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Korean Literature Now

Vol. 71 Spring 2026 이미지

Magazine Vol. 71 Spring 2026 In this issue of KLN, we explore some of the questions that arise when we think of locality in Korean literature. Which writers identify as ‘local’ writers? Are there any advantages to identifying as a local writer? How can we define regional or local literature? For this issue, we invited two writers, Ham Jeungim and Lee Jenny, to comment on the meaning of locality in their writing. Although both could be identified as writers located in the Busan area, their relationships to the city are markedly different. The poet Lee Jenny was born in Busan and moved as a child to nearby Geojedo island, where she has spent most of her life. Ham Jeungim, on the other hand, only moved to Busan when she took up a professorship at Dong-A University. As you will see from Ham’s essay, while she has been actively involved in the Busan literary scene, her identification with Busan as a writer is critical and complex. What both of their essays have in common is a rich and nuanced sense of how and when locality matters for the writer. Ham Jeungim suggests that cities such as Seoul and Busan are fluid and mobile, interconnected localities. For Lee Jenny, locality is not just “a particular location’s images or landscapes”; it is much more than a writer’s “lived environment” or the geographical imprint on a work. Indeed, “a writer’s place is not a fixed coordinate.” These are challenging essays that urge us to reimagine what it means to have a literary home. Locality, place, and movement are also enduring themes in the fiction of our featured writer Jeon Sungtae, who was born in Goheung and is commonly identified as a writer from the Jeolla Province. Jeon began his literary career with stories rooted in his rural hometown but his fictional world soon moved beyond the Korean border, to such places as Cambodia, Mongolia, and Myanmar. In his interview with the fiction writer Kim Yudam, Jeon speaks of the special meaning Mongolia holds in his writing and the reason why he has been crossing borders, both literally and metaphorically, in his life and work. Jeon Sungtae is one of an ever-growing number of Korean writers who are writing about migration, diaspora, and other types of dislocation in a transnational world. His work shows that the meaning of locality in Korean literature goes beyond the idea of belonging to a place—whatever form that belonging might take. Korean writers have been grappling with migration and crossing borders, as well as placelessness, homelessness, and the impossibility of being rooted in one place. Jeon’s interest lies specifically in writing from the vantage point of the border where cultures collide and horizons shift. Jeon Sungtae’s “Empty Cans,” featuring a Mongolian boy swept up in changes he does not yet understand, is a powerful story; do not miss it. There is much to savor and enjoy in this spring issue besides these cover feature and featured writer sections. Poet Yoo Heekyung has contributed an essay on the book that greets all visitors as they walk into his bookshop in Jongno, Seoul. Prizewinning translator Akiko Yajima describes how she got started as a Korean-to-Japanese translator and why she works at tortoise pace; Claire Gullander-Drolet writes about the current fad for healing fiction. In Bookmark, we bring you a short story by Lee Kiho featuring a problem student, bitcoin, and professorial shame; Baek Eunsun’s detailed essay about how she goes about writing a poem (it all begins in the shower); and poems by Shin Yi-in and Yoo Seonhye. In LTI Korea Now, Ki-Hyang Lee offers her reflections on winning one of the LTI Korea Translation Awards last year. If you are still wondering what should be next on your reading list, take a look at our many reviews. You may wish to peek at what we’ve placed in our Bookcart as well. Whichever way, I trust KLN will keep you good company this coming spring. Eun Kyung Min Editor-in-Chief

Reviews [Featured Review] Reading and Healing The past few years have seen the emergence and global embrace of South Korean “healing fiction.” The concept behind these books issimple: to provide comfort and healing to readers suffering from the stresses and pressures of modern life. The protagonists of this genre are, like these readers, burnt out and exhausted. Seeking a simpler and more purposeful existence, characters in healing fiction retreat to a rotation of cosy locales—bakeries, cafes, laundromats, bookshops—to reevaluate their lives and priorities from a new vantage point. From there, revelations occur, unhealthy jobs and relationships are jettisoned, and selves are fashioned anew. There is an undeniable comfort to be found in this fantasy of quitting. After all, who does not wish for a quieter life less focused on competition, profit, and gain? However, there is also good reason to be sceptical about this fantasy: in our current historical moment, when people face ever greater economic, health, and climate precarity, is opting out really an option? Kim Jee Hye’s first book, Soyangri Book Kitchen,is a wonderful example of what happens when real-life healing becomes the impetus for healing art. Kim , a former office worker intimately familiar with the intense grind of South Korean work culture, left her job during the COVID-19 pandemic—a decision prompted, among otherthings, by the pressures she experienced as a working mother. She eventually refashioned herself as a bookseller and book cafe owner, much like Soyangri Book Kitchen’s protagonist Yoojin. Yoojin is the proprietor of the titular venue located in the Korean countryside: a book cafe and guesthouse that caters to world-weary visitors from all walks of life. The novel unfolds as a series of character portraits that each speak to a specific mental health issue. In translator Shanna Tan’s deft hands, these characters are rendered with beauty and complexity. There’s Da-in, a famous singer who struggles to reconcile her public-facing persona with her true self; Mari, whose traumatic childhood triggers a pattern of compulsive lying; and Soohyuk, who experi-ences suicidal ideation after the death of his mother. There are also a number of characters dealing with burnout: Sohee, a portrait of success and diligent work ethic now grappling with a cancer diagnosis; and four friends, Nayoon,Chanwook, Siwoo and Serin, who are questioning their life choices—as well as the narrative of what success and a good life looks like—as they enter their thirties. Readers of Soyangri Book Kitchen gain insightinto South Korea’s rigorous secondary and postsecondary educational culture. The novel also paints a critical portrait of working life where yageun—the practice of working overtime—is endemic, and where the competition to land a secure government position requires several years of full-time study. While these features are specific to South Korean working culture, the broader landscape they depict—markedby extreme economic precarity and an increas-ingly unaffordable housing market—dovetailswith the picture the Lancet Commission sketchesin their 2018 report on global mental health and sustainable development. As inequality heightens in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemicand ongoing war, genocide, and climate disaster, it seems likely that this situation will only intensify and worsen around the world. To her great credit, Kim resists offering an easy solution to any of these issues. What she offers in Soyangri Book Kitchen is rather an invitation to imagine a life decoupled from the imperative to keep producing, grinding, and staying the prescribed course. This is easier in theory than in practice. As Yoojin observes, “society never stops reminding us that a suc-cessful life is to stand at the top of the pyramid. We aren’t allowed to fall, even if we’re still learning how to walk . . . We grow up with a deep-set fear that the moment we deviate from the path, we’re going to fall off the cliff.” It’s here that books and the act of reading play a crucial role. Books can be “painkillers,” as Yoojin puts it, blunting the pain of hardship and stress by transporting readers to other worlds; they can also offer a roadmap for finding one’s “optimal route” to a life that squares with one's own values rather than a prescriptive path. The novel slyly offers up literary prescriptions for its readers, namedrop-ping authors from Maeve Binchy and Min Jin Lee to Haruki Murakami and coupling themwith the particular life ailments they address. In its abundant references to contemporary Korean works—Kim Honbi’s Reflections on Kindness, Go Soori’s We Can Walk in Midnight, Kim Hana’s The Skill of Relaxation—Kim’s novel also gestures at the extraordinary breadth and scope of Korean literature yet to be translated into English and other languages, and the healing potential contained within these pages. Because of healing fiction’s immense popular-ity, there has been a tendency to overlook its politics—to dismiss it as either a variation on a generic ditching-the-big-city-for-country-lifetheme or as an example of the “no plot, just vibes” narrative beloved by Gen Z BookTok. But there is, I would argue, something profound and quietly radical about Soyangri Book Kitchen’s message of reading for reading’s sake. As Nayoon puts it, “what truly mattered wasn’t whether to open a macaron dessert shop or to stay in her office job. It was the realisation that each and every one of us is an imperfect being made with love.” Learning to listen to each other’s stories is a profound act of care, and it is what will sustain us in the trying times to come.

Book Cart Synchronized Sea Anemone / Grandma / The Cheerful Life of Lee Si-bong, Short and Struggle-Free / The Cut Synchronized Sea Anemone by Kim HyesoonNanda, 2025, 196 pagesGrandma by Hwang Sok-yongChangbi Publishers, 2025, 224 pagesLandmark feminist poet Kim Hyesoon has returned with her newest poetry collection. The first publication in the Nanda Poetry Series, Synchronized Sea Anemone is composed of sixty-five previously unpublished poems divided into eight sections. Rounding out the collection is a letter from the writer and an English translation of the titular poem by Mia You. Kim herself has said she wrote these poems as a way of shocking her system, the works serving as a bucket of cold water jolting her out of a previously “dark, dark, dark, shadow.” Fittingly, her words seem to dance across each page, with playful descriptions and straightforward professions of affection mingling with her characteristic explorations of gender and identity.Hwang Sok-yong’s Grandma opens with a scene of death begetting life: a dusky thrush meets its end near an estuary, but the small seed in its stomach is returned to the soil and grows into a giant tree—Halmae, or Grandma. This guardian deity forms the axis around which the narrative unfolds. In his first novel since his 2020 International Booker shortlisted Mater 2-10 (tr. Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae), Hwang takes readers on a sweeping saga through six hundred years of Korean history, from a Joseon Dynasty monk experiencing a moment of enlightenment under the tree to Halmae witnessing Japanese soldiers using a beloved sapling for target practice. Grandma offers a moving look at the price of human greed and the hope that endures against all odds.The Cheerful Life of Lee Si-bong, Short and Struggle-Free by Lee Ki-hoMunhakdongne, 2025, 528 pagesThe Cut by Gu Byeong-moMunhakdongne, 2025, 352 pagesIn The Cheerful Life of Lee Si-bong, Short and Struggle-Free, the titular Lee Si-bong is a dog— a Bichon Frisé with a royal pedigree, to be exact. Lee Si-bong’s owner Lee Si-seup learns of his pet’s impressive lineage when a breeder named Michelle informs him that Lee Si-bong is one of only a few remaining “King Bichons.” Michelle offers a generous sum in exchange for the dog, assuring Lee Si-seup that she will provide only the most luxurious care and accommodations for his beloved companion. As he struggles to decide Lee Si-bong’s fate, Lee Si-seup makes a startling discovery that sheds light not only on the canine’s own past, but on the lives of his royal ancestors as well. Inspired by the author’s real-life dog, this immersive novel asks, “Do humans truly know what’s best for our animal companions?”The Cut tells the story of a woman who can read a person’s mind by touching their open wound. Enigmatic businessman Moon O-eon takes a penniless young woman under his wing, giving her a new name and life in a sprawling mansion where she reads people’s minds for him. She begins to develop complicated feelings for O-eon until one day, he commits an act of betrayal that shatters the tenuous trust between them. In a desperate attempt to make her understand him, O-eon asks her to read his thoughts. He, however, is the one person she refuses to read. In her characteristically propulsive style, Gu Byeong-mo weaves a complex tale that is at once a mystery, dark romance, and exploration of the basest instincts we keep hidden deep within.

LTI Korea Now Between Sentences: Reflections from An LTI Korea Translation Award Winner Visitors to the annual Frankfurt Book Fair can encounter booths from countries all over the world, each making a concerted effort to introduce its national literature to an international audience. Korea is no exception. Founded in 1996 as the Korean Literature Translation Fund and later designated a special corporation under the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism in 2005, the Literature Translation Institute of Korea is now marking thirty years as a leading force behind Korean literature’s global outreach. During that time, LTI Korea has financially supported the publication of more than 2,400 works of Korean literature in forty-four countries and continues to play an active role in funding translations today. I got my own start as a translator in the winter of 1998 when I received a grant from the Korean Literature Translation Fund. In that sense, my career and LTI Korea can be said to have practically grown alongside each other. While Korea is now one of the world’s top dream travel destinations, there was a time not so long ago when it was hard to find foreigners who had even heard of the country. The LTI Korea Translation Award was established in 1993 to foster more professional literary translators and to raise interest in literary translation both in Korea and abroad by selecting outstanding translations among the works of Korean literature published overseas. Now every year, first-, second-, and third-place prizes are awarded to translations of Korean literature into three foreign languages. I was honored to receive the 2025 prize alongside Najbar-Miller Justyna Agata, the Polish translator of Han Kang’s We Do Not Part, and Tayfun Kartav, the Turkish translator of Chang Kang-myoung’s Homodominance. Given how few awards exist for translators, it should not be surprising that this one is so highly coveted in our field.When I first learned the news, my immediate thought was that I owed this honor to the unwavering support of LTI Korea, which has worked tirelessly for decades to make Korean literature truly global. At the end of last November, I returned to Korea to accept the award—my first winter visit since my study-abroad days. Although my visit was brief, feeling the full force of winter in my homeland again was a deeply moving experience. The ceremony brought together my fellow LTI Korea Translation Award recipients, winners of the Award for Aspiring Translators and the Outstanding Service Award, esteemed guests and judges there to congratulate the winners, and representatives from LTI Korea and the Ministry of Culture. What delighted me the most was getting to meet and talk with translators I had previously known only by name. A fleeting thought crossed my mind that day: How great would it be if there were a regular gathering like this, where translators of Korean literature could come together to exchange and discuss ideas? In all honesty, I never once dreamed of becoming a translator. I had always kept works of foreign literature close at hand, but I never imagined I would be the one to translate such stories myself. Had it not been for that fateful translation grant twenty-eight years ago, I would likely have continued to read foreign literature while remaining largely oblivious to the time and painstaking effort that translators put into their craft. There is a saying that goes: Translation is treason. A task that requires restraint, wavering between the more literal translation and the more liberal one, resisting the urge to interpret or alter each word and sentence according to one’s own whims. Work that leaves the translator lost in unfamiliar woods, sometimes missing the beauty that lies beyond the forest of the source text. I have spent countless long and grueling hours on this task—from my very first translation, Kim Jooyoung’s A Fisherman Does Not Break the Reeds, to the more than forty works of Korean literature I have translated into German since. I still vividly remember the days I spent wandering from library to library with thick Korean-German and German- Korean dictionaries in tow. I also remember, like it was only yesterday, how happy I was when the advent of online dictionaries lifted that literal weight off my shoulders. And now, I’ve gotten to a point where I don’t need a dictionary at all. The world has changed over the years, yet I am still living as a translator, drifting between sentences. Each time I complete a manuscript, I am reminded yet again how difficult and arduous a task translation still is. Before I can even savor the joy of holding a published translation of mine in my hands, the fear of critics and judgment comes rushing in. And yet the moment I encounter new words and sentences, sometimes chilling and other times indescribably beautiful, my insistence that I have no more translations left in me completely falls away, and before I know it, I am drawing a breath and stepping up to face another work of literature head-on. A translated work’s journey into the world can never be accomplished through the translator’s efforts alone. The voyage is made possible by the excellent editors who toil alongside us, refining the text to breathe new life into it in the reader’s language. Likewise, I know I’m where I am today thanks to the translators who came before me—those who, by the time I started knocking on random German publishers’ doors with my first translation in hand, had sowed the seeds that allowed Korean literature to take root in a land once barren of our stories— as well as my dedicated fellow translators who are every day, in places unseen, walking this path with me. Looking ahead, I sincerely hope that LTI Korea will remain a steadfast source of support for young translators on this same journey.

Book Shelf Self-Portrait in Poetry: Poems Living Through Death There is no door to Wit N Cynical, the independent poetry bookshop I run on the second floor of an old building in Jongno District, the historic heart of Seoul. Instead, there is a spiral staircase. On the first floor is Dongyang Seorim, a venerable bookshop that first opened in 1953, the year the Korean War ended. To reach Wit N Cynical, one must pass countless books and walk upward, turning the body about one and a half rotations as one climbs. If the spiral staircase is imagined as a large door and our bodies as its handles, then it makes for a rather grand entrance—a bookstore reached with one’s whole body. What is the first thing visitors see when they arrive at a bookstore filled only with poetry? My fixation on this seemingly superficial detail, far removed from the business of poetry itself, began when I learned about Namman Seobang, a bookstore widely known among the literary circles of its day. It was run by the poet Oh Janghwan, who was active as a poet, literary critic, and translator during the Japanese colonial period of the 1930s. It is said that, placed directly at the entrance of the shop, was a self-portrait by Yi Sang, the prodigious poet of the Korean modernist avant-garde. Readers who opened the door must have been overwhelmed by the sight—Yi Sang’s face standing as the spirit, symbol, and index of literature in his time. His eyes would have pierced what stood before him and reached into what lay beyond. I admired this detail, even envied Oh Janghwan’s decision to place the portrait of another poet at the threshold of his bookshop. In the same way, I wished that anyone who might reach Wit N Cynical with their whole body might also encounter a symbol—an index—of the spirit of poetry in this very moment and place. Today, placed at the front of Wit N Cynical is a copy of Kim Hyesoon: Death Trilogy (Moonji, 2025). The cover features a vivid red ground, foil-stamped in inky black with a drawing by the artist Fi Jae Lee. With its binding exposed and stitched across the spine in crimson thread, and at more than six hundred pages, the book has a bold, almost foreboding physical presence. It cannot help but inspire awe. More often than not, visitors find their gaze drawn first to its vermilion cover. As the title indicates, the volume gathers the work of the poet Kim Hyesoon. Born in 1955 in Wonju and active in Seoul, Kim Hyesoon is, without question, one of the defining poets of the Korean language. She wields language as though pouring music onto a canvas, as though music has acquired color and form and begun to breathe and move. Her central preoccupation is death: death as an a priori experience, death as the consequence of time, death as social death, death as vicarious encounter. In Kim Hyesoon’s poetry, one encounters death beyond death. Kim Hyesoon: Death Trilogy brings together the three poetry collections known collectively as her “Death Trilogy”: Autobiography of Death (Munhak Silhumsil, 2016), Phantom Pain Wings (Moonji, 2019), and If the Earth Dies, Who Will the Moon Orbit? (Moonji, 2022). The volume contains the essence of Kim Hyesoon’s poetry. Of the three collections of poems, her first has been translated to great acclaim. Autobiography of Death (New Directions, 2018), translated by Don Mee Choi, received the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2019, and Autobiographie des Todes, the German translation by Sool Park and Uljana Wolf (S. Fischer Verlag, 2025), earned the Prize for Contemporary Literatures in Translation in 2025. The collection contains forty-nine poems that move from the poet’s own close encounters with death toward the Sewol ferry disaster. In 2014, a passenger ferry sank off the coast of Jindo County in South Jeolla Province. Of the 476 passengers on board, 304 died or went missing. Most of the victims were high school students on a school trip to Jeju Island. Kim Hyesoon’s elegies speak to the unrest of the dead. A ritual requiem composed in poetic language—a shamanic rite of mourning— unfolds on the stage of literature. To witness such a desperate act of consolation is what it means to read Autobiography of Death. One autumn evening in 2019, Kim Hyesoon and six other poets held a poetry reading at the ARKO Arts Theater in Seoul’s Daehangno theater district. All the windows along the street rattled through the night as a typhoon moved northward. I was responsible for the stage direction that evening. For more than two hours, the seven poets took turns reading, sometimes gathering their voices as if in unison, without drinking a single drop of water. The vigil demanded the utmost effort not only from the readers but also from those in the audience bearing witness. In complete darkness, when Kim Hyesoon’s voice reading the final poem reverberated through the space, I closed my eyes and was, for a moment, dead. I thought I heard the sound of water flowing somewhere, but perhaps it was not water— it may have been time. I was moving against the current. Like a bird. Come to think of it, perhaps it was not water at all, but the wind. An unfathomable stretch of time passed. Silence. Even when the stage lights slowly rose, as planned, I did not open my eyes. I had the sense that I was not the only one. The stillness continued, and then applause broke out from within it. Being alive. Still alive, and alive despite everything. Life. This was the final page of Kim Hyesoon’s poetry-death. Each morning, I go to work at Wit N Cynical. As if turning the golden handle of an ancient, secret door, I rotate my whole body one and a half times and push through. There, at the front of the bookstore, is Kim Hyesoon’s red poetry volume—vivid, blood-bright, and unbearably alive. Standing before it, I find myself recalling my own experience, my own distant encounter with death. And then, through the windows, the morning light angles in, astonishingly bright. As if here were there, so much so that it is hard to believe this is here at all. At the very center of the front shelf, at the entrance to Wit N Cynical, stands Kim Hyesoon: Death Trilogy.

Cover Features Busan, from Near and Far “Where do you live?” This question carries weight, reflecting the sense that people are connected to the place where they have arrived. As we know all too well, a place of one’s own forms the basis for claiming rights in the world. Human beings are, inevitably, people of a place. From that place, we practice literature. Although place and writing may appear unrelated, they often feel inseparable. A writer’s account of life in a particular place serves as a vital testament to its placeness, while the fellowship of local writers shapes that place into a universal macrocosm. We invite you to hear from two writers as they each share their stories: about living and writing in their own (local) place, and about the activities of their local literary community. by Sin Yong-Mok First comes life, then comes fiction. Seonsaeng-hujak (先生後作). Most novels follow this pattern. A writer’s experiences, direct or indirect, are reborn over time as literary works. Yet every so often, a rare reversal occurs. Seonjak-husaeng (先作後生). First comes fiction, then comes life. This is the case for me, as I pen this essay in my study on a seaside hill, having serendipitously left Seoul to settle here in Busan. The eastern coast of Busan’s Haeundae Beach is dotted with three small ports: Mipo, Gudeokpo, and Cheongsapo. One autumn, I was invited as a writer to visit the nearby Dalmaji Hill, an area rich in cultural and artistic spaces. After the scheduled event, my host guided me on a tour of the seaside village below the hill, as well as the ports. At the foot of Dalmaji—or “moon-watching,” so named for being the first to greet the glowing moon—the shore was lined with lush clusters of cherry blossoms, pines, and camellia trees. Slender footpaths branched off in several directions. Along the ports, the Donghae Nambu Line railway ran parallel to the coast. At the far end of a breakwater stood a white lighthouse, its green light blinking in serene solitude. The time arrived for my return to Seoul. Darkness fell; waves splashed. I could hardly tell whether the sea was Namhae or Donghae—South or East Sea. It seemed both at once. Far off, a large vessel glided near the horizon, lights aglow. Small fishing boats huddled by the port. Beyond that horizon—is it the North Pacific? I wondered as we reached the port. “Cheongsapo,” said my host, almost in a whisper. Cheongsapo? When in unfamiliar places, I had a habit of searching for road signs. I glanced around. Nowhere did I see the name Cheongsapo. The peaceful port sat in stark contrast to the dazzling lights of Haeundae Beach. Night had yet to deepen, but the port was already hushed. Watching waves ripple in the dark, I repeated in my mind, Cheongsapo. I had never heard it before, despite knowing so many other ports. As a linguistically attuned writer, I often found my imagination stirred by the auditory resonance and texture of words. The moment Cheongsapo reached my ears, my thoughts began to whirl. Does Cheongsa mean “clear sand” (淸沙淸沙)? “Blue sand” (靑沙靑沙)? Or “blue snake” (靑蛇靑蛇)? Reveries that began in Cheongsapo carried all the way back to Seoul. Perhaps the sea breeze of Haeundae and Cheongsapo still lingered in my mind. I penned a short story in three days, then sent it to my editor. The words Busan, Haeundae, and Cheongsapo had echoed in my ears like a melody sung in a round, eventually taking shape as the story “Blue Sand.” The seemingly impossible feat brought a rush of exhilaration. I had been facing a deadline, but since the Busan event had been scheduled in advance, I had no choice but to make the trip. Even if I had canceled, my chances of meeting the deadline were slim. And yet, like an unexpected lifeline, Cheongsapo became material for the story, gifting me “Blue Sand.” To my astonishment, I now live in the very scene of that story. Fortune must have played its part. I never imagined it while writing “Blue Sand,” nor when I first accepted the invitation to Busan and reluctantly boarded the train. It simply came to be, as if by magic. I was neither born nor raised in Busan. I became acquainted with the city as an author invited to literary events at universities, bookstores, and literary organizations. The year after publishing “Blue Sand,” I relocated to Busan upon being appointed to a professorship at Dong-A University. Work and childcare responsibilities prompted the move (for male writers, the family usually stays behind), but my writing career still required frequent travel between Seoul and Busan. Outside of writing, most of my time was devoted to teaching contemporary literature and fiction writing as a faculty member of the Korean literature department. I also collaborated with the local community to develop and implement projects that explored Busan’s narrative archetypes from multiple perspectives, shaping them into literary fiction. I worked with university departments, schools, education offices, and local district offices to identify notable aspects of Busan from an outsider’s perspective. The Humanities City Support Project followed, along with initiatives to uncover narrative archetypes and conduct fiction-writing workshops. Through these successive projects and practices, I immersed myself and discovered a connection with Busan, engaging with its language and sensations, even as a complete outsider. More than a mere setting for “Blue Sand,” Busan became, after Seoul, Gyeongju, and Paris, a city of deep personal significance. In my new life in Busan, the axiom “First comes life, then comes fiction” largely held true. Arriving as an outsider, I absorbed daily rhythms, seasonal cycles, and oceanic tones, and from those sensations and stories, I wrote my fiction. Busan and the Haeundae area served as the backdrop for ten or so stories, including “Blue Sand,” “A Single Cloud,” “Hospitality,” “Archaeology of Memory” (winner of the 2012 Yi Sang Literary Award), “After Dinner” (winner of the 2013 Yi Sang Literary Award), “Origin of Shoes,” “White Night,” “Haeundae,” and “Yeongdo Island.” Busan’s literature has been shaped by writers born and raised in Busan who stayed to write about the city and its people. As for myself, I occupy a more ambiguous position. Writers may relocate their home and writing environment in two ways. First, a writer who balances professional work with writing may move to their place of employment. Second, a writer may select and settle in the ideal location for writing. In the former case, the end of employment often prompts a return to one’s original home. In the latter, one may put down roots, move elsewhere, or eventually return. I fall into the former category. While I write fiction in Busan, my life extends beyond the city, with book launches and publications taking place in the Seoul metropolitan area, including Paju Book City. Writers falling into the latter category include Kim Sung-jong, the mystery writer best known for Eyes of Dawn, who relocated from Seoul to Busan. In 1992, he established the Library of Mystery Literature, Korea’s only library dedicated to the genre. Mediating between domestic and international mystery writers’ associations, he has overseen various programs in partnership with the local community, continuing this work to the present day. As a novelist and educator, I explore fiction alongside young literary enthusiasts born and raised in Busan, sharing their joys and sorrows while helping them find their way as writers. In the creative writing workshops I have developed, participants explore Busan’s sea, harbors, ports, islands, and river mouths, crafting stories steeped in these places. Several hundred stories have been created in the process, launching the literary careers of new writers. I have endeavored to extend their creative reach beyond Busan—to the rest of Korea and to the wider world. Even here, two patterns emerge: some debut through new writer’s contests held by Busan-area newspapers and continue their literary activities based in Busan, while others debut through newspapers outside Busan and subsequently work between Busan and Seoul. Even in the first case, most writers aspire to publish their first story collections in Seoul rather than Busan, and, if circumstances allow, prefer to publish later collections there as well. Since these writers occupy the heart of locality and local literature, it is worth reflecting on both their ambitions and the significance they ascribe to publishing non-locally in Seoul. At this point, I pause to reflect on Busan’s locality and the scenes and currents of its local literature as I have come to understand them. Led by the novelist Kim Jeonghan (1908–1996), pen name Yosan, Busan’s community of literary organizations has established deep, robust roots unrivaled by any other region. Busan launched its own quarterly Literary Criticism Today in 1991, ahead of other cities. Busan has also established and maintained distinctive literary awards, including the Yosan Literary Award (est. 1984), the Ko Sukgyu Critique Award (est. 1996), the Korea Ocean Foundation Literary Award (est. 2007), and the BUMA Democratic Uprising Literary Award (est. 2020). The city has sought to enrich and revive its literary map by retracing sites where writers from outside the city once sojourned and worked, recording and reanimating the meaning of those places. As a notable example, the Mildawon Literary Festival has been held annually since 2015, inspired by Kim Dong-ni’s short story “Mildawon Days,” a fictionalized portrayal of historic literary and artistic figures—including Hwang Sun-won, Kim Su-Young, Kim Whanki, and Lee Jungseop—who fled from Seoul to Busan during the Korean War. The festival allows contemporary readers to rediscover the significance of their gathering place, the Mildawon tearoom or dabang, in Busan’s Gwangbok-dong area. Whereas wartime Busan, as a locality, functioned as a temporary refuge rather than a voluntary destination, today’s writers actively seek out the city, often for extended stays or creative residencies. This reflects a broader phenomenon: short- and long-term residencies, both domestic and international, have become key platforms for writers’ creative work. Despite Busan’s geographical advantages as a maritime capital and its historical heritage as a wartime refuge, writers based in Busan who have shaped the city’s local identity are rarely able to extend their literary activities to the national stage. The same holds true for other regional cities. Creative drive and passion do not necessarily result in published works or sustainable literary careers. Even for those who become writers and pursue creative practice, the question remains whether their efforts can be recognized as a form of economic production. Literary journals published by major national presses offer limited space, and payment for submissions has long stagnated. Local literary journals, funded by national and municipal cultural foundations, provide publication space to regional writers on a rotating basis, yet author compensation remains largely symbolic, merely enough to offset the costs of self-publication. Circumstances change little, even when writers publish with support for first-time publications or other creative grants. Busan writers may depict the city’s life and environment in their stories; whether Busan readers prefer these works is a separate matter. Readers, regardless of their own locality, select books in much the same way. The moment a work is labeled “local literature,” it encounters the dilemma of being narrowly confined. For this reason, I have refrained from assigning particular value or labels to locality or local literature, especially in our age of AI and digital nomadism, which has rendered both living and creative spaces increasingly fluid and mobile. In my capacity as a professor of creative writing in Busan, a mentor to writers, and a reviewer of applications submitted by individuals and publishers for creative support and grants, I wish to comment briefly on the realities of local literature. First, for local literature to flourish, works written, presented, and published locally must reach broader national and international audiences, thereby cultivating and sustaining a stable readership. What, then, is the current reality? Consider the state of local literature and local publishing within today’s hyper-capitalist economy. Creative writing and publishing, as well as publishing houses themselves, rely on national support and municipal cultural foundations to remain active and viable. Writers who debut through local newspapers still face limited publication opportunities, while local publishers struggle to bring their works to print without public funding. Nevertheless, recent developments suggest ways for Busan’s local writers to find solidarity and empowerment while preserving their distinctive traits . The Busan Publication Culture and Industry Association (BPCIA) and Bibliotheca Busan have gained fresh momentum, alongside a vibrant ecosystem of independent bookstores engaging readers across generations. Comprising some thirty publishing houses in the Busan region, BPCIA seeks to decentralize Seoul-centric publishing structures and establish Busan as a publishing hub through the Busan Global Publishing Culture City initiative. Since the success and sustainability of this initiative depend on discovering local writers and investing in their publication, the interdependent growth of local literature and local publishing warrants particular attention. It is hoped that BPCIA’s dynamic and pragmatic expansion will help transform Busan, with its rich geographical, historical, and cultural-artistic heritage, into a vital center of literary publishing. Several pressing problems must not be overlooked: the demographic cliff, regional decline, the steep drop in university-age population, and cutbacks in humanities departments that cultivate potential writers and literary publishing talent. These trends will only accelerate. So who will write, and who will read in the future? The writer-reader ecosystem continues to evolve. Imagined realities and realities of imagination are continuously and simultaneously renewed within an interconnected network. From here, one thinks of there; living there, one also lives here. Perhaps Seoul, Busan, Gwangju, and Jeju should all be termed moving, hetero-localities. What is local should not be condemned to remain so; localities should permeate, mingle with, and circulate among other localities; local writers should engage with writers from home and abroad. The writer from Busan, in this sense, writes from near and far. KOREAN WORKS MENTIONED: Ham Jeungim, “Blue Sand,” in Blue Eyes of Your Soul (Munhakdongne, 2006) 함정임, 「푸른 모래」, 『네 마음의 푸른 눈』 (문학동네, 2006) Ham Jeungim, “Archaeology of Memory: My Mexican Uncle,” “After Dinner,” and “Origin of Shoes,” in After Dinner (Munhakdongne, 2015) 함정임, 「기억의 고고학-내 멕시코 삼촌」, 「저녁 식사가 끝난 뒤」, 「구두의 기원」, 『저녁 식사가 끝난 뒤』 (문학동네, 2015) Ham Jeungim, “Haeundae” and “Yeongdo Island,” in Loving Love (Munhakdongne, 2020) 함정임, 「해운대」, 「영도」, 『사랑을 사랑하는 것』 (문학동네, 2020) Ham Jeungim, “A Single Cloud,” “Hospitality,” and “White Night,” in Phantasm (Yolimwon, 2009) 함정임, 「구름 한 점」, 「환대」, 「백야」, 『곡두』 (열림원, 2009) Kim Sung-jong, Eyes of Dawn (Namdo, 2003) 김성종, 『여명의 눈동자』 (남도, 2003) Kim Dong-ni, “Mildawon Days” in Mildawon Days (Munidang, 2006) 김동리, 「밀다원 시대」, 『밀다원 시대』 (문이당, 2006)

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