What I Like About Korean Literature   By Jean Bellemin-Noël on Nov 14 2014 15:05:37 Vol.11 Spring 2011 There are many reasons for my interest in Korean literature, both as a reader and critic. It all began about 10 years ago, when I happened to become a “co-translator” with a former dissertation student I considered particularly smart. So it is thanks to Choe Ae-young that I became acquainted with Yi In-seong’s extremely innovative body of work: We translated Saisons d’exil (Paris, 2004) and then Interdit de folie (Paris, 2010), and I do see this writer as an artist of international stature. With the support of the Daesan Foundation and the KLTI, we also translated and published a book of Jung Young-moon, Pour ne pas rater ma dernière seconde (Montreal, 2007), as well as some short stories by Kim Young-ha and Kim Kyung-wook. I personally produced critical studies on all the works we translated. I also reviewed some that had already been translated in French: La place by Choi In-hun and the pansori piece, “Byeon Gang-soe Jeon.” I came to enjoy writing these texts after I had the opportunity to supervise a special edition of the literary magazine Europe dedicated to South Korean contemporary writers (May 2010, No. 973) that was a valuable assessment of the present state of the nation’s literature. All of my studies were recently translated into Korean by Choe Ae-young and published in a book called Shock and Sympathy (Moonji, November 2010). Furthermore, I read the translation of different texts like Les descendants de Caïn by Hwang Sun-won, L’oiseau, la pierre tombale by Oh Jung-hee, Shim Cheong by Hwang Sok-yong, as well as several short story anthologies, not to mention of course the famous story of “Chunhyang.” They form a set that may be modest but have the advantage of variety. Still, it helped me get a more specific idea of what Korean literary fiction literature is.