Are you curious about the way in which literature from modern-day Korea is growing in popularity around the world?
By translating and publishing Korean literary works in more than 30 languages, and publishing many of the works overseas, the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea) is working hard to bring the broad range of modern Korean literature to the world, helping the "Korean voice" to sing out.
Do you wonder how Korea’s modern history and rapid social change are reflected in its literature?
Take a look at the content below and travel with us on a literary journey toward globalization.
Book Review:
'Human Acts' by Han Kang
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'Human Acts' came out in Korean in 2014 and was translated into English by Deborah Smith in 2016. Smith also worked with Han Kang on Han's earlier novel, 'The Vegetarian,' which won a Man Booker International prize just as this second novel was being released in English.
In "Human Acts," published in Korean in 2014 and diligently translated into English by Deborah Smith in 2016, Han Kang brings us back to the dictatorship massacring democracy activists in May 1980. It's a heart-wrenching, terrifying novel of sadness, insanity, regret and remorse. A society's pains -- the pains of the people as it claimed democracy for itself -- are laid bare in the author's pages.
Readers from recently democratic nations, from Indonesia and the Philippines through to Eastern Europe and Latin America, would certainly have a closer understanding about that which she writes than would a reader from North America.
Using a flexible timeline and creating sections that are both current in May 1980 and memories from later years, Han Kang writes about the legacy of the massacre on various tiers and layers of society: a young volunteer, who is the subject in the Korean-language title of this book "A Boy Comes" or "The Boy's Coming" (소년이 온다), academics, political prisoners, teenagers.
Her writing style is, it must be said: unique. By "unique," I mean it can be jarring at times, jumping between first person, second person and third person. The translator, I assume, did a good job here, for it works as an oeuvre. It's not too unnerving after the first few jumps, and readers learn to accept the pattern. As book reviewer Pasha Malla said in the Globe and Mail,
"...The book is vivid and troubling, but, like the boom mike dipping into the frame, these technical glitches compromise its poignancy."
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On page 202, author Han Kang begins the final chapter of the story: "Epilogue: The Writer, 2013." She explains the prior 200 some odd pages as a process of reconciliation. She was 10-years-old when the dictatorship massacred democracy activists in May 1980.
This novel is her coming to terms with that. This novel is her coming to terms with the dark, dark pall that hangs over modern-day South Korea; and in the end, we're healed.
#KOREANCULTURE #BIBLE_STUDY #BOOK #WRITER #K_CULTURE
#MODERN #HISTORY #HAN_KANG
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