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I intend, in the fullness of time, to give Korean literature at least its fair share of coverage here on the Los Angeles Review of Books<\/em>\u2018 Korea Blog. But where best to begin? Readerly types newly arrived in Seoul might well ask the same question about how to take a first step into the realm of letters here, and in response I would direct them to the Seoul Book and Culture Club, keep-uppable with online through either Facebook<\/a> or Meetup<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Hosted by Scottish expatriate cultural impresario Barry Welsh (whom I interviewed last year<\/a> on my podcast Notebook on Cities and Culture<\/em>), the Book and Culture Club has put on live events with such literary luminaries as poet (and prime Korean Nobel Prize candidate) Ko Un, Please Look After Mom<\/em> author Shin Kyung-sook, I Have the Right to Destroy Myself<\/em> author Kim Young-ha (whom I profiled here in the LARB<\/em><\/a>), The Vegetarian<\/em> author Han Kang, Native Speaker<\/em> author Lee Chang-rae, and Drifting House<\/em> author (as well asanother interviewee of mine<\/a>) Krys Lee, all of which they conduct bilingually, in both Korean and English.<\/p>\n
Just last weekend I attended a Book and Culture Club event which gathered onstage four young Korean writers (\u201cyoung\u201d meaning, given the high barrier to entry of Korea\u2019s literary scene, younger than fifty) for a discussion of the direction of Korean fiction today, all of whom now have a novella out in a dual-language edition fromASIA Publishers<\/a>. Lee Jangwook, a poet, critic, and Russian literature specialist in addition to his work as a novelist, wrote Old Man River\u00a0<\/em>(\uc62c\ub4dc \ub9e8 \ub9ac\ubc84); Lee Kiho, who specializes in telling stories of societally marginal characters in unusual forms, wrote Kwon Sun-chan and Nice People<\/em> (\uad8c\uc21c\ucc2c\uacfc \ucc29\ud55c \uc0ac\ub78c\ub4e4); the Korean-Chinese Geum Hee, whose work focuses on the lives of North Korean refugees, wrote Ok-hwa\u00a0<\/em>(\uc625\ud654); and Baik Sou-linne, who grew up in Paris from junior high on, wrote Time Difference <\/em>(\uc2dc\ucc28).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n