Have these fuckers ever written actually good literature or do they just play starcraft every day?

Sometimes they play Tekken.

so true

all of the good korean artists move to japan or the united states basically

The man Booker intnl was won by a Korean this year.

>kim chi

j e j

"The Japanese burned all the good books" = "My girlfriend lives in Canada"

Better than Bollywood or, god forbid, Africa, which is something. But let's not get carried away.

Apparently their poets are good, I've never tried to look much into them. Even if they sucked though, no Korean would never ever actually tell you that. Any foreigner who knows the language well enough to make a detailed case either way is too much of a koreaboo to be trusted. They have a long history as a literate society, so there's probably something there; unfortunately like everything else about Korea, the Chinese or the Japs have probably done it better.

There is a modern Korean literature scene, but it's even further up its own ass in terms of relevance/public notice as English lit-fic. To the extent that Koreans read anything that's not on their smart phone: it's manhwa (Korean manga, awful), translations of Chinese wuxia books, and translations of English bestsellers. Most Korean "literature" groups I've found have been substantially focused on learning English well enough to read untranslated books/do well on tests.

It's always been strange to me that the Koreans have produced so many good movies but literally all their television shows are unwatchable garbage.

>Kim Chi-Ha
His name is laughing at its own wordplay.

I heard this one is a pretty good read.

Yes, Kim Chi-ha is good. At least his early stuff. His latest christian/nationalist stuff is not too good.
I don't know if the english translations are any good; but his long poems like 5 thieves or sea of shit are really good.
Some have been adapted for the stage in a "pans'ori" style, a traditional form of korean theatre with a diction halfway between hip-hop and a strangled goat. It's actually really good.

>you have a good chunk that was forcibly burned/destroyed during Japanese occupation.
that is bull. all colonial period works are available. the only works from that period that are "lost" are stuff that was written in Japanese and that authors have tried to hide to avoid being labelled "collaborators." after Liberation.
Some works were lost during the Korean War though. A lot of what was published between 1950-1953 hasn't been recovered, but i doubt that a whole lot of them were significant in any way, unless you're a hardcore fan or a researcher.

This is good, and the translation is decent which is very rare.

There is plenty of good Korean literature, both from North and South Korea.
Although it is a very "foreign" literature, so it might not be for your taste.
Japanese literature is very much the same way.
Kawabata, Mishima, Murakami... all the Japanese authors that are popular in the West, actually did write for a Western public. They used literary techniques and an exotic image of Japan that would (and did) appeal to Western readers. But most of Japanese literature, especially until the 70's is actually very different.
Korean literature is the same way.
If you read recent, contemporary authors like Han Kang or Park Min-gyu I am sure you will like them. They have a very cosmopolitan way of writing and their works are very much global products, so I think you will enjoy them.

For not so recent stuff, a lot of the good literature is actually short stories.
Good full length novels are more rare.
But let me give you a couple of recommendations.

After war South Korean literature:

Yi Chong-jun, Your Paradise (당신들의 천국): This is the story of a leper colony on an Island off the coast of South Korea. It's based on an actual island (Sorok-do) where the Japanese set up a sanatorium to send their lepers too. The new director of the island's sanatorium wants to turn the place into a "paradise" for the lepers. But the lepers are reluctant to accept this vision of paradise that is being imposed upon them. The story shows how goodwill, generosity and hardwork can be completely misguided.

Yi Mun-yol, Our Twisted Hero (우리들의 일그러진 영웅): This is the story of a kid who goes to a school entirely dominated by a bully. He tries to fight the bully but soon finds out that the other bullied students and even the teachers all support the bully. Sensing that resisting is vain, he becomes the bully's henchman and becomes very successful at school. My summary is a bit shitty, but you have to read it against the backdrop of Korea's authoritarian government at the time. It's basically a story about power, resistance and submission. The author himself is ultra-conservative so what you get is not a simple denunciation of dictatorship and power, but rather a very complex look at how people submit to authority, at what corruption can bring (both advantages and disadvantages), etc... There is no moral per se, just a gut-wrenchingly accurate representation of power relationships in society through the metaphor of school life.

I think both were turned into movies, so you can check the movies out too if you want.

(continued)

>Apparently their poets are good, I've never tried to look much into them.
Yes there are plenty of great Korean poets.
The problem is that:
1. The translations are often terrible
2. The poets that are famous (and therefore translated) are "national" poets rather than good poets. I.e. poets that were somehow involved in resisting the Japanese empire or that used nationalistic themes. But very often their poetry is not very good.
3. Some can be hard to understand even in translation because they refer to things that are peculiar to Korean culture.

For example, all Koreans will tell you that Kim So-wol is the greatest poet of Korea, while it's really shitty. Boring lyrical poetry about mountains and birds and his mother.

But you can read Han Yong-Un. Buddhist monk, influenced by Tagore and western philosophy. Deep metaphysical reflexions on otherness, love, submission and freedom. The English translation is not very good (English translators always translate in an overly "literary" way, so you get something that sounds like a Shakespeare's sonnet when the original was actually written in a very plain, straightforward language), but it's not that bad.

Both Han Young-un and Kim So-wol are from the early 20th century.

>"The Japanese burned all the good books" = "My girlfriend lives in Canada"
kek

(continued)

Continuing with post-war South Korean literature.
One English professor in Korea and translator of Korean literature has put several short stories he translated on his website.
They are available for free, so I will give you the link and a few recommendations:
anthony.sogang.ac.kr/KoreanFiction.htm

Kim Tong-ni:
Probably one of the greatest 20th century Korean writers. Writes in a style that mixes traditional and modern. Really influenced by Nietzschean vitalism and modernism. Uses themes from traditional Korean themes (shamanism, legends...) so he is well liked outside of Korea (he's been criticized for being too nationalist in Korea lately).
You can find good stories here:
ekoreajournal.net/issue/view_pop.htm?Idx=2607 (The post horse curse is a curse that means you have to travel all the time and can't stand in a fixed location. This is a story about a guy who has this curse and his mother's efforts to "fix" him in a place and a job. Also has some incestuous backstory. Really great short story).

anthony.sogang.ac.kr/Hwangtogi.pdf (about two guys who just enjoy fighting. their only joy in life is to fight violently in a very self-destructive way)

ekoreajournal.net/issue/view_pop.htm?Idx=919 (The picture of the shaman, about a shaman who tries to do an exorcism to cure her son who became a christian and bring him back to traditional beliefs).

(Continued)

For early twentieth century Korean prose, you can also get anthologies of short stories.

uhpress.hawaii.edu/p-244-9780824820718.aspx
uhpress.hawaii.edu/p-6758-9781933947495.aspx
uhpress.hawaii.edu/p-9045-9781933947679.aspx

Not all of them are necessarily great, but they're from the time when Korean literature became literature in a sense. It's interesting to see the different ways writers experimented and also the strong influence of socialism on this early literature.

I would recommend reading a bit more on Korean history before you start reading those. Although some of them are definitely enjoyable "as is".

(Continued)

Also there have been some translations of North Korean literature lately.
While you may think it's terrible, it is actually very much worth reading.
I would recommend this one:

wordswithoutborders.org/article/second-encounter

The website has a couple more short stories from Best Korea, so you can check them out.
If you speak German or French, there are more North Korean works translated in those language.
North Korea also translates some of its own literature, but the quality of the translation is not very good and the works chosen are not the most interesting.

Sounds nice, where can I download it?
Libgen shows nothing.

(Continued)

It's all a bit long and scattered so I will stop here.
If you have more questions if will check back in later.

I think myanonamouse had a couple torrents with Korean literature but I'm not sure what titles were available.

I will check and let you know

>...but his long poems like 5 thieves or sea of shit are really good.
>sea of shit

I don't believe I've ever seen a country with a greater cultural fascination on scatological subject matter than Korea.

Where's the best place on the Internet for Korean literature? I haven't had any luck looking on the Korean internet.

Not to mention philosophy.

Besides regurgitating neoconfucianism, what have they offered?
It seems like high culture is non-existent there.

There really isn't much available online in English.

anthony.sogang.ac.kr/KoreanFiction.htm
I've given this earlier. Good, yet limited, selection for short stories and poems. He has more that aren't listed on this page if you look around his website (which is a mess).

ktlit.com/
This is more of a review site for contemporary Korean literature. Sometimes the guy would give a link to a short story that's translated on the web, but that's it.
I think the guy doesn't speak Korean and his comments are usually very basic and not very insightful. But it's still a good place to start if you're looking for recommendations.

muse.jhu.edu/journal/429
This is an academic journal on Korean literature and culture. They publish translations of short stories and poems almost every issue.
Just browse the issues' index on muse and then you can use sci-hub.ac to access the full articles that are behind a paywall.

ekoreajournal.net
This is an academic journal on Korea but it has some translations. It's a bitch to find the literary texts among all the academic articles though.

If you can read Korean, you can find older literature on the Korean internet. Stuff from the 1920's and 30's.
The national library of Korea's website has many old literary magazines in digital format that are freely accessible.
North Korean websites like uriminzokkiri also have plenty of novels and short stories available. Some of them are actually worth reading.
For more recent stuff, you might be able to find bestsellers on file sharing sites like filenori or wedisk, but I wouldn't expect much.

Otherwise I'm afraid you'll just have to buy the books or get them from your local library...

The silhak school has produced some very interesting insights if you care to bring their texts within the larger context of philosophical discussions within the East Asian region at the time. Korean buddhism also has a lot to offer. The main problem is that not only are very few of these texts available in translation, there is a lack of decent exegesis to explain their importance and contribution to philosophy.
During the colonial period, you had philosophers like Seo Insik who developed an original philosophy influenced by Bergson, Heidegger and Nishida (Kyoto School). A guy like Kim Peombu built a philosophy influenced by traditional Eastern thought and Jamesian modernism (which in turn influenced the poet Kim Chiha mentioned above). Again, they're not very well known because as a colony, Korean thought stayed in Korea.

I'm not saying that these are Immanuel Kant's undeservedly obscured from philosophical history. But you have to understand the way philosophy and philosophical value is produced and how Korea, as a historically "dominated" region was in a more marginal position than say, Japan, on the global philosophical scene. It's a bit much to ask "what have they offered" when hardly anyone ever cared about what they wrote in the first place.

As for the rest of "high-art" some of the best-selling contemporary artists are Korean, plenty of the best performers in classical music are Korean, video art was invented by a Korean... In any case the discussion is a bit futile as applying a 21st century, Western conception of "high culture" to the whole artistic production of a different nation does not make much sense.

The Nanjung ilgi: War diary of Admiral Yi Sun-sin

Korea is a useless country and Koreans are subhuman. Chinese and Japanese literature is where it's at.

This.

Reminder that any Korean Literature in the news is the result of a full court press by Govt Ministries because Koreans dont write shit. Very possible that OP is a plant.

newyorker.com/books/page-turner/can-a-big-government-push-bring-the-nobel-prize-in-literature-to-south-korea

How is that different from any other country?

Starcraft every day

Britain and the US are in a television golden age.

I found most of the British TV of the last decade unwatchable.

I pretty much just watch old movies and cartoons now.