Sci-fi writer Kim Cho-yeop explores limits of coexistence at Seoul International Writers’ Festival
Author Kim Cho-yeop, right, speaks during a book talk at the Seoul Internattional Writers’ Festival in Seoul, Sunday. Left is Sarah Pinsker, author of “A Song for a New Day.” Korea Times photo by Kim Se-jeong
Two award-winning science-fiction writers, Korea’s Kim Cho-yeop and America’s Sarah Pinsker, delved into the uncomfortable, often contradictory realities of coexistence, truth and imagination during a book talk as part of the Seoul International Writers’ Festival, Sunday.
Kim, one of Korea’s most prominent science fiction writers, imagined dispatchers exploring an Earth blanketed in cosmic dust and encountering humans struggling under attacks from spores born of that dust in her 2023 novel, “Ground Explorers.” The book is yet to be translated into English.
Asked about her views on coexistence with others, Kim described it as neither idealized nor easy.
“Far from being beautiful, peaceful or soft, coexistence can be quite violent and unpleasant,” she said. “But whether we coexist or not is not a matter of choice. We just have to live together and deal with it. And that’s the bottom line in the story.”
Kim made her literary debut in 2017 with “If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light,” a bestselling short story collection that won her the Galaxy Award for Most Popular Foreign Writer in China in 2023 and is now slated for English release in April 2026 in a translation by Anton Hur.
Born to a musician father and a writer mother, she studied chemistry and biochemistry at the Pohang University of Science and Technology, one of Korea’s leading institutions for science and engineering. Though her background in science shaped her voice as a science fiction author, Kim admitted it can sometimes feel like a constraint rather than an asset.
“Because I studied science, I find my thoughts become limited,” she said. “So I try to tell myself, 'This story may be scientifically impossible, but let me imagine it’s possible.'”
The conversation also touched on contemporary social issues such as fake news and political polarization.
“A society has many groups of people with different thoughts. It’s okay for different groups to believe different things,” Kim said, reflecting on Korea’s sharply divided political landscape.
“The problem is that each group refuses to consider that it might be wrong, and instead believes its views are the absolute truth.”
Pinsker, who won the 2019 Nebula Award for “A Song for a New Day” and the 2020 Philip K. Dick Award for her short story collection “Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea,” joined the discussion and echoed Kim’s view on the power of science fiction.
“By putting aliens or new technology — or things we don’t yet understand — into stories, it lets us understand ourselves a little bit better,” Pinsker said.
The literary festival, running through Wednesday, features Korean writers Hyun Ki-young, Kim Soom and Lee Jenny alongside international names such as Yan Lianke of China and Victoria Mas of France. Organized by the Literature Translation Institute of Korea, the event promotes dialogue across languages and literary traditions.