[Korean Literature Club] 'Chinatown' (authored by Oh Jung-hee)

Dear Members and Friends,

For the November meeting, we will read and discuss ‘Chinatown’, authored by Oh Jung-hee and translated by Ju-chan Fulton and Bruce Fulton.

The meeting will be led by Jeremy Seligson and held IN-PERSON only.

WHEN_ Thursday. November 13, 2025. 7:30PM (Seoul)

WHERE_B1, North Terrace Cafe (near Anguk Station or Jongno-3 ga Station (Subway Line 1, 3, or 5))

LEADER_Jeremy Seligson

READ_ ‘Chinatown’ by Oh Jung-hee (Tran. by Ju-chan Fulton & Bruce Fulton)

BOOK PURCHASE:
Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Chinatown-Penguin.../dp/0241744369 |
Kyobo https://product.kyobobook.co.kr/detail/S000001539434

ABOUT THE BOOK:

A selection of the best short stories by Oh Jung-hee, one of South Korea’s most influential writersIn this emblematic selection of her stories, Oh Jung-hee probes beneath the surface of seemingly quotidian lives to expose nightmarish family configurations warped by desertion, psychosis, and death. In ‘Chinatown’ a young girl living on the edge of the city’s Chinese community comes of age among mundane violences, collisions with adult sexuality and the American occupation; in ‘The Garden Party’ a woman grapples with her conflicting identities of wife, mother and writer at an alcohol-fuelled gathering. Throughout a career spanning six decades, Oh Jung-hee has drawn comparisons to Alice Munro, Virginia Woolf, and Joyce Carol Oates, and is assuredly a trailblazing writer.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Oh Jung-hee was born in 1947 in Seoul. After the Korean War, she and her family moved to the Chinatown in Incheon, where her autobiographical story “Junggugin geori” (중국인 거리 Chinatown) is set. During her high school days, she was tormented by the death of her youngest sibling, leading her to have suicidal thoughts and run away from home.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATORS:

Bruce Fulton is the inaugural holder of the Young-Bin Min Chair in Korean Literature and Literary Translation, Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia. He is the co-translator, with Ju-Chan Fulton, of numerous works of modern Korean fiction; co-editor, with Kwon Youngmin, of Modern Korean Fiction (Columbia University Press, 2005), editor of the Korea section of the Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian Literature (2003); and general editor of the Modern Korean Fiction series published by the University of Hawai’i Press. He is the co-recipient of several translation awards and grants, including the first National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship for a Korean literary work, the Fourth Annual Chametzky Prize for Translation, and the first residency awarded by the Banff International Literary Translation Centre for the translation of a work from any Asian Language. His most recent translations, with Ju-Chan Fulton, are the graphic novel Moss by Yoon Taeho (serialized at the Huffington Post), The Human Jungle by Cho Chŏngnae (Chin Music Press), and Sunset: A Ch’ae Manshik Reader (forthcoming from Columbia University Press).

VENUE:

The ‘North Terrace Cafe (Basement)’ is located at 12 Yulgok-ro 10-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul. Go to Anguk Station on the Orange #3 Line. Go out Exit 4 and do an immediate U-turn on the sidewalk. Then take a right in front of the Japanese Cultural Center and walk towards Changdeok-gung, but on the opposite side of the main street (Yulgok-ro) from the palace.