Korean Literature

When his jet malfunctions, Captain Ward Millar makes a last-second decision to eject over enemy territory in North Korea before his plane explodes. His parachute barely opens before impact, saving his life, but the hard landing snaps both of his ankles. Unable to walk, Captain Millar is easily captured by North Korean and Chinese soldiers. His captors interrogate, threaten, and starve him in an attempt to extract strategic wartime information. He stalls the inevitable by feeding the enemy false information, but it’s only a matter of time before they discover his lies.

Life near the North Korean border is a zero-sum game, an ongoing battle in which you either win or you lose. This dangerous, shadowed netherworld is home to an unforgettable woman known only as the “trickster.” Inspired by the story of Lee’s great aunt, one of the oldest women to escape alone from North Korea, 8 Lives of a Century Old Trickster consists of eight dark and spellbinding chapters that follow this remarkable character and her family as they struggle to survive during the most turbulent times of modern Korean history.

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.

It is the fall of 1950. The Marines have made a pivotal breakthrough at Inchon, but a roller coaster awaits them. The bit in his teeth, Douglas MacArthur surges across the 38th parallel toward the Yalu River, only to encounter the Chinese in full force, who drive him back in turn.

Four days before Christmas, eight-year-old Bo loses his mother in a tragic accident, twenty-eight-year-old Brandon loses his job after a hostile takeover of his big-media employer, and forty-eight-year-old Blue, a key witness in a criminal trial against an infamous now-defunct tech startup, struggles to reconnect with his family. So begins Jinwoo Chong's dazzling time-bending debut that blends elements of neo-noir and speculative fiction as the lives of Bo, Brandon, and Blue begin to intersect, uncovering a network of secrets and an experimental technology that threatens to upend life itself.

On March 17, 2009, Laura Ling and her colleague Euna Lee were working on a documentary about North Korean defectors who were fleeing the desperate conditions in their homeland. While filming on the Chinese/North Korean border, they were chased down by North Korean soldiers who violently apprehended them. Laura and Euna were charged with trespassing and "hostile acts," and imprisoned by Kim Jong Il's notoriously secretive Communist state.

Romi is an illustrator and hopeless romantic. When she can’t stop obsessing over a brief encounter with a handsome stranger, there’s just one thing to do: hop on a plane and find him. But Romi’s not leaving without her two best friends. Hadam, a budding filmmaker, suggests the trip in the first place. Facing her fear of failure, she envisions Romi’s search for love as the perfect subject for her first documentary.

모두 똑같은 24시간을 사는데, 왜 어떤 사람들은 더 많은 것을 이루는 것일까? 『예술하는 습관』의 저자 메이슨 커리는 이 질문에 대한 답을 위대한 성취를 이룬 예술가들의 보통의 하루에서 찾고자 했다. 충동적이고 즉흥적인 영감으로 일할 것 같은 예술가 대부분은 지독하리만치 규칙적이고 성실했으며 그 누구보다 더 엄격하게 습관을 유지했다.

His tour is over, but the war rages on for Dickie, one of the forever-haunted veterans who gave up his soul during the Forgotten War. Here is a glimpse of his story, of the battleground he can never leave. Only death can conclude his final objective: closure, and peace. Join him on his road, the Korean Road, as he battles horrors he carries and those that he meets along the way.

In a near-future world, a new technological therapy is quickly eradicating cancer. The body’s cells are entirely replaced with nanites—robot or android cells which not only cure those afflicted but leaves them virtually immortal. Literary researcher Yonghun teaches an AI how to understand poetry and creates a living, thinking machine he names Panit, meaning Beloved, in honor of his husband. When Yonghun—himself a recipient of nanotherapy—mysteriously vanishes into thin air and then just as suddenly reappears, the event raises disturbing questions.

Junie Kim just wants to fit in. So she keeps her head down and tries not to draw attention to herself. But when racist graffiti appears at her middle school, Junie must decide between staying silent or speaking out. Then Junie’s history teacher assigns a project and Junie decides to interview her grandparents, learning about their unbelievable experiences as kids during the Korean War. Junie comes to admire her grandma’s fierce determination to overcome impossible odds, and her grandpa’s unwavering compassion during wartime.

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?

Katrina Kim may be broke, the black sheep of her family, and slightly unhinged, but she isn’t a stalker. Her obsession with her co-worker, Kurt, is just one of many coping mechanisms—like her constant shape and number rituals, or the way scenes from her favorite children’s book bleed into her vision whenever she feels anxious. But when Katrina finds a cryptic message from Kurt implying he’s aware of her surveillance, her tenuous hold on a normal life crumbles. Driven by compulsion, she makes a midnight visit to the Cayatoga Bridge—just in time to witness Kurt’s suicide.

In remote northern Canada, a team led by a visionary American architect is break­ing ground on a building project called Camp Zero, intended to be the beginning of a new way of life. A clever and determined young woman code-named Rose is offered a chance to join the Blooms, a group hired to entertain the men in camp—but her real mission is to secretly monitor the mercurial architect in charge. In return, she’ll receive a home for her climate-displaced Korean immigrant mother and herself.

Written in Cho Nam-joo’s signature razor-sharp prose, Miss Kim Knows follows eight women as they confront how gender shapes and orders their lives. A woman is born. A woman is filmed in public without consent. A woman is gaslit. A woman is discriminated against at work. A woman grows old. A woman becomes famous. A woman is hated, and loved, and then hated again. As with Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, these microcosmic stories prove eerily relatable under Cho Nam-joo’s precise, unveiled gaze, offering another captivating read from an essential voice in fiction.

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.

Twelve-year-old Jordan feels like he can't live up to the example his older sister set or his parent's expectations. When he returns home from school one day hoping to hide his suspension, Los Angeles has reached a turning point. In the wake of the acquittal of the police officers filmed beating Rodney King, as well as the shooting of a young Black teen, Latasha Harlins, by a Korean store owner, the country is at the precipice of confronting its racist past and present.

숙향전'은 어린 소녀 숙향이 부모님을 잃고, 갖은 고난 속에서 성장해가는 이야기입니다. 숙향은 주어진 운명에 따라 자신이 겪어야 할 시련을 모두 거친 뒤에야 사랑하는 낭군과 부모님을 만날 수 있었습니다. 그 속에서 벌어지는 사건과 옥황상제, 용왕, 선녀와 같이 현실에서 볼 수 없는 인물들의 등장은 흥미진진하고 환상적입니다. 우리 모두 숙향이 들려주는 상상의 세계로 함께 떠나 볼까요?

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.

Deep in the Korean mountains, US sniper Caje Cole and his squad are on patrol when they witness a dogfight that ends with an American pilot being shot down over enemy territory. Cole leads the rescue effort that puts him in conflict with a deadly Chinese sniper, but that turns out to be the least of his worries. Enemy forces are on the move, starting with the capture of an outpost just beyond the American line.