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Cuentos de la noche escalofriante

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80 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2014

11 people want to read

About the author

Lee Ho-cheol

8 books
소설가 이호철

Lee Ho-cheol (Hangul: 이호철), born in 1932 in North Korea, is a South Korean writer who has won several awards.

Lee Ho-cheol was born on March 15, 1932 in Wonsan, Hamgyeongnam-do, North Korea and lived through the tragedy of the ideological conflict in Korea. His father refused to cooperate with Northern communists and his family had their property confiscated and were chased out of their hometown. During the war, Lee Hocheol was drafted into the North Korean army and sent to the front in the South. He eventually rejoined his family in his native town, but ultimately decided to move to South Korea by himself. A prolific writer as well as an activist, he participated in the democracy movement against the dictatorial regime of President Park Chung-hee and spent most of the 1970s in the prison. In the 1980s, after the army general Chun Doo-hwan gained power through a coup d’etat, Lee Ho-cheol continued to battle against military dictatorship despite government persecution, and became actively involved in organizations such as the Association of Writers for Literature of Freedom and Practice (Jayu silcheon munin hyeobuihoe).

Lee Cho-heol made his debut in 1955 with the story Leaving Home, and was known as a writer who directly confronted and described reality. His early stories explored the emotional toll of the Korean War on individuals and illuminated the conflict between those who benefited from the war and those who were ruined by it. National Division also became one of his themes and “Panmunjeom” (Panmunjeom, 1961), a story of a South Korean reporter’s visit to the DMZ and his brief but warm encounter with a female reporter from the North, is one of his most famous stories. Northerners, Southerners, similarly, focused on issues of the split from the perspective of a young Korean soldier. Lee was also interested in the effects of economic success, sometimes writing about the petit bourgeoisie becoming hardened by hollow values and pursuit of money.

(from Wikipedia)

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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
Profile Image for César Carranza.
341 reviews68 followers
October 24, 2016
Es un buen libro, seis cuentos que de hacen pensar en el escalofrío de un refugiado de guerra, todos los cuentos tienen por tema refugiados producto de la separación entre las dos Coreas.
Si bien la edición no es precisamente buena, el contenido es interesante.
Profile Image for Frida.
77 reviews
February 17, 2026
"Cuentos de la noche tenebrosa", lo tomé de la biblioteca pues el nombre me pareció interesante, me llevé una grata sorpresa.

Son una serie de narraciones cortas las cuales coinciden en la dificultad y desamparo vivido después y durante la Guerra Civil de las dos Coreas. No puedo decir que todos estos cuentos me encantaron, no terminé de conectar con algunos de ellos, pero esto no me impide apreciar varios de ellos, en especial el que hablaba sobre la abuela que esperaba que su nieto volviera de la guerra (no recuerdo su nombre).
Profile Image for Carlos.
803 reviews30 followers
April 7, 2016
El norcoreano Lee Ho-Cheol aborda en su obra los diversos puntos de vista del conflicto entre las dos Coreas (en particular, desde los refugiados que huyen al sur). Por ello, los relatos de “Cuentos de la noche escalofriante” no refieren historias de terror, pero sí son terroríficas: hermanos que se encuentran cuando ambos son hechos prisioneros de guerra, una abuela que muere esperando inútilmente el retorno del nieto (también del conflicto bélico), hombres que huyen de la frontera escondiéndose en los vagones de los trenes, un oficial que debe obedecer las órdenes de un general “imbécil”, mucho más joven que él, pero que ha escalado dentro de la milicia (y el partido), condenados que deben cavar sus propias tumbas… Seis estremecedoras historias “que unen aspectos y sucesos como la vida y la muerte, los estragos del conflicto entre las dos Coreas, el devenir temporal y la desesperanza que conlleva”.
Los textos, traducidos por Hae Myoung Yu gracias al apoyo del Literature Translation Institute de Corea, tienen, sin embargo, dos traspiés infranqueables: por un lado, el pésimo cuidado de la edición. Por doquier se encuentran erratas que molestan como piquetes de mosquito, que incluso interrumpen el relato de forma impúdica. Asimismo, la traducción está muy “a la mexicana”, pues incluye maldiciones como “¡pendejo!” y “¡chinga tu madre!”, que, al menos para quien esto escribe, están completamente descontextualizadas (por más que forcé a mi pobre cerebrito, no me pude imaginar a los coreanos gritando semejantes improperios tan nuestros). Quizá hubiera funcionado mejor maldecir como gachupín, para que se sintiera esa distancia con respecto a una cultura que nos resulta harto remota.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews