![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Across 25 short stories and 80 years of writing, the book spans the country's devastating colonisation by Japan in 1910 the bifurcation of the country into North and South ahead of the Korean War in 1950 the coup d'état of 1961 that prefaced decades of military dictatorships in the South and the rapid and painful modernisation process that led to the beginning of democratisation in 1987. One need only to skim the two-page historical chronology that opens the Penguin volume to get an understanding of the extensive disruption the country has endured in the 20th Century. And as Fulton and Lee tell BBC Culture, it's one that fosters a greater understanding of the country's development over the past century. With the Booker International Prize continuing to spotlight Korean storytelling in 2023, an exciting new chapter of the K-culture revolution is unfolding. The history witnessed via The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories, edited and curated by Bruce Fulton, parallels that observed in one of the great works of contemporary Korean long-form fiction: Min Jin Lee's Pachinko (season two of Apple TV+'s acclaimed adaptation wraps filming this month). This spring, Penguin Classics published their first collection of modern Korean literature in the UK – a short story anthology that brings the country’s dramatic 20th Century to life. But just as the V&A's Hallyu! The Korean Wave exhibition – which has dazzled UK visitors with ephemera from Parasite and Squid Game and rooms blasting BTS since September 2022 – comes to a close, another branch of K-culture, less concerned with audio-visual spectacle, is bringing the country's fascinating history into greater focus. This year, as Netflix pledged a $2.5bn investment in Korean visual media in the same month that Blackpink's headline performance at Coachella marked a milestone in the festival's representation of Asian music, it would appear that South Korea's pop culture revolution is in full force. ![]()
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