LTI Korea 
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Table of Contents
From The Translator’s Desk
Featured Writer
Bookmark
Reviews
Introduction
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.
Editor-in-Chief
