The RAS Korean Literature Club discussion

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As this Club's August 2025 monthly gathering approaches (Thursday, August 14; discussing Blowfish, 2010/2025), we learn of another Korean-literature-in-translation, in-person event of interest. One day before our gathering!

Sharing the info here:

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"Meet the Translator" event with SEAN LIN HALBERT, Gangnam, August 13, 2025

(NOTE, again, that this is one day before this RAS Korean Literature Club's own Thursday, August 14 gathering. While I'm sure the Gangnam event will be great, if you only want to attend one of the two, do make it ours; you won't regret it.)

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Info:

- Day: Wednesday, August 13, 2025
- Time: 7pm to 9pm
- Place: "Gangnam Global Village Center," 5th Floor
- Near: Gangnam Station, Exit 4 (five-to-ten minutes on foot)
- Address in Hangul: 서울 강남구 역삼로7길 16 역삼1문화센터 5층

- Book: To the Moon (novel) by Ryujin Jang (original, April 2021; English translation by Sean Lin Halbert, June 2025)

- Hosts: Gangnam Global Village Center; KLTI (Literature Translation Institute of Korea); Gangnam Yeoksam Library; the Little Libraries Association of Korea.

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ATTENDANCE: Free and open to all who speak English. But the organizers request attendees have read the book To the Moon before attending.

I am sharing the info here at GoodReads and via other methods that our members communicate. I have heard signs of interest from the few with whom I've talked about it. As such... :

---> GATHERING-POINT: It's been proposed that those who'd like to attend together, with other members of this Club, may gather at Gangnam Station Exit 4 at 6:30pm on Wednesday, August 13 and proceed to the venue together.

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Sean Lin Halbert is the translator of two works that this Korean Literature Club had read (see: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/... ):

--> "A Future as Ordinary as This" by Kim Yeonsu, published in English, March 2023; discussed at this Club's April 2023 gathering;

--> The Cabinet by Un-su Kim, published in English, Oct 2021 (Robot Press, UK); discussed at this Club's July 2023 gathering.

This Sean Lin Halbert is among the top Korean-to-English translators active today. I don't know much about him, except having seen his name around. It'll surely be an interesting opportunity to hear from him. 👍

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It seems there are several people interested in attending this Meet the Translator event. (Being just one day ahead of our own big monthly gathering is a little unfortunate.)

Meeting day/time/place:
- Wednesday, August 13, 2025
- 6:30pm
- Gangnam Station Exit 4

Venue: "Gangnam Global Village Center," 5th Floor, 7pm to 9pm.

Person: Sean Lin Halbert, translator.
Book: To the Moon (see above).

Did anyone go to this?

Yes, I think so. Peter and others posted about it in the Kakao chat.

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There were two events on Wednesday August 13th, the earlier and more-obscure one (about Soviet-Korean literature in the 1930s) I neglected to post on GoodReads but I may do so later. Both that one and the Sean Lin Halbert event had a good attendance by persons associated with this Korean Literature Club, considering all in all.

One of the evening-event attendees took a picture of just about every slide Sean Lin Halbert talk. His two-hour event about his translation-philosophy was surprisingly entertaining and illuminating. He put in an admirable effort towards this small presentation and Q&A. There were a low-few-dozen attendees; I calculate that our people were one-fifth of total.

In talking with the others from our group, I learn none would have gone for they wouldn't have been aware of it without the Korean Literature Club and probably wouldn't have gone without encouragement by the same.

The crowd of attendees crammed into a too-small space had few (if any) bozos, clueless people, or wandered-in-from-street people. Many of the attendees, it seemed, themselves were active translators or aspiring translators. Almost all were Western-language native (mainly English-native but not all). The Korean-language natives who were present, I noticed, exclusively sat in the back row, as if some unseen force ordered them to do so. (You can make good guesses usually at who is Korean-native and who not even among a group of people who all could "pass for Korean," but I noticed the native languages during the Q&A session, when some of the back-row people requested to be able to ask questions in Korean; and during the 10-minute snack-and-drink intermission.)

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I only realized later one of the places I had seen the name Sean Lin Halbert before: He was one of the winners of the 2018 Korea Times translation contest (see: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/... ).

I've been encouraging people associated with this Club to submit to that contest for the past several months. It's easy to not take it seriously (because the Korea Times, like every foreigner-facing organization in Korea, has a highly mixed reputation, often in recent decades for outright unprofessionalism or shabbiness; many of such organizations also are marked by an obvious and uncomfortable sense of propaganda). To look down on the Korea Times translation contest, though, would be to miss out on a pathway through which many "ordinary" people have gone on to be active translators. This was a lot more true in the past. Even in August 2018, when Sean Lin Halbert submitted his translation (it was of a story titled "The Other Side" by KIm Ae-ran), Korean literature-in-translation was still not considered a big deal; the sun was shining and unknown-outsiders could make all the hay they pleased. And now look at all the hay this man has made.

Sean Lin Halbert spoke about being half-Taiwanese, being raised in the Pacific Northwest near Seattle (though I arrived too late to hear this part). His one Taiwnaese parent, based on his surname I assume his mother, compelled him as a boy to attend "Taiwanese school" on weekends in the USA. He said he retained nothing of it and cannot read Chinese. His acquisition of Korean is apparently his own doing in adulthood.

The way Sean Lin Halbert's own half-East-Asian, half-White phenotype ended up, I'd say he looks rather like the target for male plastic surgeries, and his personality is also open and friendly. But the appearance and personality give a younger "vibe" than the promotional picture he used.

He went to Korea much as many of us did; was teaching a while; one thing led to another. By some time in the 2010s, he ended up with a Korean wife. During the talk and Q&A he referenced his wife many times, as the foremost of the various opinionated sounding-boards from the Korean side, who would comment on problematic cultural-translation concepts in a way helpful to the translation efforts. The Korean-to-Western gap is huge, and a lot of his little points on translation approaches show it. Those long-accustomed to Korea can easily forget how hard even basic-concepts can be to carry over. Good translation is therefore really hard.

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Sean Lin Halbert has another new translation out, to be published in September 2025:

Perfect Happiness by You-Jeong Jeong (orig. June 2021 as <완전한 행복>).

Early-review copies already out by mid-June 2025 (when it was reviewed by Paul Fulchur, the intrepid reviewer of every new Korean-to-English translation).

The English-translation version of Sept 2025 is published by Creature Press ("a feminist-horror small press"), not connected with major publishing-houses but which is well-marketed enough to support a small staff. Creature Press is "based in Virginia with roots in New York," whatever that means.

There is an almost-certainty that KLTI money subsidized the publication of Perfect Happiness (their subsidy-money will only go to foreign-based publishers).

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The talk I mentioned, on Soviet-Korean Literature of the 1920s-30s:

For those interested, I wrote a summary of what I took form it:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...