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  [Russian] Killing Evil with a Toy Sword

  Chung Serang, who studied history and literature at university, began her creative journey in 2010, focusing on the genres of fantasy and science fiction. Her works, which have earned her the 2013 Changbi Prize in Fiction and the 2017 Hankook Ilbo Literary Award, have been translated into many languages. Chung’s fantasy novel School Nurse Ahn Eun-young, originally written in 2015 and published in Russian in 2021, provides an excellent introduction to her work.        Chung states that she takes inspiration from writers such as Ray Bradbury, Haruki Murakami, and Donna Tartt while also drawing upon the “real-life experiences” of her friends. It is perhaps the combination of recognizable topics with unusual storylines that makes her works original, engaging, and relatable to a wide audience.        In School Nurse Ahn Eun-young, the fantasy plot unfolds within the real-world setting of an ordinary school. The sincerity of the characters’ emotions elicits empathy, while the battles against supernatural forces make the story dynamic and gripping.        Chung has a rather distinctive approach to writing. She strives to communicate the idea that good literature doesn’t necessarily have to be serious. “You know, even long, serious novels can be compressed into one-line jokes when they are widely read and loved,” she remarked in a 2020 interview with KLN. Chung’s writing is characterized by a simple, light, and fresh style. “I don’t think that people who read books accept the misery of reality and feel content with the way things are, so it’s important that we keep coming together and dreaming of a better world, and that we do it in the most enjoyable way.” This philosophy is reflected in School Nurse Ahn Eun-young—a book that can be read in just a day or two but still addresses meaningful personal and social issues.        The protagonist, Ahn Eun-young, is a young woman and, as the title suggests, she works as a school nurse. But that’s not all. She also possesses a unique talent: she can sense the thoughts and emotions of both the living and the dead, and perceive evil spirits. The students and teachers have no idea that she can delve into their minds and souls. She can even see manifestations of their erotic fantasies and deep romantic feelings. When evil spirits begin harming those around her, Eun-young leaps into action. Her methods are unconventional—she combats evil with children’s toys. Unfortunately, the author does not explain why she possesses these extraordinary abilities or whether her mission is limited to helping specific people and battling certain spirits, leaving readers to speculate.        The book comprises numerous mini-stories with unpredictable endings. Most of the plotlines are unconnected to each other. While this structure might feel unusual to those who prefer linear narratives, it ensures that the reading experience is never dull. Throughout the book, Eun-young is supported by her loyal yet reserved friend, Hong In-pyo, a classical Chinese teacher. Initially unaware that he has a strong protective aura shielding him from spirits, In-pyo starts to willingly share his energy with Eun-young, making her supernatural battles even more effective.        Ahn Eun-young and Hong In-pyo are the only constant characters in the novel. The quirky nurse and the reclusive, melancholic teacher seem destined to become friends—or perhaps something more? Fans of “slow burn relationships” will enjoy reading about their interactions. Other characters come and go throughout the book. This variety allows Chung to explore a wide range of topics, both common and less so, including bullying, unrequited love, and kleptomania. The cast of characters is diverse, including a talented fortune-teller, a national rock star, and an adoptee. The blend of disparate plotlines captivates readers and surprises with its originality.        It’s no surprise that this book caught the attention of filmmakers. In 2020, the novel was adapted into a Netflix series, The School Nurse Files. Many viewers noted that the series was a breath of fresh air compared to traditional K-dramas with their flawless characters. The use of computer graphics effectively visualized the supernatural creatures, while the cinematography and the talented acting conveyed the book’s energy and vibrancy.        In conclusion, School Nurse Ahn Eun-young is more than just a struggle between good and evil; it also delves into human challenges, emotions, and the hope for a better world. It is a light, captivating read that provides an escape from everyday life while subtly raising important questions.  Maria V. SoldatovaAssociate Professor, Russian State University for the Humanities

  by Maria V. Soldatova

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  [GERMAN] Close to the Moon, on the Margin of Society

  Cho Nam-joo gained worldwide attention with her feminist novel Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982. Published in 2016, the book is often regarded as inspiring the #MeToo movement in Korea and was subsequently translated into over twenty languages, including German (Kim Jiyoung, geboren 1982, tr. Ki-Hyang Lee, 2021). The work sparked debates on the pay gap, glass ceiling, care work exploitation, and other forms of gender discrimination. Miss Kim Knows and Other Stories, a collection of short stories about women of various generations, deepened and diversified Cho’s critique of institutional sexism (Miss Kim weiß Bescheid, tr. Inwon Park, 2023). Her latest publication in Germany puts the focus on another universal social issue: classism.        Go Mani, the protagonist of Wo ich wohne, ist der Mond ganz nah (“Where I live the moon is very close,” originally published in 2016), is no less representative of contemporary Korea than globally relatable everywoman Kim Jiyoung. Mani is an only child who lives with her family in a run-down home in one of Seoul’s so-called dal-dongne. Literally meaning “moon-town,” these low-income neighborhoods are often located on steep hillsides, far away from glitzy department stores or comfortable apartment complexes. They are “close to the moon”—hence the novel’s title. Here, winding alleyways tightly intermingle with one- or two-floor buildings stacked upon one another. However, despite what the title suggests, this book is less about the neighborhood itself and more about Mani’s  reflections on her history of poverty. The novel begins with Mani at the age of thirty-six, about to leave the dal-dongne behind. When cleaning out her desk drawers, she discovers long-lost hair ribbons and once fashionable make-up, which prompts a trip down memory lane. The following episodes, organized in nine chapters of various lengths, go back to her early teens and are only loosely connected by her aspirations and failures.        Mani’s dream of becoming a professional gymnast runs like a red thread through most of the book despite many time jumps and associative leaps. In 1988, inspired by the Seoul Olympics, eight-year-old Mani and her friends start to practice balancing acts. But while the others soon give up, Mani continues to take aerobics lessons and later attends a private gymnastics high school. Her plan is cut short, though, perhaps because her talent is not enough but, more significantly, because of her lack of self-confidence and her family’s financial situation. Even though Mani is determined to a fault and her mother tries everything to provide for the necessary extra fees, the long commute, recurring health problems, and the other students’ seemingly superior skills prove to be obstacles too big  to overcome. Mani finally gives up and returns to her old school in the neighborhood. While society changes at maximum speed, Mani’s life seems to stall, interrupted only by occasional abrupt turns, sometimes for the better but mostly for the worse, leaving her even further behind.        Other plot points similarly avoid dramatic or entirely satisfying resolutions, but the meandering narrative and the jump-cuts shed light on the systemic—and often intersectional—contradictions Mani and her family endure. For instance, when a shopping center opens nearby, Mani’s father has to downscale his grocery store and ends up selling snacks to high school students. He still enjoys his work, even though the meager income makes his daughter, now in her thirties and stuck as an assistant manager in a small architecture firm, the sole breadwinner in the family. Without any apparent reason, she is fired after ten years and falls into a deep depression. She only leaves the house when her mother insists that she has to vote on upcoming redevelopments plans. Her presence, however, turns out to be unnecessary, as each household is granted only one vote. At least she gets a bowl of hot chicken stew out of the trip, provided by one of the competing building companies in an attempt to rig the election that ultimately proves futile—redevelopment is postponed, again.        Without delving deeply into politics or historical events, Wo ich wohne, ist der Mond ganz nah depicts late twentieth and early twenty-first century South Korean society through Mani’s perspective. Her blunt, down-to-earth voice—convincingly translated into German by Jan Henrik Dirks—makes the book a refreshing read, even though various casual references to contemporary songs and TV shows, as well as minor current affairs and urban legends, may puzzle readers. Thankfully, the translator provides numerous helpful explanations, sometimes in endnotes. Anyone whose interest in Korea goes beyond the glamor of Gangnam will not regret reading this book.  Jan CreutzenbergAssistant Professor, Ewha Womans University

  by Jan Creutzenberg

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  [JAPANESE] Modern Korean History Through the Lives of Two Women

  In her masterful novel Can’t I Go Instead, Lee Geum-yi reveals a century of modern Korean history, deeply drawing readers into its complex folds as they follow the tumultuous lives of the characters. In its questioning of human weakness and strength, however, the work manages to transcend time, ensuring it appeals to readers of all generations.        This weighty epic novel begins with a twist: two elderly women who both claim to be Yun Chaeryeong—the daughter of a powerful Korean man named Hyeongman who became a viscount during the Japanese colonial occupation of Korea. The great axis of history hidden within their stories is gradually revealed. The book depicts the ups and downs in the lives of the Yun family, which achieved its fortune through collaboration with Japan.        Hyeongman, a wealthy Korean landowner who made his fortune through mining, purchases seven-year-old Kim Sunam for a large sum, presenting her as a maidservant to his daughter Chaeryeong as a birthday gift. In fact, Sunam ends up in the Yun’s household by chance, when the original girl to be sold resists being trafficked. Sunam steps forward, offering to go in her place, saying, “Can’t I go instead?” Sunam’s reaction testifies to her bold character, as she utters these same words on numerous occasions throughout her turbulent life. Instead of serving as Chaeryeong’s maid, however, Sunam is treated more like her plaything. The two young girls from different classes grow up with complex feelings of both recrimination and affection.        The novel takes us to Japan, China, the United States, and Russia. It is the story of people forced to continuously move, facing many known and unknown dangers of continental travel at the time. As these two women embark on their journeys, they strive to love freely, suffering losses and encountering challenges, but somehow managing to forge their own paths while maintaining curiosity and hope. Sunam excels at languages and cannot give up her desire to study. She yearns for the romantic world of novelist Yi Gwangsu’s The Heartless.        Layers of oppression, discrimination, and violence pervade the whole book: male chauvinism, rigid patriarchy and class structures, colonial rule, and contempt for Asians. These themes ring true even in the present. Page after page, readers will experience how individuals can be swept up in the waves of history. These unassuming words “Can’t I go instead?” reveal their true power, transcending both place and time.        Lee Geum-yi’s precise and unwavering style captures the malice and desires of humans which can surface at a moment’s notice. She is constantly aware of the multifaceted nature of human existence while carefully relativizing and universalizing it at the same time. No character is flawless. As Chaeryeong’s half-brother Ganghwi, who has dedicated himself to the Korean independence movement, states:        “When people gather, anything can happen. We have disappointments and doubts, as well as setbacks, but these are all natural, because we are human.” The depiction of the hardships experienced by Korean comfort women under the Japanese military casts a darker shadow over the story. It should be noted that the book also includes scenes from internment camps of Japanese Americans in the United States.        Like the author’s other work The Picture Bride, which follows the journey of a group of young women who, in the early 1900s, leave their homes and cross the ocean to Hawai’i to become the wives of Korean migrant workers, Can’t I Go Instead is a story of sisterhood. It is this solidarity that empowers these resilient women to overcome national borders to escape poverty, societal conventions, and colonial rule. The author’s meticulous research and unflinching human observations cannot suppress the hope that arises from these richly woven narratives.        This work is certainly a must-read within the current Korean literature boom. Translated by Meri Joyce  Hideyuki TanabeReporter, The Mainichi Newspaper

  by Hideyuki Tanabe

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  [KOREAN] A Precious Realization to Carry into the New Year

  I love listening to a musician’s debut album. It contains an innocent kind of joy that vanishes in their later works. They’ve yet to make a name for themselves and the future lies wide open, allowing them to take a leap of faith and release melodies into the world that they’d previously kept all to themselves. Sadly, many artists fade away after their first album, and those who do succeed often lose the spark that made them special as they try to replicate their initial success. But here is one artist who, after years of winning hearts, is celebrating the tenth anniversary of her debut—the writer Sou Linne Baik. A revised edition of her debut short story collection Falling in Paul has just been released in 2024.        The nine stories in this collection are bursting with life. Some are firmly rooted in reality, some feel more dreamlike, and some blur the boundaries between fantasy and reality. Baik herself had doubts about these stories, and initially had no intention of turning them into one cohesive book. Instead, she simply indulged in the joy of exploring each narrative world on its own terms. After reading all nine, however, I noticed two threads that tie them together.        First, the protagonists in each story are all grappling with mental struggles or with circumstances that evoke empathy from the reader. For instance, “Lying Practice” centers around a woman who lives apart from her unfaithful husband and goes abroad to study. In “Falling in Paul,” a woman in her mid-thirties narrates her secret, one-sided love. In “Potato Gone Missing,” the narrator discovers that what they had firmly believed to be a potato was actually seen by everyone else as a dog, a revelation which strips them of their ability to speak. The characters in each of these stories reveal a shared sense of inevitability in their emotions and futures.        “That was when I first realized how easily someone else’s life could be reduced to a cliché in just a few sentences,” writes the author in “Lying Practice.”        However, Baik herself resists such reductionism, ensuring that no character is ever confined to a stereotype. She gives detailed portrayals that not only explain the protagonist’s emotions, but also vividly describe their surroundings to make her depictions come to life. She doesn’t attempt to justify her characters’ actions or existence, instead relying on nuanced portrayals that allow readers to feel her profound empathy for humanity and the world, which has become a signature of her writing.        Secondly, her characters often find themselves in unfamiliar situations that leave them at a loss for words. Again in “Lying Practice,” Baik writes that “In reality, none of us thought we fully understood what the other person was trying to say. We never deluded ourselves into thinking our words were getting across perfectly. Yet, despite this, we continued talking.”        Baik’s writing subtly captures non-verbal cues that seem indescribable. We often forget that communication is not limited to spoken words, but also includes non-verbal elements. At first glance, her characters’ conversations might appear disjointed, yet through Baik’s lens, they unfold just as they were intended. Fiction plays a vital role in helping us understand others in a world that often doesn’t make sense. By stepping into the lives of fictional characters, we enhance our capacity to empathize and connect with others. While there will always be people and forms of communication we cannot fully grasp, simply acknowledging their existence makes us better equipped to listen—whether we are conscious of it or not. In this sense, reading fiction, which is a non-verbal act in itself, becomes an attempt to connect with others.        At first, I thought the enjoyment I felt came from reading someone’s “first” work, but by the time I turned the final page, I realized that I was making a conscious effort to connect with others. Starting the new year with this realization feels even more meaningful, as it offers hope for building connections with new and unfamiliar people. It feels like a nudge of encouragement to continue reading fiction and to never stop seeking connection with others—a precious gift to carry into the year ahead. Translated by Léo-Thomas Brylowski  Son Jeong SeungWriter, Anyway, Drums (Hugo Books, 2022),The Words of Jeolla (UU Press, 2024)

  by Son Jeong Seung

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  [ENGLISH] Grace Notes

  Years ago, an American song came out with lyrics that seemed so trite, people assumed that they had to be ironic. In “I Will Buy You a New Life,” Art Alexakis, the lead singer for the band Everclear, sang about wanting to buy his girlfriend a new car and a big house. He was subsequently forced to explain in numerous interviews that he had not intended the song to be a satire of consumerist culture, but instead the expression of an earnest wish and a straightforward message: money can help.        That song is stylistically miles away from Chung Han-ah’s nuanced, tough-minded novella, Last Night, in My Dream, but both pieces seem to raise the same questions. Can money help us make amends, heal the past? Is life—are we—that simple?        The story, which Chung has described as being about disease, money, and grace, begins with the last item in vanishingly short supply. We meet three generations of women—a grandmother, mother, and granddaughter, who’s also the story’s narrator—each unwilling to give any of the others a single inch. For example, after the narrator’s mother leaves her abusive husband, her grandmother lobs some shockingly cruel words, and the narrator vows to “never forgive Grandma”—and also, to never forgive her mother if she forgives. Years later, she ruefully acknowledges that she need not have worried: the women spend decades locked in a grudge-match over the “infernal past.”        That past truly is infernal. It begins with the grandmother’s diagnosis of Hansen’s disease, which prompts her husband to try and murder her, forcing her to abandon her young daughter. When the grandmother later gives birth to another daughter—the narrator’s mother—she places the child in an orphanage. The narrator’s mother is a neglectful parent, only taking an interest in her daughter when trying to break up her adult relationship. For these women, abandonment and pain are what they know best; they not only endure such pain but also inflict it, often in “venomous words.”        And yet, near the story’s conclusion, we see all three together, celebrating a new addition to the family. “We clapped our hands and laughed out loud.” What helps the brittle nesting dolls we first met enter into this state of grace?        Money. After a lengthy legal battle with a man who defrauded a Hansen’s disease community, the grandmother wins quite a sizable sum. She gives it to the mother, who awkwardly (but insistently) passes it on to her own daughter, the narrator. Both mother and daughter seem at a loss for words; only the daughter’s partner, Incheol, can speak to the magnitude of this gift: “I’m thinking about what dream I must have had last night to deserve such a fortune.”        The money buys the struggling couple better food, a larger apartment, and more time for both art and love. When the daughter accepts Incheol’s second marriage proposal (the first having been made when they were still poor), she sheepishly admits to herself that her heart must have changed “because of that money.”        More surprising, however, is the money’s deeper impact. With each monthly payment, so clearly tied to “an old woman who paid the price,” the narrator is compelled to understand more viscerally her grandmother’s painful, stigmatized life, which she had previously dismissed as something like “a story you might come across in an American TV show with an eerie vibe.” (The grandmother’s story also powerfully impacts the playwright Incheol, who incorporates it into a play dismissed as “trite” by one competition judge, but staged in Seoul’s largest theater by another.)        And yet, money alone cannot bring about these changes, as we witness in the descriptions of the mother’s teenage years—reunited with her family and amply provided for, but feeling little warmth. Nor can it be found in the uncle’s joyless, relentless accumulation and disposal of things.        What is needed, it seems, is grace. Where do the women find it? First, in the money itself. As critic Kim Bokyung points out in the Afterword, each of the women attributes a meaning to money that enables reconciliation. Passed from hand to hand, the money embodies whatever they need: an apology for abandonment and neglect, a blessing on a romantic relationship. The decision to see the money in this soft light is a kind of grace, allowing forgiveness to grow.        “Inscrutable grace,” as the narrator calls the monthly sum, also describes the poignant moments that begin to accrue between the three: the mother’s soft insistence—“Take it, still”—after the narrator tries to refuse the first offer out of pride; the narrator naming her own daughter after the grandmother’s lost child; the women’s interlude of quiet happiness on Jeju Island.There are no flights of lyrical fancy in those moments; Chung Han-ah’s vision is determinedly earthbound, the translation by Stella Kim is plainspoken, and the grace the women show each other is distinctly ungraceful , at least in manner. After passing along the money, the narrator’s mother beats a hasty retreat, saying, “Since I gave you what I came to give you, I’m going to go now.” The grandmother responds to her great-granddaughter’s naming with “her typical aloof look.”        There are few words of tenderness spoken, perhaps because language has too often before been wielded as an instrument of harm. But there is the narrator’s private wish for her mother’s boyfriend to be “a good man,” and her lingering glance in the story’s penultimate scene: Mom sat by the window and waved at me. With the scarf around her neck, she looked so much like Grandma that it took my breath away for a second. The understated, deep emotion echoes like the faint piano the narrator hears being played by an “untrained musician” in the story’s final paragraph. Before the music lapses into silence, there is time to be grateful that it has come into the world at all.  Nadia KalmanAuthor, The Cosmopolitans(Livingston Press, 2010)

  by Nadia Kalman

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  [SPANISH] New Families

  As in her novel Concerning My Daughter, for which author Kim Hye-jin is best known not only in Korea but in several countries thanks to multiple translations, her 2022 novel Counsel Culture also places the theme of care at the center of the conversation. In Concerning My Daughter, one of the protagonists is a caretaker for the elderly. In Counsel Culture, the protagonist has worked as a psychotherapist for ten years. In principle, their common task is to help and—to some extent—protect. Nevertheless, for different reasons, both fail and the terrible ostracization that results disrupts their previously stable lives.      Besides working at a therapy center, Im Haesu, the protagonist of Counsel Culture, is a consultant on a television program where she gives her professional opinion on a variety of topics. One day, Haesu thoughtlessly repeats a talking point that the screenwriters have given her about an actor while on air. Her comment is just one of the many already in circulation about this actor’s chaotic behavior on set and his strained relations with his co-stars. But to her surprise, her opinion becomes the final blow to his online public crucifixion. The actor commits suicide and the shoal of digital commentators line up against Haesu to destroy her reputation and career. The words carelessly spoken on air return to Haesu like a boomerang, leaving her perplexed. “She learned that a few words or one line was enough to stab a person in the heart. In the days following the incident, she died hundreds, thousands of times looking at her phone and her computer screen.”       Her husband, her best friend, her neighbors, her boss, her colleagues—everyone distances themselves from her. The author masterfully reveals all of this very slowly, through the letters the protagonist writes day after day. Letters that never reach their conclusion much less the mailbox. Letters in which       Haesu strenuously tries—but fails—to explain her behavior to her closest relations nor manages to confront those who have done her harm.      Haesu wanders through her neighborhood at night, using the darkness to avoid being recognized. On one of her errant walks, she meets a girl and shortly after, the two of them join efforts to save a stray cat which, like Haesu, wanders through the streets scared and hurt. Here is where another of Kim’s recurring themes appears. The woman, the solitary girl, and the sick and hungry cat quickly form an unconventional family, even more so than the one in Concerning My Daughter. And it’s the girl who becomes the head of this quite unusual family. She makes suggestions and gives guidance in coordinating the rescue project, despite living a solitary life at home and being excluded at school. It is she who names the cat “Turnip.” Not long after, an enormous ginkgo tree on the edge of the neighborhood becomes home for the three of them where  they gather in the afternoons. In this tree, they set a trap to catch the cat and take it to the vet. “The ginkgo tree becomes something of a place of worship to Haesu. The time she spends there waiting for Turnip brings her calm. She does not know where this calm and peace are coming from. Sometimes she stays past sundown, until darkness settles in.” The waiting in this green sanctuary cures her, to the point she finally decides to meet the wife of the deceased actor. Their meeting teaches Haesu how powerful words can be, something she had not fully grasped in her previous life as a therapist.       Kim Hye-jin’s novels move on a scale that some might consider minor. Even her transparent writing, transmitted with serenity and efficacy by her translators, can give the false impression of lightness. There is no epic catharsis, nor lessons. Rather, her book deals with a discovery of themes that concern us today—the nature of care, the reach of language in the age of social media, the intangibility of forgiveness—through ordinary fumblings in the dark and new ideas of family. Kim tells us that if we give these factors sufficient attention, perhaps we can find the path of return. Translated by Lucina Schell  Andrés Felipe SolanoWriter, Gloria (Counterpoint, 2025)

  by Andrés Felipe Solano

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  [TURKISH] Exploring Technological Frontiers and Human Fragility

  Djuna’s Counterweight, translated into Turkish by Derya Çelik, immerses readers in a speculative narrative where corporate ambition, technological innovation, and personal reflection intersect. Known for their philosophical science fiction works, Djuna uses the futuristic setting of Patusan, an island transformed by a space elevator project, to explore identity, memory, and ethical dilemmas by asking whether humanity can retain compassion in a world increasingly driven by technological progress.      The novel opens with a child who receives her mother’s ashes but rejects them, saying, “That’s not my mom. It’s just ashes.” The ashes later become part of a firework display, accompanying a digital simulation of the mother created through augmented reality. The story also combines existential and technological themes, exploring what it means to be human in a world where reality and simulation blur: What happens to memory and identity in a digitized world? Can technology bridge emotional gaps or does it only accentuate the isolation inherent in human relationships?       The first-person story is driven by the narrator’s relationship with Choi Gangwu, a seemingly ordinary technician who serves as the central character. Initially suspected of supporting the Patusan Liberation Front due to his love of butterflies, Gangwu complicates expectations by showing how bureaucracies whittle people down to mere numbers. Djuna’s signature thoughtful pacing fosters reflection on these tensions, inviting readers to slow down and engage deeply with the characters’ choices.      The construction of the space elevator on Patusan displaces locals, rendering them as a marginalized minority within the new system. Djuna cleverly turns the space elevator into a metaphor, representing both the promise and burden of progress. The protagonist’s interactions with Gangwu reflect this tension, as the latter oscillates between his beloved butterflies and his navigation of corporate hierarchies. The fragmented monologues provide insight into the private lives of central characters, allowing the exploration of their regrets, decisions, and epiphanies. Gangwu, for example, contemplates his dual identity as both a rebel and a corporate employee, embodying the tension between individual freedom and institutional constraints. The butterflies symbolize a yearning for simplicity in a world overtaken by corporate agendas.      The novel’s translation by Derya Çelik preserves Djuna’s poetic prose, balancing philosophical inquiry with narrative tension. Çelik’s skillful rendering captures the subtle nuances of Djuna’s world-building, making the story accessible to Turkish readers without compromising its depth. Through detailed descriptions of both physical and emotional landscapes, Çelik brings out the tension between the vastness of Patusan and the characters’ internal struggles. Djuna challenges readers to engage with the text on multiple levels—emotional, philosophical, and intellectual.      The novel also challenges the established social order. Gangwu struggles with indecision and societal expectations despite his technical skills, while the protagonist displays resilience in navigating personal and corporate dilemmas. Djuna subtly critiques how societal structures often limit individuals, trapping them within predefined roles, much like the space elevator confines the movement of bodies and materials. Gangwu’s journey reveals that survival in a hyper-technological world demands not only technical skills but also emotional adaptability.      The big reveal comes when Gangwu meets Neberu O’Shaughnessy, a spy disguised as an ally. O’Shaughnessy is shot and killed before he can extract Gangwu’s implanted data using a “Worm extractor.” O’Shaughnessy’s death raises questions: Was Gangwu manipulated all along, or did he unknowingly harbor critical information? The novel concludes ambiguously, implying that if there are ghosts that influence us, perhaps we, too, can learn to haunt them in return. This leaves readers a faint glint of hope amid the darkness that even in tyrannical regimes, resistance might still be possible.      Beneath the surface focus on the space elevator and the geopolitical conflicts it creates, Djuna’s real concern is directed at the human and moral quandaries brought on by technological development. By following Gangwu’s journey, the novel stresses that even in the age of corporate capitalism and technological innovation, love, curiosity, and compassion are paramount. The story offers a glimmer of hope that humanity can build authentic bonds under the weight of so much change.      Djuna’s Counterweight invites readers to consider the consequences of unchecked ambition while celebrating the quiet, human moments that persist in the shadows of progress.   Sümeyra Buran Writer and Professor 

  by Sümeyra Buran

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  [JAPANESE] Stories to Invite the Future

  “Invite (you) into the world”—in Chung Serang’s Take My Voice, this lovely phrase is used to refer to the birth of a child. To borrow this expression in part, the stories in this collection could be called “stories to invite our future.”      Even among Chung’s works, these stories feature exceptionally strong science fiction elements such as a detention center that contains people who pose a threat to other humans or a world isolated by a zombie pandemic. All these stories were first published in Korean in the 2010s, yet they seem to foresee the COVID-19 pandemic that shook the world in 2020 and the chaos that ensued. However, their real value doesn’t simply lie in their futuristic vision.      For example, the memory-enhancing pill from the short story “Little Baby Blue Pill,” which enables one to remember everything for only three hours, is marketed for use by families hoping to treat relatives with dementia. However, its misuse soon becomes rampant; it unexpectedly boosts the success rate of acquiring one’s object of infatuation, and revitalizes the quality of scripts in the corrupt entertainment industry. At the same time, it makes the torture carried out by authoritarian regimes and in war zones even more brutal, mass-produces traffic accident deaths and suicides, and critically damages the brains of children of the next century.      “It changed everything and, at the same time, nothing could be changed,” says the narrator. I believe this ambivalent phrase to contain both a bitter irony about our history of simplifying complexity into either zeros and ones for the sake of efficiency, suppressing the small voices of those who lived in the in-between. At the same time, it holds an  equal amount of sincere prayer.      “Reset” stands out as a defining work. After urban civilization is devoured by a sudden horde of giant worms, the few surviving humans withdraw from the surface and build a civilization with low environmental impact in the long underground tunnels left behind by the worms. They stop eating meat and realize the cruelty of enclosing other animals; produce only as much energy as necessary; and eliminate waste by circulating resources within the city. What awaits after this literal reset is a world that seems to embody only the best solutions  for the planet and humanity. In order to maintain  population levels, reproductive behavior and even the emotional dynamics and desires surrounding it are tightly monitored. According to the younger post-reset generation, “I don’t feel like doing anything with anyone around me.” Later, the reader realizes that the very emotions and desires that have been purged from the individuals in these stories are also   the same drives that will save them from the depths of despair.      There can be no such thing as a “right answer” in this SF vision of the world.  Whatever the justification, if we try to optimize society, then that is not rational or functional—in other words, the soft parts of the human heart—is gradually marginalized and discarded. Mechanically repeating such efficient measures offers no guarantee that a world where mutual care and compassion will still exist. That is why Chung sharply pierces our complacency to reveal the harm and violence which we have tolerated both now and in the past, while also portraying faint traces of affection and fragile connections  that carefully, delicately, and honestly sketch a landscape colored with humor and tenderness, even if only for a moment .      A perceptive critical sensibility underpins the unexpected settings of each short story in this collection. In addition to tough, incisive insights into environmental issues and bioethics, the stories offer illuminating and constructive perspectives on gender.       Above all, the fantasy elements of this book expand the range of the reader’s own imagination in all directions, by revealing in a meticulous and multi-layered way the workings of human beings, which can never be reduced to numbers. This is precisely the process required to build our future—a future in which we can pass the baton from me to you, from one to another.      Ultimately, I believe that the most important characteristic of human beings is to be “lost” within the disorientation of a dystopian world. It is telling that the final piece in this book is “The Medalist’s Zombie Years.” The tough protagonist, a former archery medalist who has survived a zombie apocalypse,  wrestles with the emotional burden of confronting her already zombified lover until the last possible moment. She is lost because she has not given up until the very end—on him as a person, on what she can do for him as a fellow human being, and on the idea of humanity itself. Chung Serang’s fantastical visions are woven to remind us to never give up on what it means to be human. Translated by Meri Joyce Kuramoto SaoriLiterary Critic

  by Kuramoto Saori

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  [POLISH] Metamorphosis of the Other: A Queer Sci-Fi Thriller

  In recent years there has been a growing interest in contemporary South Korean fiction which constantly seeks new means of expression. A number of Korean novels have been published in Polish translation. Walking Practice was translated into Polish by Łukasz Janik and is remarkably successful at reproducing the style and form of the original Korean version.      Dolki Min is the pen name of an essayist and writer who is considered one of the greatest enigmas in the contemporary South Korean literary scene. His identity is shrouded in a veil of mystery, which is the result of his deliberate efforts to create a mysterious atmosphere around him. His biographical note has never been made public. What’s more, Dolki Min has never revealed his face and wears a mask during media appearances. As he insists, the author’s persona should not carry much significance for the reception of his work.      Dolki Min’s debut novel, Walking Practice, is a paranormal sci-fi thriller with an explicit queer message. This short novel is about Mumu, an extraterrestrial from outer space who landed on Earth fifteen years earlier due to an invasion of his home planet. Of indeterminate gender, Mumu finds themself trapped in an unfamiliar refuge and is strongly affected by Earth’s gravity. In order to survive in a new, hostile environment, the alien shifts into a human form, taking on bodily shape (male or female) as is most advantageous at a given moment in order to capture human prey. They hate walking on two legs, as their original alien form has three legs and one arm, and climbing up the stairs is torture. Another distressing moment for Mumu is having to travel on crowded public transportation with a big backpack stuffed with tools they use to murder their victims.       Mumu feeds themself on human flesh and by taking advantage of the hook-up culture that pervades today’s fast-paced world, Mumu meets their unsuspecting victims using dating apps. After a casual sexual encounter, Mumu kills and devours them on the spot or takes leftovers to their crashed spacecraft they use as house, nestled somewhere in a dense forest. Mumu loathes humans, although feeling lonely and isolated they cherish an inner longing for brief moments of intimacy. Their goal is to blend in with human society without getting caught, but at the same time, to survive by eating humans.       The author of this queer novel employs the science fiction genre in order to criticize gender role models and the exclusion of disadvantaged groups in modern societies, including South Korea, through the lens of an alien. The reader is not spared appalling descriptions and blunt language, moments that verge on vulgarity and obscenity. This intriguing and at times disturbing novel contains interesting (though not necessarily easy to understand) formal experiments: when Mumu’s body is deformed, the text does the same; it becomes slightly distorted, expands and contracts according to the first-person narrator’s mental state. The author uses clichés and templates from science fiction, erotica, horror, thriller, gore, confession, and chat records. He also uses emoticons, highlighted words and graphic signs.       We may perceive Walking Practice literally as a fantasy thriller story about a murderous and paranoid alien among defenceless earthlings, or metaphorically as a subversive queer story about social gender fluidity, bisexuality, exclusion, phobias, humiliation, rejection, and lack of acceptance. The attentive reader will certainly notice the hidden social commentary on gender identities, otherness, and contemporary human relationships. The novel’s genre may be classified as sci-fi horror with a queer and transgender message and a penetrating critique of the obsolete social structures and anachronistic mental attitudes that exclude those who are queer and resist conformity.      In challenging conventional narratives, Dolki Min’s novel transcends the boundaries of genre fiction, offering a raw critique of societal norms surrounding gender and identity. His bold, unconventional approach has established him as a voice for marginalized communities, further enriching the dialogue on queer representation in global literature.   Anna Diniejko-WąsLiterary TranslatorAssistant Professor, University of Warsaw, Poland

  by Anna Diniejko-Wąs

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  [ENGLISH] Dog’s World

  “Was it the right decision to bring Choco home?” asks Yuna, the narrator of Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s Dog Days. Choco is a malnourished and neglected Border Collie who lives outdoors in a dilapidated cage. She sits day in and day out exposed to the elements. Her owner barely pays her any attention. When Choco’s owner offers her to Yuna and her husband Hun, they don’t bring her home right away. Instead, they work to earn her trust. Hun visits Choco every day in her cage. He sits outside her open cage in the cold until she’s eventually willing to come out.      When she finally leaves the cage, Yuna and Hun wonder about how she experiences the walk to her new home: “When was the last time she’d smelled the soil? Or smelled the scent of decomposing leaves? Or the bugs crawling under the leaves?” This potent moment is marred by an unglamorous arrival at home. Yuna and Hun’s other dogs, Carrot and Potato, play rough with Choco, even though they’re both neutered. Most worrisome, after living in such poor conditions outdoors, Choco is in extremely poor health. It’s not clear if she’ll even survive the transition to her new home. However, spending any more time in the outdoor cage would have undoubtedly been a death sentence for her. So was it the right choice? Unnerving (and often unanswerable) questions like this arise for Yuna and Hun throughout Dog Days. In lush brushstrokes, Gendry-Kim presents a portrait of the dilemmas of being a dog owner.       Long before they adopted Choco, there was Carrot. Yuna and Hun bought Carrot, a Welsh Corgi, from a pet store in Seoul to help Hun cope with the passing of his grandmother. But it is also true that Carrot came into their lives partly by chance—as Yuna admits, if the other Corgi in the shop had been handed to them, “that pup would have become ours instead.” Introducing their first dog into their home was not an easy adjustment. Carrot is anxious around other dogs and bites Yuna. They eventually get him neutered, and worry if that was the right decision. They debate sending Carrot to Dog Training Center because of his biting, but worry about stories of mistreatment, including one center where “The facility’s owner had beaten the dog with a pipe for excessive barking.” In all these moments, Gendry-Kim presents Yuna and Hun as an uncomfortable amount of power over the lives of their pets. They are completely in control of Carrot’s fate, but never entirely sure if what they’re doing is best for Carrot. This amusing behavior will be familiar to any pet owner.       One day, Yuna and Hun make a major change for the sake of Carrot. They move from Seoul to the countryside, partly to give Carrot more room to roam and (hopefully) thrive. At first, their new life outside the city seems close to idyllic. They go for long walks with Carrot on quiet country lanes. One of their elderly neighbors, Mr. Han, offers them a spot on his property so they can start a vegetable garden. They also adopt another puppy after it’s left on their doorstep, which they name Potato.       But then Hun discovers a trio of dogs in a shed on Mr. Han’s property. They soon disappear, without any explanation. Other dogs disappear in their neighborhood, and the book takes on some of the unnerving qualities of a horror novel.       All is made clear with the arrival of the Dog Vendor, a truck with a loudspeaker that blares: “Dogs and puppies wanted! Goats wanted!” Yuna captures how their once pleasant country life immediately becomes a nightmare with the appearance of the truck: “During the summer right after the rains, the sound of the loudspeaker would fill the air, making me anxious about what the dog butcher might do to our puppies. Sometimes, I felt as if I were the one in danger.” In this pivotal moment, a switch is flipped, making the characters and readers realize that the killers are all people you know and see every day. That kindly neighbor Mr. Han who let Hun and Yuna garden on his land? He turns out to be a major local dog butcher. In no time, the quandary for Yuna and Hun is clear to the reader: which dogs can they save? Often, it’s not many. This brutal realization makes Yuna and Hun’s tenderness toward their pets moving rather than frivolous.       In her afterword, Gendry-Kim reflects on the difficulties of addressing dog butchering in Korean culture, and the risks in doing so to an audience that would understandably react negatively:       My greatest concern while writing this book was the risk of racial discrimination against Koreans or Asians abroad due to its content, a fear stemming from my own past experiences. I’ve experienced comments like, “Don’t           you eat dog? Go back to your country. . .” The last thing I wanted to do was to reinforce those stereotypes.  In facing the grisly, unsettling details of dog butchering head on, Gendry-Kim provides a service to readers to contextualize a cruel but dying tradition. She also reminds readers of the emotional importance of dogs in the lives of owners like Yuna and Hun. Throughout Dog Days, we see Yuna and Hun put their lives second to the needs of Carrot, Potato, and Choco. On the other hand, we are also given glimpses into how the dogs help to heal Yuna and Hun’s emotional wounds. At one point, Yuna speculates that Hun is especially attached to Choco because of his own difficult childhood. This scene serves as another reminder for the reader of how much weight these dogs carry in our lives.       Again and again in Dog Days the question is asked: what is best for a dog? Often, the answer is far from clear. But, again and again, Yuna and Hun give themselves fully to finding out.   Lucas AdamsEditor and writer

  by Lucas Adams

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  [RUSSIAN] Love Brings Hope in This Post-Apocalyptic Story

  Choi Jin-Young’s novel To the Warm Horizon, translated by Alina Kolbiagina, presents a storyline in which a group of people is forced to flee their homes by a deadly virus. It is a familiar type of story to Russian readers not only because of Stephen King and other widely translated Western writers who produce such novels, but also thanks to the success of Russian writer Yana Vagner’s To the Lake in 2011. But this Korean post-apocalyptic story is a different cup of tea: while King’s and Vagner’s narratives are more fast-paced, this book requires a much slower reading. This story serves as a reflection, almost a diary, of the characters’ attempts to analyse their pasts at a moment of tragedy; a soul-searching tale of what their lives could have been like, had they made different choices.     The book consists of a series of monologues where Dori, Jina, Ryu, and Gunji invite us into their inner worlds as they escape from their native Korea to Russia  while the pandemic is taking over the world. In the foreword of the book, Choi says that she deliberately wanted to place the characters in “the most enormous country on the planet,” and that she wanted them “to hold a flag, so even from the sky it would signal that ‘a human being is right here, in this place!’” It seems Choi wants us to study and observe the individual at a time of crisis—and the landscape here plays the part of a vast space that helps bring out the feeling of loneliness. She moves characters from a densely populated place into this huge “sandbox” to have a closer look at what they would do, and to reflect on existential identity and the consequences of life choices.      At first glance, the focus in the book is on the pandemic and its aftermath—poverty, famine, crime, and chaos—but these actually serve as the backdrop for the internal transition the characters go through. Each of them analyses their past and realises how loveless their lives have been. Ryu reflects on how she used to neglect her own needs (“I always wore thin jackets into the winter until I got ill, because I never had time to take my warm winter coat to the dry cleaners.”). Having never looked after herself and having never felt loved (“Do we actually know anything about love?”), she regrets marrying a man who doesn’t show any affection or interest towards her.      The voices in Choi’s book are predominantly female, and her heroines are courageous and self-sacrificing, valuing the lives of their loved ones over their own. Men, on the other hand, are often either indecisive or violent: Dan, Ryu’s husband, cries and asks her to return to Korea because he is scared; Dori’s father joins a gang of marauders and bandits to survive, explaining that this is the only way he can save Dori’s life; Jina’s father hits Dori, blaming her for the deaths of several family members, and Jina’s uncle sexually assaults her. The only exception is Gunji, an orphaned boy from Jina’s village who later becomes a compassionate young man. He protects Dori from Jina’s family but ends up being disowned.     The characters that have a chance at being saved are the ones who care about others and who protect their loved ones. Their desire to keep running further away from the disaster—“there, over the horizon, where the sun sets”—is fuelled by their ability to love. Jina, Dori, Ryu, Gunji, and even Miso, Dori’s little sister, dream of making their loved ones happy. Ryu, having told her husband that she doesn’t love him, realises that his survival is more important to her than the words she said, which actually held no meaning. Gunji, having survived losses and hardship at such a young age, simply dreams of catching fish, collecting fruit, and giving them to the person he loves. Wanting to make someone happy is present even at a subconscious level. Without knowing its meaning, Dori keeps humming a song that she heard on the radio—“Ma rendi pur contento” which means “Only make her happy.” Choi Jin-Young offers us the hope that love will prevail and humanity will survive, despite the disasters. Otherwise, why would she end the novel with the words, “I love you”?   Maria WiltshireTranslator and Russian language tutor

  by Maria Wiltshire

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  [TURKISH] When AND How Does a Human Become Human?

  “Will artificial intelligence bring the end of humanity?” This is one of the main questions explored in the novel Veda, a question that everybody, from pop culture creators to contemporary philosophers, have been sharing their opinions about.     But first, let us put this question aside and think about the process that brought us here whenever humans faced technological advances in the past: Will computers replace human beings? Will railroad transportation be the end of horse-and-cart? Will the printing press finish clerical scribes? Following the Industrial Revolution, the conflict between humans and machines has taken center stage. Since the day the first machine appeared, humankind has been asking the same questions, although in slightly different ways. The current version is: Will artificial intelligence bring humanity to an end? We will only be certain to answer this from experience, not by prediction.     In Veda, Young-ha Kim essentially asks the same question and gives his answer in different ways. We are talking about the “existential” adventure of Cheol, a humanoid in the novel who lives on an AI development campus. He decides to cease his isolated life and face the realities of the outside world through his experiences with other humans and robots. While Kim follows this plot, he gives quick nods to earlier science fiction works, utopia/dystopia texts and films, and sometimes he even adds paragraphs to convey the infinite reaches of intertextuality. Many preceding texts include Utopia by Thomas More and, more indirectly, Emile, or On Education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The endeavour of creating a “human being” reminds one of Frankenstein and, because the AI campus is not what it seems, of Brave New World; readers may also think of post-apocalyptic, sci-fi films such as The Terminator and The Matrix. As in The Truman Show, we explore the consequences of limited contact with the outside world, and the existentialist dilemma of the humanoid character will call to mind Blade Runner.      In addition, Cheol’s fate has similarities to that of Pinocchio, carved from wood by Master Geppetto, both characters who believe themselves to be human before they finally become so. Without forgetting that Karel Čapek’s Rossum’s Universal Robots introduced the word “robot,” Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot forms a reference point for Veda as do many other texts.     In Cheol’s dialogues with his “father” as well as with other robots, humanoids, clones and humans, the writer searches for answers without neglecting the philosophical, ethical and sociological aspects, and proposes his own thesis (since humanity is already over) while “adding on” to the existing body of work.     For instance, Cheol asks many of the same questions that philosophers have pondered throughout the history of humankind: conscience, trust, courage, public awareness, individualism, free will, loving and being loved, remembrance, sorrow, death. Occasionally he thinks about the philosophy of religion. There is only one place where these questions lead: When and how does a human become human? As we dig deeper, we notice that the novel that best represents Veda is The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Just like Dorothy, Cheol is forcibly swept away from his familiar settlement. The Tin Man, The Scarecrow and The Cowardly Lion accompany Dorothy just as Min, Seon, and Dharma do with Cheol. And Cheol, just like Dorothy, wishes to return “home” because only then will his story be completed.      Kim indirectly addresses the central question of his book, suggesting that to become human, one needs a story. The various paths Cheol takes, the stops he waits at, and the twists and turns that alter his course all contribute to an ongoing story, crafted along the way. This continuous narrative is the key element that defines humanity.     Whether one is aware or not, the experiences one has lived and collected, shared with others, and partially remembered by others, contribute to the ongoing story that defines humanity. The nature of that story is shaped throughout the journey. Veda leads its readers to believe that, although humanity may have ended by the time Cheol’s story begins, there may still be hope for humankind as long as there are stories to be told.  Çağlayan Çevik Editor and Journalist

  by Çağlayan Çevik