Kim Jung-hyuk (author)

Born in Kimcheon, North Gyeongsang Province in 1971 Kim possesses a diverse resume, including writing professional book reviews for an online bookstore, handling DVDs for a bookstore that specializes in art, writing music columns for a pop culture magazine, and writing for a restaurant industry magazine. In addition to literature, he is interested in a wide range of fields, including movies, music, and food—those around him refer to him as an “everything-ist” rather than a “novelist.” Given his interest in drawing and cartoons, he drew his own illustrations for his story collections and works freelance as a cartoonist. It is perhaps for that reason that he referred to himself in the author’s note of Penguin News as a collection of countless Lego bricks.[2]

Characters with unusual personalities or rare jobs also appear in his stories: a “conceptual inventor” who confines himself underground and invents useless concepts; a man who wanders in search of “Banana, Inc.” with a rough map left behind by a friend who committed suicide; a map surveyor who searches for his direction in life, using a wooden Eskimo map. While writing about trivial objects, unusual people, and unseen music, Kim Junghyuk has established himself as a writer who awakens readers to the warmth and importance of analog sensibilities in a digital age.

Kim's stories are considered on the outer fringe of Korean literature, and feature a nearly maniacal focus on the objects of his work. This focus on objects instead of characters is extremely unusual in Korean fiction. Kim Jung-hyuk always attempts to discover new approaches that no one else has delved into.[3]

• The Glass Shield
• 楽器たちの 図書館 (Japanese)
• J'etais un maquereau (French)
• La Bibliothèque des instruments de musique (French)

Short Story Collections

• Penguin News (2000)
• Library of Instruments (2008)

• 2008, his short story, “Offbeat D,” won the 2nd Kim Yujeong Literary Award.[4]
• 2010 Munhak Dongne Young Artist Award
• 2011 Today's Young Artist Award
• 2012 Yi Hyo-seok Literature Award[5]