Korean Contemporary Fiction

The Penn Libraries actively collects contemporary literature from South Korea for study and enjoyment by international students, language learners, and researchers at Penn: a community that continues to grow as Penn's Korean Studies Program and the newly established James Joo-Jin Center for Korean Studies flourish. Upper-level Korean language classes at Penn, in particular, make use of our fiction collection for their coursework every year. As the Penn Libraries expands the global voices represented in its collections, our coverage of contemporary Korean materials will continue to grow.

We focus on novels and stories by major authors, prize-winning literature, and bilingual editions. Many of the popular authors whose works we collect are women, and our focus is on recent literature, published since 2000. Among other series, the Penn Libraries collects K-Fiction, Bilingual Edition Modern Korean Literature, and a series published annually that features prizewinners and young breakout authors.

Please come check out some Korean fiction by browsing the PL900s in the East Asia Stacks, on the fifth floor of Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center.

If you'd like to read Korean fiction in English or French translation, aside from the bilingual edition series you can find it in the PL900s on the third floor. The Dalkey Archive Press's Library of Korean Literature is a good recent series of translated Korean fiction in English.