And Now, a Word from a Sponsor!

A cute video of the Korean Literature Translation Institute booth at the recent International Book Fair at the Coex. The video is by Hyunwon Soo who says:

I went to International Seoul Book Expo 2009 and visited the booth of Korea Literature Translation Institute and received a warm welcome from the staff.

http://klti.or.kr/eng/

Check out their website if you want to learn more about Korean literature!

Sonagi - "Rain Shower" by Hwang Sun-won

Heh, I found a modern video remake of a modern-classic Korean story, Sonagi.

Rain Shower, also called Shower in English, 0r Sonagi (in Romanized Korean), is a short story written by Hwang Sun-won in 1959 (Hwang also wrote the seminal novel The Descendants of Cain - a horrific story of greed and betrayal). Sonagi is a brief but a heavy rain shower that suddenly comes down usually on a hot afternoon. In Hwang’s story, the rain shower both causes and symbolizes the short and tragic love of the boy and the girl. The story begins with the boy encountering the girl playing by the stream on his way back home. By the end, the girl is... well, read it for yourself. You can read Sonagi at Brother Anthony of Taize's excellent website here.

For now, here is the excellent modern video version. It contains Korean, but you don't need to know any Korean to follow the plot (It actually ends at about 5:15, the remainder is blooper stuff and credits).