Yi Munyeol Our Twisted Hero. This tale of psychological warfare at a Korean elementary school has a deceptively twee plotline, managing to explore the use and misuse of power while providing metaphorical parallels to Korean politics of the 1970s.Despite Korea’s long and interesting history, the East Asian sections in most bookshops largely focus on China and Japan, with the majority of books that are devoted to Korea covering North Korea or the Korean War. Far less biased than most newspaper or television reports, these are the best form of reportage about the world’s most curious state and how it was created.
Cho Se-hui The Dwarf. Even miracles have a downside: Seoul’s economy underwent a truly remarkable transformation in the 1970s, but at what cost to its people and culture? This weighty, tersely delivered novel uncovers the spiritual decline of Seoul’s nouveaux riches, via twelve interconnected stories; A Dwarf Launches a Little Bell is particularly recommended, and has been reprinted hundreds of times in Korea.
Yi Munyeol Our Twisted Hero. This tale of psychological warfare at a Korean elementary school has a deceptively twee plotline, managing to explore the use and misuse of power while providing metaphorical parallels to Korean politics of the 1970s.
Young Ha Kim Your Republic is Calling You and I Have the Right to Destroy Myself. Two books from a man whose international reputation is growing by the year, his popularity and his existentialist tendencies marking him out as a potential Korean Murakami. The first book revolves around a North Korean spy torn between his homeland and the South, while the second, set in Seoul, is the dark tale of a refined thinker with suicidal tendencies.
Michael Breen The New Koreans: the Story of a Nation. A 2017 follow up to Breen’s esteemed The Koreans, this is an excellent look at the Korean psyche, at a time of profound social change. As with the initial tome, his accounts are relayed with warmth and a pleasing depth of knowledge.
Bruce Cumings Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History. The Korean peninsula went through myriad changes in the twentieth century, and this weighty tome analyzes the effects of such disquiet on its population, showing that the South’s seemingly smooth trajectory towards democracy and capitalism masked a great suffering of the national psyche.
Euny Hong The Birth of Korean Cool. A good rundown of Korea’s attempts to conquer Asia, then the world at large, with its pop culture – as well as the more obvious drama and music, it looks at how this impacted upon Korea’s place on the global economic stage.
Keith Pratt Everlasting Flower: A History of Korea. This thoroughly readable book provides a chronicle of Korean goings-on from the very first kingdoms to the modern day, its text broken up with interesting illustrated features on the arts and customs prevalent at the time.
Daniel Tudor Korea: The Impossible Country. Written by Korea’s former Economist correspondent, this looks at how the country transformed from a failed state to an economic powerhouse in the space of a generation or two – and what today’s generation has in store.
Bruce Cumings North Korea: Another Country. The US-North Korean dispute is far more complex than Western media would have you imagine, and this book provides a revealing glance at the flipside. Cumings’ meticulous research is without parallel, and the accounts of American atrocities and cover-ups both in the “Forgotten War” and during the nuclear crisis offer plenty of food for thought.
Max Hastings The Korean War. A conflict is not quite a war until it has been given the treatment by acclaimed historian Max Hastings. Here, he has provided more than his usual mix of fascinating, balanced and well-researched material; the account of the stand of the Gloucesters on the Imjin is particularly absorbing.
Don Oberdorfer The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History. Lengthy, but easy to read, this book traces events in postwar Korea, and examines how it was affected by China, Russia, Japan and the US. You’d be hard pressed to find a book about North Korea more neutral in tone.
Debra Samuels and Taekyung Chung The Korean Table. With a hundred easy recipes “from barbecue to bibimbap”, accompanied by photos that will make you drool, this book will have your kitchen covered with chilli paste in no time at all.
Marja Vongerichten and Jean Georges Vongerichten The Kimchi Chronicles: Korean Cooking for an American Kitchen. A very useful cookbook, which takes account of the fact that its readers may not have access to a full Korean kitchen’s-worth of utensils.