This blog is dedicated, but not limited to, information and commentary on literature, film, culture, and its transmission from Korea and Asian America. It is a collaborative effort beginning with three (mastered!) translators of Korean literature, all with backgrounds in Korean studies. This makes us think we are entitled to say some things about all of the above.
That is the most pretentious thing we will say about us. The rest is for the ages…
Contributors
jwc125: Jae Won Chung (정재원)
Hello, I’m a PhD student of modern Korean literature at Columbia University. I’ve translated and published works by Gi Hyung-do, Kim Yeon-su, Kim Hun and Eun Hee-kyung, among others. I am currently working on an English translation of Chun Myung-gwan’s Whale (고래) — a postmodern folktale chock-full of melodrama, martial arts and sex.
Formerly a co-founder of now-defunct Impossible Transfer (a translation blog), I am ready to focus my attention on possibilities rather than impossibilities. While I mainly translate prose, you can find some of my poetry translations here and here. You can also read my original fiction here.
kokkiri: Jenny Wang Medina (제니 왕 메디나)
I’m a dissertating, translating, spawning ajumma (I own it proudly but don’t have a real perm, just good fist-shaking action) currently in Seoul on a Korea Foundation Research fellowship and on loan from Columbia University. My research deals with the transformation of Korean culture following democratization in the late 1980s as represented in its literature and popular culture.
I’ve published translations of work by Park Min-gyu, Kim Jung-hyuk, Kim Young-ha, and Oh Jung-hee’s novella The Bird (Telegram Books, 2006).
Also, I like chicken.
sorakr: Sora Kim-Russell (김소라)
I’m Sora. I hold an MA in East Asian Studies from Stanford University, and I teach in the translation department at the Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation, Ewha Womans University.
My translations include short fiction by Pyun Hye-young (편혜영), Jeon Seong-tae (전성태), Kim Aeran (김애란), and Cheon Woon-young (천운영). I’m also responsible for this particular ripple in the Korean Wave.
Currently, I’m hard at work translating a novel and a collection of short stories. My hobbies include lifting weights, baking and eating pastries, lending my support to Revised Romanization, and refining the details of my In Event Of Zombies survival plan.
Because you never know.
Hi. My name’s Brian and I’ve just stumbled onto your blog and I am currently a student of Korean Lit. I really like this blog as I really don’t have a great resource for Korean Literature in translation and I always appreciate finding more books to add to my ever growing list. I also have a question, I’m wondering if any of you could help me in regards to Korean language resources. I’m a non-native speaker and I’ve studied the language in college for some years (but it’s been a little while) and I was wondering if anyone knew of any good reference books as far as grammar goes and maybe a good dictionary. Just looking to spend the summer doing some hardcore studying and any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Hi Brian,
Sorry for the late reply. If you’ve read around here a little, you’ll know that I’m a big advocate of Naver’s online dictionary. It aggregates several dictionaries (국어사전, 국사사전, 영한/한연, 일한/한일, 용어, 한자, 백과사전) and has a decent collection of usage examples. Sometimes those sample sentences are off the mark, but they are pretty useful. And whatever I can’t find in the dictionary usually turns up in the blog searches.
I can’t really help with grammar books — it’s been a while for me too (not b/c I’m great, but b/c I’m lazy), and I’m kind of ambivalent about the series I learned with (Columbia’s Integrated Korean and Berkeley’s College Korean).
If you studied for several years, I would recommend reading and consuming as much media as possible. If you’re looking for a hardcore study tool, I guess flashcards, and maybe this book:
Handbook of Korean Vocabulary — it was recommended to me years ago. It groups Korean vocabulary words into their most common Chinese roots. I have it, but didn’t spend much time with it so I can’t give you a good assessment of how helpful it is.
link to amazon info and review: http://www.language.berkeley.edu/korean/1/
Good luck!
Thanks for the reply. I’ll definitely check out that book. I guess I need to start working with naver.