Best Sellers Across the Globe: South Korea
We all love K-pop and those energetic performances, watching k-dramas that make us swoon over the protagonists and the story and we just can’t forget about their heavenly food. South Korea is a country rich in culture and heritage. It has an ancient history of warriors and dynasties to study that led to the formation of the present developed society. But it has a lot more to offer — BOOKS. Like other countries, South Korea has contributed quite a lot in the field of literature and has won several internationally acclaimed prizes. So, let’s take a look at a list of 5 of the best sellers from South Korea (in no particular order)
KIM JI-YOUNG BORN 1982 by Cho Nam Ju
“What do you want from us? The dumb girls are too dumb, the smart girls are too smart, and the average girls are too unexceptional?”
Kim Ji-Young Born 1982 was published on 14 October 2016. The story beautifully depicts how society and its baseless stereotypes affect the protagonist and make her vulnerable, eventually leading her to depression. The story talks about gender inequality and discrimination in Korean society and simply tells its reader that it is not “a” country’s social problem, it is present everywhere. It has sold more than 1 million copies as of now and has been adapted into a movie in 2019. Jamie Chang has translated this book into English making it reach readers around the world. Jamie Chang has carefully captured the blending of political and stylistic concerns in a cool tone in the context used by the author. Jamie Chang, the author of ‘A Sea Between Us’ is a literary translator based in Seoul who teaches at Ewha Woman's University Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation, and the Translation Academy at the Literature Translation Institute of Korea.
PLEASE LOOK AFTER MOTHER by Shin Kyung-sook
“Either a mother and daughter know each other very well or they are strangers.”
Published in 2008, Please Look After Mother sold around 1.5 million copies. It is a story about a ‘missing mother’ whom her family tries to find. It is an absolute moving tale about a woman’s life when she becomes a mother and devotes her entire life to nurturing and caring for her family, and yet we know so little about her life and story just like in this novel. Chi-Young Kim translated this novel into English. Chi-Young Kim is a Korean English literary translator who lives in the United States.
THE VEGETARIAN by Hang Kang
“Why is it such a bad thing to die?”
Based on Han’s 1997 short story “The Fruit of My Woman”, The Vegetarian published in 2007 is set in modern-day Seoul, the story is about a homemaker who stops eating meat after some series of a nightmare about animals and cruelty towards them. Deborah Smith translated The Vegetarian. The duo of Han Kang and Deborah Smith was awarded as the co-winners of the Man Booker International Prize in 2016 for the book. Boyd Tomkin, chairman of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize panel, lauded the book for its “disturbing outlook on a subject of vast interest”.
HUMAN ACTS by Hang Kang
“After you died I could not hold a funeral, and so my life became a funeral.”
Another book by the most widely acclaimed Korean writer, Human Acts (2014) depicts a violent student uprising in South Korea, where a young boy named Dong-ho is shockingly killed. The story of this tragic episode unfolds in a sequence of interconnected chapters. Also explains the agony of the massacre. The novel’s original title is believed to be You, In the Summer but the title Human Acts was decided at the last minute. The young protagonist is referred to as “you” throughout the book. Deborah Smith again worked with Hang Kang to translate Human Acts in English which was later on translated into over 14 languages.
ALMOND by Won-Pyung Sohn
“Even though my brain was a mess, what kept my soul whole was the warmth of the hands holding mine on both sides”
Almond is a coming-of-age novel that tells a story about a boy Yunjae who sees a gang beating up a boy but shows no expression or emotions that one might portray after seeing such a gruesome sight. It has been said that this story is about a monster meeting another monster and one of the monsters is the protagonist. Sandy Joosun Lee is a translator and interpreter based in Seoul who translated this novel into English.
The South Korean publishing industry strives with a number of books printed every year which are read and critiqued by masses. Here is a list of a few South Korean best-sellers, but we have merely touched the tip of the iceberg. As a reader, one should expand their reading horizon by curating well-researched content from across the globe and that is what we aim at.
