Product Description: Night-Sky Checkerboard introduces English-language readers to the imagistic lyricism of a Korean master at the peak of his powers. As a young poet fascinated by Modernism, Oh Sae-young attempted to reproduce the inner landscapes of the dislocated self produced by industrial society before arriving at the more existentialist concerns that dominate his work today...read more

Product Description: Fiction. Northeast Asia Studies. Homer B. Hulbert and James S. Gale, two of the most famous North American missionaries to come to Korea in the 1880s, were very fond of ghost stories, but for years the Korean scholars they met swore that no such stories existed in Korea...read more

Kim Yeong-nang (1903–1950) is highly reputed in Korea for the delicate lyricism of his poems. Yet in many ways he has remained little known, even in Korea, limited to a small number of often anthologized poems. Although he was a resolute opponent of Japanese colonial rule, he did not suffer frequent imprisonment, or death, so his role as a champion of Korean independence has largely been ignored. Killed in bombing near the start of the Korean War, he had no time to participate in the development of a new Korean poetry.Many of Kim Yeong-nang’s earlier poems clearly express opposition to Japanese rule; after Liberation in 1945, he wrote to express his agony at the looming conflict between leftists and rightists that he saw threatening to tear Korea apart. At the same time, most of his poems are bold experiments in forms of Modernism; his use of images and symbols as well as his exploration of native Korean rhythms make him one of the most rewarding and challenging poets of his time. He spent most of his life in his native Gangjin, far removed from the literary world of Seoul, and the beauty of the Jeolla Province landscapes, as well as its dialect’s vocabulary, underlie his poetry. Text in Korean and English

Product Description: Poetry. Asian American Studies. Translated from the Korean by Brother Anthony of Taize. Commentary by Lee Tae-Dong and Se-young Oh. "There are few modern Korean poets who have pursued change as ardently as Mun Dok-su has done. In his early days, he wrote Modernist poems engaged in the pursuit of ontological issues, under the influence of Yu Ch'i-hwan...read more

“Bodhisattva of Korean poetry, exuberant, demotic, abundant, obsessed with poetic creation . . . Ko Un is a magnificent poet, combination of Buddhist cognoscente, passionate political libertarian, and naturalist historian.”—Allen Ginsberg"Korea's greatest living Zen poet."—Lawrence Ferlinghetti   Flowers of a Moment is a treasure trove of more than 180 brief poems by a major world poet at the apex of his career. A four-time Nobel Prize nominee,Ko Un grew up in Korea during the Japanese occupation. During the Korean War, he was conscripted by the People's Army. In 1952, he became a Buddhist and lived a monastic life for ten years.   For his activism confronting South Korea's dictatorial military government, he was imprisoned and tortured. He has published more than one hundred volumes of poetry, essays, fiction, drama, and translations of Chinese poetry. At sunset a wish to become a wolf beneath a fat full moon

Product Description: Kim Kwang-kyu was born in Seoul in 1941 and is a professor in the German language and literature department at Hanyang University. He has written poetry sharply critical of the abuses of human dignity caused by corrupt politics and the structural contradictions brought about by the industrialization of society...read more

Product Description: This book showcases the work of three major Korean poets born at fourteen-year intervals, in 1921, 1935, and 1949. Each has tried to renew Korean poetry by bringing it into closer contact with everyday speech, social issues, and ordinary people's lives...read more

In a novel that explores the search for self-respect and self-identity in an unjust Korean society, the youngest grandson of the executed King's governor is consigned to a life of vagrancy and genteel begging as a wandering poet as he struggles to recover his family's fortunes. Original. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Shin Kyong-Nim’s first volume of poems, Farmers’ Dance (Nong-mu), marked a major new step in the development of modern Korean poetry when it was published in 1973. The life of Korea’s oppressed rural masses had never before been highlighted in such a manner...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: So Chong-Ju, also known by the penname Midang, was born in Sonum village in the North Cholla Province of Korea, in 1915. His first poems were published in the late 1930s; his first collection of poems dates from 1941. The present volume contains the complete poems of his first four collections, on which his reputation as Korea's leading living poet largely rests...read more

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Product Description: When the King's governor, after falling into rebel hands and changing sides, is recaptured by royal troops and executed, his sons and grandsons are also condemned to death. They survive by subterfuge, but they have lost their place in society...read more

Product Description: These poems by "the happiest man in the world" are full of light though written in dark times. Ch’ôn had the art of seeing the beauty of life beyond all the pain, and of putting it into the music of words. Recently, many young Koreans have discovered in these poems and in the poet’s life the innocence and honesty they look for in vain in modern society...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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