In a Quicksand of Language: A Conversation with Krys Lee
Krys Lee discusses her debut novel, How I Became a North Korean, having empathy for people and characters, and finding the balance between real-world facts and imagination. ...more
Posts Tagged: North Korea
What to Read When You Need to Know about Korea
A list of books about Korea (both North and South) and by Koreans that Rumpus editors have read and enjoyed. ...more
This Week in Trumplandia
Welcome to This Week in Trumplandia. Check in with us every Thursday for a weekly roundup of the most pertinent content on our country, which is currently spiraling down a crappy toilet drain. You owe it to yourself, your community, and your humanity to contribute whatever you can, even if it is just awareness of the truth.
...moreThis Week in Trumplandia
Welcome to This Week in Trumplandia. Check in with us every Thursday for a weekly roundup of the most pertinent content on our country, which is currently spiraling down a crappy toilet drain. You owe it to yourself, your community, and your humanity to contribute whatever you can, even if it is just awareness of the truth.
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
This week, a short story collection written by an author in North Korea and smuggled across its borders is reaching readers in North America. The Accusation is the first known story collection written by an author still living inside the totalitarian state to have escaped its iron curtain, and it is now being published across the globe.
...moreThis Week in Trumplandia
Welcome to This Week in Trumplandia. Check in with us every Thursday for a weekly roundup of the most pertinent and relevant content on our country, which is currently spiraling down a crappy toilet drain. You owe it to yourself, your communities, and your humanity to contribute whatever you can, even if it is just awareness of the truth.
...moreWriting to Legitimize the Self
To research her book Without You, There Is No Us, Suki Kim worked undercover as an ESL teacher in North Korea. Kim was reluctant to call the work a memoir, believing that to do so “trivialized” her investigative reporting. The result was a backlash from critics, who called her undercover methods “dishonest.” At The New Republic, Kim responds to her critics:
...moreHere I am telling my story to you, the reader, essentially to beg for acknowledgment: I am an investigative journalist, please take me seriously.
The Panama Papers: A Rumpus Roundup
Over the weekend, journalists announced a leak of 11.5 million files from the law firm of Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based law firm specializing in corporations designed to take advantage of offshore tax havens.
On April 1st, Mossack Fonseca sent a warning letter to clients suggesting they had suffered a data breach.
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The Rumpus Interview with Adam Johnson
Pulitzer Prize–winning author Adam Johnson talks about his new book, Fortune Smiles, fiction and voice, veterans and defectors, solar-powered robots and self-driving cars, and infrared baseball caps that can blind security cameras. ...more
No Lights, No Camera
Mitch Moxley took a trip to the North Korean Film Festival; reporting for GQ, he riffs on how the event was a script in itself:
...moreAfterward, outside in the afternoon sun, Hong politely poses for photos with a few fans.
The Rumpus Interview with Suki Kim
Suki Kim discusses her new memoir, Without You, There Is No Us, going undercover for research, growing up as an immigrant to the U.S., and spending six months trapped in North Korea. ...more
Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea’s Elite
Even now, writing in Manhattan, my heart beats faster recalling that initial meeting. Oddly enough, the first word that came to my mind was beauty. ...more
The Rumpus Interview with Fiona Maazel
Writer Fiona Maazel talks about her love for the "sad, lonely, self-loathing guy," the appeal of cults, setting her latest novel in the wildly divergent worlds of North Korea and Cincinnati, and her current fascination with neuroprosthetics. ...more
“I Was Very Afraid of Failing, Because I Knew I Would Be Shot”
In a downright insane profile piece for GQ, Rumpus interviewee Adam Johnson talks to Kenji Fujimoto, the sushi chef and longtime friend of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il.
The article is just as wild and disturbing as Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son (which just won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize), but it’s nonfiction.
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In the Books
Social workers in South Korea frequently refer to North Korean defectors as da-moonhwa, a broad label that means “many cultures.”
...moreJason Novak’s Lowdown on North Korea
At The Morning News, check out head Rumpus illustrator Jason Novak and Mike Duncan’s “She Nukes Me, She Nukes Me Not” ironically comical visual guide to the history of the US relationship with North Korea.
It’s definitely worth the read, if only for Novak’s amazing interpretation of North Korea’s uranium enrichment program.
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The Rumpus Interview with Adam Johnson
When I saw Stephen Elliott call The Orphan Master’s Son “the best novel I’ve read in forever,” in one of his Daily Rumpus emails I knew I had to interview Adam Johnson for the Rumpus.
...morePrepare Yourself Citizens!
In The Orphan Master’s Son, Adam Johnson has not only visited a nation curtained from the rest of the world, but has recreated it with compassion and humanity. The result is a relentless examination of what it means to be human in an inhumane world.
...moreHoping Things End Safely: The Rumpus Interview with Hyejin Kim
North Korean women risk their lives to escape across the border to China, where they often face lives of indentured servitude and the ever-present fear of being outed by the husbands they marry or communities they join and sent back to North Korea.