Category: SF in South Korea

Korean SF Translations, and Our Current Workflow

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So, my wife and I have been working on a couple of translations lately.  I mentioned, back in September, having finished up one of them. We just put the almost-final touches on the second one. (We sent off three questions to the original author of the second one we finished drafting, but otherwise, the translation’s pretty much done and just needs some proofreading before it’s sent off.) The two stories are: 레디메이드 보살 by Sunghwan Park (English title: “The Prefab Bodhisattva.” This is a story I’ve mentioned here before, as one of the tales adapted to the screen in The Doomsday Book omnibus …

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Daerijeon: The Proxy War—Online Now!

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Well, folks, it took two and a half years—actually, almost three—but finally, Mrs. Jiwaku’s short film adaptation of the famous Korean SF writer/film-critic Djuna‘s novella (so-so translation here), “Daerijeon: The Proxy War” is online. You can see it over at Youtube, though I’ll embed it here for your convenience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jCdPB_PsDo Note, that’s set to autoload the English subtitles by Youtube’s caption function. You might want to resize the captions so they look good (and they look best in fullscreen mode). If you do enjoy it, please share it! That’s pretty much the biggest encouragement you can give her as a film director, and it will help …

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An Evolutionary Myth by Bo-Young Kim

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This entry is part 65 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

I’m very happy to announce that a translation of Boyoung Kim’s “An Evolutionary Myth,” — co-translated by yours truly and Jihyun Park — has just been published in the current issue of Clarkesworld, issue #104 (May 2015), alongside a diverse selection of authors including Chinese author A Que, and the Finnish author Hannu Rajaniemi, as well the American authors James Van Pelt, Matthew Kressel, Andrea Pawley, and Ian Muneshwar. As for Jihyun and myself, this is our first published co-translation, and we’re pleased as punch. Hopefully it is only the first of many… The original story contained some footnotes that didn’t …

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Korean SF Festival 2014

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This entry is part 64 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

Those tracking Korean SF might be pleased to note that the Gwacheon International SF Film Festival I blogged about a while back–and which has continued over the years since–has expanded into a kind of Korean SF Festival, full stop. There’s a big film component, but there seems to be much more than screenings and an exhibit nowadays, which is great! It runs from the 26 September to 5 October this year, and is being held at the same spot as the year I attended: the Gwacheon Science Museum which is a very good venue, as long as you don’t mind the trek out to Gwacheon. Here’s a link to …

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Articles on Korean SF in _list Magazine

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This entry is part 61 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

For those interested in South Korean SF, but unable to read it themselves (like me) you will be interested in the little treasure trove of articles I’ve just run across on the subject. They were published as part of the Summer 2013 issue of the magazine _List, which appears to be published by the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. There are four articles in all: “Chronicling Korean Science Fiction” by Cho Sung-myeon, which discusses the history of Korean SF. This is a great piece with a lot more history than I ever found available anywhere else. Plenty of figures in Korean …

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Korea in English-Language SF

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This entry is part 60 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

Over at Gusts of Popular Feeling, everyone’s favorite archives-trawler Matt has a post about about “the first SF story involving Korea” and a few other such tales from the Galaxy/Amazing Stories era. I’ve left a comment clarifying that “the first SF story” should be qualified as “the first English-language SF story” and also noting that depending on how you define “SF,” one might consider Jack London’s Star Rover the first in the English language. As for the first Korean-language SF story, I don’t know what it was, though I’d argue that the amount of remixing that seems to have gone …

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Seoul Comics World Convention #114 (December 2012)

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This entry is part 59 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

Note: This is a post from late December. I was too busy to finish writing it, so I’m posting it a bit late.  Those following my SF in South Korea series have no doubt been wondering why I haven’t posted anything new in a long time. The fact is, not much has happened as far as I’ve heard about. I do have some reviews of older SF movies that Miss Jiwaku and I have dug into–specifically, Half-Moon Mask (Mask Bandal) and Wooraemae–but I’d rather talk about those once I’ve seen the whole series, and in both cases, that’s a lot of …

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사이코메트리 [Psychometry] — The Gifted Hands (2013)

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This entry is part 58 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

There is now a stereotype for psychics in Korean cinema. (Assuming there wasn’t already one, that is.) Psychics are tall and pale as Snow White. They are skinny and their eyes do weird, sparkly blue things. Even if they’re from a poor background or living in poverty, they are obviously plastic-surgeried, and they look as if they belong in the back line of the photographs of a Korean boy band. Also, when they do something psychic, they look kind of crazy, and their eyes get really big too. To be fair, it’s probably as much the investors pressuring the director …

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Seoul Cthulhu Festival of Film: 28 Feb 2012

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This entry is part 57 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

UPDATE (8 March 2013): This event was a huge success, selling out all the seats in the cinema to a very appreciative audience. We’re happy it was so well-received, and hope that it will inspire the organization of similar such events in future! I’ll post photos when I get the chance… ORIGINAL POST: Fans of H.P. Lovecraft in Seoul will not want to miss the upcoming Cthulhu Festival of Film in Seoul. The evening will feature three film adaptations of Lovecraft’s stories: one Korean, one German, and one American. There will be subtitles for all films, to accommodate both Korean-speakers …

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Upcoming Korean SF Film: AM 11:00

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This entry is part 55 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

Well, there have been a few Korean SF film projects going on lately, and the most recent film in process now is a time-travel effort titled AM 11:00. I don’t know when it’s supposed to come out, though I feel like I saw an ad for it already — but that can’t be, as they only started shooting in May, right? Anyway, according to Hancinema, here’s the deal: “AM 11:00” is about a scientist who invented a time machine and went to the next day’s 11:00 AM, but witnesses a mass murder of his colleagues and comes back to the …

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