Download or read book Friend written by Paek Nam-nyong and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paek Nam-nyong’s Friend is a tale of marital intrigue, abuse, and divorce in North Korea. A woman in her thirties comes to a courthouse petitioning for a divorce. As the judge who hears her statement begins to investigate the case, the story unfolds into a broader consideration of love and marriage. The novel delves into its protagonists’ past, describing how the couple first fell in love and then how their marriage deteriorated over the years. It chronicles the toll their acrimony takes on their son and their careers alongside the story of the judge’s own marital troubles. A best-seller in North Korea, where Paek continues to live and write, Friend illuminates a side of life in the DPRK that Western readers have never before encountered. Far from being a propagandistic screed in praise of the Great Leader, Friend describes the lives of people who struggle with everyday problems such as marital woes and workplace conflicts. Instead of socialist-realist stock figures, Paek depicts complex characters who wrestle with universal questions of individual identity, the split between public and private selves, the unpredictability of existence, and the never-ending labor of maintaining a relationship. This groundbreaking translation of one of North Korea’s most popular writers offers English-language readers a page-turner full of psychological tension as well as a revealing portrait of a society that is typically seen as closed to the outside world.

Download or read book Area Handbook for North Korea written by Rinn-Sup Shinn and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Thousand Miles to Freedom written by Eunsun Kim and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2015-07-21 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eunsun Kim was born in North Korea, one of the most secretive and oppressive countries in the modern world. As a child Eunsun loved her country...despite her school field trips to public executions, daily self-criticism sessions, and the increasing gnaw of hunger as the country-wide famine escalated. By the time she was eleven years old, Eunsun's father and grandparents had died of starvation, and Eunsun was in danger of the same. Finally, her mother decided to escape North Korea with Eunsun and her sister, not knowing that they were embarking on a journey that would take them nine long years to complete. Before finally reaching South Korea and freedom, Eunsun and her family would live homeless, fall into the hands of Chinese human traffickers, survive a North Korean labor camp, and cross the deserts of Mongolia on foot. Now, Eunsun is sharing her remarkable story to give voice to the tens of millions of North Koreans still suffering in silence. Told with grace and courage, her memoir is a riveting exposé of North Korea's totalitarian regime and, ultimately, a testament to the strength and resilience of the human spirit.

Download or read book The Accusation written by Bandi and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A PEN Translates Award-winning collection of short stories about life in North Korea under Kim Jong-Il, written in secret by a dissident author. The Accusation is a revelatory work of fiction that exposes the truth of the North Korean regime. Set during the period of Kim Jong-Il’s leadership, the seven stories that make up The Accusation throw light on different aspects of life in this most bizarre and horrifying of dictatorships. One story, “Life of a Swift Seed,” tells of a war hero and former ardent Communist who plants an elm tree in his back garden to commemorate one of his brothers-in-arms. When the tree is to be cut down to make way for a power line, the man is ready to defend it with his life, leaving a family friend to decide whether to intercede. In another story, “City of Specters,” a Pyongyang mother’s young son misbehaves during a party rally, crying out when he sees a portrait of Karl Marx, whom he thinks is a monster of Korean myth known as the Eobi. In one other story, a mother attempts to feed her husband during the worst years of North Korea’s famine, and in another, a woman in a perilous situation meets the Dear Leader himself. As a whole, The Accusation is a vivid and frightening portrait of what it means to live in a completely closed-off society, and a heartbreaking yet hopeful portrayal of the humanity that persists even in such dire circumstances. “Searing fiction by an anonymous dissident . . . A fierce indictment of life in the totalitarian North.”—New York Times

Download or read book Rewriting Revolution written by Immanuel Kim and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2018-04-30 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: North Korea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), is firmly fixed in the Western imagination as a barbaric vestige of the Cold War, a “rogue” nation that refuses to abide by international norms. It is seen as belligerent and oppressive, a poor nation bent on depriving its citizens of their basic human rights and expanding its nuclear weapons program at the expense of a faltering economy. Even the North’s literary output is stigmatized and dismissed as mere propaganda literature praising the Great Leader. Immanuel Kim’s book confronts these stereotypes, offering a more complex portrayal of literature in the North based on writings from the 1960s to the present. The state, seeking to “write revolution,” prescribes grand narratives populated with characters motivated by their political commitments to the leader, the Party, the nation, and the collective. While acknowledging these qualities, Kim argues for deeper readings. In some novels and stories, he finds, the path to becoming a revolutionary hero or heroine is no longer a simple matter of formulaic plot progression; instead it is challenged, disrupted, and questioned by individual desires, decisions, doubts, and imaginations. Fiction in the 1980s in particular exhibits refreshing story lines and deeper character development along with creative approaches to delineating women, sexuality, and the family. These changes are so striking that they have ushered in what Kim calls a Golden Age of North Korean fiction. Rewriting Revolution charts the insightful literary frontiers that critically portray individuals negotiating their political and sexual identities in a revolutionary state. In this fresh and thought-provoking analysis of North Korean fiction, Kim looks past the ostensible state propaganda to explore the dynamic literary world where individuals with human emotions reside. His book fills a major lacuna and will be of interest to literary scholars and historians of East Asia, as well as to scholars of global and comparative studies in socialist countries.

Download or read book Comrades and Strangers written by Michael Harrold and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2004-08-19 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1987 Michael Harrold went to North Korea to work as English language adviser on translations of the speeches of the late President Kim Il Sung (the Great Leader) and his son and heir Kim Jong Il (then Dear Leader and now head of state). For seven years he lived in Pyongyang enjoying privileged access to the ruling classes and enjoying the confidence of the country’s young elite. In this fascinating insight into the culture of North Korea he describes the hospitality of his hosts, how they were shaken by the Velvet Revolution of 1989 and many of the fascinating characters he met from South Korean and American GI defectors to his Korean minder and socialite friends. After seven years and having been caught passing South Korean music tapes to friends and going out without his minder to places forbidden to foreigners, he was asked to leave the country.

Download or read book Inside North Korea s Theocracy written by Ra Jong-yil and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2019-05-01 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in Korean in 2016, Inside North Korea's Theocracy offers a fascinating and rare look at the lives of several of the regime's key leaders. Its primary focus is Jang Song-thaek, a talented and reform-minded member of the political ruling class who was executed in 2013. Jang was the son-in-law of North Korean founder, Kim Il-sung; brother-in-law of its second leader, Kim Jong-il; and uncle to its current leader, Kim Jong-un. The author traces Jang's life from his youth as a brilliant student in Pyongyang to his eventual marriage to Kim Kyong-hui and his rising power as a businessman to, ultimately, his untimely death. In addition to biographical sketches of Jang, his wife, and brother-in-law, Ra Jong-yil provides first-hand impressions of life in North Korea and illuminates the inner workings of its government.

Download or read book The Real North Korea written by Andrei Lankov and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Real North Korea, Lankov substitutes cold, clear analysis for the overheated rhetoric surrounding this opaque police state. Based on vast expertise, this book reveals how average North Koreans live, how their leaders rule, and how both survive

Download or read book Technical Translations written by and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Soldiers on the Cultural Front written by Tatiana Gabroussenko and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2010-07-26 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An understanding of contemporary North Korea’s literature is virtually impossible without an investigation of its formative period, 1945–1960, which saw a gradual transformation from the initial "Soviet era" to a Korean version of "national Stalinism." This turbulent epoch established a long-lasting framework for North Korean literature and set up an elaborate system of political control over literary matters, as well as over the people who served in this field. In 1946 Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) leader Kim Il Sung described the country’s writers as "soldiers on the cultural front," thus clearly defining what the nascent Communist regime expected from its intellectuals. As a result, many literary nonentities were rewarded with fame and success (often only to be relegated once again to obscurity within a few years) while many outstanding luminaries of the past were erased from the pages of official publications or even lost their lives. The Soviet cultural impact brought new tropes, artistic images, and rhetoric, which were quickly absorbed into the North Korean discourse. However, the cultural politics of the DPRK and the USSR revealed profound and irreconcilable disparities that were rooted in the different political conditions and traditions of each country. Soldiers on the Cultural Front presents the first consistent research on the early history of North Korea’s literature and literary policy in Western scholarship. It traces the introduction and development of Soviet-organized conventions in North Korean literary propaganda and investigates why the "romance with Moscow" was destined to be short lived. It reconstructs the biographies and worldviews of major personalities who shaped North Korean literature and teases these historical figures out of popular scholarly myth and misconception. The book also investigates the specific forms of control over intellectuals and literary matters in North Korea. Considering the unique phenomenon of North Korean literary critique, the author analyzes the political campaigns and purges of 1947–1960 and investigates the role of North Korean critics as "political executioners" in these events. She draws on an impressive variety and number of sources—ranging from interviews with Korean and Soviet participants, public and family archives, and memoirs to original literary and critical texts—to present a balanced and eye-opening work that will benefit those interested in not only understanding North Korean literature and society, but also rethinking forms of socialist modernity elsewhere in the world.

Download or read book Drifting House written by Krys Lee and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-02-02 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unflinching portrayal of the Korean immigrant experience from an extraordinary new talent in fiction. Spanning Korea and the United States, from the postwar era to contemporary times, Krys Lee's stunning fiction debut, Drifting House, illuminates a people torn between the traumas of their collective past and the indignities and sorrows of their present. In the title story, children escaping famine in North Korea are forced to make unthinkable sacrifices to survive. The tales set in America reveal the immigrants' unmoored existence, playing out in cramped apartments and Koreatown strip malls. A makeshift family is fractured when a shaman from the old country moves in next door. An abandoned wife enters into a fake marriage in order to find her kidnapped daughter. In the tradition of Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker and Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies, Drifting House is an unforgettable work by a gifted new writer.

Download or read book Routledge Handbook of East Asian Translation written by Ruselle Meade and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-09-05 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Routledge Handbook of East Asian Translation showcases new research and developments in translation studies within the East Asian context. This handbook draws attention to the diversity of scholarship on translation in East Asia, and its relevance to a variety of established and emerging fields. It focuses on hitherto less-explored interactions, such as intra-Asian translation encounters, translation of minority languages, and translation between East Asian and non-European languages, while also contributing to a thriving body of historical scholarship on East Asian translation traditions. Contributions reflect a growing awareness of the cultural and linguistic heterogeneity within nations, and the reality of multilingualism and plurilingualism among many communities in East Asia. A wide variety of translatorial practices are discussed, including the creative use of Chinese in Japanese-language novels, the use of translation to evade censorship online, community theatre translation, and translation of picture books. The volume also includes contributions by practitioners, who reflect on their experiences of translation and of developing training programmes for community interpreters. This handbook will appeal to researchers and students of translation and interpreting studies. Chapters are likely to be of value to those working, not only in East Asian studies, but also disciplines such as literary studies, global cultural studies, and LGBT+ studies.

Download or read book Translation and Ideology written by Sonia Cunico and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ideology has become increasingly central to work in translation studies. To date, however, most studies have focused on literary and religious texts, thus limiting wider understanding of how ideological clashes and encounters pervade any context where power inequalities are present. This special edition of The Translator deliberately focuses on ideology in the translation of a rich variety of lesser-studied genres, namely academic writing, cultural journals, legal and scientific texts, political interviews, advertisements, language policy and European Parliament discourse, in all of which translation as a social practice can be seen to shape, maintain and at times also resist and challenge the asymmetrical nature of exchanges between parties engaged in or subjected to hegemonic practices. The volume opens with two ground-breaking papers that investigate the nature and representation of truth and knowledge in the translation of the sciences, followed by two contributions which approach the issue of shifts in the translation of ideology from the standpoint of critical linguistics and critical discourse analysis, using data from political speeches and interviews and from English and Korean versions of Newsweek. Other contributions discuss the role that translation scholars can play in raising public awareness of the manipulative devices used in advertising; the way in which potentially competing institutional and individual ideologies are negotiated in the context of interpreting in the European Union; the role translation plays in shaping the politics of a multilingual nation state, with reference to Belgium; and the extent to which the concepts of norms and polysystems may be productive in investigating the link between translation and ideology, with reference to Chinese data.

Download or read book China Asia exclusive of Near East written by United States. Joint Publications Research Service and published by . This book was released on 1966 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Government Translation in South Korea written by Jinsil Choi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-04-26 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Government Translation in South Korea: A Corpus-based Study is the first book to investigate and discuss translation processes and translation products in South Korean government institutions, employing a parallel corpus-based approach. Choi identifies different agents and procedures involved in institutional translation practices, discusses linguistic and genre features of translations, and investigates changes made in translations compared to the original documents, during the two Korean presidencies of Lee Myung-bak (2008–2013) and Park Geun-hye (2013–2017). Choi’s book explores important facets of Korean government translation in the belief that practices associated with the normative meaning and concept of government translation have to be displaced into the wider understanding of the concept of translation as a social construct. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of institutional translation and critical discourse analysis–informed corpus-based translation studies, the chapters discuss the practice, process and products of Korean government translation. The Korean–English parallel corpus methodology used introduces a systemic way to analyse changes in Korean government translations, based on a personally built sentence-level tagged corpus, both qualitatively and quantitatively. This volume will be of great interest to scholars and students of translation studies as well as Korean studies.

Download or read book Interviews with North Korean Defectors written by Lim Il and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-07-21 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally compiled and written by North Korean defector and author Lim Il, this English-language edition, thoroughly annotated by Dr. Adam Zulawnik, is a fascinating collection of 34 interviews with highly prominent North Korean defectors residing in South Korea, ranging from religious figures, to artists, politicians, North Korea experts, and even divers and subway train operators. The 33 interviews herein are listed chronologically according to the interviewees' date of arrival to South Korea and span almost 70 years. The book also includes six special columns addressing key issues pertaining to North Korean defectors and their lives in South Korea, such as the relationship between North Korean defectors and their South Korean counterparts (South Korean defectors to North Korea; nomenclature (how North Korean defectors have been referred to in South Korean society over time); arrival and settlement provisions from the South Korean government; the nuanced difference between defectors, defector-residents, and the displaced; North Korean defector-residents and their position in South Korean politics; and a short biography of five notable North Korean defector-residents who were not interviewed. The English translation also contains an exclusive 34th interview with Lim Il, the source text author which was carried out towards the end of the project in October 2020. The book is a valuable testament to North Korean defector-residents and unique in that it provides a candid account of each individual’s experience. It will prove to be especially useful to students and scholars seeking to understand the complex dynamics of North Korean society and the status of exiles in South Korea, and a vital resource for students of Korean Studies.

Download or read book Asian Developments written by and published by . This book was released on 1962 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: