Sugar-dusted Korean bestseller 'To the Moon' takes off in English edition

Author Jang Ryu-jin, left, and translator Sean Lin Halbert pose during an interview at The Korea Times' headquarters in central Seoul in August. Halbert translated Jang's novel "To the Moon" into English. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

When three women pool their modest salaries to gamble on cryptocurrency, it’s less about chasing profits than chasing a future that always seems just out of reach. “To the Moon,” the first novel novel by Korean writer Jang Ryu-jin published in an English edition, is a bittersweet tale of class, sisterhood and fragile hope in the face of stagnant wages and stalled dreams.

Before she wrote about women tracking crypto charts instead of office clocks, Jang was living that very office life herself — working at a tech company in Pangyo, often dubbed Korea’s Silicon Valley.

When her first short story “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work” appeared on the Changbi Publisher’s website in 2018, it quickly went viral. Readers, many of them young office workers, saw themselves in her honest, sharply observed depiction of corporate life — a realism so vivid that it briefly caused the website to crash due to the overwhelming traffic.

Now, with “To the Moon” published in English by Bloomsbury in June, Jang’s stories are reaching a wider readership — thanks in no small part to translator Sean Lin Halbert, who brings the novel’s emotional nuance and cultural specificity to life with clarity and care.

Cover of the English edition of Jang Ryu-jin's novel "To the Moon," translated by Sean Lin Halbert / Courtesy of Bloomsbury

Fantasy rooted in reality

Jang describes “To the Moon” as her version of “realism fantasy.”

“I can’t write characters who fly into space,” she said in an interview with The Korea Times. “But I can write about something that feels just as impossible, yet could still happen in the real world. That’s my kind of realism fantasy.”

The novel was born from her own experience of economic instability as a young adult during the 2008 global financial crisis.

“When I started working after graduation, there was never enough money left by the end of the month. I used to wish someone would just give me a million won,” she recalled. “So I imagined a story where someone actually gets that gift. That’s the beauty of fiction — I can do whatever I want with it.”

In “To the Moon,” three women stuck in mundane office jobs at a confectionery company decide to invest their savings in cryptocurrency, hoping to ride it “to the moon.” From the beginning, Jang knew she wanted to give them a happy ending, a rare choice in contemporary fiction

“There are so many stories where people are punished just for wanting more,” she said. “I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to give these women a break, just once.”

But Jang didn’t want to offer neat escapism. She likens the novel to a to a sugar-coated corndog, referencing a scene in which the lead character asks for “more sugar, please.”

“The idea of a corndog rolled in sugar and setting the story in a confectionery company were all intentional,” she said. “I wanted to write something sweet, but also leave behind that cloying, sticky feeling you get after eating too much dessert. That aftertaste — the thoughts and emotions that linger after closing the book — that’s part of the reading experience too.”

Translating the invisible

For translator Halbert, the opportunity to work on "To the Moon" came through Changbi Publishers, which had released Jang’s original Korean edition and previously collaborated with him on literary translations. Halbert, who won The Korea Times Modern Korean Literature Translation Award in 2018, was initially asked to translate a short sample of the novel, but that quickly expanded into the full manuscript.

“I felt like I had won the lottery,” Halbert said, gesturing toward the finished book.

But bringing the novel into English was no easy task.

“I have to admit, when I first read it, I didn’t quite get the importance of cryptocurrency,” he said.

“The three women don’t have the means for social mobility. They can’t go up the ladder through their jobs or through other ways such as real estate. But cryptocurrency is a way that they can get rich quick. I didn’t realize at first that that was out of desperation.”

Covers of international editions of Jang Ryu-jin's "To the Moon," from top left clockwise, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, Germany, Russia and Turkey / Courtesy of publishers

Halbert picked the two most difficult parts of the translation process — handling Korea's distinct cultural references, particularly around daily life and housing, and the book’s narrative voice.

In “To the Moon,” protagonist Dahae dreams of living in an apartment with a small threshold separating the front door from the living space, a simple barrier to keep dust from shoes out. It’s a modest wish, but many studio apartments in Korea lack even that basic distinction.

“But in the U.S., for example, we don’t have that. And the desire to not want dirt to come into your room is so central in this book,” he explained.

Other details, such as tooth brushing after lunch or office coffee runs, also posed translation dilemmas, leaving Halbert to decide when to intervene and when to let it be foreign.

“There’s a scene about choosing between Starbucks and Coffee Bean. If you don’t realize that everyone goes to get coffee, you might miss what’s really happening here,” he said. “(Dahae) decides to skip brushing her teeth after lunch. Americans — at least from what I know — usually only do that in the morning and at night. So it might seem kind of pointless in the text, but in Korea, everyone does it.”

The novel’s interior monologue also proved tricky. “There’s a lot of internal monologue — characters talking to themselves — which comes off really natural in the Korean book,” he said. “In English, it’s a little harder to render … You have to have a lot of extra words to show their process. And then it gets really clunky.”

To balance this, Halbert often chose to trust the reader’s intuition.

“I don’t want to baby the reader. I assume that hopefully they can just understand this is a thing ... So sometimes I just leave it. If they understand it, they understand it. If they don’t, that’s okay.”

Stories that travel

"To the Moon" is the first of Jang’s books to be published in English — despite already translated into and published in Japanese, Chinese, Turkish, Spanish, German, Thai and more — and she hopes it won’t be the last.

“I never imagined it would be translated, so it’s an honor. My novels feel like my children and now they are going far away,” she said. “English is a global language, so I feel like it can reach even further. Having an English edition opens doors to more countries as well.”

Jang compares her writing to a song — not the kind people go to concerts to hear, but the kind they quietly sing along to.

“I think I’m the latter. Readers abroad often tell me their own stories, saying they’ve gone through similar things or felt the same emotions. Even in this realistic yet unreal story, they find emotional resonance.”

That sense of connection surprised translator Halbert as well.

“I think corporate life is really different in Korea and the U.S.,” he said. “But it’s still the same in many ways — having bad bosses, being expected to work long hours, dealing with unfair or weird rules at work. Everyone can understand that, even if it looks a little different.”

More of Jang’s works are already in the translation pipeline and the success of "To the Moon," particularly with a K-drama adaptation airing now, could open even more doors.

Jang's storytelling continues to evolve. Her third work of fiction, “A Driving Course” (2023), is a collection of six short stories that once again explore quiet revelations and moments of self-discovery, all while maintaining her signature sharp eye on the rhythms of modern life. More recently, she turned to nonfiction with “The Season We Sparkle” (2025, translated title), a luminous essay tracing her trip to Finland with a close friend.

As Jang continues to write — with the same warmth, wit and emotional clarity — her stories will continue to resonate with readers not only in Korea, but, through translations, around the world.