-
Japanese
いいから、あなたの話をしなよ
-
English
Please Look After Mother
-
Indonesian
Pachinko
-
English
I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki
-
French
Ma sœur Mongsil
-
English
The Waiting
-
English
Pachinko
-
Hebrew
הדממה שלך
-
English
Lemon
-
Greek
Μάθημα ελληνικών
-
English
VIOLETS
-
French
La vieille dame au couteau
-
German
JAB
-
Arabic
رجال لا لزوم لهم
WRITERS & MEDIA
VIDEO
+ moreFEATURED COLLECTION
This project was launched in 2017 with the aim of expanding the foundation for the exchange of Korean literature and globalizing Korean literature by identifying and supporting Korean diaspora literature. LTI Korea has been striving to establish diaspora literature as a valuable asset of world literature through the support for multilingual translation of outstanding works of diaspora literature, production of sourcebooks on the history and current status of diaspora literature, hosting of exchange events between Korean and overseas writers, hosting of essay contests on works of overseas Korean writers, and production of digital contents related to works of diaspora literature.
EVENTS
+ morenow i’ve found the great wall of china that everyone sensed encircled madly now everyone’s irked insensibly so now i get myself into deep water. Turgut Uyar     A few years ago, as I wandered the EphesusArchaeological Museum where the ruins of the ancient city of Ephesus are ondisplay, I saw a little boy standing stock-still, his eyes fixed on the eyes ofthe statue of Antinous. Though his mother persistently kept calling him to herside, the boy couldn’t pull himself away from Antinous’s attentive gaze, thestatue’s neck turned to the side. He gazed upon Antinous as though he could,just by looking, fill in the missing parts of that familiar object. At thetime, I’d thought of the boy’s frozen stance in front of the statue as a kindof admiration, but now when I envision the scene, a different possibility comesto mind. The boy, his fresh ego filled to the brim with curiosity and wonder,was waiting for Antinous, who hadn’t budged for approximately 1,900 years, toblink. Waiting for that inveterate statue, filled with emotion, to tremble. Dwelling on the gaze of that boy as he tried toovercome the sharp border between human and human-statue, dwelling on hisinsistent, staring, expectant focus, I think now about the borders of theobject in his focus, about how the border is itself bounded by everything else,about how every border in our world of perceptions is boundless. And indeed,although we cannot comprehend the bounds of the universe, even the universeitself has a border. Just as we can’t comprehend the boundlessness of so manyemotions whose names we don’t yet know. Last year, a Korean novel titled Badem (Almond) was releasedin Turkish. A “silent” novel in Turkish for the moment, it hasn’t yet beennoticed by readers. And yet, the novel’s senses are open, even as theprotagonist begins his life utterly lacking in emotion due to the insufficientdevelopment of the amygdala in his brain. This is the border that leaves himoutside of culture. He describes emotions by following the traces they leave inthe body, trying to recognize them by describing each one. Like a written text,he attempts to take on each emotion by rationalizing it. The ego, shaped byanger, trauma, and relationships, is, in his ghostliness, a perpetually blankpage. If what we call the ego is an orb of consciousness endlessly pulsing andbleeding in the tower of childhood, then the protagonist of Almond is shrewd but sans ego. He is a freak of nature.As a consequence, we might name him directly by his illness—Alexithymia, theinability to recognize emotions. The organic, pathological border ofAlexithymia makes the protagonist brave, for he knows no fear; tranquil, for heknows no joy; calm, for he knows no rush. In these times when we are trying tohear our inner selves, when we are learning to grapple with our egos throughdifferent kinds of meditation, Alexithymia appears as a freak of nature, as a realphenomenon in the face of the modern person imprisoned by emotions. Though hisbasic senses are highly developed, he lacks the intuition, instincts, andfaculties to turn whatever he touches into individual images or figures ofspeech, and he remains stuck in the realm of description. Because the reasonthe protagonist has been so successful in the realm of description is his lackof poetry. Or, more figuratively, his lack of a heart. It is remarkable thatthe habitat that Alexithymia narrates over the course of the story, purged asit is of emotion and thus of soul, is girded with such towering description.Life exists but its sensuous trace is missing. While the past becomes absolutein material forms, the mind cannot escape from its chronological ordering in analbum. The past, instrumentalized by Chronos, comes to resemble a vacantlandscape, completely disconnected from Cosmos’s involuted, polysemousperceptions. In this novel about a person who is nothing more than arationalized body, the story’s tragic weight is left entirely to the reader. Wefind ourselves taking on all the emotions in this poignant story. It’s almost as though the statue might tremble,isn’t it? At any moment it might tremble: it is about to tremble. We might read Almond as a novel that rather strikingly demonstratesthe possibility of a past without memory. In order to survive and to adapt tosociety, the protagonist has to cast off the appearance of having a heart ofstone by learning the common behaviors that emotions elicit. But that does notsuffice. Because adapting to one’s environment isn’t what makes a human human,but the oikos that forges him into something incomparable. A person in pursuitof the descriptions, figures of speech, and images that abstract the world,from the crudest to the most refined, finds his ego. Every ego is of course transitory. Every egotakes on new forms alongside new experiences; for the ego is not a sturdy,unchanging, fixed entity. As for Almond’s Alexithymia, that blank page in the mind is simultaneously a ballad ofpossibilities. But what I really want to touch on here, beyond the inherentpotential of the ego, is the process in which the protagonist, living on thedark side of its sensuous border, begins to come undone, which is to say, beginsto transform. Following all the horrible things he undergoes, our protagonistfeels neither grief nor solitude nor guilt nor sorrow, but he begins todiscover the oikos where he remains inintractable contact with a peer who experiences his emotions to an excessivedegree. Only a freak can heal another freak. The passage of our protagonistinto humanity scintillates in the relationship he forges with another personwho also could never have been a “normal” human. This novel maps out an unexpected route forthinking about the connections between borders, passages, and transformations;it reverses the usual path that emotions take from the heart to the brain,starting its adventure instead in the brain and coming to an end in the heart.One of the most striking insights that the novel offers the reader through itswayward references is this: that the well of morality is the heart, while thebrain is simply a living abode where moral law is governed. Another significantinsight is that counterparts never become one another. When it comes to theego, every dissimilarity that approaches another, that collides in approach,that bleeds in collision, serves as a sacred text to the outcast. Just asAntinous has stood for 1,900 years, about to tremble in the eyes of a boy, sothe boy there, too, is a prospective poet, ready to be sculpted by Antinous.
now i’ve found the great wall of china that everyone sensed encircled madly now everyone’s irked insensibly so now i get myself into deep water. Turgut Uyar     A few years ago, as I wandered the EphesusArchaeological Museum where the ruins of the ancient city of Ephesus are ondisplay, I saw a little boy standing stock-still, his eyes fixed on the eyes ofthe statue of Antinous. Though his mother persistently kept calling him to herside, the boy couldn’t pull himself away from Antinous’s attentive gaze, thestatue’s neck turned to the side. He gazed upon Antinous as though he could,just by looking, fill in the missing parts of that familiar object. At thetime, I’d thought of the boy’s frozen stance in front of the statue as a kindof admiration, but now when I envision the scene, a different possibility comesto mind. The boy, his fresh ego filled to the brim with curiosity and wonder,was waiting for Antinous, who hadn’t budged for approximately 1,900 years, toblink. Waiting for that inveterate statue, filled with emotion, to tremble. Dwelling on the gaze of that boy as he tried toovercome the sharp border between human and human-statue, dwelling on hisinsistent, staring, expectant focus, I think now about the borders of theobject in his focus, about how the border is itself bounded by everything else,about how every border in our world of perceptions is boundless. And indeed,although we cannot comprehend the bounds of the universe, even the universeitself has a border. Just as we can’t comprehend the boundlessness of so manyemotions whose names we don’t yet know. Last year, a Korean novel titled Badem (Almond) was releasedin Turkish. A “silent” novel in Turkish for the moment, it hasn’t yet beennoticed by readers. And yet, the novel’s senses are open, even as theprotagonist begins his life utterly lacking in emotion due to the insufficientdevelopment of the amygdala in his brain. This is the border that leaves himoutside of culture. He describes emotions by following the traces they leave inthe body, trying to recognize them by describing each one. Like a written text,he attempts to take on each emotion by rationalizing it. The ego, shaped byanger, trauma, and relationships, is, in his ghostliness, a perpetually blankpage. If what we call the ego is an orb of consciousness endlessly pulsing andbleeding in the tower of childhood, then the protagonist of Almond is shrewd but sans ego. He is a freak of nature.As a consequence, we might name him directly by his illness—Alexithymia, theinability to recognize emotions. The organic, pathological border ofAlexithymia makes the protagonist brave, for he knows no fear; tranquil, for heknows no joy; calm, for he knows no rush. In these times when we are trying tohear our inner selves, when we are learning to grapple with our egos throughdifferent kinds of meditation, Alexithymia appears as a freak of nature, as a realphenomenon in the face of the modern person imprisoned by emotions. Though hisbasic senses are highly developed, he lacks the intuition, instincts, andfaculties to turn whatever he touches into individual images or figures ofspeech, and he remains stuck in the realm of description. Because the reasonthe protagonist has been so successful in the realm of description is his lackof poetry. Or, more figuratively, his lack of a heart. It is remarkable thatthe habitat that Alexithymia narrates over the course of the story, purged asit is of emotion and thus of soul, is girded with such towering description.Life exists but its sensuous trace is missing. While the past becomes absolutein material forms, the mind cannot escape from its chronological ordering in analbum. The past, instrumentalized by Chronos, comes to resemble a vacantlandscape, completely disconnected from Cosmos’s involuted, polysemousperceptions. In this novel about a person who is nothing more than arationalized body, the story’s tragic weight is left entirely to the reader. Wefind ourselves taking on all the emotions in this poignant story. It’s almost as though the statue might tremble,isn’t it? At any moment it might tremble: it is about to tremble. We might read Almond as a novel that rather strikingly demonstratesthe possibility of a past without memory. In order to survive and to adapt tosociety, the protagonist has to cast off the appearance of having a heart ofstone by learning the common behaviors that emotions elicit. But that does notsuffice. Because adapting to one’s environment isn’t what makes a human human,but the oikos that forges him into something incomparable. A person in pursuitof the descriptions, figures of speech, and images that abstract the world,from the crudest to the most refined, finds his ego. Every ego is of course transitory. Every egotakes on new forms alongside new experiences; for the ego is not a sturdy,unchanging, fixed entity. As for Almond’s Alexithymia, that blank page in the mind is simultaneously a ballad ofpossibilities. But what I really want to touch on here, beyond the inherentpotential of the ego, is the process in which the protagonist, living on thedark side of its sensuous border, begins to come undone, which is to say, beginsto transform. Following all the horrible things he undergoes, our protagonistfeels neither grief nor solitude nor guilt nor sorrow, but he begins todiscover the oikos where he remains inintractable contact with a peer who experiences his emotions to an excessivedegree. Only a freak can heal another freak. The passage of our protagonistinto humanity scintillates in the relationship he forges with another personwho also could never have been a “normal” human. This novel maps out an unexpected route forthinking about the connections between borders, passages, and transformations;it reverses the usual path that emotions take from the heart to the brain,starting its adventure instead in the brain and coming to an end in the heart.One of the most striking insights that the novel offers the reader through itswayward references is this: that the well of morality is the heart, while thebrain is simply a living abode where moral law is governed. Another significantinsight is that counterparts never become one another. When it comes to theego, every dissimilarity that approaches another, that collides in approach,that bleeds in collision, serves as a sacred text to the outcast. Just asAntinous has stood for 1,900 years, about to tremble in the eyes of a boy, sothe boy there, too, is a prospective poet, ready to be sculpted by Antinous.
THEMES
+ moreHow many Korean literary works are read by international readers in a year? In 2021, more than two-hundred Korean books were introduced overseas. At the beginning of the K-Literature Wave, the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea) examined the sales of Korean books published overseas with the support of LTI Korea from 2016 to 2020. And the most popular work abroad over the past five years turned out to be Kim Ji-young, Born 1982, which sold more than three hundred copies in ten languages, followed by The Vegetarian, which sold more than one hundred and sixty copies in thirteen languages. The Digital Library of Korean Literature has selected the five most popular Korean literary works among international readers for the second installment of the Themes Series. When combined with the writer’s delicate style that elaborates on the character’s emotions, the stories of the characters struggling with their harsh realities create a universal resonance. ㅣ Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 Author Cho Nam-juPublisher MineumsaYear of Publication 2016 Born in 1982, Kim Ji-young is an ordinary, married woman, who is raising a daughter. One day, she suddenly starts to show signs of a mental disorder and decides to consult a psychiatrist. However, these consultations reveal multiple forms of social discrimination against women. Because this book was published when the feminist movement was in full swing in Korea, it created a great sensation in the country. The book illustrates various situations that an ordinary woman may experience in her daily life, drawing public attention to the issue of feminism. The book has sold more than three hundred copies in ten different languages. ㅣ The Vegetarian Author Han KangPublisher ChangbiYear of Publication 2007 The Vegetarian is a three-part novella, published in 2007. It won the Man Booker Prize in 2016. Each novella—The Vegetarian, Mongolian Mark, and Flaming Trees —has different narrative voices, although they revolve around the same main character. In thesethree stories, Han Kang depicts various themes such as the pain of a wounded soul, human desire, vegetation, existence, and death. The book has sold more than 160,000 copies in thirteen languages. ㅣ Almond Author Sohn Won-pyungPublisher Changbi Year of Publication 2017 Almond was selected as the “Best Translated Novel” by Japanese bookstore employees in 2020, having sold more than ninety-thousand copies in Japan. The story depicts the evolution of Yunjae, a fifteen-year-old boy who has Alexithymia, a condition that makes it hard for him to experience feelings or emotions. As the story unfolds, Yunjae learns to interact with others. He grows up happy and content, thanks to theutmost care of his mother and grandmother—until an unfortunate incident happens to his family. Then, a boy named Gon appears in front of Yunjae who’s trapped in darkness and fear. The two boys, who have both experienced loss, grow up forming an unexpected bond of solidarity. The story focuses on the courage and willpower needed to step forward into a better world. ㅣ The Good Son Author Jeong You-JeongPublisher EunHaeng NaMuYear of Publication 2016 A once promising swimmer, Han Yu-jin, has lived a spiritless life under the supervision of his mother and aunt. He sometimes slips out of the house under cover of night without taking the mysterious medicine prescribed by his psychiatrist aunt.One day he returns home only to find his mother murdered. The story vividly captures and embodies the moment when evil is engendered in human hearts and how it evolves. The book was published in nine different languages, selling over twenty-thousand copies in Brazil alone. ㅣ Diary of a Murderer Author Kim Young-haPublisher MunhakdongneYear of Publication 2013 Byeongsu is a former serial killer, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. He encounters Taejoo in a car accident and instinctively realizes that he is also a murderer. Byeongsu reports him to the police, but no one believes him. Taejoo lingers around Byeongsu and his adopted daughter, Eun-hee. Byeongsu becomes desperate in his pursuit after him. In the meantime, Byeongsu’s killing inclination renews, confusing him between delusion and reality. This book won the 2020 German Prize for Crime Fiction in the international category and soldmore than ten thousand copies in Germany alone.
PUBLICATION
+ moreLIBRARY NEWS
+ more-
Notice
Library Temporary Closure (23 ~27.May )
MAY 19, 2022 -
Notice
Library Temporary Closure (28, April ~ 6, May)
APRIL 26, 2022 -
Notice
Revised Terms of Use of the Digital Library of Korean Literature
MAY 02, 2022 -
Notice
[Notice] Library Temporary Closure (28, December ~ 31, December)
DECEMBER 24, 2021