K-LIT REVIEW June Hur's 'A Crane Among Wolves' takes young adults on journey to past
The current decade has witnessed a renewed blossoming of literary works by Korean American and, increasingly, Korean Canadian writers. Prominent among the fiction of these writers are novels targeting a young adult (high school and up) and juvenile (middle school and up) readership. Some of these novels are set in the present day — at least three deal with the lives of K-pop trainees in Seoul — while others take place during cataclysmic events in the past — for example, the 1950-53 Korean War. Almost all contain a strong coming-of-age element. As a reader of mysteries that offer a strong sense of culture and place — consider, for example, the Sueno/Bascom mysteries by Martin Limón featuring two Eighth U.S. Army criminal investigators based in Seoul's Yongsan Garrison — I was delighted to come across June Hur’s young-adult mysteries set during the 1392-1910 Joseon Dynasty. I had the pleasure of studying Joseon history under James Palais during a graduate program in Korea Regional Studies at the University of Washington in the early 1980s, and the very first book he assigne
Feb 25, 2025By Bruce Fulton
