Korean Literature

North Korea's deadliest weapon is sleeper agent Song Sun Young. Married with children and living the good life in New York City, she has waited seven years to activate the mission she was trained to do: infiltrate America's financial infrastructure. She prays the call from her handlers will never come, because she loves her husband and kids and affluent New York lifestyle. But the call does come. During volatile negotiations between the White House and Pyongyang, Song is hurled back into a reality she had hoped to leave behind forever.

On the outside, Yumi Chung suffers from #shygirlproblems, a perm-gone-wrong, and kids calling her "Yu-MEAT" because she smells like her family's Korean barbecue restaurant. On the inside, Yumi is ready for her Netflix stand-up special. Her notebook is filled with mortifying memories that she's reworked into comedy gold. All she needs is a stage and courage.

『추남, 미녀』는 샤를 페로의 동화 「고수머리 리케」를 현대적으로 재해석한 작품으로, 추하지만 천재인 남자와, 아름답지만 멍청해 보이는(사실은 멍청하지 않다) 여자라는 두 주인공을 등장시키고 있다.

Elena Soo has always felt overshadowed. Whether by her more successful older sisters, her more popular twin brother, or her more outgoing best friend, everyone except Elena seems to know exactly who they are and what they want. But she is certain about one thing—she has no interest in going to prom. While the rest of the school is giddy over corsages and dresses, Elena would rather spend her time working to save the local community center. So when international K-pop superstar Robbie Choi shows up at her house to ask her to prom, Elena is more confused than ever.

In South Korea, a 105-year-old woman receives a letter. Ten days later, she has been thrust into the afterlife, fighting to head off a curse that will otherwise devastate generations to come. Hak Jeonga has always shouldered the burden of upholding the family name. When she sent her daughter-in-law to America to cover up an illegitimate birth, she was simply doing what was needed to preserve the reputations of her loved ones. How could she have known that decades later, this decision would return to haunt her?

In crisp, unembellished prose, Eunyoung Choi paints intimate portraits of the lives of young women in South Korea, balancing the personal with the political. In the title story, a fraught friendship between an exchange student and her host sister follows them from adolescence to adulthood. In "A Song from Afar", a young woman grapples with the death of her lover, traveling to Russia to search for information about the deceased. In "Secret", the parents of a teacher killed in the Sewol ferry sinking hide the news of her death from her grandmother.

Years later, the Korean War is a distant memory for the parents hosting their children for a Christmas party. But when an old photograph rekindles those memories, they're soon wrapped up in telling their children how they fell in love. As a nurse and a downed pilot, they'd found themselves on the run from the enemy - but the only thing that could snare them was true love.

In a world where Saints are monsters and Wonderland is the dark forest where they lurk, it’s been five years since young witches and lovers Caro Rabbit and Iccadora Alice Sickle were both sentenced to that forest for a crime they didn’t commit—and four years since they shattered one another’s hearts, each willing to sacrifice the other for a chance at freedom. Now, Caro is a successful royal Saint-harvester, living the high life in the glittering capital and pretending not to know of the twisted monster experiments that her beloved Red Queen hides deep in the bowels of the palace.

Yeongju is burned out. With her high-­flying career, demanding marriage, and busy life in Seoul, she knows she should feel successful, but all she feels is drained. Yet an abandoned dream nags at her, and in a leap of faith, she leaves her old life behind. Quitting her job and divorcing her husband, Yeongju moves to a small residential neighborhood outside the city, where she opens the Hyunam-dong Bookshop.

Snow Hunters traces the extraordinary journey of Yohan, who defects from his country at the end of the Korean War, leaving his friends and family behind to seek a new life on the coast of Brazil. Throughout his years there, four people slip in and out of his life: Kiyoshi, the Japanese tailor for whom he works; Peixe, the groundskeeper at the town church; and two vagrant children named Santi and Bia. Yohan longs to connect with these people, but to do so he must let go of his traumatic past.

Korean immigrant Mina Pak Johnson is clearing out the last of her husband’s things when she finds a picnic basket in his closet—a long-forgotten wedding present from her mother. With it comes decades of memories—of her mother’s wishes for her to be happy and her own shattered hopes for her first child—and regret at never having used it. Pushing her husband’s ashes and a bottle of wine in a rusty old stroller, Mina is determined to re-create the picnic they never had. But with it comes something Mina never expected, illuminating a loving gesture her husband made years ago.

『작은 공주 세라』는 『소공녀』의 새 이름이다. 원제 『A little Princess』에 일본식 표현이 아닌 저자의 의도를 살린 한글 제목을 붙였다. 부잣집 학생으로 특급 대우를 받다가 아버지의 죽음으로 어느 날 갑자기 누더기를 입고 허름한 다락방으로 쫓겨난 세라. 하지만 누구보다 강한 내면의 힘으로 역경을 이겨내는 소녀. 세라의 스펙터클한 인생 드라마는 1905년에도 지금도 수많은 독자들에게 희망이 되어준다. 연극, 영화, 애니메이션으로도 끊임없이 재창조되는 『작은 공주 세라』는 작품성과 내용 면에서 그 가치를 인정받으며 어린이와 교사는 물론 어른들에게도 반드시 읽어야 할 필독서로 꼽히는 작품이다.

부모에게 버림받아 마치 황무지 같던 아이들의 마음은 비밀의 화원을 만나면서 되살아난다. 『비밀의 화원』이 110년이 지난 지금까지도 아이들뿐 아니라 어른들에게도 치유의 메시지를 전해주는 것은, 외롭고 쓸쓸한 마음을 가장 섬세하고 부드럽게 위로해주는 자연이라는 모티브가 여전히 유효하기 때문일 것이다. 자연 속에서 아이들은 생명의 의미를 되새기고 우정의 힘을 믿게 되며 인생의 가치를 되돌아보게 된다.

Chobahm's perfect life in Snowglobe came crashing down when she discovered the truth about Haeri; the girl she watched faithfully on television was far from perfect. And the TV family, revered by millions, was nothing more than an illusion created by the Yibonn Media corporation. Nothing is as it seems in the carefully curated programs released from Snowglobe. But revealing the lies behind the Yibonn Media group was only the first crack in Snowglobe. Suddenly, the heat is rising inside the domed utopia—and with the soaring temperatures, come new secrets.

Every Friday after school, 17-year-old Alice Choy and her little sister, Olivia, head to Myeongdong to sing karaoke. Back in San Francisco, when she still had friends and earthly possessions, Alice took regular singing lessons. But since their diplomat mom moved them to Seoul, her only musical outlet is vamping it up in a private karaoke booth to an audience of one: her loyal sister. Then a scout for Top10 Entertainment, one of the biggest K-pop companies, hears her and offers her a spot at their Star Academy.

Peace has returned to the Pacific after the Taiwan War, but it doesn’t last. The Korean peninsula erupts in fire and blood, drawing America into a fresh conflict that sees use of some of the world’s deadliest weapons. In the aftermath, Navy fighter pilot Jack Knapp tells a news reporter about his experiences fighting the Korean People’s Army (KPA) and how he helped prevent a nuclear attack that could have destroyed an American city.

소홀해지기 쉬운 것에 관심을 쏟고, 누구보다 아이들의 성장을 응원하는 박현숙 작가의 '수상한 시리즈'가 돌아왔다. 이번엔 『수상한 화장실』이다.

Ken Hideyoshi is the new guy in Halawa Correctional Institute. He’s tough looking, a hard case. His cellmate is Cal—the mute tattoo artist of the prison who murdered his own wife. Ken, already inked with a gang symbol and a Japanese emblem, eventually asks Cal to create an elaborate tattoo on his back, in kanji script, of Musashi’s Book of the Void.

『토우의 집』은 권여선 소설가가 이룬 가장 의미 있는 문학적 성취라고 할 수 있다. '장독 뒤에 숨어서'라는 제목으로 계간 『자음과모음』을 통해 2014년 봄부터 가을까지 연재된 작품으로, 우리가 정면으로 응시해야 할 고통과 상실의 현장을 다루고 있다.

『공공연한 고양이』는 이제는 우리에게 친숙하고 소중한 존재가 된 '고양이'에 관한 열 편의 짧은 소설을 모은 작품집이다. 제목 '공공연한 고양이'는 다양한 의미로 해석될 수 있다. 우리의 삶에 없어서는 안 될 '공공연한 존재'가 되었다는 의미로도, 고양이와 인간이 맺고 있는 다양한 관계의 방식들을 '공공연하게' 드러낸다는 의미로도 생각해볼 수 있다.