Korean Literature

대부분이 피난을 가서 텅 비어 있는 서울, 갑작스레 사상과 권력이 뒤바뀌고 이분법적 논리와 인식의 틀이 몇 안 남은 사람들의 삶도 깊이 갈라놓는다. 『목마른 계절』은 마구잡이로 뒤섞이고 무너져 내리던 혼돈 속 서울에서 1년간 벌어진 이야기를 인민군 부역을 하는 여대생 진이의 시각에서 그린 작품이다.

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?

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.

Inca the Siberian kitty and her globetrotting furry family are off to South Korea with their human mom. Mom has just created a fabulous new cheese, and she's been invited by the famous French school Cordon Bleu Cookery to not only present her new cheese, but also be the judge of a cookery competition between South and North Korean chefs. Along with plenty of sightseeing and delicious cheese, the cats befriend a Korean dog and his master pining for his long-lost sister living in the North. What dangers await the group of animal detectives as they cross over from South to North Korea?

This audiobook contains touching accounts of struggles and achievements of Korean Americans and serves an important primary source material for understanding the Korean teenage experience in the United States. This audiobook contains biographical accounts of a diverse group Korean Americans. Kenny Yoon, a junior at Horace Mann School in New York, is a part of the gifted music program at The Julliard School. Kenny describes how he came to play violin and how he hopes to bring joy to people through music.

For the first time, Euna Lee - the young wife, mother, and film editor detained in North Korea - tells a harrowing, but ultimately inspiring, story of survival and faith in one of the most isolated parts of the world. On March 17, 2009, Lee and her Current TV colleague Laura Ling were working on a documentary about the desperate lives of North Koreans fleeing their homeland for a chance at freedom when they were violently apprehended by North Korean soldiers.

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.

In a Seoul slum marked for demolition, residents’ shadows have begun to rise. No one knows how or why—but, they warn each other, do not follow your shadow if it wanders away. Employees of a small electronics repair shop, Eungyo and Mujae can only watch their tight-knit community begin to fade as the landscape of their lives is torn apart, building by building. Their growing connection with one another provides solace, but against an uncaring ruling class and the inevitability of the rising shadows, their relationship may not be enough.

Seventeen-year-old Bucky Yi knows nothing about his birth country of South Korea or his bio-dad's disappearance; he can't even pronounce his Korean name correctly. Running through the woods of rural Washington State with a tire tied to his waist, his sights are set on one all-American goal: to become a college football player. So when a misadventure with his adoptive family leads the US government to deport him to South Korea, he's forced to navigate an entirely foreign version of his life.

This is a classic fairy tale written in both Korean and English, so it is a great way to teach both languages to your little ones. Yetnare ("Once upon a time" in Korean), there was a little girl called Little Red Riding Hood. One day, she went through the woods to visit her grandmother. But a big scary wolf follows her.... What will happen? Listen to find out.

This is the story of a salmon whose silver scales mark him out as different – who dares to leap beyond his fate. It's a story about growing up, and about aching and ardent love. For swimming upstream means pursuing something the salmon cannot see: a dream. Translated for the first time into English, The Salmon Who Dared To Leap Higher is a wise, tender and inspiring modern fable about finding freedom and a harmony with nature we have either forgotten or lost in the binding realities of life.

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.

How the mighty have fallen. Anna K, once the golden girl of Greenwich, CT, and New York City, has been brought low by a scandalous sex tape and the tragic death of her first love, Alexia Vronsky. At the beginning of the summer, her father takes her to the other side of the world, to connect with his family in South Korea and hide her away. Back in the US, Lolly has forgiven Steven for cheating on her, and their relationship feels stronger than ever. But when Lolly meets a boy at her beloved theater camp, she has to ask herself how well Steven will ever really know her.

In The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot, New York Times best-selling author Blaine Harden tells the riveting story of how Kim Il Sung grabbed power and plunged his country into war against the United States while the youngest fighter pilot in his air force was playing a high-risk game of deception - and escape.

It's been a year since Penny first walked through the doors of the Dallergut Dream Department Store, and surviving a year at the store means one thing… She is now an official employee of the dream industry! She can finally take the express commuter train to the Company District, where all the dream-production companies are located, and discover how all raw dream materials and testing equipment are produced. But the Company District is not quite what she expected. Instead it hides a secret underbelly of the magical industry that Penny thought she was a part of.

A beautifully crafted, enriching saga inspired by East Asian mythology, The Melancholy of Untold History is Minsoo Kang’s debut novel, steeped in history like R.F. Kuang’s Babel, epic in scope like Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land, and lyrically exciting like David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, interweaving four complex yet entertaining stories as they shape and create a nation’s literary narrative through the themes of love and grief.

Helena Rho was six years old when her family left Seoul, Korea, for America and its opportunities. Years later, her Korean-ness behind her, Helena had everything a model minority was supposed to want: she was married to a white American doctor and had a beautiful home, two children, and a career as an assistant professor of pediatrics. For decades she fulfilled the expectations of others. All the while Helena kept silent about the traumas - both professional and personal - that left her anxious yet determined to escape.

Set against the backdrop of the 2002 World Cup and rising anti-American sentiment due to a deadly tank accident involving two young Korean girls, The Korean Word for Butterfly is told from three alternating points-of-view.

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.

Hope is not your typical teenage girl. After a tumultuous childhood, she is once again in a new town and a new school which her mother has dragged her to. As is often the case, she is one of the only Asian kids in an all-white school and is still dealing with family issues. Hope is struggling to adjust to her new environment as a freshman in high school, where she meets a school counselor who helps her wade through the entire school year as well as pushes her to explore her past.