"I’ve been a writer for 27 years and I’m one of the older generation of writers in Korea, who’s been around forever and forever, but when I come to the West it’s like, it’s as if I’m a first time author. They’ve only read one book and it’s not even my oldest first book, nor my newest even; it’s one of my middle books that has been published as my first book in English. In their consciousness, I am a new writer or emerging writer. It’s quite funny when in Korea I have a signing and I’m the one who has the longest line, whereas here, I felt a bit sheepish. There were a few people who’d read my book, and others who said “oh I can’t wait to read your book, I just heard about it.” And I’m just not used to that, and I thought it was so cool that I can kind of re-go through the feelings of being a first time writer. You know, that kind of nervous heartbeat of who’s going to have read my book, but what will they think, and I am so lucky. Then, I get to go back to Korea and pretend to be an old established writer, then back here to pretend to be a first time writer who’s waiting eagerly for what people think.
In Korea, so much of the reading market is foreign books translated into Korean and the opposite is not the case; I am only one of two Korean writers who have been translated properly in the West. And, it’s just a bit weird when I’ve kind of read everything from that side. It’s just a sad situation where it’s more like a one-way street.
(...)
Korea’s got a kind of strange exception for any modern country, I think, where literature actually plays a big role in public life and there are so many different viewpoints within literary circles. It has a great vibrancy. For example, poetry, I feel, may be perhaps dying as a collection thing in the West, whereas in Korea, the poetry industry is growing and publishers are publishing hundreds of different collections every year.
When I was living in Korea, not out of it, I didn’t even realise it was that precious. And when I went to Japan, France, and America, that’s when I realised that, “oh Korea’s got a peculiar focus on literature. Oh no! I’m not being patriotic!” You know, like “Korea is the best”! I should be praising the unique literary life of Korea more."
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na Istanbul Review, #2.
(ou a caixinha ocidental)
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