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1084 books found.
그의 자서전
By 이광수
A man looks back on his life, beginning in a farming village under Samgaksan, and then through his school days and his years as a teacher. Yi Kwang-su's 1936 novel is told in the first person, though its title calls him only he, so that it reads as the story of any Korean of his time.
6 chapters · About 278 minutes of published text
김연실전(金姸實傳)
By 김동인
Yeon-sil, the daughter of a Pyongyang official and a retired gisaeng, is carried by the wave of enlightenment into Japan, where she learns her ideas of freedom and love the wrong way round. Kim Dong-in's satire of 1939, in short numbered chapters, follows a would-be new woman with merciless wit.
44 chapters · About 70 minutes of published text
단종애사(端宗哀史)
By 이광수
The boy king Danjong comes to the throne of Joseon in the 1450s, and his uncle Prince Suyang, later King Sejo, seizes power by killing the loyal ministers who guarded him. Yi Kwang-su's historical novel follows the child's exile and death and the six ministers who died for him, and it is long read as a lament for a lost loyalty.
4 chapters · About 428 minutes of published text
대수양(大首陽)
By 김동인
Prince Suyang, the second son of King Sejong, grows up bold and ambitious beside his gentler brother and then makes his way to the throne over the bodies of the old king's loyal ministers. Kim Dong-in's historical novel follows the court of the early 1450s in short chapters.
55 chapters · About 284 minutes of published text
무영탑(無影塔)
By 현진건
In eighth-century Silla, the Baekje stonemason Asadal comes to build the Seokgatap at Bulguksa, and his wife Asanyeo waits for him far away while a Silla girl, Jugu, falls in love with him. Hyun Jin-geon draws on the old legend of the pagoda that casts no shadow in the pond to tell of art, devotion and a country's divided loyalties.
9 chapters · About 354 minutes of published text
무정(無情)
By 이광수
Yi Hyeong-sik, a young English teacher in colonial Seoul, is pulled between the gisaeng Pak Yeong-chae, once promised to him, and the well-bred Kim Seon-hyeong, whom he is expected to marry. Serialized in 1917, it is usually called the first modern Korean novel and ends with a flood that gathers its young people around a cause larger than their own hearts.
7 chapters · About 354 minutes of published text
박명
By 한용운
A girl born in a village on the upper reaches of the Han, below the Seorak mountains, grows into a woman whose beauty and poverty steer her into one hard fate after another. Han Yong-un, the monk and poet, wrote this serial novel as a story of a woman's suffering and endurance.
5 chapters · About 419 minutes of published text
벽공무한
By 이효석
The novelist Mun Hun leaves Seoul on the Manchurian express, with a bouquet in his hand, for a journey that carries him into the cities of the north, the dance halls and cafes, and a tangle of love with several women. Yi Hyo-seok's novel of 1940 is a cosmopolitan story of desire, music and travel across the borders of the empire.
16 chapters · About 284 minutes of published text
사랑의 동명왕
By 이광수
The archer Jumong, who will found the kingdom of Goguryeo, loves Yerang and is hunted by the princes of Buyeo, who fear his skill, and he leaves with his mother's blessing to build a country of his own. Yi Kwang-su's late novel gives the foundation myth the shape of a love story.
9 chapters · About 194 minutes of published text
상록수
By 심훈
Park Dong-hyuk, a student, and Chae Yeong-sin, a young woman of fierce purpose, leave Seoul in the early 1930s to teach the poor children and farmers of the countryside to read and to organize. Sim Hun's prizewinning novel joins their quiet love to the hard work of the Rural Enlightenment movement under colonial rule.
17 chapters · About 267 minutes of published text
소금
By 강경애
A Korean peasant family flees hardship for Manchuria, where bandits and Chinese militia press them on every side, and the wife, widowed and robbed of her children, turns to smuggling salt to live. Kang Kyong-ae's short novel is a stark account of the exiled poor, told from a woman's side.
6 chapters · About 46 minutes of published text
순정해협
By 함대훈
During a summer vacation, the family of a student home from Japan waits at the village station for the train, and the young people's loves begin to tie themselves across the strait between Korea and Japan. Ham Dae-hun's novel of 1936 follows them there and back.
7 chapters · About 117 minutes of published text
어머니
By 나도향
A young man named Chun-u, home again in his family's house, lies awake in the summer morning and begins to turn over his life and the people close to him. Na Do-hyang's novel of a household and a mother's place in it is written in the emotional manner of the 1920s.
20 chapters · About 232 minutes of published text
운현궁의 봄
By 김동인
Yi Ha-eung, the poor and shrewd prince later known as the Daewongun, passes years among the dissolute and the idle in the 1850s and 1860s, playing the fool so that the powerful Andong Kim clan will not see him as a danger. Kim Dong-in's novel ends on the eve of the day when his young son is made king.
25 chapters · About 327 minutes of published text
원효대사
By 이광수
Wonhyo, the great monk of seventh-century Silla, struggles with the world he has renounced, above all his love for Princess Yoseok, and the novel follows him from his trials of faith through his breaking of the monastic vows to his wandering among ordinary people. Yi Kwang-su's own note on why he chose this scholar-monk as his hero is left out of the chapters.
8 chapters · About 377 minutes of published text
이순신
By 이광수
In 1591, the new naval commander Yi Sun-sin arrives at a decayed fleet on the southern coast and sets about making ready for a Japanese invasion that the court does not believe will come. Yi Kwang-su's serial follows the admiral through the first years of the Imjin war in very short numbered chapters.
177 chapters · About 331 minutes of published text
적도〔赤道〕
By 현진건
A man comes out of prison into the snow of Seoul, and a ring of lovers, fortune seekers and old debts begins to close around him. Hyun Jin-geon's serial novel of 1933 to 1934 is a story of passion, money and deceit in the modern city.
22 chapters · About 237 minutes of published text
직녀성
By 심훈
In the years after 1894, Insuk, the daughter of a fallen official, is married as a child into a rich Seoul house, whose son has other ways, and she grows into a woman who must decide what a wife owes to a family that fails her. Sim Hun's newspaper novel follows the old marriage customs into the new city and the first generation of Korean women who dared to leave.
26 chapters · About 516 minutes of published text
탁류
By 채만식
Cho-bong, the daughter of a ruined rice clerk in the port of Gunsan, is pushed into marriage and then drawn down, one man after another, as the town's bankers, clerks and schemers use her and one another. Chae Man-sik's long novel follows the muddy Geum River into the colonial city and shows how money and a poor family's need grind a young woman down.
19 chapters · About 443 minutes of published text
태평천하
By 채만식
Old Yun Jik-won, a rich landlord who bought his standing with money, thanks the Japanese for keeping the peace and dreams of a grandson who will become a magistrate. His own grandson, a student, is arrested as a socialist, and the old man's world collapses. Chae Man-sik's satire of 1938 is told in the sly voice of a storyteller who praises what he means to mock.
15 chapters · About 174 minutes of published text
화분
By 이효석
In a house hidden behind green vines on the edge of Pyongyang, a household of women and young people lives out one season of desire, with a man who has the power to bind them and a taste for the pleasures of the city. Yi Hyo-seok's novel of 1939 is a lyrical tale of bodies and moods in a land of cafes, music and gardens.
9 chapters · About 188 minutes of published text
후회(後悔)
By 한용운
On an autumn morning a young woman named Gyeong-sun, sewing at home, is visited by Chang-su, and the two begin a relation that each will later regret. Han Yong-un's short novel is a moral tale of love, haste and its consequences.
6 chapters · About 95 minutes of published text
흙
By 이광수
Heo Sung, a Seoul lawyer, gives up his career and goes to a poor farming village to lift its people, while his wife in the city falls into an affair that his absence helps to start. Yi Kwang-su's serial of 1932 sets the nationalist hope of the countryside against the temptations of the capital.
5 chapters · About 481 minutes of published text
こころ
By 夏目漱石
A young man in Kamakura befriends a withdrawn older man he calls Sensei, whose silence about his past draws him in until a long letter, written before Sensei's death, tells what he never said. Natsume Soseki's novel of 1914, serialised in the Asahi Shimbun, follows the friendship, betrayal and guilt one man carries through the end of the Meiji era.
110 chapters · About 327 minutes of published text