In this series, we present you, the top 5 Korean page turners. Some were written in English with the Korean backdrop in mind and others are the Korean Best Sellers which was initially published in Korean Language but were later translated to English.

One thousand chestnut trees: a novel of Korea
by Mira Stout

How best to prepare for a trip to Korea? Forget the kimchi experiments and immerse yourself in a novel that’s thick with the people, the history, and the feel of Korea. Mira Stout’s protagonist is Anna (based loosely on Stout herself), a young artist who lives in New York and feels lost. Knowing little about her Boston Irish father and her Korean mother, and less still about Korea, she decides to journey to Korea, as Mira Stout herself did, to try to make sense of the random jigsaw pieces of her background–tidbits like the story of her great-grandfather, once the ruler of Kangwon Province, who was stripped of land and title by the invading Japanese and ordered a temple be built atop the highest mountain amidst 1,000 chestnut trees.

In the novel, Anna’s Korean curiosity begins as a teenager, when Uncle Hong-do arrives from Korea to visit Anna’s mother, the sister he never met. Years later, Anna turns to Korea as an answer to her feelings of existential angst, retracing her mother’s steps in an effort “to see my family undie.” Told in her voice as well as her mother’s and grandfather’s, what you get is a stirring novel that combines Korea’s epic history with a family legacy and a personal exploration. A fine read whether you’re going to Korea or lounging in your living room, Stout’s story is engrossing and educational.

Please Look After Mom
by Kyung-Sook Shin

A million-plus-copy best seller in Korea—a magnificent English-language debut poised to become an international sensation—this is the stunning, deeply moving story of a family’s search for their mother, who goes missing one afternoon amid the crowds of the Seoul Station subway. 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. You will never think of your mother the same way again after you read this book.

Amazon Best Books of the Month, April 2011: There is a simple, yet remarkable, scene in Kyung-sook Shin’s novel, Please Look After Mom, where the book’s title character visits her adult son in Seoul. He lives in a duty office in the building where he works, because he can’t afford an apartment. At night, they sleep on the floor and she offers to lie next to the wall to shield him from a draft. “I can fall asleep better if I’m next to the wall,” she says. And with this gesture, we catch a glimpse of the depth of love she has for her first-born and the duty-bound sacrifices she’s made on behalf her family. Please Look After Mom is the story of a mother, and her family’s search for her after she goes missing in a crowded train station, told through four richly imagined voices: her daughter’s, her oldest son’s, her husband’s, and finally her own. Each chapter adds a layer to the story’s depth and complexity, until we are left with an indelible portrait of a woman whose entire identity, despite her secret desires, is tied up in her children and the heartbreaking loss that is felt when family bonds loosen over time. Kyung-sook Shin’s elegantly spare prose is a joy to read, but it is the quiet interstitial space between her words, where our own remembrances and regrets are allowed to seep in, that convicts each one of us to our core.

Silver Stallion: A Novel of Korea
Junghyo Ahn

In a mountain village in Korea, 1950, the memory of the Japanese occupation has just begun to fade when the farmers hear that the World Army, led by the great American General “Megado” has landed at Inchon.

The second novel by this popular Korean writer offers an intimate, mournful perspective on the Korean War, as the harmony of a tiny village is destroyed by the arrival of friendly foreign troops. In 1950, the hamlet of Kumsan is much the same as it was a century earlier; a rich elder serves as the arbiter of propriety, children play together in gangs, men farm and women run the households. But when air raids begin and Western soldiers (called bengkos –big noses) set up camp, Kumsan’s delicate structure collapses. The author keeps his scale small but faultlessly detailed, letting events unfold primarily through the eyes of Mansik, a young boy whose mother is raped by soldiers and then shunned by the other villagers; eventually, she seeks work in a prostitute shantytown to feed her children. Though his subjects – the casual devastation wrought by armies and the cruel hypocrisy that can seethe within small communities – are anything but new, the author handles them with passion and precision.

A Single Shard
by Linda Sue Park

Park (Seesaw Girl) molds a moving tribute to perseverance and creativity in this finely etched novel set in mid- to late 12th-century Korea. In Ch’ul’po, a potter’s village, Crane-man (so called because of one shriveled leg) raises 10-year-old orphan Tree Ear (named for a mushroom that grows “without benefit of “parent-seed”). Though the pair reside under a bridge, surviving on cast-off rubbish and fallen grains of rice, they believe “stealing and begging… made a man no better than a dog.” From afar, Tree Ear admires the work of the potters until he accidentally destroys a piece by Min, the most talented of the town’s craftsmen, and pays his debt in servitude for nine days. Park convincingly conveys how a community of artists works (chopping wood for a communal kiln, cutting clay to be thrown, etc.) and effectively builds the relationships between characters through their actions (e.g., Tree Ear hides half his lunch each day for Crane-man, and Min’s soft-hearted wife surreptitiously fills the bowl). She charts Tree Ear’s transformation from apprentice to artist and portrays his selflessness during a pilgrimage to Songdo to show Min’s work to the royal court he faithfully continues even after robbers shatter the work and he has only a single shard to show. Readers will not soon forget these characters or their sacrifices.

Somebody’s Daughter: A Novel
by Marie Myung-Ok Lee

Young adult novelist Lee explores a Korean-born girl’s complicated journey to define her identity in her poignant adult debut. Adopted by a white Minnesota family who tried to quash any curiosity Sarah Thorson might have about her homeland, the directionless 20-year-old drops out of college and enrolls in a Korean-language program in Seoul. As she struggles to fit in, she recognizes her desire to learn about her birth family, and she’s shocked to learn that she was abandoned as a baby (she’d been told her parents died in a car accident). With the help of her new boyfriend, Korean-American Doug, who educates her about her homeland and its citizens (“Cut open a Korean and… you’ll find: salt and hot red peppers,” he tells her over a meal of spicy soup), she goes on a Korean TV show dedicated to finding missing persons. When a woman comes forward, the two begin to form a bond, but a DNA test proves them unrelated. Meanwhile, Lee spins out the parallel story line of Sarah’s birth mother: Kyung-Sook had dreams of pursuing a career in Korean folk music, but she fell for an American hippie who abandoned her once she became pregnant. Now 50, Kyung-Sook sees Sarah on TV and comes to Seoul to find her. Lee sidesteps a tender emotional reunion, though, in favor of an honest portrayal of a mother’s sacrifice and a daughter’s growth.