Korean Literature

Situated at the heart of a rapidly gentrifying district of Seoul, the Yeonnam-dong Smiley Laundromat is a place where the extraordinary stories of ordinary residents unfold. It is already a haven of tranquility and reflection for locals, but when someone leaves a notebook behind, the laundromat becomes a place that brings people together. One by one, customers start jotting down candid diary entries, opening their hearts and inviting acts of kindness from neighbors who were once just faces in the crowd.

Life near the North Korean border is a zero-sum game, an ongoing battle in which you either win or you lose. This dangerous, shadowed netherworld is home to an unforgettable woman known only as the “trickster.” Inspired by the story of Lee’s great aunt, one of the oldest women to escape alone from North Korea, 8 Lives of a Century Old Trickster consists of eight dark and spellbinding chapters that follow this remarkable character and her family as they struggle to survive during the most turbulent times of modern Korean history.

When the Seoul police inform Min that his girlfriend Yu-jin has committed suicide, he’s sure it can't be true. She was successful, ambitious, happy, just on the cusp of graduating from university and claiming the future she’d always dreamed of.

In a race to stop an ancient evil from destroying the worlds as they know them, Sunny comes to a startling, heartbreaking realization: if she chooses love—everything will burn. Sunny Cho aspires to be the dullest, least interesting person in any given room, which can be challenging for a nine-tailed fox spirit. So she drifts from city to city—staying clear of any and all attachment—and keeps her fox buried deep inside her. It is better this way. She would rather live as half of herself than risk losing control of her terrible powers.

Twelve-year-old Jordan feels like he can't live up to the example his older sister set or his parent's expectations. When he returns home from school one day hoping to hide his suspension, Los Angeles has reached a turning point. In the wake of the acquittal of the police officers filmed beating Rodney King, as well as the shooting of a young Black teen, Latasha Harlins, by a Korean store owner, the country is at the precipice of confronting its racist past and present.

Yeongju is burned out. With her high-­flying career, demanding marriage, and busy life in Seoul, she knows she should feel successful, but all she feels is drained. Yet an abandoned dream nags at her, and in a leap of faith, she leaves her old life behind. Quitting her job and divorcing her husband, Yeongju moves to a small residential neighborhood outside the city, where she opens the Hyunam-dong Bookshop.

Yongju is an accomplished student from one of North Korea's most prominent families. Jangmi has had to fend for herself since childhood, most recently by smuggling goods across the border. Danny is a Chinese American teenager of North Korean descent whose quirks and precocious intelligence have long marked him as an outcast in his California high school. These three disparate lives converge when each of them travels to the region where China borders North Korea.

A beautifully crafted, enriching saga inspired by East Asian mythology, The Melancholy of Untold History is Minsoo Kang’s debut novel, steeped in history like R.F. Kuang’s Babel, epic in scope like Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land, and lyrically exciting like David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, interweaving four complex yet entertaining stories as they shape and create a nation’s literary narrative through the themes of love and grief.

Ken Hideyoshi is the new guy in Halawa Correctional Institute. He’s tough looking, a hard case. His cellmate is Cal—the mute tattoo artist of the prison who murdered his own wife. Ken, already inked with a gang symbol and a Japanese emblem, eventually asks Cal to create an elaborate tattoo on his back, in kanji script, of Musashi’s Book of the Void.

Jin and Suja meet and fall in love while studying at university in Pyongyang. She is a young journalist from a prominent family, while he is from a small village of little means. Outside the school, North Korea has fallen under great political upheaval, plunged into chaos and famine. When Jin returns home to find his family starving, their food rations all but gone, he makes a rash decision that will haunt him for the rest of his life.

Whale, set in a remote village in South Korea, follows the lives of many linked characters, including Geumbok, an extremely ambitious woman who has been chasing an indescribable thrill ever since she first saw a whale crest in the ocean; her mute daughter, Chunhui, who communicates with elephants; and a one-eyed woman who controls honeybees with a whistle. Brimming with surprises and wicked humor, Whale is an adventure-satire of epic proportions by one of the most original voices in international literature.

병자호란 때문에 힘들었던 우리 백성에게 희망을 준, 영웅 임경업을 주인공으로 한 군담소설이다. 무과에 일등으로 합격한 임경업은 어린 시절부터 열심히 병서를 읽으며 공부한다. 벼슬할 때는 맡은 일에 최선을 다하고, 함께 일한 군사와 백성들을 아껴 준다. 명나라에 사신으로 갔다가 호국(후금, 후에 청나라로 이름을 바꿈)을 도와주라는 부탁을 받고 전쟁에 나가 전쟁을 승리로 이끈다. 이 일로 임경업 장군의 이름이 널리 퍼지게 된다.

Every Friday after school, 17-year-old Alice Choy and her little sister, Olivia, head to Myeongdong to sing karaoke. Back in San Francisco, when she still had friends and earthly possessions, Alice took regular singing lessons. But since their diplomat mom moved them to Seoul, her only musical outlet is vamping it up in a private karaoke booth to an audience of one: her loyal sister. Then a scout for Top10 Entertainment, one of the biggest K-pop companies, hears her and offers her a spot at their Star Academy.

One evening in downtown Seoul, Jeong-su is smoking a cigarette outside when he sees something impossible: a huge black orb appears out of nowhere and sucks his neighbor inside. Jeong-su manages to get away, but the terrifying sphere can move through walls, so he’s sure he won’t be able to hide for long. The orb soon begins consuming every person caught in its path, and no one knows how to stop it. Impervious to bullets and tanks, the orb splits and multiplies, chasing the hapless residents of Seoul out into the country and sparking a global crisis with widespread violence and looting.

Two Russian agents discover a missing nuclear weapon was hidden in an American city by North Korea. Another nuclear weapon nears Seoul in a tunnel built by North Koreans. And North Korea's new military dictator launches an all-out invasion. Will Seoul or Pyongyang be the new capital of a united Korea?

Inca the Siberian kitty and her globetrotting furry family are off to South Korea with their human mom. Mom has just created a fabulous new cheese, and she's been invited by the famous French school Cordon Bleu Cookery to not only present her new cheese, but also be the judge of a cookery competition between South and North Korean chefs. Along with plenty of sightseeing and delicious cheese, the cats befriend a Korean dog and his master pining for his long-lost sister living in the North. What dangers await the group of animal detectives as they cross over from South to North Korea?

맑고 청명한 스위스 산골, 그곳에서 자유분방하게 자라나는 알프스 소녀 하이디. 애니메이션 속 하이디는 알프스 공기만큼이나 싱그러운 아이로, 언제나 통통거리며 뛰어다닌다. 소설 『하이디』가 발표된 후 전 세계인들은 대자연을 만나기 위해 알프스를 찾았고, 『하이디』는 스위스를 대표하는 문학 작품이 되었다.

Elsa Park is a particle physicist at the top of her game, stationed at a neutrino observatory in the Antarctic, confident she's put enough distance between her ambitions and the family ghosts she's run from all her life. But it isn't long before her childhood imaginary friend—an achingly familiar, spectral woman in the snow—comes to claim her at last. Years ago, Elsa's now-catatonic mother had warned her that the women of their line were doomed to repeat the narrative lives of their ancestors from Korean myth and legend. But beyond these ghosts, Elsa also faces a more earthly fate.

She's always had to deal with the trouble her gambler boyfriend creates, and now she's in for it big time. Lonnie's put up his Korean beauty as part of a poker bet, and when the chips are down, she's going down as well. A shocking gangbang with interracial sex, forced deepthroat, forced first anal sex, and double penetration ensues. This Asian sex short by Stacy Reinhardt pushes all the right buttons and adds a few extra for good measure.

Jae-Young has just left everything she’s ever known, not that it was much: her thankless job, her infested apartment, and her abusive boyfriend—who happens to be dead on the kitchen floor. Murder was never the way she envisioned leaving, but times were desperate. Now on a train to the bustling city of Seoul, Jae-Young is hoping to escape her transgressions and just become invisible—safe. On the train, she meets a chatty mother fleeing with her infant son from an unfaithful husband and hoping to find refuge with the in-laws she’s never met.