INTERVIEW Bora Chung shows us what sci-fi with its fists raised looks like

Bora Chung is the author of the 2022 International Booker Prize- and 2023 National Book Award-nominated short story collection "Cursed Bunny." This year, her new collection "Your Utopia" is one of six finalists for the Philip K. Dick Award. Courtesy of Hyeyoung

An AI-powered elevator harbors an unrequited love for an apartment resident it ferries up and down each day. It hides secrets in its coded database, pines in tender silence and serenades her with a 1941 poem by a Polish resistance fighter — its language so achingly sensuous, “it feels like gold and silver melting into verse” (“A Song for Sleep”).

Elsewhere, at a high-tech research institute, a low-level employee battles cosmic bureaucracy to plan a flashy gala, only to be swept into a crime she didn’t commit. But she can’t be fired. Not now, not ever (“The Center for Immortality Research”).

The cover of Bora Chung's "Your Utopia" / Courtesy of Algonquin Books

Welcome to “Your Utopia” — another wonderfully bizarre collection of short stories from Bora Chung, the acclaimed Korean author of “Cursed Bunny.” Deftly rendered into English by Anton Hur, the collection, like its International Booker Prize- and National Book Award-nominated predecessor, traverses a landscape where the uncanny meets droll humor and tenderness lurks in the unlikeliest places.

The eight featured stories leap across fantastical worlds — from space cannibalism to a tense standoff between greedy genetically modified organism (GMO) corporations and walking, talking nature. Each is as tech-driven as it is indelibly human.

But if Chung had to choose the one story that lingered with her the most, it would be “To Meet Her” — a futuristic tribute to Byun Hee-soo, Korea’s first openly transgender soldier, who ended her life at age 23 after being forcibly discharged from the military.

It’s a passage from that story that the writer will recite this Friday in Washington, during the Philip K. Dick Award ceremony, where “Your Utopia” has been selected as one of the six finalists. The annual prize, named after the iconic American sci-fi visionary, honors distinguished works of science fiction published in paperback in the U.S.

Chung is the first-ever Korean nominee in the award’s 42-year history.

“I wrote ‘To Meet Her’ for the collection in March 2021, at a time when I couldn’t think about anything else; my mind was utterly consumed by the shock of Byun’s fate,” Chung told The Korea Times in an interview in Seoul, Sunday.

“I believe that, whether in Korea or the U.S., those who oppose LGBTQ communities often don’t do so out of well-formed ideology or conviction. Rather, they assume no one will stand up for these people, so they feel safe targeting them first. And once that begins, the next minorities will follow, like dominoes. I wanted to show that we won’t just sit back and do nothing when that first line is crossed.”

“To Meet Her” is Chung’s sci-fi-inflected message of such solidarity, set in a near future where deepfake technologies, bone-stitching nanobots and 120-year-old activists strolling down the street have become common sights.

“And you know what the Philip K. Dick Award organizer told me? That science fiction has always been political. I liked that,” she added.

Protesters rally at the National Assembly in Yeouido, Seoul, Dec. 14, 2024, calling for the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol. Korea Times photo by Jung Da-bin

In fact, one way the writer describes her own brand of science fiction is “demonstration sci-fi” — a term shaped by her 12 years as a political activist, attending rallies for victims of the 2014 Sewol ferry disaster and LGBTQ rights, as well as campaigns for a comprehensive anti-discrimination law and workplace safety reform.

That same period saw Korea roiled by not one but two waves of nationwide protests calling for presidential impeachment — moments that, for Chung, crystallized a uniquely Korean mode of collective resistance.

“I started noticing real change happen around the 2016 demonstrations that demanded the removal of then-President Park Geun-hye. Unlike rallies led by labor unions in the past, these protests turned into an unorthodox space where anyone could show up with whimsical flags or even K-pop light sticks. People with different backgrounds — all marginalized in some way — found solidarity through humor and satire,” the 49-year-old said.

Bora Chung dons a messenger bag adorned with badges she collected over 12 years of political activism. Courtesy of Hyeyoung

“At protests like that, you often hear, through speeches and slogans, a concise breakdown of a social issue on hand: what went wrong, and which solutions failed to materialize. Hear it enough times, and you start to see the patterns.”

When you inject the concepts of ever-evolving science, technology and capital into those real-world issues — that’s when it becomes science fiction, according to Chung.

One recent example that struck her was the disconnect between cutting-edge innovation and the wildfires that ravaged Korea’s southeastern regions, including the port city of Pohang, where she lives.

“In an age where unmanned drones are used to spray pesticides on farms,” she noted, “you can’t help but ask: why do volunteers in their 60s still have to strap hoses and water tanks to their backs and walk straight into fire zones? On one side, there’s advanced technology. On the other, there are people and places completely overlooked by tech and capital. How can these two realities exist in the same era?”

Wildfires spread across a hillside in Andong, North Gyeongsang Province, March 25. Yonhap

Chung’s literary concerns — both humanistic and post-humanistic — reflect the broader ethos of Korean science fiction, shaped by popular authors like Cheon Seon-ran, Kim Cho-yeop and Kim Bo-young.

Unlike much of the classic Western canon, often driven by themes of alien invasions and frontier adventure, Korean science fiction tends to look inward — toward questions of ethics, the environment and the social body.

“Korea has experienced colonialism and imperialism, but it’s never been a colonizing power,” Chung said. “So the very idea — of boarding a spaceship, landing on an alien planet, killing its ‘monstrous’ inhabitants and declaring it a heroic act — just doesn’t exist in the mindset of most writers.”

Instead, much of Korea’s speculative fiction expresses a postcolonial worldview — one that’s self-reflective, climate-conscious and increasingly engaged with questions beyond the human.

Han Kang, left, the 2024 Nobel laureate in literature, receives her award from Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf during the Nobel Prize award ceremony at the Stockholm Concert Hall in Sweden, Dec. 10, 2024. AP-Yonhap

Global surge in translated Korean fiction

Chung is among a growing constellation of literary stars fueling the international boom in translated Korean fiction — a movement reshaping prize circuits and readership across continents.

A defining breakthrough came in 2016, when Han Kang and her translator Deborah Smith jointly won the International Booker Prize for “The Vegetarian.” In the years since, a wave of Korean novelists and poets, including Kim Hye-soon, Pyun Hye-young and Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, have racked up high-profile accolades. That momentum reached a historic peak in 2024, when Han became the first-ever Korean writer to clinch the Nobel Prize in literature.

Behind the scenes, a new generation of literary translators has been instrumental in this trend. Many are second-generation Korean immigrants who grew up navigating different cultures and are fluent in both Korean and the dominant language of the countries they live in. Their rise marks a stark shift from the earlier days, when the task of translation was often undertaken by white academics “discovering” Korean literature on their own terms.

To Chung, the global appetite for Korean fiction is also an organic outgrowth of “hallyu,” or the Korean wave.

“K-pop, K-dramas, K-films, K-literature — they’re all part of the same orbit. Literature just takes the longest to travel, because it has the highest entry barrier,” she said. “It demands the most imagination, the most active engagement from its audience. But all the groundwork has already been laid by other cultural exports.”

Bora Chung, left, with translator Anton Hur at the 2022 International Booker Prize ceremony for "Cursed Bunny" / Courtesy of David Parry/PA

Against this backdrop, one thing becomes urgently clear: the need for diversified state support for translation.

“The tide is rising. We should be rowing harder, not snatching the paddles away,” the writer said.

One crucial step, she argues, is to invest more in translating Korean fiction into the languages of other Asian nations, rather than fixating on anglophone and European markets.

“Right now, we’re overlooking vibrant, fast-growing audiences in places like Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, India and China,” she explained.

“When I was invited to a literary festival in Indonesia last October, they asked me to say a few words celebrating Han’s Nobel win — because to so many Asian women writers, it felt personally meaningful. There’s genuine goodwill toward Korea in these countries. They have the population, the cultural curiosity, the market potential. So why shouldn’t we invest in those relationships?”

The English-language covers of Bora Chung's novel "Red Sword," left, and "Midnight Timetable," both slated for release this year / Courtesy of Honford Star and Algonquin Books

When asked at the end of the interview if she had anything else to add, it wasn’t the fact that she’s deep in the middle of a new full-length novel that came up, nor the upcoming English-language releases of “Red Sword” and “Midnight Timetable.”

Instead, the writer brought up something else: the large-scale protest set for April 26, in solidarity with the laid-off workers of Korea Optical High Tech, a Japan-funded firm that was dissolved after a factory fire in 2022. The workers have been fighting for reinstatement ever since.

That’s Chung for you — speaking like a writer who’s never stopped marching.