Malaga Hoy / October 29, 2013

España es la Alhambra, la playa, el flamenco y... La crisis. Así nos ven en el décimo tercer país más rico del mundo: Corea del Sur. La escritora Cheon Un-yeong explicaba ayer, instantes antes de entrar en el seminario de literatura coreana que forma parte de la IV Semana de Corea que organiza la Universidad de Málaga (UMA), cómo las penalidades económicas españolas han dado la vuelta al mundo para convertirse en un elemento de la marca España junto a los grandes tópicos como el de la playa o el flamenco.

新民晚报 / December 19, 2007

“从长江到汉江，从汉江到长江”中韩文学论坛昨天在沪举行。韩国作家代表团一行23人与王安忆、叶辛、赵丽宏等上海作家进行了交流。在论坛的间隙，上海市作家协会主席王安忆和三位来访的韩国女作家金仁淑、申京淑和殷熙耕进行了一番颇有趣味的对话。

新民晚报 / December 19, 2007

　“从长江到汉江，从汉江到长江”中韩文学论坛昨天在沪举行。韩国作家代表团一行23人与王安忆、叶辛、赵丽宏等上海作家进行了交流。在论坛的间隙，上海市作家协会主席王安忆和三位来访的韩国女作家金仁淑、申京淑和殷熙耕进行了一番颇有趣味的对话。

list_Books from Korea / -

One Writer’s Life: Novelist Kim Insuk   By Shim Jinkyung on Oct 19 2014 13:00:07 Vol.14 Winter 2011 Shim Jinkyung: You have been writing for nearly 30 years straight since your literary debut. But your image is still that of a young writer, and in fact, your works are considered alongside the works of young contemporary writers. What do you think about the way your works are appraised?       Kim Insuk: I do make an effort to write like the younger writers. I debuted at 20, and debuting at such a young age can be a handicap. As a result, I’ve been treated as if I’m older than other writers my age. So I feel that if I don’t make an effort to make myself younger, I’ll get lost in the shuffle of time. But it’s not easy. When you write for many years, you never stop building your own house, and that house becomes the box that confines you. That “box” refers to the safe, easy method of writing that is all your own. Seeking out that box means creating the characteristics that are unique to “Kim Insuk, the writer.” But if you settle within that, it becomes difficult to keep pace with contemporary literature. My goal has not been to build up a method of fiction writing that can be summarized as “Kim Insuk’s style,” but to break out of the literary mold that I have created.       Shim: So perhaps that is why it is so difficult to group your body of work together into one consistent trend. You’ve demonstrated a keen eye for timely issues and matters that have been regarded as socially and culturally important. Your works from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s address the trends in each of those eras. Your fiction in the 1980s mostly dealt with the turbulence of the South Korean democratization movement or takes place against the backdrop of the labor movement, whereas in the 1990s, the setting of your work expanded to include the everyday spaces of personal lives and addressed the issues of female characters who are unable to break out of the mold of their everyday lives. Then in the 2000s, you broke down the theme of everyday life a little more and addressed it on a deeper level, while also cleaving a little more closely to social conditions. What are your thoughts on this?

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The Long Road by Kim Insuk Podcast on Nov 15 2014 20:34:52 Vol.24 Summer 2014   The Long Road Kim Insuk Stephen J. Epstein Portland Merwin Asia 2010 113pp. ISBN 9781878282811         The first time Han-Yeong heard Kang Meong-U’s name was in a curious rumor circulating at the Korean Compatriots’ Journal. Supposedly, a Korean had managed to swing permanent residence in the refugee category. Han-Yeong had understood that it was almost impossible for a South Korean to get a refugee visa. It was hard enough for real refugees from Vietnam or Cambodia. For a South Korean to declare himself a refugee was just not possible unless there was some extraordinary circumstance. Of course, it wasn’t especially difficult to explain that South Korea had suffered under a dictatorship. The turmoil of Gwangju in 1980 was particularly useful for those who wanted to claim refugee status. Back then, those who were actively protesting against the government could give evidence of their credentials and make a strong argument for being recognized as political refugees. But after the so-called civilian government came to power, the opportunity virtually disappeared. No matter how often specials appeared on television about South Korean labor injustices and the labor movement or about the standoff with North Korea, civilian government meant that South Korea was no longer a source of refugees. And with each passing year, South Korea became a more important trading partner for Australia. There was no reason for Australia to risk diplomatic friction for the sake of one man’s refugee application. But there it was: permanent residence as a refugee. Han-Yeong wondered what sort of remarkable history Myeong-U had. By a stroke of good fortune, Park, the immigration lawyer who’d handled the case, was a friend of Han- Rim’s. Han-Yeong went to visit, and Park jotted down Myeong-U’s address, begging Han-Yeong not to let on under any circumstances that he’d received it from him. Park clearly hoped that a magazine would reveal the story that he could not personally divulge. Getting to blow his nose without using his hands, so to speak. It didn’t take a genius to realize that Park wanted to enhance his reputation in having word get out that he’d won a case for a refugee visa.

BECOME A WRITER TODAY / March 14, 2023

Western audiences have grown increasingly interested in Korean culture in recent years. From K-pop to K-food, K-beauty to K-drama, audiences have an insatiable appetite for everything Korean. To get a taste of South Korea’s culture, nothing compares to a page-turning novel. 

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Transnationalism in Korean Literature   By Kim Jonghoi on Nov 15 2014 21:31:35 Vol.24 Summer 2014 There are many writers in contemporary Korean literature whose works deeply engage with the expansion of space and transnational logics.   Among the many forms of transnationalism in literature, this article deals with the issue of crossing or breaking down boundaries in the spatial sense. In this context, transnationalism in Korean literature refers to Korean writers going beyond the spatial environment of “Korea” and staging their works in other spaces. This space is where the activities of characters or events in a writer’s work take place and the message of the writer is conveyed. The structure of this space can become a factor that determines the content of the work. In other words, a space in a literary work is a major element that makes the very existence of the work possible.   There are many writers in contemporary Korean literature whose works deeply engage with the expansion of space and transnational logics, and it is in fact common to find such writers. In Land, the opus magnum by the late Park Kyung-Ri who passed away in 2008, the scope of the story reaches to Manchuria during the Japanese occupation. We also see similar transnational expansion in Hwang Sok-yong’s Shim Chong or Princess Bari. The Great Jungle by Jo Jung-Rae caused controversy for fictionalizing the world of Chinese business for the sake of Korea, but it’s a bestseller that has done well in recent years. Kim Insuk’s Sydney, Standing at the Blue Ocean and The Long Road, Kim Young-ha’s Your Republic Is Calling You and Black Flower, and Kang Young-sook’s Rina all exemplify similar patterns of transnationalism in Korean literature today.

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Communicating the Space Between the Lines   By KIm Insuk on Nov 15 2014 20:51:31 Vol.24 Summer 2014 “She is one of the few writers to write extensively on the Korean expatriate experience.” — The Korea Herald   Thanks to my complex, or perhaps riveting personal life, I’ve lived abroad in different countries for a few years, and sometimes even a few months. But I’ve never been able to speak any local language fluently, no matter where I was. In some places, I was able to manage by speaking slowly; in other places, I could not speak a lick. This is not a big problem if you’re a tourist, but living there is another matter. Language was a matter of communication that stirred up loneliness, pain, and all kinds of disillusionment. It was also an issue in dating and love. Living in a country that’s not mine, I became lonely because of the language that was not my own, but the endless cycle of irony was that I had no choice but to write the things inspired by this loneliness in the language of my country. I often wondered: Wouldn’t Sydney, one of the places I’ve lived, be best represented in Australian English? Wouldn’t Beijing be most “Beijing” when represented in Mandarin, particularly the Beijing dialect? Looking at it from the other side of things, wouldn’t Seoul, the place I was born, be most faithfully Seoul when represented in Korean, especially the Seoul dialect? If so, if my works were to be translated, and when the translations reached the readers, would my stories be able to reach them fully? I once wrote in my novel, Ocean and Butterfly: “It’s not just a problem of language, but in the end, language will become the source of all problems.” This was a Korean female narrator commenting on a joseonjok (descendants of Koreans in China) woman who married a Korean man. Language is not just a means of communication, but communication itself. That’s why language becomes lonely, and so do people. Writers fill the shortcomings of language with the space between the lines. The spaces between the lines are things that cannot be expressed through words, but nevertheless must be expressed, like wounds, loneliness, and love.