Koreadathon

Koreadathon
March 7-13 (details)
Hosted by @bookswithchloe and @itsmonicakim
a week long celebration of korean stories

GROUP READ:

Winter in Sokcho
by Elisa Shua Dusapin
translated by Aneesa Higgins
Contemporary, France, Korea | Published: 2020 | Goodreads
It’s winter in Sokcho, a tourist town on the border between South and North Korea. The cold slows everything down. Bodies are red and raw, the fish turn venomous, beyond the beach guns point out from the North’s watchtowers. A young French Korean woman works as a receptionist in a tired guesthouse. One evening, an unexpected guest arrives: a French cartoonist determined to find inspiration in this desolate landscape.

The two form an uneasy relationship. When she agrees to accompany him on trips to discover an ‘authentic’ Korea, they visit snowy mountaintops and dramatic waterfalls, and cross into North Korea. But he takes no interest in the Sokcho she knows – the gaudy neon lights, the scars of war, the fish market where her mother works. As she’s pulled into his vision and taken in by his drawings, she strikes upon a way to finally be seen.

READ:

Beasts of A Little Land
by Juhea Kim
Historical, Korea | Published: 2022 | Goodreads | my rating: 5
An epic story of love, war, and redemption set against the backdrop of the Korean independence movement, following the intertwined fates of a young girl sold to a courtesan school and the penniless son of a hunter.

In 1917, deep in the snowy mountains of occupied Korea, an impoverished local hunter on the brink of starvation saves a young Japanese officer from an attacking tiger. In an instant, their fates are connected—and from this encounter unfolds a saga that spans half a century.

In the aftermath, a young girl named Jade is sold by her family to Miss Silver’s courtesan school, an act of desperation that will cement her place in the lowest social status. When she befriends an orphan boy named JungHo, who scrapes together a living begging on the streets of Seoul, they form a deep friendship. As they come of age, JungHo is swept up in the revolutionary fight for independence, and Jade becomes a sought-after performer with a new romantic prospect of noble birth. Soon Jade must decide whether she will risk everything for the one who would do the same for her.

From the perfumed chambers of a courtesan school in Pyongyang to the glamorous cafes of a modernizing Seoul and the boreal forests of Manchuria, where battles rage, Juhea Kim’s unforgettable characters forge their own destinies as they wager their nation’s. Immersive and elegant, Beasts of a Little Land unveils a world where friends become enemies, enemies become saviors, heroes are persecuted, and beasts take many shapes.

My Holiday in North Korea:
The Funniest/Worst Place on Earth
by Wendy E. Simmons
Memoir, Travel, North Korea | Goodreads | my rating : 4
Most people want out of North Korea. Wendy Simmons wanted in.

In My Holiday in North Korea: The Funniest/Worst Place on Earth, Wendy shares a glimpse of North Korea as it’s never been seen before. Even though it’s the scariest place on Earth, somehow Wendy forgot to check her sense of humor at the border.

But Wendy’s initial amusement and bewilderment soon turned to frustration and growing paranoia. Before long, she learned the essential conundrum of “tourism” in North Korea: Travel is truly a love affair. But, just like love, it’s a two-way street. And North Korea deprives you of all this. They want you to fall in love with the singular vision of the country they’re willing to show you and nothing more.

Through poignant, laugh-out-loud essays and 92 color photographs of North Korea rarely published, Wendy chronicles one of the strangest vacations ever. Along the way, she bares all while undergoing an inner journey as convoluted as the country itself.

READ: audiobook

The Silence of Bones
by June Hur
Historical, Mystery, YA, Korea | Published: 2020 | Goodreads | my rating: 4

I have a mouth, but I mustn't speak;
Ears, but I mustn't hear;
Eyes, but I mustn't see.

1800, Joseon (Korea). Homesick and orphaned sixteen-year-old Seol is living out the ancient curse: “May you live in interesting times.” Indentured to the police bureau, she’s been tasked with assisting a well-respected young inspector with the investigation into the politically charged murder of a noblewoman.

As they delve deeper into the dead woman's secrets, Seol forms an unlikely bond of friendship with the inspector. But her loyalty is tested when he becomes the prime suspect, and Seol may be the only one capable of discovering what truly happened on the night of the murder.

But in a land where silence and obedience are valued above all else, curiosity can be deadly.

READ: Manhwa (Korean webtoon)

Bastard
by Carnby Kim
illustrated by Youngchan Hwang
Horror | Published: 2015 | Goodreads
WATCH:

All of Us Are Dead (2022)
Original title: Jigeum Uri Hakgyoneun
TV, season 1
Stars: Ji-hu Park, Chan-Young Yoon, Yi-Hyun Cho
Action, Drama, Fantasy, Zombie, Korea | imdb
It was a normal school day for the students of a Korean high school-until a student returns from the school's science lab, infected by an unknown virus. As the infection spreads out of school and throughout the peninsula, the Military desperately interrogates the psychotic science teacher who started it all, while his students struggle to survive until help arrives.

LISTEN: the latest from BTS, Butter (here)

EAT:

Honey Butter Chips
and barley tea with
Yolk by Mary H.K. Choi
YA, Mental Health, Korean American | Published: 2021 | Goodreads

The Last Story of Mina Lee by Nancy Jooyun Kim

The Last Story of Mina Lee
by Nancy Jooyun Kim
narrated by Greta Jung

Published: 2020
Publisher: Park Row
Hardback: 384
Rating: 4
Contemporary, Mystery, Korean American | Goodreads | Website
Travel destination: Los Angeles, CA

First sentence(s):
Margot's final conversation with her mother had seemed so uneventful, so ordinary—another choppy bilingual plod. Half-understandable.

Margot Lee's mother, Mina, isn't returning her calls. It's a mystery to twenty-six-year-old Margot, until she visits her childhood apartment in Koreatown, LA, and finds that her mother has suspiciously died. The discovery sends Margot digging through the past, unraveling the tenuous invisible strings that held together her single mother's life as a Korean War orphan and an undocumented immigrant, only to realize how little she truly knew about her mother.

Interwoven with Margot's present-day search is Mina's story of her first year in Los Angeles as she navigates the promises and perils of the American myth of reinvention. While she's barely earning a living by stocking shelves at a Korean grocery store, the last thing Mina ever expects is to fall in love. But that love story sets in motion a series of events that have consequences for years to come, leading up to the truth of what happened the night of her death.

My two-bits:

The mother-daughter relationship was a constant theme in swirl.

Got me thinking of the importance of knowing (or not) family history.

~*~

* Listened to audiobook version.

* part of Reese's Book Club 2020 (here)

* part of Armchair Autumn Travel (here)

Somewhere Only We Know by Maurene Goo

Somewhere Only We Know
by Maurene Goo

Find out more about this book and author:
Goodreads
Website
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter

Published: May 2019
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Genre: Romance, YA, Asian American, Korea
Hardback: 320
Rating: 5

First sentence(s):
When you have a face that's recognizable by an entire continent, you have zero room to make mistakes.

10 00 p.m.: Lucky is the biggest K-pop star on the scene, and she's just performed her hit song "Heartbeat" in Hong Kong to thousands of adoring fans. She's about to debut on The Tonight Show in America, hopefully a breakout performance for her career. But right now? She's in her fancy hotel, trying to fall asleep but dying for a hamburger.

11 00 p.m.: Jack is sneaking into a fancy hotel, on assignment for his tabloid job that he keeps secret from his parents. On his way out of the hotel, he runs into a girl wearing slippers, a girl who is single-mindedly determined to find a hamburger. She looks kind of familiar. She's very cute. He's maybe curious.

12:00 a.m.: Nothing will ever be the same.

My two-bits:

Loved the Kpop/Kdrama kind of romance in this story. I wanted to continue to hang out with this couple well after I closed the book.

Also loved escaping to Hong Kong for a day and experiencing the food, sights, passions of this duo.

Got me thinking of passion for pursuing an artist/creative life.

I was taken with the hamburger mentions.

Back cover:

May is Asian Pacific Heritage Month

WATCH and DO:

I attended CAAMfest (Center of Asian and Asian American Media) film screenings (details) and volunteered time at the festival. It was fun to meet people, learn about CAAM and enjoy films (25 out of around 100).

Movie two-bit reviews can be found on these posts: Lovely Books and Things 5/11 (here) and Lovely Books and Things 5/25 (here).


VISIT: San Francisco Japan Town

I went to Uji Time for a tasty treat - soft serve Black Sesame ice cream served in a fish shaped cone.


READ:

Somewhere Only We Know
by Maurene Goo
-Romance, YA, Korea | Goodreads
Feeling like a K-Pop romance.


LISTEN:

BTS
Love Yourself: Her
Love Yourself: Tear
Love Yourself: Answer
Creating a K-Pop mood with this set by BTS.

And, looking forward to getting BTS newly released Persona :-)

~*~
* image source: BTS

The Hole by Hye-Young Pyun

The Hole
by Hye-Young Pyun
translated by Sora Kim-Russell

Find out more about this book and author:
Goodreads

Published: 2018
Publisher: Arcade; Reprint edition
Genre: Horror, Mystery, Korea
Paperback: 208
Rating: 5

First sentence(s):
Oghi slowly opened his eyes.

In this tense, gripping novel by a star of Korean literature, Oghi has woken from a coma after causing a devastating car accident that took his wife's life and left him paralyzed and badly disfigured. His caretaker is his mother-in-law, a widow grieving the loss of her only child. Oghi is neglected and left alone in his bed. His world shrinks to the room he lies in and his memories of his troubled relationship with his wife, a sensitive, intelligent woman who found all of her life goals thwarted except for one: cultivating the garden in front of their house. But soon Oghi notices his mother-in-law in the abandoned garden, uprooting what his wife had worked so hard to plant and obsessively digging larger and larger holes. When asked, she answers only that she is finishing what her daughter started.

A bestseller in Korea, The Hole is a superbly crafted and deeply unnerving novel about the horrors of isolation and neglect in all of its banal and brutal forms. As Oghi desperately searches for a way to escape, he discovers the difficult truth about his wife and the toll their life together took on her.

My two-bits:

Although this did not feel too much like a mystery, I enjoyed this as one of those slow burn horror stories.

Come to think of it, maybe the mystery was what was to become of Oghi.

~*~
* part of Books, Inc. Foreign Intrigue Book Club (here)

The White Book by Han Kang

The White Book
by Han Kang

Find out more about this book and author:
Goodreads
BookExcerpt

Published: 2019
Publisher: Hogarth
Genre: Literary, Korea
Hardback: 160
Rating: 5

First sentence(s):
In the spring, when I decided to write about white things, the first thing I did was make a list.

While on a writer's residency, a nameless narrator wanders the twin white worlds of the blank page and snowy Warsaw. THE WHITE BOOK becomes a meditation on the color white, as well as a fictional journey inspired by an older sister who died in her mother's arms, a few hours old. The narrator grapples with the tragedy that has haunted her family, an event she colors in stark white--breast milk, swaddling bands, the baby's rice cake-colored skin--and, from here, visits all that glows in her memory: from a white dog to sugar cubes.

As the writer reckons with the enormity of her sister's death, Han Kang's trademark frank and chilling prose is softened by retrospection, introspection, and a deep sense of resilience and love. THE WHITE BOOK--ultimately a letter from Kang to her sister--offers powerful philosophy and personal psychology on the tenacity and fragility of the human spirit, and our attempts to graft new life from the ashes of destruction.

My two-bits:

I felt enveloped in white when I read this. There are different iterations of snow in several forms as well as a theme of loss.

The Good Son by You-jeong Jeong

The Good Son
by You-jeong Jeong
translated by Chi-Young Kim
narrated by Johnathan McClain, Elizabeth Liang

Find out more about this book and author:
Goodreads

Published: 2018
Publisher: Penguin Books
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, South Korea
Paperback: 309
Rating: 5

First sentence(s):
The smell of blood woke me.

Who can you trust if you can't trust yourself?

Early one morning, twenty-six-year-old Yu-jin wakes up to a strange metallic smell, and a phone call from his brother asking if everything's all right at home - he missed a call from their mother in the middle of the night. Yu-jin soon discovers her murdered body, lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs of their stylish Seoul duplex. He can't remember much about the night before; having suffered from seizures for most of his life, Yu-jin often has trouble with his memory. All he has is a faint impression of his mother calling his name. But was she calling for help? Or begging for her life?

Thus begins Yu-jin's frantic three-day search to uncover what happened that night, and to finally learn the truth about himself and his family. A shocking and addictive psychological thriller, The Good Son explores the mysteries of mind and memory, and the twisted relationship between a mother and son, with incredible urgency.

My two-bits:

Felt like I was spinning and uncomfortable with this story. But, its thriller essence had a strong pull for this whydunnit.

~*~
* Listened to audiobook version.

Happy Horror Release: Korean Psychological Thrillers

The Hole: A Novel
by Hye-young Pyun
translated by Sora Kim-Russell
-Horror, Thriller, Korea
Release date: October 2, 2018
Amazon | Goodreads
In this tense, gripping novel by a star of Korean literature, Oghi has woken from a coma after causing a devastating car accident that took his wife's life and left him paralyzed and badly disfigured. His caretaker is his mother-in-law, a widow grieving the loss of her only child. Oghi is neglected and left alone in his bed. His world shrinks to the room he lies in and his memories of his troubled relationship with his wife, a sensitive, intelligent woman who found all of her life goals thwarted except for one: cultivating the garden in front of their house. But soon Oghi notices his mother-in-law in the abandoned garden, uprooting what his wife had worked so hard to plant and obsessively digging larger and larger holes. When asked, she answers only that she is finishing what her daughter started.

A bestseller in Korea, The Hole is a superbly crafted and deeply unnerving novel about the horrors of isolation and neglect in all of its banal and brutal forms. As Oghi desperately searches for a way to escape, he discovers the difficult truth about his wife and the toll their life together took on her.

* Winner of the 2017 Shirley Jackson Award

~*~

City of Ash and Red
by Hye-Young Pyun
-Horror, Thriller, Korea
Release date: November 6, 2018
Amazon | Goodreads
Distinguished for his talents as a rat killer, the nameless protagonist of Hye-young Pyun's City of Ash and Red is sent by the extermination company he works for on an extended assignment in C, a country descending into chaos and paranoia, swept by a contagious disease, and flooded with trash. No sooner does he disembark than he is whisked away by quarantine officials and detained overnight. Isolated and forgotten, he realizes that he is stranded with no means of contacting the outside world. Still worse, when he finally manages to reach an old friend, he is told that his ex-wife's body was found in his apartment and he is the prime suspect. Barely managing to escape arrest, he must struggle to survive in the streets of this foreign city gripped with fear of contamination and reestablish contact with his company and friends in order to clear his reputation.

But as the man's former life slips further and further from his grasp, and he looks back on his time with his wife, it becomes clear that he may not quite be who he seems. From the bestselling author of The Hole, City of Ash and Red is an apocalyptic account of the destructive impact of fear and paranoia on people's lives as well as a haunting novel about a man’s loss of himself and his humanity.

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

The Vegetarian
by Han Kang

Find out more about this book and author:
Amazon
Goodreads
BookExcerpt

Published: 2016
Publisher: Hogarth
Genre: Literary
Hardback: 192 pages
Rating: 4

First sentence(s):
Before my wife turned vegetarian, I'd always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way.

A beautiful, unsettling novel about rebellion and taboo, violence and eroticism, and the twisting metamorphosis of a soul

Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams—invasive images of blood and brutality—torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It’s a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband, her brother-in-law and sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that’s become sacred to her. Soon their attempts turn desperate, subjecting first her mind, and then her body, to ever more intrusive and perverse violations, sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous, bizarre estrangement, not only from those closest to her, but also from herself.

Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.

My two-bits:

I found this to be a surreal read with some colorful artsy scenes and stark medical depicted images.

Themes of body image, oppression of women, dreams and freedom run throughout.

One of those books where I am not quite sure I like it but agree that it is written well.

~*~
* part of Tournament of Books 2017 (here)

* part of Korean Book Challenge (here)

* part of Book Passage Literary Prize Book Group (here)

WINNER of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Publisher's Weekly • Buzzfeed • Entertainment Weekly • Time • Wall Street Journal • Bustle • Elle • The Economist • Slate • The Huffington Post • The St. Louis Dispatch • Electric Literature

Please Look After Mother by Kyung-Sook Shin

Please Look After Mother
by Kyung-Sook Shin
transalated by Chi-Young Kim

Find out more about this book and author:
Amazon
Goodreads
Website

Published: 2012
Publisher: Vintage
Genre: Family, Korea
Paperback: 272 pages
Rating: 4

First sentence(s):
It's been one week since Mom went missing.

MAN ASIAN LITERARY PRIZE WINNER

When sixty-nine-year-old So-nyo is separated from her husband among the crowds of the Seoul subway station, her family begins a desperate search to find her. Yet as long-held secrets and private sorrows begin to reveal themselves, they are forced to wonder: how well did they actually know the woman they called Mom?

Told through the piercing voices and urgent perspectives of a daughter, son, husband, and mother, Please Look After Mom is at once an authentic picture of contemporary life in Korea and a universal story of family love.

My two-bits:

How well do we (can we) ever know close loved ones? This story presents the question through the voices of different family members in regards to a mother.

Spoken in first person mode with each family member, the inner feelings and reflections give a complete picture of the mother.

Snapshots of living in the city and countryside of South Korea provide some insight into the place and culture.

~*~
* part of Korean Book Challenge

Korean Book Challenge

Korean Book Challenge
hosted by vvb32 reads
I am making my Korean interest and reading into a challenge to read books by Korean Authors and/or Containing Korean Characters

MY READING LIST:

The Birth of Korean Cool
by Euny Hong
Non-fiction | Amazon | Goodreads

Please Look After Mother
by Kyung-Sook Shin
Family, Korea | Amazon | Goodreads | my review

Re Jane
by Patricia Park
Bronte theme | Amazon | Goodreads

One Hundred Shadows
by Hwang Jung-eun
translated by Jung Yeown
Contemporary Fiction, South Korea | Amazon | Goodreads

My Holiday in North Korea:
The Funniest/Worst Place on Earth
by Wendy E. Simmons
Memoir, Travel, North Korea | Amazon | Goodreads

In Order to Live:
A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom
by Yeonmi Park, Maryanne Vollers
Korea, Memoir | Amazon | Goodreads

Pachinko
by Min Jin Lee
Fiction, Korea | Amazon | Goodreads

The Vegetarian
by Han Kang
translated by Deborah Smith
Contemporary Fiction, Korea | Amazon | Goodreads | my review

Hello, I Love You
by Katie M. Stout
Music, Romance, YA, Korea | Amazon | Goodreads | my review

I Have The Right To Destroy Myself
by Young-Ha Kim
Korea, Mystery, Art | Amazon | Goodreads | my review

K-Pop Now!:
The Korean Music Revolution
by Mark James Russell
Non-fiction, Korea, Music | Amazon | Goodreads
=====> I am flipping through and reading bits and pieces from this one.

~*~
* updated 11/13/16, converted to a personal ongoing challenge

* Goodreads listopia list of Korean reads (here)

* badge image source: The Birth of Korean Cool by Euny Hong

* Ribbet was used for badge image creation

Waiting on Wednesday - 8.3.16

Waiting on Wednesday
sponsored by Jill at Breaking the Spine (details)
~*~
I'm waiting for...

One Hundred Shadows
by Hwang Jung-eun
translated by Jung Yeown
-Contemporary Fiction, South Korea
Release date: October 3, 2016
Amazon | Goodreads
An oblique, hard-edged novel tinged with offbeat fantasy, One Hundred Shadows is set in a slum electronics market in central Seoul – an area earmarked for demolition in a city better known for its shiny skyscrapers and slick pop videos. Here, the awkward, tentative relationship between Eun-gyo and Mujae, who both dropped out of formal education to work as repair-shop assistants, is made yet more uncertain by their economic circumstances, while their matter-of-fact discussion of a strange recent development – the shadows of the slum’s inhabitants have started to ‘rise’ – leaves the reader to make up their own mind as to the nature of this shape-shifting tale.

Hwang’s spare prose is illuminated by arresting images, quirky dialogue and moments of great lyricism, crafting a deeply affecting novel of perfectly calibrated emotional restraint. Known for her interest in social minorities, Hwang eschews the dreary realism usually employed for such issues, without her social criticism being any less keen. As well as an important contribution to contemporary working-class literature, One Hundred Shadows depicts the little-known underside of a society which can be viciously superficial, complicating the shiny, ultra-modern face which South Korea presents to the world.

=====> This one calls to me because of my current interest in things Korean.

Hello, I Love You by Katie M. Stout

Hello, I Love You
by by Katie M. Stout

Find out more about this book and author:
Amazon
Goodreads
Website
Blog
Instagram
Pinterest
Twitter @katiemstout

Published: 2015
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Genre: YA, South Korea
Hardback: 304 pages
Rating: 4

First sentence(s):
Big Brother,
I want you to know something: It wasn't your fault, not any of it. And I'm so sorry. Sorry for ditching the family and for shipping off to the other side of the world.

Grace Wilde is running-from the multi-million dollar mansion her record producer father bought, the famous older brother who's topped the country music charts five years in a row, and the mother who blames her for her brother's breakdown. Grace escapes to the farthest place from home she can think of, a boarding school in Korea, hoping for a fresh start.

She wants nothing to do with music, but when her roommate Sophie's twin brother Jason turns out to be the newest Korean pop music superstar, Grace is thrust back into the world of fame. She can't stand Jason, whose celebrity status is only outmatched by his oversized ego, but they form a tenuous alliance for the sake of her friendship with Sophie. As the months go by and Grace adjusts to her new life in Korea, even she can't deny the sparks flying between her and the KPOP idol.

Soon, Grace realizes that her feelings for Jason threaten her promise to herself that she'll leave behind the music industry that destroyed her family. But can Grace ignore her attraction to Jason and her undeniable pull of the music she was born to write? Sweet, fun, and romantic, Katie M. Stout's Hello, I Love You explores what it means to experience first love and discover who you really are in the process.

My two-bits:

I have been looking for Kpop related fiction and found this one which fit the bill. Still looking for more.

In this story the main character, Grace, is an American teen attending school in South Korea not so much for interest in Korea, but for escapism. Because of this, there are only glimpses of the locations and culture.

However, I did enjoy the glimpses into the Kpop industry, boarding school and jaunts into town for entertainment.

There is a coming of age moment at the end for Grace as she deals with the issues that caused her move from the U.S. And, some push-pull romance is sprinkled in as well.

About the author:

Hello! I'm Katie, and I write books.

I'm from Atlanta, Georgia, but I have a passion for travel, which has taken me all over the world. I've lived in Thailand and England, and I've visited five continents. I love Southern sweet tea and English sticky toffee pudding, and I'm a full-time grad student and part-time social media manager for a Christian charity.

Zombies in Korea

As I have been getting into the world of Kpop and Korea this year I came across another of my favorite topics in entertainment there... zombies!

In literature:

Zombies
by Kim Junghyuk
-Zombies
details
Zombies is the first full-length novel by Kim Junghyuk whose other works have enjoyed much popularity among readers for his ingenious imagination, slick humor, and compassionate point of view. This particular work presents an enticing interplay of unique characters, an atypical setting, and witty conversations along with the tension created by the presence of zombies, the uncanny beings. In the novel, zombies do not serve as a symbolic representation of an absolute death or a disease, and neither are they an “Other” that must be persecuted and eliminated. As the unfolding story line reveals, they are beings that could easily have been our family, or close neighbors, and those that appear in front of the living as the memories that connect the dead and the survived. The protagonist, who could not free himself from the death of his brother for a long time, also must confront the memory of the death and comes to an understanding of what meaning life may hold through coming face to face with those zombies. As the author states, “This is not a story about zombies. It is one about the memories that have been forgotten. It is a story about the people who desire to remember.” (Epilogue) The climactic moment of the work comes in the last scene of the novel where the protagonist marches into the oblivion along with hundreds of zombies through the flames surrounding them in all directions while blasting the music of Stone Flower. Just as the protagonist has come together and formed a community with Chubby278 and Hong Hyejeong through the music of Stone Flower, a 60’s rock band, he and the hundreds of zombies come together in the stench of blood and roars through rock-and-roll music heading forward into one shared destiny. This is a ‘zombie tale a la Kim Junghyuk’ born out of the author’s twisting and deconstructing the conventions of the genre through the positive outlook and soundness, which are his signature, that escapes being mistaken with any other writer.

In graphic novels:

Pandora
End of Days: A Zombie Survival-Horror Graphic Novel
by Peter J. Ang (Author), Jin Song Kim (Illustrator)
Amazon | Goodreads | Facebook
The most amazing archaeological discovery of our time-- a sarcophagus from an ancient civilization that predates the Egyptian Pyramids by more than fifty thousand years--is being broadcast as a live public exhibit on national TV.

But in their haste to reveal a glimpse of what could be the origin of mankind, the scholars of the OBARI Foundation instead unleash an ancient plague upon the modern world.

This is the age-old story of the curious--and of those who must race to close the door on what should never have been opened . . .

This is PANDORA, the End of Days...

Priest
Volume 1. Prelude for the Deceased
by Min-Woo Hyung
-comic series (currently up to #16)
Amazon | Goodreads
In the frontier of the American West, a veil of evil threatens to engulf humanity. Servants of the fallen angel Temozarela are paving the way for their dark lord's resurrection. One man stands in the way of the Apocalypse -- Ivan Isaacs -- a fallen priest who sold his soul to the devil Belial for the power to fight evil. Armed with a wicked blade and silver bullets, Ivan will give the heretics a baptism of blood in his pilgrimage for humanity's redemption.


In Korean film:

Zombie School (2014)
aka Jombiseukool
Director: Kim Seok-Jung
Starring: Ha Eun-Sul, Min Ji, Kyeong-ryong Kim
-Action, Horror, School, Zombies | details | imdb
Chil Sung School is seemingly peaceful, yet no can predict the horrific events that are soon to take place. Pigs buried alive during the foot-and-mouth disease scare, have come back from the grave – teachers are bitten by the zombie pigs, turning into zombies themselves, while the students team up to fight the teachers.

=====> Heh, heh... zombie pigs

Busan Bound (2016)
aka Busan Line
Director: Yeon Sang-ho
Release date: December 31, 2016
Starring: Gong Yoo, Ma Dong Seok, Jung Yu Mi
-Action, Thriller, Zombies | details
This film is set in a KTX (high speed train) on the Seoul-Busan railway that is filled with the walking dead.

In Kdrama:

The Neighbor Zombie (2010)
Yieutjib jombi (original title)
Directors: Oh Young-Doo, Ryu Hoon, Hong Young-Geun, Jang Youn-Jung
Starring: Ji-hun Bae, Yong-geun Bae, Eun-Jung Ha
-Comedy, Horror, Zombies | details | imdb
In 2010, a Zombie virus is spreading all over the world including the uneasy but peaceful city of Seoul, South Korea. The government in Seoul now declares martial law, as they search for people affected by the virus and rid themselves of those persons.

On the other side, civilians risk infection to hide and feed those affected, while looking for a vaccine.


In Kpop music video:

Here is a mashup of the cutesy kpop sound and walking dead...



~*~
* part of zombie month (schedule)