Nov 10, 2026
On paper, Korea's economy looks strong. Fueled by a semiconductor export boom, the country's annual exports are projected to top $1 trillion for the first time this year, making Korea only the fourth country to reach the milestone, after the United States, China and Germany. Forecasts from eight major investment banks put Korea's real gross domestic product growth at an average of 3.5 percent this year, with some expecting growth as high as 4 percent. Per capita gross national income is also expected to surpass $40,000 for the first time, potentially placing Korea sixth in the world by that measure. By those numbers, President Lee Jae Myung's approval ratings should be soaring. The economy, after all, is widely regarded as one of the biggest drivers of presidential popularity. Yet that is far from the case. A Realmeter survey of 2,528 adults nationwide, conducted from Nov. 2 to Friday for the Asia Business Daily, put Lee's approval rating at just 35.9 percent. His ratings have hovered between the high 30s and low 40s since October, a sharp decline from 67 percent seven months earlier. More
A string of recent drug cases is eroding Korea’s lingering reputation as a drug-free country, highlighting how both Koreans and foreign nationals are being increasingly drawn into narcotics crime. The Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police said Monday that it referred 66 foreign nationals to the prosecution between March and October on charges including violating the Narcotics Control Act, with 30 of them being held in custody. Many of the suspects were Southeast Asian students who entered the country on D-2 student visas or D-4 language training visas. Of the seven separate cases, one involved drug manufacturing plans and another smuggling, while five involved distribution, purchase and use. One suspect set up equipment in a studio apartment to make ecstasy pills from powder and other materials smuggled into Korea, but was caught before obtaining them. Six others were arrested in succession after investigators found evidence that they had smuggled large amounts of ecstasy, ketamine and other drugs into Korea through international mail in March. They operated in isolated cells and took order
Written by Lee Su-myeong Translated by Noh Hye-yeon To Unfold a Bird A bird followed by hundreds of birds. I pass through the hundred-fold bird, without disturbance. The birds are seething. I move myself. I move a rock. The birds enter the rock, leave the rock. I move the rock against the direction of bird, while they watch How to Fall Under the Minari Family Every morning I wake minari. I hover as minari. I see a function f I do not understand. In theory, I follow the rhythms of minari standing still as exception. A lump of rhythms in the shape of minari Rhythm outside rhythm Rhythm is no abode Rhythm is most of me blended into it, therefore I push myself aside Pulled apart, blade by blade I break into today’s minari and try to repair minari, but a machine only wants a larger machine to smash itself, rather than become the machine itself. Minari leaps into the minari family The minari family grows smaller And smells foul on occasion. Into the hollow leaf Fly the great bundles of minari I wake minari. In the mechanical arrangement, most minari are nothing beyond minari Muddled, it looms. I Have Y
Written by An Hee-yeon Translated by Park Se-yeon There Was a Fire He figured the day had turned chill, and also felt a bit alone. Today, I'll light a fire, he thought. He laid dry sticks together and lit them. Fire, rise, fire— he hummed a song, he dreamed of a fire that would not hurt, not a fire that devours but the one that allows, not a fire that scorches but the one that allows. Even here, he said, there was a home, and people arrived one by one. Once the cold hands came out from their pockets, that's how stories began— palm lines crisscrossing, without our noticing. The sun and the moon tenderly exchanged goodbye, beyond the fence, the weeds were growing, a stray dog retrieved its soul, returning home, while not-yet-born me— the self that died inside, I lulled and fell asleep. The fire—extinguished long ago— but certain things did not cease. The fire hadn't hushed, not even a little. Fuss Covered head to toe in flour, I stepped into the square to bring my sorrow into view. Yesterday, I hid my umbrella in my bag and took the rain on, to proclaim: I do not shatter. I do not disintegr
Written by Danyao Translated by Ku Bon-seung Excerpt from 'Giraffe Is the Name of the World' The story I am about to tell is of the Giraffe, and also of myself. If I were asked to name the animals familiar to me, would name the meerkat that swivels its head this way and that from behind a rock, and the hyena whose eyes curve into a grin when it opens its mouth to tear at its prey, and the jackal whose ears and face and thighs and tail and every part of its body are triangles. And if I were to name the animals unfamiliar to me, I would recite the memory of slipping quietly past the shadows of lion and rhinoceros and hippopotamus. As for the plants, I would call to mind the acacia that spreads its branches like the cap of a mushroom, and the ebony blacker than the night sky, and the gloriosa flower that soars as though aflame. Should you wish for something more amusing, I would tell you that the baobab's branches are stunted, as though a great weight had pressed them down, because the tree grew its thick trunk upward without knowing how low the sky hung and realized only too late that ther
Written by Cho Ye-eun Translated by Breanna Hundley Excerpt from 'How to Get Your Deposit Back' Security deposit: 30 million won Monthly rent: 550,000 won Maintenance fee: 150,000 won (not included in rent) There were just under two months left until Seongah’s lease ended. She had given the landlord notice about two weeks before, which legally, was more than enough time to prepare for the vacancy. So there wasn’t anything in the way of getting her deposit back. At least, there shouldn’t have been. That’s for sure. * * * Seongah had received a call from her family in the countryside the day before. Her mom informed her that her little brother needed to be enrolled in cram school and asked her to send 5 million won as soon as her deposit was returned. That was how much she had borrowed from her mother, so she couldn’t really say no. Seongah just replied, “Okay,” before ending the call. The deposit budget for her next place was now down to 25 million won, which meant an increased chance of moving into an apartment with mold on the wallpaper or warped windows that had been illegall
For Noh Hye-yeon, returning to poetry began with opening old files and rediscovering a pleasure that corporate work and anxiety over artificial intelligence had pushed aside. An in-house translator at an automotive company, Noh spent this summer revisiting poems by Lee Su-myeong that she had first translated in graduate school. Revising them brought her back to the literary ambitions she had struggled to sustain. “Flipping through my Roget’s Thesaurus again, I realized just how much I was enjoying translation and how much I’d missed it,” Noh said in a written interview with The Korea Times. “For the first time in a long while, I was doing something that genuinely brought me joy.” Her translations of 10 poems by Lee won the poetry Commendation Award in this year’s Korea Times Literature Translation Awards. The recognition follows her fiction Grand Prize in the competition in 2023. In the intervening years, however, her confidence in a future as a literary translator had faltered. “The arrival of GPT felt like a natural disaster to me as a translator,” she said. Noh continu
The Korea Times' 57th Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards entries demonstrate the growing range of voices and talent within the world of Korean literature, and the translators who, with their passion, commitment and creativity, bring these voices to life for a greater reading public. Our discussions focused on how to balance the choices that a translator made, from larger decisions to finer details. We gave serious consideration to the translator’s selection of which texts to translate, both in terms of selecting more challenging texts, as well as texts that we considered to have greater literary merit within their genre. When it came to our final candidates, we considered more closely the translator’s ear for the music of the target language, the fluency of the translation ranging from phrasing, tone, diction and general grammatical structure of sentences, and in the case of poetry, other specific elements such as line breaks. We also weighed each text’s themes and social concerns, in terms of how the texts might reflect the unique nature of a translation award focused
For Jude Vandervort, translating Korean literature meant learning to move beyond the precision of scientific writing and embrace the possibilities of interpretation. A recent Rutgers University graduate who majored in cell biology and neuroscience with a minor in Korean, Vandervort won the fiction Commendation Award in this year’s Korea Times Literature Translation Awards for his translation of Jeong Ji-a’s novel “Bead by Bead.” The experience helped the aspiring health care professional see translation not simply as transferring words between languages, but as a literary art shaped by the person doing the translating. “It meant so much to me to learn how to stray from the literal and venture into more poetic verse,” Vandervort said in a written interview with The Korea Times. That interest first emerged while analyzing Korean articles in language classes at Rutgers in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Vandervort, who also served as a senior student ambassador for the university’s Asian Languages and Cultures Program, became fascinated by how a sentence’s emotional effect could
Singer and music producer Park Jin-young, widely known as JYP, has once again personally defended his independent religious group Firstfruits, urging the public to listen to his lectures directly before labeling it a cult. In a video posted Sunday to the group’s official YouTube channel, titled "For Christians who have not received salvation," Park said that the growing backlash against his Bible study group was actually driving more public curiosity rather than hurting it. "Our church is gradually becoming better known. Why? Because as pastors warn people that it’s dangerous, many who had never heard of our group are now finding out about it," Park said during a sermon based on the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel of John. "Some might think, 'They say JYP’s church is a cult, so maybe I should listen to it just in case?' I really hope people give it a listen at least once." In another video uploaded on the same day, Park drew criticism for claiming that humans and dinosaurs once lived together based on the Bible. However, modern science shows that dinosaurs went extinct about 6
Written by Jeong Ji-a Translated by Jude Vandervort Excerpt from 'Bead by Bead' I have been with you since the moment I drew my first breath. Yet for the longest time, you never noticed. Did it make me sad to both be there and not be there? Sometimes, yes; sometimes, no. More often than not, I pitied you, as you gradually succumbed to me, completely unaware. At this very moment, I totally control you. You and I have already become one. Last night, you fell asleep before the nine o'clock news. You may think you simply drifted off into an endless sleep, but your dreamless slumber is nothing more than the final leg of the journey that leads to me. It has been a long time since you dreamed. Do you remember the last? It was on a spring day ten years ago, when you were ninety years old. Along the banks of the Seomjin River, the cherry trees had been shedding their blossoms all day long, scattering them like drowsy fragments of a dream. Even at your window, a mere hundred meters from the tree-lined path, petals floated and fluttered in the breeze. You struggled to remember something, but it cou
For Ku Bon-seung, translating fiction began with wanting to share something remarkable with friends who could not read Korean. After reading a novella by writer Danyao in the summer of 2025, Ku asked for permission to translate it. The author suggested translating the whole collection instead. That exchange led to Ku’s English translation of “Giraffe Is the Name of the World,” which won this year’s Kevin O’Rourke Prize in The Korea Times Literature Translation Awards. Working on Danyao’s fiction helped Ku understand translation as a form of testimony — taking responsibility for conveying an experience that a summary could not adequately capture. “I experienced something remarkable while reading Danyao’s works, and I knew that this quality was holistic, irreducible to a well-delivered summary,” Ku said in a written interview with The Korea Times. Simply sending friends the Korean text and suggesting translation tools would not have fulfilled that responsibility. “If I wanted to make a testimony, I should indeed make it — be responsible for it,” Ku said. “I think
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![[57th Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards] Kevin O'Rourke Award: Giraffe Is the Name of the World](https://newsimg.koreatimes.co.kr/2026/11/03/7d345a66-4bb1-4fd3-a961-98ad423aa73c.jpeg)
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![[57th Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards] Poetry Commendation Award winner Noh Hye-yeon](https://newsimg.koreatimes.co.kr/2026/11/01/f9037b4e-2439-47c8-b0d7-b14d40fdf248.jpeg)
![[57th Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards] Judges' report](https://newsimg.koreatimes.co.kr/2026/11/09/f2429a5f-1720-45cc-87bd-c0b89228e563.jpeg)
![[57th Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards] Fiction Commendation Award winner Jude Vandervort](https://newsimg.koreatimes.co.kr/2026/11/01/46c36ca8-6fd2-4baf-87ee-ddb38e1ef815.jpeg)
![[57th Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards] Fiction Commendation Award: 'Bead by Bead'](https://newsimg.koreatimes.co.kr/2026/11/03/d8a15498-5d27-4a53-a14f-1fa76491b401.jpeg)
![[57th Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards] Kevin O'Rourke Prize winner Ku Bon-seung](https://newsimg.koreatimes.co.kr/2026/11/09/eabc3a6e-7764-4ac0-87a8-6ac916db72f3.jpeg)