The most recommended books about South Korea

This book is a detailed account of the fighting at Pork Chop Hill, aka Hill 255. It was aptly named because on the topographical map it resembled a pork chop. They call this the forgotten war. It is a gritty, blow-by-blow, extremely detailed account of the battle in April 1953. This book describes the incredible feat of bravery and heroism by the men of the 7th Infantry Division. Pork Chop Hill was not the only place of the combat as Old Baldy, Hill 266, was a short distance away.

Kang’s sentences are short and tidy and clearly well-translated into English from Korean, and I was immediately drawn into the novel through the almost staccato rhythms of the prose. A small warning: this story comes with ghosts.

The plot is a fictionalization of a horrific event in Korean history in which soldiers opened fire on thousands of students protesting the 1980 military coup, killing somewhere between 600 and 2,300 civilians. The story was actively suppressed by the Korean government—hence the uncertainty over numbers.

Using this as a backdrop, Kang personalizes the violence and political upheaval of Korea in the 1980s, giving us memorable characters and the anguished and marginalized voices of the dead. It’s a novel I can’t quite shake, even years after first reading it.

I love this book and true story commemorating an almost forgotten hero of the Korean War - a Thoroughbred mare. The author tells the tale with phenomenal detail, and her passion for the subject shines through. Robin Hutton’s thorough research and descriptions of first-hand accounts about the battles and the brave hero horse made this book rise to the top of my list. It may help that I am a Navy veteran (and Sgt. Reckless was a Marine), a horse enthusiast, and was stationed in Korea, where the war is not forgotten.

This is a surreal novel that suggests a complexity to modern Korean life that I can’t say that I’ve witnessed. It’s a novel of patterns—repeated images and passages that may be indicative of what it’s like to live in Seoul at this point in time. The main character has lost her job—and an odd job it was—but she is now even more immersed in the world of artists and writers, which is another reason the book spoke to me. The book was something of a challenge, given its shifts and ghost-like characters, but that too made it more exciting.

Imagine for a moment that you receive an email that states the following: “Liquidate everything and return immediately.” Now imagine you are a North Korean spy who has lived in South Korea for almost twenty years, and after your handler disappeared more than a decade ago, you’ve heard nothing. Until this email. Is it real? Or has the South Korean CIA found you out and is trying to trick you? What about your wife and your daughter, both completely unaware of your true identity? Your Republic Is Calling You takes place entirely in a single day of this unfortunate spy’s life, and now you’ll have to read it to see how it ends: does he stay or does he go?

Barbara O’Connor is one of my very favorite authors for this age group. Her books are funny, sweet, and full of heart! She also does a great job of creating books set in the South without relying on tropes. In Wonderland, two very different girls team up to help a runaway greyhound find a more satisfying home. Mavis is brave and bold but has never had a best friend. Rose is timid and a worrier. She’s never really fit in with the other kids in the neighborhood. And then there’s Henry, a greyhound who’s run away from the Wonderland race track. Henry’s best days are behind him which could lead to his being euthanized. Alternating between the voices of Mavis, Rose, and Henry, O’Connor weaves a wonderful story of friendship, home, and redemption. Give this book to your reader who loves to laugh and to cry.

World War II is over. The U.S. is demobilizing and in 1948, the United States Air Force becomes a separate service. President Harry Truman appoints Louis Johnson as the new Secretary of Defense in 1949 after James Forrestal resigned because he would not carry out Truman’s defense cuts. Johnson accepted the Air Force’s proposal that nuclear deterrence was the sole responsibility of the Air Force and all military aviation should be under its command. This set in motion a series of events known as the “Revolt of the Admirals” which Barlow used as the title of his book.

This is a story of professional courage. A group of admirals was willing to put their careers on the line to force the Truman administration to change its policies and decisions. They fought with the Secretary of Defense Johnson as well as other officials in the administration and based their arguments on… show more.

In 2021, my son spent a semester abroad in Seoul. While he was there, I picked up this book to get a better feel for his experiences in South Korea. At the start of Heart and Seoul, Hara, a 25-year-old Korean-American woman, has just lost her adoptive father. His death prompts her to travel to Seoul to learn more about her birth parents, whom she’s never met. Though the story includes a swoony love interest, what I enjoyed the most about Hara’s journey was the way she adapts to life in South Korea. The setting is so richly described that I got an amazing sense of Seoul as a vibrant city, filled with beautiful monuments, delicious street food, and quirky cafes. While the book is marketed as a romance, the love story isn’t fully resolved until the sequel, Seoulmates, which is equally enjoyable.   

This was one of my favorite books of 2021. First published in South Korea (where it was a bestseller), I Am the Subway takes readers on a subway ride through Seoul, narrated by the subway itself. “I rattle and clatter over the tracks. Same time, same route every day. Carrying people from one place to another….” We see the passengers get on and off the subway. We hear the subway sounds–ba-dum, ba-dum– and we catch an intimate glimpse into the lives of the people who step on board. I Am a Subway is an unexpectedly beautiful meditation on the many people we cross paths with each day as we make our way through the city. 

I fall hard for novels about intense friendships and loyalty. I’ve never been to Korea, but it was easy for me to relate to the protagonist, Jung Yoon, whose personal growth is influenced by her study of European culture, much as my own immersion in Latin American culture continues to inform my life. 

Here again, a gap in most Americans’ knowledge gets filled in. Shin’s haunting and poetic novel offers a bracing account of the student protests in South Korea in the ’80s, with repression, deaths, and disappearances at the hands of the US-supported dictatorship. The politics are eye-opening, but just a backdrop to the characters’ pursuit of love, friendship, intellectual development, and the tender way they must mourn many other losses as they grow up and apart.