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/lit/ - Literature

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3909711 No.3909711 [Reply] [Original]

I did the oral exam of my A-levels about Pyongyang and North Korea in general which ignited my interest in this country. In preparing the presentation I had to do I read and watched a lot about North Korea but mostly non-fiction regarding the history and economical situation in North Korea as I focused on the economy and the economical potential of the state.

Trying to get a hold on some novels by North Korean writers, I stumbled across a couple of authors but can't seem to find a translation of any of their books. I know that an excerpt of the novel "Hwangjini" by Hong Seok-jung was translated and published in an anglophone anthology, still I can't find the whole thing or any other novel to buy anywhere.

tl;dr sources to acquire North Korean literature without having to learn Korean.

>> No.3909715

Contemporary North Korean writers?

>> No.3909721

Tao Lin

>> No.3909725

>>3909715
after a half-hearted research, I have found so far
>Kang Kwi-mi
>Hong Seok-jung
>Lim Hwa-won
>Byungu Chon
which are four authors that have been published in the anthology "Literature from the Axis of Evil". Unfortunately, I've found no novels of them as such.

>> No.3909732

>>3909721
>North Korean
>Korean

>> No.3909742

I would imagine that most literary productions from the country would have been censored by the government. The closest thing to North Korean 'literature' that you could reasonably accquire (without having to spend the better part of your life tracking down a relevant author) would be the propoganda books you can buy in the embassy shop.

>> No.3909747

>>3909742
that was my concern too but shouldn't there be at least one or two authors or their works which made it somehow out of the country?

>> No.3909761

>>3909747

Not necessarily. Keep in mind that only about 1000 tourists enter the country each year, and that something like 50% of all escapees are deported. With those kind of statistics, the chances of any work whatsoever actually surviving, let alone making its way to a foreign audience, must be in the low decimal ranges.

>> No.3909778

Is "Escape from Camp 14" by Blaine Harden about Shin Dong-hyuk worth a read? same question concerning "Eyes of the Tailless Animals: Prison Memoirs of a North Korean Woman" by Soon Ok Lee.

(I know it's not fiction but hey, better than nothing...)

>> No.3909789

>>3909778
I've not read either but I've read about Shin Dong-hyuk's story and it's quite incredible. I think he's the only known person to have been born in one of the high-level North Korean prison camps and to have successfully escaped.

>> No.3909818

>>3909789
probably going to look into that instead of Soon Ok Lee's book simply because the latter costs like three times as much on amazon and I have a busy reading schedule.

>> No.3909825

>>3909778
i read Camp 14 a while back. Considering how few first hand acounts of north korean life are available it's worth a read.

>> No.3909923

>>3909778

I'd say so, yeah. I've never read it, but given the book's premise alone, it must be a decent read.

>> No.3910893
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3910893

>>3909711
"The Tears of my Soul" by Kim Hyun Hee. You can get it off Amazon. The author was a North Korean agent personally selected by Kim Jong il to carry out a terrorist attack whereby she planted a bomb on a South Korean airliner and killed over a hundred people. She captured in Bahrain and sentenced to death but was later pardoned by the South's president who saw her as another victim of the North.

>> No.3910907

>>3909778
>not fiction
Top kek.

Protip: _everything_ you ever hear or read about North Korea in the west is fiction.

>> No.3910951

The Aquariums of Pyongyang