Korean Literature in Translation from July to December 2026: What to Read Next!

“A mutant virus has swept half of the world’s population overnight. The known world has collapsed. The new world is a lawless place where children’s livers are believed to provide immunity.

In one apartment block, an unlikely pack break out of quarantine in a stolen lorry and brave an achingly empty world once teeming with colour. The desolate reaches of Eurasia are signposted with fellow defectors and found family.

A wandering travel agent.
A mixed-race divorcee embracing her sacred desire.
A deaf girl traversing the frozen continent barefoot.

How do you find a way forward in a world turned upside down? A novel about our will to live and love until the very end, Everything Happened at Once charts the intimate landscapes of humans making liferafts out of the small miracles of the everyday.“
— Hachette UK

Left: Cover of Everything Happened at Once (Credit: Hachette UK)

“Tucked away in the corner of a neighbourhood in Dosan, South Korea, is the Plant Shop. Its owner Yoohee has started anew, while her meticulously grown foliage thrives under her tender care. Plant Shop is her refuge, where petunias and marigolds bloom and the air itself is like an elixir of peace.

By day, Yoohee dispenses gardening advice, but she also finds herself offering a special service out-of-hours. Women in desperation come to her about a man they hope might disappear from their lives.

Because Yoohee has encountered these kinds of men in her own life, men who treated her (and her beloved plants) with utter disrespect.

So as night falls, Yoohee trades her apron for a shovel and a hoe and vanishes into her moonlit garden. There, she buries not just the remains of the day, but also the bloody remnants of a few unfortunate incidents.

As more men are reported missing, a determined young detective comes knocking…

Atmospheric and haunting, PLANT LADY is a subtle, humorous story of dangerous obsession and misogyny that will fertilise your deepest fears and keep you rooted right to its chilling last page.”
— Penguin Books UK

We reviewed Minyoung Kang’s Plant Lady on Substack! You can read our review here!

Left: Cover of Plant Lady (Credit: Penguin Books)

“Visionary Korean author Kim Bo-Young unleashes a Lovecraftian nightmare of infection, transformation, and abomination.

While waiting for a train to Haewon, an isolated Korean seaside village, bodyguard Muyoung gets a disaster alert on her phone. TVs throughout the station report breaking news of a massive earthquake on the eastern coast. Despite the danger, Muyoung boards the train with her niece: she’d rather face the earthquake than leave the girl in her mother’s care. That choice haunts her for the rest of her life.

Three years later, Haewon Village is home to horrors. The earthquake unleashed an ancient plague that transforms its victims into fishy monsters, and the government’s lockdown has cut off any hope for help. Muyoung’s niece is dead, and all that’s left for her is to hunt villagers who break isolation. When an officious bureaucrat from Seoul arrives in the village, he stirs up even deeper trouble. Will Muyoung survive? Does she even deserve to?“
— Honford Star

We reviewed Kim Bo-young’s A Plagued Sea on Substack! You can read our review here!

Left: Cover of A Plagued Sea (Credit: Honford Star)

“Following the landmark English-language publication of Everything Good Dies Here, Kaya Press delivers more provocative thought experiments by pseudonymous author Djuna, whose writings on internet culture have attracted a cult following in South Korea. Not Yet Gods explores the universe-shattering effects of teenage anger cross-pollinated with radiation-induced psychic powers, unscrupulous governments and corporate avarice.

In the aftermath of a nuclear explosion set off in North Korea, an ordinary South Korean high school classroom becomes ground zero for the discovery of a radical new source of energy: children capable of conducting and amplifying the telepathic and telekinetic powers of those around them. Told as a series of interlinked stories, Djuna’s fractally unfolding thought experiments interrogate the nature of power, disability and illusion in the potential end of history.”
— Google Books

Left: Cover of Not Yet Gods (Credit: Kaya Press)

“The stories brought together in this collection introduce the dazzling speculative imaginings of Djuna, one of South Korea’s most provocative science-fiction writers. Whether describing how a species of interplanetary machines brings Korea’s North-South divide into the heavens or satirizing the vampiric nature of Confucian patriarchy, these stories evoke a universe at once familiar and clearly fantastical. Blending influences ranging from genre fiction (zombie, vampire, science-fiction, you name it) to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Djuna’s stories illuminate the past, present, and possible futures.

Praised by Publisher’s Weekly as an ‘impressive collection which showcases the power of speculative fiction to illuminate the human condition,’ Memoir of a Joseon Bride is an outstanding work by one of science-fiction’s most mysterious authors.“
— Honford Star

Left: Cover of Memoir of a Joseon Bride: Stories (Credit: Honford Star)

“Jini dedicates her life to the study of primates. One night, she helps rescue a bonobo that has escaped from a burning building. As she holds the bonobo in her arms on the way back to the Center for Primate Studies, an accident throws her through the windshield and a strange fusion takes place: while her body is taken to the hospital, between life and death, Jini’s spirit takes refuge in the body of the little bonobo. Thus begins a fascinating coexistence between the two beings.

From the author of the #1 international bestsellers The Good Son and Seven Years of Darkness, Jeong delivers a captivating story that keeps us on our toes from start to finish. But the real originality of his novel is to examine the boundaries between human and animal by making us enter the universe and the sensitivity of bonobos.“
— Honford Star

Left: Cover of Bonobo (Credit: Honford Star)

“No. 9 is in trouble. His son’s college tuition is coming due, his wife needs surgery after taking double shifts at a grocery store, the apartment building they bought as a nest egg is falling apart, and the company he helped build is trying to force him into early retirement. When he refuses, the mid-level IT man is demoted to sales and given increasingly impossible tasks. As his salary dwindles and the humiliations mount, No. 9 must decide where his loyalties lie. If he fights back, how far will the company go to stop him?

With her urgent and timely novel, award-winning Korean author Kim Hye-jin questions how long we can endure a broken system. In a rigged game, is there an alternative to playing out your hand?“
— Restless Books

Left: Cover of Employee No. 9 (Credit: Restless Books)

“Hyoyoung feels trapped in her small hometown after her dreams of becoming a filmmaker have been dashed, and so when a friend asks her to come and work at his boutique letter shop in Seoul’s Yeonhui-dong district, she jumps at the chance.

The shop is stocked with irresistible pens, papers and envelopes, and Hyoyoung is soon beguiled by its charms. She is particularly intrigued by the shop’s pen pal service, where customers can pick up an anonymous letter to read, as long as they agree to write an anonymous letter in return. Hyoyoung observes the shop’s customers secret correspondence with each other, as they express their deepest fears and most ardent desires to people they’ve never met. Each of the customers has their own story to tell, and as her connection with them deepens, it’s not long before Hyoyoung discovers the healing, transformative power of the handwritten letter herself…“
— HarperCollins Publishers

For more about The Seoul Letter Shop, I’d recommend this lovely introduction by The Korea Herald.

Left: Cover of The Seoul Letter Shop (Credit: HarperCollins Publishers)

“John and Helen Koh and their three children – Bo, DH and Mido – are building new lives in Korea when they find their worlds upended, first by a terrible betrayal and then by the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Striving to regain their footing, the Kohs set out to do whatever it takes to provide for their children’s futures.

They leave Seoul for Sydney and eventually settle in California, where new opportunities open for the Koh children, as the parents, strangers in a strange land, adjust to a difficult existence in which their qualifications mean little. Their way forward is lit by the faith that education will lead the next generation to the success and security that have eluded their parents.

The Kohs, their friends, relatives and even their foes move in and out of each other’s lives as they navigate love, work, fortune and fulfilment across the years. But with each new sacrifice and fresh horizon, larger questions begin to open up before them: what are we willing to give up to secure the happiness of the ones we love? What is the purpose of education? And what is truly important for a good life?

American Hagwon is the most ambitious and extraordinary work yet by one of our greatest novelists.“
— HarperCollins Publishers

Left: Cover of American Hagwon (Credit: HarperCollins Publishers)

“Once Ko Mani dreamt of becoming a professional gymnast. Life, however, had other plans for her. Today she has an office job and lives with her parents in the same house and poor part of Seoul in which she grew up.

When she unexpectedly finds herself out of work, however, her old ambitions resurface. At the same time property developers start to show an interest in the local area and her mother sniffs an opportunity for her family to finally slip the chains of poverty.   

Exploring the fine line we all tread between dreams and reality, in On the Balance Beam Cho Nam-Joo tells the story of an ordinary Korean family, capturing their moments of pain, frustration, resilience and love.“
— Simon & Schuster

Left: Cover of On the Balance Beam (Credit: Simon & Schuster)

“That summer I stood in the centers of storms   That summer my despair burst out into crimson but still I weathered the wind and rain

Mountains, rivers, trees, flowers, the dark, a cat, a train. In the elemental forms and figures of our world, Lee Seong-bok finds repositories for thought, sounding boards against which he can test his reflections. Again and again, in sequences, he probes his subjects—five “Mountain Path” poems, three “River” poems, three commentaries on the I Ching— not to solicit answers, like Moses impatiently striking the rock for water, but to savor the muted tones that echo in response.

After one ruckus / begins another / The silent forest vibrates // Suffering was always / new suffering

The poems of That Summer’s End, though acutely conscious of the self, are free of an inhibiting self-consciousness, speaking directly of youth, love, fear, family, grief, old age, impermanence, and all that’s central to life. As enticing as they are profound, Lee Seong-bok’s poems have made him not only a poet’s poet but a favorite of RM, leader of K-pop superstars BTS, whose support of his work on social media has brought him international attention.“
— Penguin Random House

Left: Cover of That Summer’s End: Poems (Credit: Penguin Random House)

“In this world, there are two types of food: ramen and non-ramen.

Yoon Ina takes ramen seriously. She makes sure to try new flavours as soon as they come out, always has enough packets stocked in the pantry, has developed her own principles and theories for making good ramen, and even keeps up to date with ramen news.

This book is an ode to her obsession. With a contagious enthusiasm, Ina teaches us how to prepare the perfect serving of instant noodles, from choosing the type of ramen, to boiling the water, to deciding whether to add noodles or seasoning first.

But bubbling under the surface is a rich narrative of a life-long relationship with ramen. We find warm, generous, humorous stories from the author’s life – narratives about family and friends, about working life, about being a woman in modern society, and about finding a way to live comfortably with who you are.

Ramen Makes Us Complete is a funny, comforting and moreish celebration of the hugely popular dish that will have you craving a steaming bowl of instant noodles before you know it.“
— Penguin Books UK

Left: Cover of Ramen Makes Us Complete (Credit: Penguin Books)

“‘Do you like cats? Or do you know cats well? I never once imagined that I would raise one with my own hands in the mountains. And yet, quite unexpectedly, something unbelievable happened: a cat walked into my arms.’

After more than a decade at a bustling city temple in Seoul, Bokyeong Sunim – the Venerable Bokyeong – moves to a rural mountain temple where, in the depths of winter, an unexpected guest appears on his doorstep: a ginger-and-white cat. Their everyday interactions unfold into generous and life-affirming meditations on cats, companionship, patience, the fleetingness of time, and the satisfactions and challenges of different ways of seeing the world.

Drawing on years of learning, reflection and the Venerable Bokyeong’s own practice, One Day a Cat Came to Me blends philosophy, mindfulness and connection with nature, powerfully capturing the essence of life in the company of others.“
— Google Books

Left: Cover of One Day a Cat Came to Me: Timeless Zen Wisdom from a Cat & His Monk (Credit: Profile Books)