my timesThe Korea Times
Lifestyle

People & Events

38th Korean Literature Translation Award Winners

The Korea Times is happy to present the winning works of the 38th Korean Literature Translation Awards: Mun Hyung-ryul’s “Bicyling Over the Ocean,” translated by John Hak-sung Cha was selected as the Grand Prize winner in the fiction category; and Ko Jae-jong’s “Splendor,” translated by Yoon Chae-eun and William Morley as the Grand Prize winners in the poetry category. As part of our 57th anniversary edition of The Korea Times, we are proud to publish three of the four winning poems in both their translated and original Korean forms. We also congratulate Blair Lee for translating Kim Jung-hyuk’s “Eskimo, This is the End,” and Jae-won Edward Chung for translating Hwang Jung-eun’s “The Door.” Lee and Chung are our proud winners of the Commendation Awards in the fiction category. The Korea Times and the Korea Exchange Bank, which sponsored the contest, would like to thank Brother Anthony, emeritus professor at Sogang University and professor Min Eun-kyung of Seoul National University, who took time out of their busy schedules to judge this year’s contest. We congratulate all t

Oct 31, 2007

About the Authors

Fiction Grand Prize Mun Hyung-ryul, 52, from Goryeong, Gyeongsang Province, first won a literary contest run by the Maeil Newspaper with the children's story ``Wind Is Blowing'' in 1975, when he was a high school student. He also won three more newspaper literary competitions in 1982 and 1984. Mun graduated from Yeongnam University with a bachelors degree in sociology in 1984, and a masters degree in philosophy in 1988. He officially stepped into the literary circle with ``Silmyeonggi'' (The Story of Losing Eyesight) in 1983. Mun published many novels and poems in the 1980s and early 1990s. Known as the last Romanist novelist, Mun was once a high school social studies teacher and an editorial writer at the Yeongnam Ilbo. He released ``Bicycling Over the Ocean'' in 1994. Mun stopped writing for about 10 years but came back with the book ``Yeonjeok'' in 2006. Commendation Award Fiction Novelist Kim Jung-hyuk, born in 1971, Gimcheon, Gyeongsang Province, graduated from Keimyung University in Daegu with a bachelors degree in Korean Language and Literature. Kim debuted in 2000 by

Oct 31, 2007

Aspiring Writer Alternates With Translating Fiction

Commendation Awards (Fiction) By Sa Eun-young Staff Reporter Being a good translator and a talented writer seem to go hand in hand, and it proves true with the winner of the commendation prize in fiction at this year's Translation Awards. Jae-won Edward Chung, 27, who is finishing up his masters degree in creative writing at Columbia University in New York, decided to use this talent to translate Korean literature. His background provided a firm foundation for his translation work. Born in Seoul, he immigrated to the United States when he was 10-years-old and continued to speak Korean at home with his parents, which explains his fluency in both languages. He returned to Korea four months ago to participate in a fellowship program on Korean literature translations hosted by the International Communication Foundation, Korea. Chung also translates for the Korean Literature Translation Institute. Chung came across ``The Door" by Hwang Jung-eun while reading a collection of short fiction and was attracted to the manner in which it seemed to depart from realism and communi

Oct 31, 2007

English Major Delves Into, Translates Korean Fiction

By Sa Eun-young Staff Reporter Blair Lee, 36, brought his background in English Literature to translating, which garnered him the commendation award in fiction in the 2007 Korean Literature Translation Award. Born in Seoul, Lee moved to Toronto, Canada, with his family when he was four, where he received his schooling. An English Literature major at the University of Toronto, he polished his Korean skills through participating in a language program at Yonsei University. On top of that, he took a yearlong course at the Korea Literature Translation Institute, which he also said was helpful. `` I was interested in literature because that was my background, and I was interested in understanding Korean literature better. It was like a hobby to study literature and translate for fun on my own,'' Lee said. Lee first came in touch with Korean Literature when he took a course during his undergraduate years, where he learned about Korean short stories and poetry through English translations. It was also then that he learned from his parents that his mother's uncle was Korean poet

Oct 31, 2007

Teamwork Recreates Korean Poems in English

Interview With Grand Prize Winner in Poetery: Yoon Chae-eun/ William Morley By Sa Eun-young Staff Reporter Poet Ko Jae-jong's poems have been rendered into English through the collaboration of an American and Korean, a feat for which they earned grand prize in the poetry category of the 2007 Korean Literature Translation Awards. Yoon Chae-eun, 24, and William Morley, 25, admitted that it was not an easy task yet an extremely rewarding one to translate Ko's poems, but the enormous respect they had for the poems helped carried through their efforts. The two friends met in 2003 when Yoon, then an English Literature and Politics major at Ewha Womans University, went to the United States to volunteer at a camp for the disabled where Morley was also helping out. They kept in touch until Morley, also a literature major at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire, came to Korea in 2006 amid travels around Asia. As Morley was not fluent in Korean, Yoon set out to select a piece, which she confessed was one of the toughest parts of the competition. ``I remember spending over a we

Oct 31, 2007

Ex-Ambassador Fights Yellow Dust

By Kang Shin-who Staff Reporter A former Korean ambassador to China has been fighting the yellow dust phenomenon for 10 years. Kwon Byong-hyon, 69, chairman of Korea-China Culture & Youth Association (Future Forest), said desertification is certainly man-made and everybody should take responsibility for it in an interview with The Korea Times, Monday. As part of his efforts, Kwon has been sending Korean college students to China on tree-planting projects and environmental seminars since 2002 along with the establishment of Future Forest, an environmental organization. The organization has annually invited Chinese students highly recognized by the Communist Youth League of China, a renowned group of top students in the country, to Korea. ``Korean and Chinese youngsters should take the lead in protecting our environment against rapid desertification. I believe future leaders should be concerned about problems in the environment. This is why I launched exchange programs for elite students from both countries,’’ Kwon said. When Kwon arrived Beijing as the new ambassador

Oct 31, 2007

Wisdom of Age Brought to Translation

Interview With Grand Prize Winner in Fiction: John Hak-sung Cha By Sa Eun-young Staff Reporter The phrase ``born to be a writer" well befits Hak-sung John Cha, who won the grand prize in the fiction category of the 2007 Korean Literature Translation Awards. The 62-year-old writer and translator's office is based in San Francisco, but he visits Seoul twice a year ― and to speak of impeccable timing, he walked through the airport doors just a day before The Korea Times contacted him to inform him of his award. Born in YongJung in Manchuria, he went to the United States when he was 16, and although he had always wanted to write he studied engineering and worked as an engineer. He was 44 when he finally kicked off his writing career, and now he writes and sometimes translates. It all started when he translated Chu Yo-sup's popular piece into English, which he titled ``Mother and Sarang Guest," for a literature translation contest hosted by The Korean Culture and Arts Foundation in 1989. ``That was a good experience for me, it was all my mother's fault," he said wit

Oct 31, 2007

Judges Report 2007

By Brother Anthony and Professor Min Eun-kyung We were happy to see that this year, too, a good number of people have submitted work for The Korea Times Translation Awards. Generally speaking, it seems that there are more and more good translations being made of Korean literature, even though it remains true that very few publishers in the English-speaking world show any interest in them. This year, the overall quality of the submissions was really encouraging. Of course, there are always a few entries where the quality of the English is quite poor, allowing us to establish an initial shortlist. This year, however, for fiction, we still found ourselves confronted with eight entries after that first elimination, out of a total of fifteen. With the poetry, too, it was not very easy to establish any kind of shortlist. We have no idea as to the identity of the translators while we are judging the entries. Also, we try not to let ourselves be unduly influenced by the choice of writer or work. We are always looking for translations which are both accurate and faithful t

Oct 31, 2007

38th Korean Literature Translation Award Winners

The Korea Times is happy to present the winning works of the 38th Korean Literature Translation Awards: Mun Hyung-ryul's ``Bicycling Over the Ocean," translated by John Hak-sung Cha was selected as the Grand Prize winner in the fiction category; and Ko Jae-jong's ``Splendor," translated by Yoon Chae-eun and William Morley as the Grand Prize winners in the poetry category. As part of our 57th anniversary edition of The Korea Times, we are proud to publish three of the four winning poems in both their translated and original Korean forms. We also congratulate Blair Lee for translating Kim Jung-hyuk's ``Eskimo, This is the End," and Jae-won Edward Chung for translating Hwang Jung-eun's ``The Door." Lee and Chung are our proud winners of the Commendation Awards in the fiction category. The Korea Times and the Korea Exchange Bank, which sponsored the contest, would like to thank Brother Anthony and professor Min Eun-kyung of Seoul National University, who took time out of their busy schedules to judge this year's contest. We congratulate all the winners and hope that more

Oct 31, 2007

Yahoo Korea Prepares Second Leap

By Cho Jin-seo Staff Reporter Kim Jin-soo is a rare breed for a leader of an Internet firm. He is not a young Bill Gates type who wears jeans with an MP3 player in his pocket. Nor is he a typical businessman with an overseas MBA degree or a career spanning consulting firms and conglomerates. Rather, Kim thinks of himself more as an anthropologist, who studies the behavior of consumers and the relationship between humans and computers. Taking the job of representative director of Yahoo Korea this May, he believes that it is time for Korean Internet firms to turn their eyes to what the consumers really need from technology itself. Yahoo can set a good example of this, he hopes. ``Technology can do many things but not all of them can be successful. You have to understand people first. You must understand their need before introducing new services,'' he said in an interview commemorating the 10th anniversary of Yahoo Korea. Kim joined the company in 2001 after earning a Ph.D. degree in cognitive science from Yonsei University. His major was human-computer interaction, an i

Oct 31, 2007
previous page
553554555556557
next page

Most Read in Lifestyle