The Korean Wave, or Hallyu, is reaching new heights around the globe. Due to the meteoric success of Korean TV shows (e.g. Squid Game), films (e.g. Parasite), and music (e.g. BTS) in almost every corner of the world, Korean sentiment and culture have now entered the mainstream. In this respect, Hallyu might be the most significant cultural product in recent years.
This new cultural phenomenon has also spilled over to literature as international readers want to find out more about Korean society and culture. Meanwhile, Korean authors themselves are writing more about contemporary issues than before. Their themes now range from feminism and gender to the climate crisis and human rights—universal concerns that readers, regardless of region or age, want to explore. Out of the abundant titles that have been published overseas, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo (tr. Jamie Chang; Scribner UK, 2021), The Plotters by Kim Un-su (tr. Sora Kim-Russell; Fourth Estate, 2019), and The Good Son by Jeong You-jeong (tr. Chi-Young Kim; Penguin Books, 2018) seem to have gained the most traction. The grant applications we have received from international publishers tell us that copyrights of these titles have been sold to more than fifteen countries. Now is the perfect timing for Korean literature to expand its readership as more readers, as a result of Hallyu, relate to our stories.
Describe the structure of your organization and its goal(s). How many staff members does it employ and what are their main activities?
LTI Korea was first launched as the Korean Literature Translation Fund in 1996; we celebrated our twenty-fifth anniversary this year. Our mission is to enrich Korean literature and promote it overseas by serving as a center for global exchange and the promotion of Korean literature. Our current goal is to establish Korean literature as part of world literature.
As of 2021, about fifty-seven staff members work at LTI Korea in four divisions—the Division of International Affairs, the Division of Literature Promotion, the Division of Education Programs, and the Division of Administration and Planning. The Division of International Affairs runs grant programs for translators and publishers, as well as events such as the Publishers Roundtable, the Literature Review Contest, and the K-Book Talk Series. The Division of Literature Promotion hosts the annual Seoul International Writers’ Festival and manages the LTI Korea Library and its online platform. This division also publishes Korean Literature Now, LTI Korea’s quarterly magazine. The Division of Education Programs runs our Translation Academy, which has graduated more than 1,000 students since its establishment in 2008. Lastly, the Division of Administration and Planning deals with administrative matters and communicates with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to set annual and long-term plans for our organization.
How much funding does your organization disburse in a year, and where does the funding come from?
For this year, LTI Korea plans to disburse a total of 1.8 billion KRW (approx. 1.5 million USD) to translators, publishers, and literary organizations or institutions. We will disburse 1.6 billion KRW (approx. 1.3 million USD) for the translation and publication of Korean works and provide 1.6 hundred million KRW (approx. 135,000 USD) for international publishers to support their marketing and promotional events. We also plan to provide 60 million KRW (approx. 50,000 USD) to organizations hosting events that promote Korean literature. Last year, LTI Korea supported 159 translation projects, 170 publication projects, and 86 international literary events.
LTI Korea is one of thirty-three public institutions affiliated with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. We receive our entire budget from the South Korean government every year. Being a public institution, most of the events that we host, including the annual Seoul International Writers’ Festival and the online K-Book Talks, are offered for free.
Including the one just announced in October 2021, as many as five Nobel Prizes in Literature have been awarded to writers working in English in the past decade alone. Translation into English has also been a crucial factor for many of the winners to receive consideration in the first place. In light of this linguistic hegemony, I imagine that there is an increased focus on translation into English, the costs of which can’t be met by market demand alone. Given your own institution’s limited resources, what criteria do you use to choose which authors to fund, and, given the sources of your funding, are there certain considerations factored into your selection?
LTI Korea has five grant programs for the translation and publication of Korean literature. These programs are open to all languages, so we do not in fact prioritize any language. Nevertheless, judging from the applications that we receive from translators, international publishers, and Korean publishers, it appears that the target languages we support generally reflect the trends of the global publishing market.
LTI Korea’s Translation Grant is open to translators of any language who wish to translate a sample of Korean literature that has not yet been published in the target language. The Translation and Publication Grant for Overseas Publishers is for international publishers planning to publish Korean literary works. For our Translation and Publication Grant programs, we do not commission the translations; these are typically initiated by translators or publishers who apply to translate or publish a particular Korean title. Impartiality and diversity are at the core of the evaluation process. The applications we receive are reviewed by a group of four to six experts. The Review Committee makes the final decision for the grant programs based on four criteria: the quality of the original work, the expected reception of the work in the target country, the publisher’s marketing capability, and the strategic importance of the target country. For the last criterion, the Committee examines whether Korean literature is underrepresented in the target language, thus requiring governmental support, or whether LTI Korea has plans to host any major events with the target country in the near future. This is to ensure that our programs promote diversity in terms of target languages.
LTI Korea also co-hosts the Translation Concours with select overseas publishers, through which the publisher holds a translation competition on a certain Korean work they want to publish. The Translation Grant for Korean Publishers is a new program we began this year, where we support the complete translation of some of the more recent works published by Korean publishers. Last but not least, LTI Korea also runs the Special Translation Program, through which we translate classic and modern titles that have historical and literary value but have yet to be introduced overseas.
The sitcom Seinfeld was notably a flop in Germany. Similarly, authors who encounter success in one culture sometimes do not receive the same reception in another. What are some surprising crossover successes or failures you have encountered in your tenure with this institution and what do you think might have led to these outcomes?
There is always a time lag in the world of translated literature. Some works are translated into a different language years after debuting in their original language. Although we can never know which book will work for which market, we have experienced some delightful surprises in recent years.
The Vegetarian by Han Kang (tr. by Deborah Smith; Portobello Books, 2015) is one example. Changbi Publishers first published it in 2007. The book was well-received by literary critics and the media after its initial publication, but it was only after it won the International Booker Prize for Fiction in 2016 that it became a nationwide bestseller in South Korea. Kim Yideum’s Hysteria, the poetry collection (tr. by Jake Levine, Soeun Seo, and Hedgie Cho; Action Books, 2019), was another crossover success in the United States, as it took the US National Translation Award and the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize in 2019. Yun Ko-eun’s The Disaster Tourist (tr. by Lizzie Buehleer; Serpent’s Tail, 2020) received the CWA Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger award this year, which was a surprise because the book was not classified as crime fiction when it was initially published in South Korea in 2013.
All these success stories are the product of collaborations between writers, translators, and international publishers. It’s undeniable that translators and publishers know best about their target countries and their readers. LTI Korea’s role is to serve as a platform for these key players and support them throughout the publication process. In fact, we found through trial and error that collaboration is the key factor for successful projects. We hope to continue to play our role as a steadfast supporter of writers, translators, and publishers.
What are some recent challenges you have faced advocating for your country’s literature and how has your institution adapted to meet these challenges?
The COVID-19 outbreak was an unexpected challenge for everyone. It was especially difficult for LTI Korea since a considerable number of our projects are conducted overseas. Most of our international projects were either canceled or postponed last year. However, we were slightly better prepared to deal with the situation this year and devised new ways to connect with international publishers and readers.
First, most of our on-site events are now held online. The Publishers Roundtable, a gathering of international publishers, journalists, and literary agents held in Seoul, was conducted virtually this year. Although the participants were unable to meet in person, they were able to meet online and actively exchange information about Korean literary works and the publishing market. We are also working with international publishers to host online author events to celebrate the publication of Korean literature overseas. While virtual events lack the lively ambiance and urgency of on-site events, we have found that they can also be a way to reach a wider audience. We plan to continue some of these new online events and programs, although we very much look forward to greeting our guests in Seoul very soon.
Tell us about your proudest accomplishments as an institution in the past ten years. I’d be particularly interested to hear about any campaigns that your institution conceived to advocate for your country’s literature.
Since our ultimate goal is to expand the global readership of Korean literature, we often hold literary events at major international book fairs. We have found that taking part in focus country events at these book fairs is an effective way to draw local attention to Korean literature. In 2019, nine Korean writers visited the Göteborg Book Fair in Sweden and had talks with Swedish writers and readers. In 2016, fifteen Korean writers took part in the Salon du Livre de Paris in France. Even earlier, in 2014, ten Korean writers were featured at the London Book Fair in the UK. To spread the word about our authors, we made sure to invite local journalists, literary agents, and publishers to these events so that interest in them would be sustained even afterward. As a government institution, we believe our role is to create positive momentum in the international book market. We want to pave the way for every player in the industry, from literary editors and agents to authors and translators, to collaborate in introducing great Korean works to international readers.
In his Nobel Lecture, Kazuo Ishiguro exhorted us to “widen our common literary world to include many more voices from beyond our comfort zones of the elite first-world cultures. We must search more energetically to discover the gems from what remain today unknown literary cultures, whether the writers live in far away countries or within our own communities.” Yet, in one crucial respect, this ideal of an inclusive world literature shares the same problem as the climate crisis or even the COVID-19 vaccine crisis: countries that have the means to do something about a global situation often end up looking out for their own interests. How do you think institutional advocates of a country’s literature might be better allies for world literature, if they might even play a role at all?
As a government-affiliated public institution, LTI Korea’s primary goal is to promote Korean literature overseas. We fully acknowledge that this cannot be done by promoting Korean literature alone, which is why we have made a continuous effort to become a global platform for literary exchange. The Seoul International Writers’ Festival, which began in 2006, has invited more than 240 writers from fifty-four countries to present international voices to Korean readers. For this year’s Seoul International Writers’ Festival, we invited sixteen writers from fifteen countries to be featured alongside seventeen writers from Korea. The participants engaged in lively discussions on literature and social issues through our online programs.
We also believe that our projects should have something to do with nurturing the value of cultural diversity. This is why we have initiated a Two-Way Translation and Publication Program, through which we partner with international institutions and publishers to introduce works from Iran, Georgia, the Netherlands, Indonesia, and Belarus to Korean readers. In turn, these international partners also publish Korean literature in their respective countries. Last year, LTI Korea partnered with the Institute for Literary Translation in Moscow, Russia, and launched the 2020 5+5 Co-Publication Project. Ten books, five each from Korea and Russia, were published in each of their respective countries to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of formal diplomatic relations between South Korea and Russia. South Korean readers have historically been receptive to world literature, and so we look forward to continuing our advocacy of cultural exchange between South Korea and the rest of the world.
