Novels by Korean-heritage writers active overseas are drawing attention and are being translated and published in Korea one after another. From novels addressing overseas adoption and immigrant identity to stories based on traditional folktales such as Sim Cheong, and to SF, subjects and genres are diversifying, signaling the potential of an expanded ‘K-diaspora literature’.

Park Ji-seon’s <Luminous> (Hwanggeumgaji) is an SF novel set in near-future Seoul after unification. In the world of the story, robots have replaced humans. Detective ‘Jun’ of the robot-crime task force tracks ‘Elli’, an old-model companion-robot girl abducted from a luxury apartment in Hannam-dong, and in the process confronts secrets entangled with a missing father and sibling. Centering on the robot ‘Yoyo’, who holds the key to the mystery, the story unfolds in a mystery format.

We met the author, a professor of English at the University of Kansas, at the Minumsa building in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, on the 2nd. She said she is staying in Korea for the vacation. On setting a unified Korea and featuring people of diverse backgrounds, including North Korean residents, she said, “When I imagine the future of Korea, I naturally wonder what became of the North”, and added, “Watching parents who have lost a child, I thought it might be more painful than having a child die. I felt the relationship between North and (South) Korea, though it still exists, is similar in that it is also a place that has been lost.”

Although born in the United States, the author spent her elementary through high school years in Korea. Perhaps for that reason, most of her story settings are in Korea. Her next work is also set on the sea off Jeju. She said, “I am not yet interested in writing about the United States”, and, “Even when I write about Korea, I move back and forth between the perspectives of an insider and an outsider.”

Although the novel is set in the fictional society of a unified Korea, it does not feel far from the present when it contrasts an upscale residential area in Hannam-dong with a scrapyard piled with discarded robots, or depicts hate rallies at Gwanghwamun targeting people from the North and refugees. It explores human identity in a society where discrimination and boundary-making persist.

In that it probes the identity of those excluded by virtue of being Korean diaspora, this work also appears to stand within the lineage of an expanded Korea diaspora literature. She said, “I sometimes wish my identity were less complicated. I suspect that is why, in this novel, the boundary between human and robot is not clear-cut.”

Published abroad last year, the novel was selected by the Guardian as among the SF to watch this year, and this year it made the finalist list for the Locus Award in the first novel category. It is also a finalist for the United Kingdom’s representative SF literary prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, to be announced next month. A screen adaptation is in progress at Media Res, the producer of <Pachinko>.

Diaspora, from an ancient Greek word meaning to scatter, refers to people who left their original homeland to move and settle elsewhere, or to the migration itself. Historical wounds and cultural contexts in Korean society brought by war and immigration form the foundation of Korea diaspora literature.

The issue of overseas adoption, which grew after the Korean War, is also a main subject of diaspora literature. That is the case with Lee Langvad, who visited Korea as <My Interpreter> (Prunsoop) was published domestically last month. Born in Korea in 1980 and adopted to Denmark, Lee Langvad poured out criticism of overseas adoption and the social structures that permit it in the previous work <The Woman Is Angry> (Nanda). <My Interpreter> likewise tells the story of an adoptee who travels to Korea to meet a birth family. <Min Kim> (Sanjini), published in May by the Korean Danish novelist Eva Tind, also centers on two adopted women.

[Flat]“I am angry because women were an export item”… The ‘anger’ of a Korean Danish poet adopted to Denmark

There are also works that probe identity from the position of a boundary-dweller. <Exhibition of Light> (Munhakgwa Jiseongsa) by Korean American Kwon O-gyeong, who visited Korea last month to attend the Seoul International Book Fair, weaves together reflections on desire and taboo, femininity and sexuality, family and racism through two Asian women artists. An earlier novel by the author, <The Incendiaries>, has also been slated for a drama adaptation to be directed by Kogonada, who directed <Pachinko>.

Recently, Korean American novelist Angela Mi Young Hur’s <We, Like Echoes> (Yeollinchaekdeul) and Yun Ji-hyun’s <And the River Pulls Her Down> (Humanist) have drawn on Korea’s traditional folktales. Each novel modernizes the legends of the Emille Bell, Sim Cheong, and Janghwa Hongryeon to explore immigrant identity, and has won attention.

Editor Lee Seong-geun at Humanist said, “The subjects and methods used in Korea diaspora literature have been broadening”, and added, “As the global popularity of Korean culture grows, Korean-heritage writers are standing out more in the Anglophone literary world, and the domestic scene is taking close notice.”