Korean Literature discussion

This is the thread for the March book club read Return to the DallerGut Dream Department Store by Lee Mi-Ye, translated by Sandy Joosun Lee.

This book is the second in the DallerGut Dream Department Store series.

I ordered my copy from Blackwells and expect it soon. I enjoyed the first volume.
(update) Just received this today 12 March, so starting soon.

I read this at the end of last month since I needed something I knew I would like. I got my copy during my visit to Korea, and I was so excited to find the English version there since I was unsure if it would be available in my country.

My review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

But the TL;DR is that I enjoyed this less than the first one, likely because there was more focus on world-building, and because the first one ended up becoming one of my favourite books. Nevertheless, I really enjoy Lee Mi-Ye's work, and I'm looking forward to her next works.

Chapters 3 & 4 are my favorites so far. No spoilers so I will write them up near the end of the month.

As I started the second volume of Dallergut, I was thinking that it wasn’t going to be a good as the first volume. It was as good but in a different way. You learn more about the world of Dallergut, the stories of some of the continuing characters, and, esp in chapters 3 & 4, wonderful stories where dreams are so significant in the lives of dreamers.

Sorry to be negative - but I must admit to being pretty negative on the Dallergut series generally for its influence on what gets translated.

The first book, in both Korean and then in international translation, played a key-role in the, to me frustrating trend of translated-from-Korean literature being dominated by healing novels of the 'the Magical Healing Laundromat-cum-Coffee-cum-Bookshop' ilk - as called out in an astute article in K-Book Trends:

Actually, it has only been 4 years since Korean-style healing novels began to gain popularity. The background story can be summarised as follows: Shin Kyung-Sook’s Please Look After Mom (Changbi), published in 2008, first became popular in the US, and Han Kang’s The Vegetarian (Changbi) won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize, which led to the strong performance of pure Korean literature. Then, the trend changed to healing novels with the book Dallergut Dream Department Store.

Because of this, some show concern that the demand in both domestic and international markets for Korean-style healing novels might not last long. There are also comments that readers are feeling fatigued from the repeated production of similar stories. In fact, Korean-style healing novels follow similar storylines - it is the background space familiar to people that changes, such as a store, laundromat, and convenience store. One CEO of a literary publisher said, “It may seem like a sensation, but the commercial success is only a flash in the pan compared to the performance of pure literary works that won multiple international awards.” “Literary quality is gone - in its place is only the commercial purpose of quickly producing what sells well right now,” another literary editor explained, “I hope highly sophisticated readers around the world won’t mistake healing novels for all of Korean literature.”

Paul wrote: "Sorry to be negative - but I must admit to being pretty negative on the Dallergut series generally for its influence on what gets translated.

The first book, in both Korean and then in internation..."

I hadn't heard this before, but echo the sentiment that I'm fatigued by these 'healing novels,' and miss Korean literature that added more depth as opposed to being 'feel good' novels. I just started Dallergut 2 and feel much the same as I did reading the first one, which is not that enthusiastic.

I think limiting translations to what experts in critics and highly sophisticated readers would like to show that they have read would make for a pretty boring world. Also what would there be left for critics to criticize?
As for me, if I don't like a book, especially if I know it's from a genre that I am not a fan of, I will not read it.

I somehow agree with Paul's statement. Already the first book was hard for me to finish, and to be honest, for me there was little of "healing" content in. However I will read with interest what you write about it.

My rating was from chapter 3&4. Chapter 3 stuck with me. A person would was struggling to adapt to loss of vision. This reminded me of the professor in Greek Lessons by Han Kang. I was wondering if the author had direct experience of an individual like that through a family member or friend. I have family, friends, and people in the Deaf and Deaf/Blind community who have sensory differences from most people. I have rare dreams in ASL (sign language) so I chapter 3 was thoughtful for me.
I gifted the two volumes to a friend who enjoys k-lit.

Paul wrote: "Sorry to be negative - but I must admit to being pretty negative on the Dallergut series generally for its influence on what gets translated.

The first book, in both Korean and then in internation..."

Re healing fiction, there’s a great article in the New York Times, “In Tumultuous Times, Readers Turn to ‘Healing Fiction’” by Alexandra Alter, who, according to her byline, writes about books, publishing and the literary world for the Times). (You can find the url by googling for the title, but you’ll have to create a free account to see the full text.) It focuses exclusively on Japanese healing fiction; the K-Trends piece you quote is clearly talking about Korean healing fiction, but the two are obviously related.

I looked at the publishing dates for the original and English translation dates in Japanese and Korean healing fiction books and concluded two things:

(1) The Japanese healing literature publishing fad began with Japanese author Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold (orig 2015, Engi 2019, tr. Geoffrey Trousselot), the first entry in what is as of now a five volume series). Everybody agrees on this.

(2) The first Korean healing fiction book was Hwang Bo-reum’s Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop (orig 2022, Engl 2023, tr. Shanna Tan), which was originally written after not only the original versions but also the English translations of not only Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold (orig 2015, Engl 2019 ), but also the first two (of four, to date) sequels, Tales from the Café (orig 2017,Engl 2021) and Before Your Memory Fades (orig. 2018, Engl 2022) – from which I conclude that Korean healing fiction starting with Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop was nothing more than a commercially motivated response to the success of Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold and its sequels.

A couple books that don’t fit into this simple story are worth mentioning. First, on the Japanese side, Satoshi Yagisawa’s Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (orig 2010, Engl 2023 tr. Eric Ozawa), was originally written well before Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold and the beginning of the healing fiction fad, and the Engl version at least as was marketed as healing fiction (complete with cat on cover), but focuses on a single character, which what was to become standard healing fiction does not. and follows, if anything, in the track of Hiromi Kawakami’s Nakano Thrift Shop (orig 2005, Engl 2017 tr. Allison Markin Powell).

Second, on the Korean side, Baek Sehee’s I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki: A Memoir (orig 2018, Engl 2022 tr. Anton Hur ), though taggable as healing, is not fiction, but rather a personal inspirational/self-help memoir.

And finally third, a non-Asian book that at first sight belongs in the same healing fiction category as the Japanese and Korean ones but is a little different and much better, is German author Carsten Henn’s The Door-to-Door Bookstore (orig 2021, Engl 2023 tr. Melody Shaw). It has (at least on the US paperback) a cat on the cover, but it’s a three-legged cat …

I appreciate this discussion thread.

John, I read the NYT article and thanks for the reference.
I wonder if there were (a set of) trigger events that started the Healing Novels trend in Japan that spread worldwide? I had forgotten that Before the Coffee Gets Cold started as a play. I had watched part of the film looking for a feeling on how it might have been staged.

Claire Mabey in writing for Unity Books, NZ, “One origin for the melancholic tone of these novels can be found in Japanese literary criticism, in a concept called “mono no aware”, which roughly translates to “the pathos of things”, or feeling deeply about a thing. The idea is applied to art that is acutely aware of the poignancy of time passing, the impermanent state of life, of experience, of the senses. That everything is fleeting, and inherent in those moments is beauty as well as pain. It’s this undulation of feeling that underpins Before the Coffee Gets Cold and its specific peddling of tearjerking encounters.”
(Note that I liked Before the Coffee Gets Cold but couldn’t get through the whole series.)
See: https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/01-03-...

Our local rural library director just read Yeonnam-dong's Smiley Laundromat, reserved the book for me and let me know it was waiting… We have a small k-lit, in person, book club here in the middle of nowhere. We are reading No One Writes Back in April and I hope The Cabinet in May.

Jack wrote: "I appreciate this discussion thread.

John, I read the NYT article and thanks for the reference.
I wonder if there were (a set of) trigger events that started the Healing Novels trend in Japan tha..."

My experience with Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s books is limited to a quick read of the first story in Before the Coffee Cools, but between that and the blurbs of all five books I think I understand the basic premise and formula for the series. But I don’t see any Mono no Aware in it. I have not seen any Korean healing fiction books that follow Kawaguchi’s formula, but I have seen literally dozens of K-dramas with the same basic theme of people being helped by one or another form of magic to make things right that they can no longer do in any other way. Admittedly most involve ghosts with problems and characters with the gift of seeing and hearing them, who listen to their stories and find ways to do things for them to solve their problems. This is different from Kawaguchi’s setup, but the net effect is the same, namely emotional satisfaction (and maybe even few tears) for the reader.

Re the applicability of Mono no Aware to Kawaguchi’s books and possibly other Japanese and Korean healing fiction, I’m not seeing anything that fits my own personal idea of what Mono no Aware is. I’ve never been interested in the aesthetic side of it, which is comparable to Wabi-Sabi and is largely conventional. My idea of MnoA is pretty close to the that expressed by Claire Mabey in the passage you quote. For me the basic idea is the impermanence of all things and the sad beauty of the transition of things from being to non-being. I personally experience it most strongly in the transitions of people from life to death and of the connections between people from love to loss. I felt it most of all in Yasujiro Ozu’s 1955 movie Tokyo Story, and, within literature, in Yasunari Kawabata’s novel Master of Go (orig 1951, tr. Edward G. Seidensticker 1972) and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021) [BTW note that Ishiguro is Japanese-heritage and set his early novels in Japan, but is not Japanese – even though his books often appear on the Japanese Lit display in our local bookstore]. I have never experienced it in a work of Korean literature.

As to how the Healing Literature trend got started in Japan and Korea, I’d say it’s rooted in the economics of the two countries, and particularly the transition from growth economies to stagnant and at times shrinking (recession) economies. This change began in Japan in 1990 and in Korea ten or so years later after the double whammy of the IMF crisis in 1997 and the world-wide recession in the early 2000’s.

The change came as a big shock to the people of both countries, who had come to take ever growing export economies and guarantee of good jobs (as long as you score well on your exams) for granted, and were now finding that what they thought was the path to job security for life (especially devoting themselves to scoring high on their exams) evaporate before their eyes. What they saw instead was less good jobs and more intense competition to get them, the increasingly obvious advantages that the rich had over everyone else in getting the best jobs, and the increasing likelihood that those without those advantages would compete as hard as they could and still come out with nothing – and not just no full-time job but not respectable place in their highly status-sensitive societies.

At some point Koreans started calling the new status quo “Heil Joseon” or “Hell Joseon”, and I was expecting to see a reaction to it in hard-hitting writing by young authors, but it never came. Instead, what we got was a lot of tepid dystopian near future sci-fi. (My opinion, others may disagree).

But I learned later that most Koreans these days aren’t very interested in Korean “literary fiction” (Han Kang is a big except, especially after her Nobel Prize) but were very interested in something that is not fiction at all, namely self-help and self-improvement books, and especially American and other Western books (including original as well as translated versions). Korean publishers realized this early on and fed the demand, but Western publishers looking for “Korean literature in translation”, who were already well aware of the popularity of self-help and self-improvement books at home, and had observed the breakout success of the translations of Kawaguchi’s books and other Japanese healing fiction, shifted their focus from Korean literary and genre fiction to Korean healing fiction, rooted out what little there was, got it translated, and positioned it on the coattails of the ever more popular Japanese healing lit. And that’s where we are now.