Since South Korean poet Han Kang has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, I wanted to celebrate that well-deserved recognition by sharing one of my favorite poems of hers, from her 2013 collection 서랍에 저녁을 넣어 두었다 (I Put the Evening in the Drawer). A Thing Called the Heart…
Episode 13 of the K-drama Welcome to Samdal-ri features a mournful poem about loving someone in solitary silence, from poet Kim Ki-seong’s collection Love Blooms, but It Blooms in Silence (사랑은 피워도, 침묵 속에 피워라). However, the show’s writer (Kwon Hye-joo) helps us to see that even the cold, dull…
Episode 12 of the K-drama Extraordinary Attorney Woo features a powerful poem about putting others first, from author Ahn Do-hyun’s 2004 collection Lonely High Solitary (외롭고 높고 쓸쓸한). I couldn’t get the powerful imagery off my mind: in Korea even today, people fight off the winter cold with charcoal briquettes.…
I’ve been watching the Korean drama 기상청 사람들: 사내연애 잔혹사 편, known in English as Forecasting Love and Weather. In episode six, there’s a lovely scene in which the two leads (who work for the Korea Meteorological Administration and therefore know a lot about the weather) are reading a lovely…
Like many folks around the world, I was introduced to the poetry of Kim Sowol—who published a single book of poems, Azaleas, before dying at age thirty-two—through the show The King: Eternal Monarch. In episode three, the eponymous ruler of alternate Earth Kingdom of Corea pulls Azaleas from a shelf…
One of the many things I love about watching K-drama is all the wonderful poetry I’ve been introduced to. During episode 10 of Hometown Cha Cha Cha, male protagonist Hong Ban-jang reads the poem “The Gatekeeper” from the collection Portrait of Echoes by Kim Haengsook (so that female protagonist Yoon…
Ever since I first watched the Korean drama 쓸쓸하고 찬란하神 – 도깨비, known in English as Guardian: The Great and Lonely God or simply Goblin, I have been obsessed with the poem the male lead (Kim Shin, an immortal goblin) reads from an anthology the female lead (Ji Eun-tak, his…
