Series: SF in South Korea

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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Asia’s First Steampunk Art Exhibition

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This entry is part 62 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

Well, we’re back from our trip to Korea. Many missions were accomplished, though the visit was too short to see everyone I would have liked to. I focused on seeing the people who probably won’t be in Korea next time I’m there, as those folks are always harder to see again later. While I was in Korea, I was lucky enough to have a chance to see what apparently is the first steampunk art exhibition in Asia.  It’s currently showing at the Seoul Arts Center (서울 예술의전당). (And it runs till the 18th of May, for those of you too bogged down …

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A.M. 11:00 (11 A.M.)

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This entry is part 63 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

Well, I finally sat down and watched the Korean Sf film A.M. 11:00 with Mrs. Jiwaku last night. It’s a time travel outing I heard about (and mentioned here) ages ago; delays on film releases never bode well, but I thought the premise sounded promising, so we gave it  a shot anyway. Sadly, it was a disappointment, and for the usual sorts of reasons, when it comes to Korean SF films. Here’s what I had to say on IMDB.com about it: Yet another disappointing Korean SF film, 11 A.M. starts out potentially promising, but devolves into a nonsensical mess of melodrama …

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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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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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Old Movie Promo Posters in Korea

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This entry is part 66 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

In Korean cinemas, upcoming and currently-running films are advertised using handouts (available on a stand within the cinema) that are A4 printouts of the film’s poster on the front, with a writeup and some still frames from the film on the back. Maybe these exist in Canada now too, but I’d never seen such a thing before I arrived here, years ago.  As long as I’ve been here, these flyers were always just a re-texted version of the film poster, with the title in Hangeul. (Sometimes, the title really is just “in Hangeul”—not translated, just written using English words in …

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Readymade Bodhisattva, “The Flowering,” Los Angeles/Riverside, and More

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This entry is part 67 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything to the SF in South Korea series on this blog, but that doesn’t mean that nothing’s happened in the field. It’s just that:  My interests have broadened out from SF to other forms of speculative or “genre” narrative (and, in a big way, to include tabletop RPGs in general), and a lot has happened in many other narrative genres and different media within Korea.   I’ve been a little less involved in the informal Korean SF world since 2013. We were abroad for a while, and then we had a kid and moved …

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“The Peppers of GreenScallion,” and More

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This entry is part 68 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

Among the many wonderful things included in the June 2019 issue of Clarkesworld, you may find two things of interest to those following Korean SF, or my own work as a cotranslator with Jihyun Park. The first is a translation of Myung-Hoon Bae’s “The Peppers of GreenScallion,”translated through the efforts of Jihyun Park and myself. It’s a story about war, systemic failures, bureaucratic nonsense, food, and love. We’re very proud of it, especially given the fact that it turned out to be a lot more fiendishly subtle than we originally realized: little things throughout proved challenging to translate, including an …

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Korean SF 2020: A Rushed Update

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This entry is part 69 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

The vagaries of full-time child-care and full-time work (online, thank goodness) on top of full-time pandemic and full-time global insanity have left me a bit out of the loop when it comes to Korean SF—and I feel a little less obligated to keep up this series now that more people out there in the rest of the world are paying attention to Korean SF—but I feel like it’s worth mentioning a few things: Back in September, FutureCon happened. It was a great series of panel discussions about SF all over the world, and I highly recommend checking out all of …

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Boyoung Kim’s “An Evolutionary Myth”: Reviews and Comments, and Audio Version

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This entry is part 70 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

I mentioned recently that our translation of Boyoung Kim’s “An Evolutionary Myth” was published in May, in the (excellent) 104th issue of Clarkesworld. Since then, a podcast of the story has been released—you can hear it here. It’s worth mentioning that, David Steffen deemed Boyoung’s story the #4 best of Clarkesworld’s story podcast episodes (out of a total of fifteen best) in his review of Clarkesworld’s podcast. In addition, the story has been reviewed a few other times since it was published, and very positively too! It was one of Lois Tilton’s recommended stories for the month. In her reviews column in Locus, she …

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