Wednesday, December 23, 2015

literature of Korea - in English translation

as of December 2015:

Korean Poetry in English translation
-title in English
-author
-translated by
-publisher

________________________________________
Beating on Iron
Kim Soo-Bok
Translated by Brother Anthony
Green Integer

Maninbo: Peace & War
Ko Un
Translated by Brother Anthony / Lee Sang-Wha
Bloodaxe

Patterns
Lee Si-Young
Translated by Brother Anthony / Yoo Hui-Sok
Green Integer

Wild Apple
Heeduk Ra
Translated by Daniel Parker etc
White Pine

The Colors of Dawn: Twentieth-Century Korean Poetry
An anthology of poems by 44 poets
Translated by Brother Anthony, Chung Eun-Gwi, etc
Manoa (University of Hawai?i Press, early 2016)


Korean novels in English translation

The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness
Kyung-Sook Shin
Translated by Ha-Yun Jung
Pegasus

The Investigation
J. M. Lee
Translated by Chi-Young Kim
Pegasus

Princess Bari
Hwang Sok-Yong
Translated by Sora Kim-Russell
Periscope

Nowhere to Be Found
Bae Suah
Translated by Sora Kim-Russell
Amazon Crossing

The Salmon Who Dared to Leap Higher
Ahn Do-hyeon
Translated by Deborah Smith
PanMacmillan

The Vegetarian
Han Kang
Translated by Deborah Smith
Portobello Books

Human Acts
Han Kang
Translated by Deborah Smith
Portobello Books (January 2016)

Modern Family
Myeong-kwan Cheon
Translated by Kyoung-lee Park
White Pine

The Future of Silence: Fiction by Korean Women
9 authors
Translated by Ju-Chan Fulton / Bruce Fulton
Zephyr (February 2016)


Dalkey Archive?s Library of Korean Literature added 5 more titles late in 2015:

Son of Man 
Yi Mun-yol 
Translated by Brother Anthony of Taiz? 

A Good Family 
Seo Hajin 
Translated by Ally Hwang & Amy Smith 

God Has No Grandchildren 
Kim Gyeong-uk 
Translated by Sunok Kang 

The Private Lives of Plants 
Lee Seung-U 
Translated by Inrae You Vinciguerra & Louis Vinciguerra 

Rina 
Kang Young-sook 
Translated by Kim Boram 

These are in addition to last year's 14 Dalkey Archive Korean Literature volumes:

Stingray by Kim Joo-young 
One Spoon on This Earth by Hyun Ki Young 
When Adam Opens His Eyes by Jang Jung-il 
My Son?s Girlfriend by Jung Mi-kyung 
A Most Ambiguous Sunday, and Other Stories by Jung Young Moon 
The House with a Sunken Courtyard by Kim Won-il 
At Least We Can Apologize by Lee Ki-ho 
The Soil by Yi Kwang-su 
Lonesome You by Park Wan-suh 
No One Writes Back by Jang Eun-jin 
Pavane for a Dead Princess by Park Min-Gyu 
The Square by Choi In-Hun 
Scenes from the Enlightenment: A Novel of Manners by Kim Namcheon 
Another Man?s City by Ch?oe In-Ho 


Asia Publishers have continued to add to their K-Library of Korean short fiction in bilingual volumes in 2015:

Kong?s Garden by Hwang Jung-eun
Danny by Yun I-hyeong
Homecoming by Cheon Myeong-kwan

Friday, December 4, 2015

Korean Indie rock vs. K-POP

Article in Asia Pacific Review this week, http://japanfocus.org/-Stephen-Epstein/4401/article.html

Stephen Epstein, "Us and Them: Korean Indie Rock in a K-Pop World", The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 46, No. 1, November 30, 2015

PrĂ©cis: This article, intended as a companion to the recent documentary Us and Them: Korean Indie Rock in a K-Pop World co-produced by Stephen Epstein and Timothy Tangherlini, situates Korean indie and punk rock within a broader context in order to demonstrate how what may seem a byway within Korean culture serves as a useful index of important recent societal transformations. As the nature of not only global media flows and musical circulation but Korean national identity and economic structures all undergo significant change, how should observers understand "Korean" "indie" music and its meanings as of 2015? How have the local punk and indie scenes developed in concert with, and in contrast to, K-pop?

Key words: South Korea, popular music, indie music, punk, K-pop.

Friday, November 6, 2015

selected resources online at Korea U.

from the Publications tab, https://riks.korea.ac.kr/root/?pg=P_64e7ac2f45
 [accessed Nov 6, 2015]
Multimedia Works on Korean Culture
Chang: A Traditional Vocal Misic (Album)
Released on six LP stereo recordings in 1986, this is the first recording of all 41 extant Changs (Korean traditional songs) with male and female vocals, which have been passed down from the past to the present.
Traditional Korean Culture of Food (Video)
This video includes the visual recordings of traditional foods such as Korean biscuits, rice cakes, sweets, alcoholic drinks, kimchi, and sauces, narrated in both Korean and English in each volume.
Korean Language Textbooks
The following textbooks are used for Korean language instruction: Korean (vol. 1-6), Korean Conversation (vol. 1-6), and Standard Pronunciation Practice for Korean.

Friday, October 23, 2015

journal article - Early Photos, women in Korea

*Gendering Modernity: Korean Women Seen through the Early Missionary Gaze, 1880s-1910s, https://cross-currents.berkeley.edu/e-journal/photo-essay/980?page=0
 --- Curated by Heejeong Sohn, Stony Brook University

Curator's Statement, https://cross-currents.berkeley.edu/e-journal/issue-16/sohn
 (viewers may 
leave feedback online)

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

back to the farm - Koreans' U-turn from city to country

About 45,000 households left the city centers in the past year to seek their fortunes or at least more fulfilling lives away from urban places,
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/08/03/428102390/tired-of-the-seoul-sucking-rat-race-koreans-flock-to-farming

[excerpt]
"At the construction company a lot of the time I'd wake up at 6 in the morning and work all night through to the next day," he says. "That was really hard for me."


South Korea has an overwhelmingly urban population. More than 80 percent of people live in cities. But in the past few years, something has started to change. Tens of thousands of South Koreans like Kim Pil-Gi are relocating to the countryside each year. His father, Kim Jin-Suk, left a marketing job in Seoul to start this farm.


"In the city you're always running short of time, because you're trying to get rich," he says. "In the countryside, I find that I have more time for myself."

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

dprk in set of 360 panorama views

As seen this morning at dpreview.com, including this youtube link, North Korea 360 Video ( Young Pioneer Tours - 2015 June Tour )



Wednesday, June 3, 2015

app to bridge N.Korea & S.Korea varieties of language

blog article of  interest






Monday, June 1, 2015

scholarly journals about Korea (408 titles so far)

From the more than 1750 publications (mostly Korean-language writings), about 400 have joined an open system of publication for easy searching in English or Korean [cross-posting excerpt from e-list KoreanStudies.com of 1 June 2015]:

electronic texts of the articles published in their journals since 2002. There are no limitations, no signing up or signing on is needed. 

The pages are available in Korean and in English. The starting point for a search of journal titles (?????)  is at https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/po/search/poSereSear.kci and there a choice can be made between working in Korean or English (but almost all the journals listed are in fact in Korean with Korean names of course, but everything has been translated). 

Monday, February 23, 2015

cinema, DPRK

blog article in review of A Kim Jong-Il Production by Paul Fischer
http://www.omnivoracious.com/2015/02/dear-director-essential-north-korean-cinema.html


cf. screenshot, (in the Japanese language Amazon store) another encyclopedic look at films made in North Korea

Monday, February 2, 2015

online tool for Romanizing Korean names

... In order to help with difficulties in romanizing personal names, I have developed the Korean Name Romanizer, a Windows-based tool that converts Korean names in Korean script into the roman alphabet according to ALA-LC rules. You can freely download the tool on the Princeton EAL website at:
http://eastasianlib.princeton.edu/korroman.htm

(The downloadable file is in .exe format, and some security systems may prevent proper downloading or installation. If this happens, please consult your system technician.)

I acknowledge here gladly the assistance of many Korean librarians who tested the tool and provided helpful feedback, in particular Erica Chang (Univ. of Hawaii) and Jee-young Park (Univ. of Chicago). Please report any errors or further suggestions to me at hyounglat princeton dotedu

Sunday, January 4, 2015

early observations of KR and RU, 1882 Geo. Foulk

from YK at the Korean Studies Discussion List
RE: First Westerners to Visit Korea: George C. Foulk & His Friends' Travel Records to Busan and Wonsan, June 1882


…On their way back to the United States for reassignments via Siberia and Europe, Ensign George C. Foulk and two fellow naval officers seized the opportunity to travel to Busan and Wonsan. This was less than a month after Korea signed the "Treaty of Peace, Amity, Commerce and Navigation" with the United States on May 22, 1882 at Inchoen.
            Arriving in Busan on June 7, 1882, they became the first Western travelers to visit Korea. Two years later, in December of 1884 on the eve of the Gapsin Coup, Foulk re-visited Busan, this time as the United States Naval Attache to Korea*. Another well known traveler, Isabella Bird Bishop, landed in Busan twelve years later in 1894.
            During his six years of duty with the United States Asiatic Squadron, when he had frequent ports of calls in Japan, Foulk became fluent in Japanese and taught himself to read and write Chinese characters. Further, he had enough of a basic overview on what was going on in Korea at that time to be able to absorb quite a bit of what was going on during his visits. His preparedness, fluency in Japanese and  competency in Chinese characters proved to be of great benefit. He conversed in Japanese with men on the street and communicated in Chinese characters with Korean boys by writing out questions on the ground. They answered him in the same manner. His language skills also helped him to study and evaluate Japanese settlements in Busan and Wonsan.
            Upon their return to the United States, the U.S. Government Printing Office published their travel report in 1983 as a U.S. federal document under the lengthy title of:

Observations upon the KOREAN COAST, JAPANESE-KOREAN PORTS, and SIBERIA made during a journey from THE ASIATIC STATION TO THE UNITED STATES through SIBERIA AND EUROPE, June 3 to September 8, 1882.
I've made copies of the first 19 pages from this 132-year-old, very fragile, and hard to find book, which cover the Korean portion of their journey, and is attached hereto.
            I hope to have my copy of the report on Korea stored in the [KS] archives before the books disappears from the library shelves.
            While Foulk and his two friends were in Siberia, they also observed and recorded Russia's military designs on Korea as well as accounts of Koreans toiling to make lives for themselves in Siberia.  It reads as follows:

*Russia's Military Designs on Korea*

Page 20 - "Even in the latitude of Vladivostok, however, the harbor is

blocked with ice in the long winters, while fogs obstruct navigation in
summer, and the Russians find that, with all the expenditure put on the
place, Vladivostok is unsuitable as a base to maintain a powerful fleet in
the Pacific, or prolonged warlike operations in the East. It is with this
fact before it that the attention of the Russian Government must have been
turned with great interest to the condition and future of Korea, with the
hope of securing one of its excellent harbors, as Fusan and Gensan, or the
island of Tsushima, all of which are below the frozen latitude. The Korean
coast, and especially the harbors mentioned above, have been visited again
and again by Russian men-of-war, and an attempt was made in 1859 to obtain
a hold on Tsushima, where a small colony of Russian seamen was established
and several buildings elected on an obscure part of the coast; this
settlement was abandoned after its existence was made known by a visit to
Tsushima of the English commander-in-chief, Vice-Admiral Sir James Hope.
The Chinese Government was probably actuated in sending an ambassador and
fleet of gun boat with Commodore Shufeldt when he visited Inchiun to make
the treaty, by its estimation of the value of the seaports on the eastern
coast of Korea, to their rivals the Russian."

Page 25 - "At the junction of Ussuri and Amur, where the boundary line
turns southward, Khaborovka was founded, and from it a post road made
following the Ussuri and Sunggacha Rivers to Lake Khanka, rounding which to
the westward it continued on to the south-ward, east of the board line, to
Vladivostok. Later this road was extended to the southernmost point of the
Primorskkaya, or sea-coast province, to the Korean border, at a distance of
40 miles from which was established the military post known as Nova
Kievaskaya, or Possiette, from its situation on a bay of the latter name. "

*The Struggling Koreans in Siberia*

Page19 - "(Vladivostok)- - - on landing hired a number of porters from the
motley crowd of Chinese, Manchus, and Koreans on the wharf."

Page 21- "The population of Vladivostok was about 6,000 composed of
Russians of various classes, but chiefly military, many Manchus, Chinese
from Chefoo, Koreans, and several hundred Japanese. The laboring class was
made up chiefly of Koreans and Chinese. - - -while Koreans and the lowest
Chinese did menial labor, such as driving bullock carts, digging, etc."

Page 22 - "(Vladivostok) Near the landing place was a bazaar consisting of
a double row of shabby buildings, in which traded an unsightly rabble of
Manchus, Chinese, Koreans, and low Russians"

Page 25 - "Thus the ethnographic maps of East Siberia show a system of thin
lines of Russian habitation lying in the midst of a vast region peopled by
Manchus, Tunguse, straggling Koreans, and the more barbarous natives known
as Goldi, Gilyaks Orochons, and Ainos."

Page 28 - "(Razdolnui) We learned, however, that a few Chinese and Koreans
had settled in this locality, but their fear of wandering bands of
marauding Manzas, or northern Chinese, had prompted them to live in
secluded places. As a rule these settlers have not been successful as
permanent inhabitants, even when unmolested by their marauding countrymen,
owing to the severe and protracted winters."

Page 31 - "Nikolskaya (or Nikolski), Mingled with the Russian population
were numbers of Chinese, Manzas, and Koreans traders or farming settlers
like the Russians; many of these. we were told, were voluntary Russian
subjects."

Page 32 - "(Nikolskaya) These troops with the Cossacks, were not confined
to fixed localities, being sent in detached bodies as required to protect
settlers from Chinese brigands, for the general defense of the district by
picket lines, or to prevent the Chinese, Koreans, and aboriginal people
from smuggling or trading, or establishing themselves on Russian soil
excepts in conformity with the exactions of the Russian Government."

Fifteen years later, in 1897, Isabella Bird Bishop also visited Siberia and
described the Korean settlements that were much improved by that time, in
her book "Korea and Her Neighbors".

* Professor Samuel Hawley edited two books on George C. Foulk's life in Korea, 1884-1887.
1) America's Man in Korea: The Private Letters of George C. Foulk, 1884-1887, Lexington Books, 2007
http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Man-Korea-Private-1884-1887/dp/0739120980

2) Inside the Hermit Kingdom: The 1884 Travel Diary of George Clayton Foulk, Lexington Books, 2007
http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Hermit-Kingdom-Journal-Clayton/dp/0739120964

see also in PDF, Observations Upon the Korean Coast, Japanese Korean Ports and Siberia.pdf