Eugenia Kim's Blog, page 3

Remembering Korea 1950: A Boy Soldier's Story by H. K. Shin

This slim volume, a gem, tells Shin's story of his boyhood and his experience in the Korean War as a sixteen-year-old ROK soldier. While many books written in English cover the action and politics of the war, especially from the American point of view, few tell in such a personal way about the individual Korean experience of this war on families, on refugees, on the young men in battle. Laced with important historical hindsight about the movement of the war, the narrative has the ring of truth of the young man who witnessed many aspects of this confusing war and reconstruction, and who managed to survive in order to continue his education. It is both informative and charming, as the narrator's voice is one of self-deprecation and gentle humor.

Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung

Catherine Chung's acclaimed debut novel (a Booklist Starred Review, among other terrific press) earns its accolades with elegant prose and a story of an immigrant family. Set in both America and in Korea, Janie's complicated relationship with her missing sister, Hannah, stands as a metaphor for Janie's own complicated relationship with her parents and with her identity. The story examines the

I Am the Clay, Chaim Potok

An old woman and an old man flee from their village outside of Seoul (south of the river Han) when the Chinese join the North Korean People’s Army and invade Seoul for the second time. In the early days of their journey they find a boy, bleeding with a shrapnel wound, in a ditch. Having lost a son in childbirth, she rescues him more than once from the brink of death, her prayers to the spirits

The Orphan Master's Son, Adam Johnson

Riding a crest of enormous praise, this debut novel by an American man about a North Korean citizen is a worthy achievement, and one I couldn't put down for two days straight. Despite twists of plot that in fiction often seem too coincidental, the reader's sympathy and alignment to the protagonist is so rich and deeply felt that these happenstances feel believable, and are forgivable. The book

Miles from Nowhere, by Nami Mun

With stunning prose and a sensitive eye for detail, Mun unfolds five years from age 14 in the gritty and difficult life of a young Korean American runaway on the urban streets. Not only does Joon quickly lose her innocence and succumb to the seemingly soothing beguile of drugs, leading to heroin addiction, she must fight for a lost identity as she attempts to reconcile being the daughter of an

My Innocent Uncle, by Ch'ae Man-sik

Ch'ae Man-shik (or Man-sik), who wrote stories and novels during the colonial period, is considered one of the greats of Korean modern literature. Like his other work, these three stories hone in on individuals who face the dilemmas of their times, those dilemmas of culture and historical circumstance which offer a tragi-comedy of errors. His renown rises from targeting the common man, not the

An Appointment with My Brother, by Yi Mun-Yol

The famed South Korean writer imagines meeting his North Korean brother after the death of his father--a defector to the North in the narrator's youth (a fact that parallels the author's life). The narrator, a professor of history who has suffered as a result of his father's defection, joins a tour group to Yenji, a chinese border town from which groups are allowed to see the famed Mt. Baektu and

Twofold Song, by Yi Mun-Yol

In a beautifully illustrated and bound bilingual edition, famed writer Yi Mun-yol's story of the last encounter of an affair presents as allegory of ancients and modern mixed together, with a coda that changes all that primordial prehistoric metaphor into something altogether different. The title of the story and its writing parallel each other with a constant shifting of sides and views, past

The Martyred by Richard E. Kim

Richard E. Kim's book THE MARTYRED, a 1965 National Book Award Finalist, became a Penguin Classic book in May 2011 (pictured left). The introduction is by Heinz Insu Fenkl, with a Foreword by Susan Choi. This Korean War story follows Captain Lee who investigates the murders and kidnappings by North Korean Communists of Christian ministers and priests. As Lee investigates the depths of this

KYOPO by Cindy Hwang (CYJO)

The Kyopo project by artist Cindy Hwang is a five-year photography and textual endeavor that explores and exposes the breadth and individual depth of people "of Korean ethnic descent and living outside of Korea," from which the acronym derives. Several of CYJO's KYOPO photographs are on exhibition as part of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery's "Asian American Portraits of Encounter,"