.com 82-31-955-3369

45p Black Flower Geomeun Kkot Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. www.munhak.com Kim Mijeong mijeong@munhak.com 82-31-955-2662 45p The Diary of Kim Gu Baekbeomilji Dolbegae Publishers www.dolbegae.co.kr Shin Gui-young kysh80@dolbegae.co.kr 82-31-955-5020 (Ext.1)

46p Chinatown Junggugin Geori Hollym Publishers www.hollym.co.kr Chloe Lee gohj@hollym.co.kr 82-2-734-5087 47p A Dwarf Launches a Little Ball Nanjangiga Ssoaollin Jageun Gong Iseonggwa Him Cho Joonghyeop hesperion@naver.com 82-2-322-9383 47p Children of Gwaengiburimal Gwaengiburimal Aideul Changbi Publishers, Inc. www.changbi.com/english Lee Soonhwa copyright@changbi.com 82-31-955-3369

48p Korean Food Odyssey Hanguk Eumsik Odisei Thinking Tree Publishing Co. www.itreebook.com Park Yeonju yeon@itreebook.com 82-2-3141-1616 (Ext.303) 48p Seonjae’s Temple Food Seonjae Seunimui Sachareumsik Design House www.design.co.kr Chang Da-woon cdw@design.co.kr 82-2-2262-7396 51p Le Grand Chef Sikgaek Gimm-Young Publishers, Inc. www.gimmyoung.com/english Lee Youjeong bookmaker@gimmyoung.com 82-2-3668-3203 53p The Private Life of the Nation Gukgaui Sasaenghwal Minumsa www.minumsa.com Michelle Nam ha@minumsa.com 82-2-515-2000 (Ext.207) 54p Seoul: The City in Fiction Seoul, Eoneu Nal Soseori Doeda Kang Publishing Kim Hyunju gangpub@daum.net 82-2-325-9566

54p Wolf Neukdae Changbi Publishers, Inc. www.changbi.com/english Lee Soonhwa copyright@changbi.com 82-31-955-3369

61p The Economics of Life Sallimui Gyeongjehak Person & Idea Publishing Co. www.inmul.co.kr Kim Yungon insaedit@gmail.com 82-2-325-6364

66p For the Truly Awkward Cham Seotun Saramdeul Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. www.wjbooks.co.kr Yang Sook-hyun shy07@wjbooks.co.kr 82-2-3670-1168

55p The Elephants Have Come Kokkiriga Tteotda Minumsa www.minumsa.com Michelle Nam ha@minumsa.com 82-2-515-2000 (Ext.207)

62p Civilization and the Sea Munmyeonggwa Bada Sanchurum Yun Yang-mi sanbooks@naver.com 82-2-725-7414

69p Wave Padoya Nolja BIR Publishing Co., Ltd. www.bir.co.kr Song Jung-ha ha@minumsa.com 82-2-515-2000 (Ext.207)

55p The Washing Place Ppallaeteo Munidang www.munidang.com Jang Jung-min munidang88@naver.com 82-2-927-4990 56p Wolf's Word Neukdaeui Munjang Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. www.munhak.com Kim Mijeong mijeong@munhak.com 82-31-955-2662 56p The Republic of Uzupis Uzupis Gonghwaguk Minumsa www.minumsa.com Michelle Nam ha@minumsa.com 82-2-515-2000 (Ext.207) 57p All the Beautiful Children Modu Areumdaun Aideul Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. www.moonji.com Seo Eun-mi kaiseo@moonji.com 82-2-338-7224 (Ext.111) 58p The Miracles in My Past, the Miracles in My Future Sara On Gijeok, Sara Gal Gijeok Samtoh Co., Ltd. www.isamtoh.com Lee Mankeun aura@isamtoh.com 82-2-763-8965 60p Hyojae’s Lifestyle Hyojaecheoreom Sarayo Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. www.munhak.com Kim Mijeong mijeong@munhak.com 82-31-955-2662 60p Picturesque Travel Spots in Korea Urinara Geurim Gachin Yeohaengji Ahn Graphics www.ag.co.kr Kim Kanghee kanghee@ag.co.kr 82-2-745-0631 61p Hakuna Matata, Shall We Dance?

Hakuna Matata Uri Gachi Chumchullae Bookhouse Publishers www.bookhouse.co.kr Kim Kyoungtae kimkt@bookhouse.co.kr 82-2-3144-2701

62p Paper Road Travels Peipeorodeu Gihaeng MBC Production Co., Ltd., www.mbcpro.co.kr Kim Ki-tae newcity3@naver.com 82-2-789-0209 63p Journey to the Soul of Latin

by Kim Byoung-jong Gimbyeongjongui Ratin Hwacheop Gihaeng Random House Korea www.randomhouse.com Park Jiyoung jiyoung@randomhousekorea.com 82-2-3466-8907 63p The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World Jisangui Areumdaun Doseogwan Hangilsa Publishing Co., Ltd. www.hangilsa.co.kr Ahn Minjae hangilsaone@hanilsa.co.kr 82-31-955-2000 64p Growing Geuroing Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. www.wjbooks.co.kr Yang Sook-hyun shy07@wjbooks.co.kr 82-2-3670-1168

70p The Vagabond Puppet Troupe Moyeora Yurang Inhyeonggeukdan Little Mountain Publishing Co. Shin Soo-jin dotch@naver.com 82-2-335-7365 70p Two Friends in a Barley Field Boribat Du Dongmu Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. www.munhak.com Choi Youn-mi kids@munhak.com 81-31-955-8852 71p Lee Yujeong, the Perfect Meoljjeonghan Iyujeong Prunsoop Publishing Co., Ltd. www.prunsoop.co.kr Kim Mijung iledor@prunsoop.co.kr 82-31-955-1410 (Ext.128) 71p Here Comes Dad Appaga Natanatda Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. www.moonji.com Seo Eun-mi kaiseo@moonji.com 82-2-338-7224 (Ext.111)

64p The Boss Sallim Publishing Co. www.sallimbooks.com Jinny Park jinny@sallimbooks.com 82-31-955-4668

72p Puppy Poo Granddad Gangajittong Harabeoji Sakyejul Publishing Ltd. www.sakyejul.co.kr Kang Hyunjoo kanghjoo@sakyejul.co.kr 82-31-955-8600

65p Eraser Jiugae The Open Books Co. www.openbooks.co.kr Kim Hoju bobby@openbooks.co.kr 82-2-3217-7007

72p Gongju Pigs Out Sonagibap Gongju Changbi Publishers, Inc. www.changbi.com/english Lee Soonhwa copyright@changbi.com 82-31-955-3369

65p The Neighbor Iutsaram Munhak Segyesa Publishing Co. www.msp21.co.kr Kim Yo-an esop98@hanmail.net 82-2-702-1800

73p I Died One Day Eoneu Nal Naega Jugeotseumnida Wind Child Yeo Eun-young windchild04@hanmail.net 82-2-3142-0495

66p The Story of Renaissance Art Reunesangseu Misul Iyagi Hankyoreh Publishing Company www.hanibook.co.kr kim Yun-jeong simple@hanibook.co,kr 82-2-6383-1603

77p Math in an Art Museum, etc.

Misulgwaneseo Mannan Suhak Yeowon Media www.tantani.com Kim Sunhee Atoz705@naver.com 82-2-523-6761

75p The Crucible, etc.

Dogani Changbi Publishers, Inc. www.changbi.com/english Lee Soonhwa copyright@changbi.com 82-31-955-3369

list_ Books from Korea Vol.5 Autumn 2009 79

Afterword

The Korean Matrix The modern era of Korean literature began in 1908 with the publication of the literary journal Sonyeon, founded by Choi Namseon. The title is often translated as “Youth” or “Children,” but it is literally and more accurately “Boys.” We tend to forget that the editors of that journal–and many of the most significant early modern writers in Korea–were only in their teens. Like those brilliant teenagers, Korean literature grew up quickly: between 1908 and 1945, under the oppressive shadow of Japanese colonial rule, it reflected and adapted every major western literary form and movement from the pastoral poem to Dadaism. One of Korea’s most flamboyant and ingenuous writers, Yi Sang, was creating postmodern multimedia works long before modernism had even peaked in the west (the Harvard poet, David McCann, was recently inspired to write a poem about this fact called “Korea’s Strangely First”).

Looking back at modern Korean literature, I am continually surprised by its incredible pace of innovation, but looking back requires a kind of pause and the taking of a deep, calming breath. Why? It’s because that frenetic pace has not slowed at all. In fact, the spectrum of Korean literary production has diversified, branching off into permutations so quickly and numerously that when I try to comprehend what is going on these days I have to visualize a psychedelic fractal morphing into ever more complex and exciting patterns. Korea is now the most wired nation on the planet, a living laboratory for the applications and effects of 21st century information technology, in which the boundaries between literature, pop culture, information, news, and private communication have become blurred. While Americans are shy of simple new technologies like Amazon’s Kindle text reader, Korean teens are reading and watching comics, animation, gaming contests, music videos, private journals, and news on their videophones–often in real time.

I consider myself lucky that my various roles as writer, translator, and literary scholar allow me to be a professional reader. And though I cannot predict the future, what I see in the past trajectory of Korean literature makes me anticipate new and wonderful things. Korea’s literary history certainly supports such optimism. Koreans invented moveable metal type in the 13th century, 200 years before Gutenberg; and a decade before Gutenberg printed the Bible, King Sejong’s scholars had developed hangeul, which contemporary linguists hail as the most elegant phonetic alphabet in the world. When I teach my course in Buddhist Literature, my students always bring up the mindblowing ideas in “The Matrix,” the 1999 film starring Keanu Reeves, but then they are shocked to see the same deep ideas regarding reality and illusion played out in the Korean novel Kuunmong (The Nine Cloud Dream), which Kim Man-jung wrote more than 300 years ago. I remind my students that long before most ideas become popularized on screen, they emerge first in poetry and fiction–in literary traditions. Who knows which themes in today’s Korean literary scene might be found in the next international blockbuster?

By Heinz Insu Fenkl (author, editor, translator, and folklorist)

Copyright ⓒ 2009 by Choi Suk-un (Puppy Poo Granddad)

80

list_ Books from Korea Vol.5 Autumn 2009

The 3rd International Translators’ Conference

To get the latest scoop on Korean books

First held in 2007, the International Translators’ Conference is an annual conference hosted by LTI Korea to provide a venue for translators and scholars to discuss issues on Korean literature translation and exchange information.

The International Translators’ Conference is also a great place for Korean literature translators, translation theorists, and publishers to mingle and build mutual support.

Date: September 23-24, 2009 Place: Coex Conference Center Room 330, Seoul, Korea Theme: Strategies to Improve Translation Quality

Browse through the quarterly list _ Books

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Evaluation of translation and education of translators.

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Vol.4 Summer 2009 A Quarterly Magazine for Publishers

Vol.5 Autumn 2009

Vol.5 Autumn Autumn 2009 2009 Vol.5 A Quarterly Quarterly Magazine Magazine for for Publishers Publishers A Special Section

Self-help Bestsellers Interviews Writer Park Wansuh Psychoanalyst Kim Haenam Publisher Jill Schoolman The Place Incheon, Gateway to Korea Theme Lounge Korean Cookbooks

ISSN 2005-2790

ISSN 2005-2790

Vol.5 Autumn Autumn 2009 2009 Vol.5 A Quarterly Quarterly Magazine Magazine for for PP A