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The Korea Society welcomes beloved Korean author Young-ha Kim as we celebrate the publication of his fourth novel, Your Republic Is Calling You, in English translation. Kim has participated in the famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop, won all three of the prestigious Korean literary prizes in a single year (2004), has had major motion pictures based on his work, and is one of the first modern Korean writers to be translated by a major American publishing house.
Emotionally taut and psychologically astute, Your Republic Is Calling You reveals the depth of one particularly gripping family secret and the ways in which people sometimes never really know the ones they love. An aficionado of Heineken, soccer, and sushi, family man Gi-yeong is also a North Korean spy who has been living among his enemies for twenty-one years. Suddenly, he receives a mysterious email—a possible directive from the home office to come in from the cold.
Spanning the course of one day, the novel confronts moral questions on the small and large scale, and addresses the political and cultural transformations that have shaped Korea since the 1980s.
Tuesday, October 12
6:30PM Reading and Reception
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Join The Korea Society for a candle-lit evening of literary reflections on the persistence of trauma in everyday life. Translators Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton read from The Red Room, with highlights from Pak Wan-So’s “In the Realm of the Buddha,” O Chong-hui’s “Spirit on the Wind,” and Im Ch’or-u’s “The Red Room.” A literary bookend to The Korean War Today conference, this Book Cafe takes place in The Korea Society Gallery. As space is limited, advance registration is required.
Monday, September 13
6PM Reading and Light Refreshments
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 Among the space-age cityscapes of Korea's deeply wired and trend-setting population centers, Koreans maintain the vibrant Shamanic traditions of their ancestors according to anthropologist Laurel Kendall. In her latest book, Shamans, Nostalgias and the IMF: South Korean Popular Religion in Motion (University of Hawai'i Press), Kendall, chair of the Anthropology Division at the American Museum of Natural History, argues that Korean Shamanism remains a vital force in Korean spiritual life, and offers lively accounts of how ancient Shamanic traditions help Korean professionals navigate the anxieties of modern life. Thursday, May 6, 20105:45 PM Check-in 6:00 PM Presentation
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| Author James Bradley's new book The Imperial Cruise weighs in on the debate surrounding the Taft-Katsura Agreement of 1905, widely seen as entree for Japan's colonial occupation of Korea. In the summer of 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt dispatched Secretary of War William Howard Taft across the Pacific, where Taft negotiated a series of secret agreements laying the groundwork for the U.S. Pacific engagement. Bradley marshals evidence that could "reshape conventional wisdom about Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency," according to the New York Times, America's role at the time and Korean popular memory.
  photo by Kelly Campbell
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
6:30pm Reception
7:00pm Reading
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|  On October 29, 2009 The Korea Society held a special reception with prize-winning author Hwang Sok-yong to mark the release of his major novel, The Old Garden, in English translation. During the reception, Mr. Hwang discussed the literary life and his new book with Theodore Hughes, Assistant Professor of Modern Korean Literature, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University.
Hwang Sok-yong is one of Korea’s most revered novelists, and The Old Garden, published in translation by Seven Stories Press, is his masterwork. A sweeping history of modern Korea, The Old Garden was published in anticipation of the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War. In it, Hwang expresses timeless themes—the endurance of love and the price of commitment to a cause—while depicting a singular generation that sacrificed youth, liberty, and often life, for the dream of a better tomorrow.
“Hwang Sok-yong is undoubtedly the most powerful voice of the novel in East Asia.” - Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe
Thursday, October 29, 2009
6:30 PM-7:00 PM ♦ Reception
7:00 PM-8:30 PM ♦ Reading, Q&A & Reception
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