Bora Chung
South Korean writer and translator (born 1976)
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Chung Bora (born 1976) is a South Korean writer and translator. Her collection of short stories, Cursed Bunny, was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize.[2][3]
Yale University (MA)
Indiana University Bloomington (PhD)[1]
Chung Bora | |
|---|---|
Chung Bora at Quais du Polar, Lyon in 2023. | |
| Born | Seoul, South Korea |
| Occupation | Author, activist |
| Language | Korean |
| Education | Yonsei University (BA) Yale University (MA) Indiana University Bloomington (PhD)[1] |
| Genre | |
| Years active | 2008-present |
Early life and education
Chung Bora was born in 1976, in Seoul, South Korea.[2] Her parents were dentists.[3] She completed graduate studies in Russian and East European area studies at Yale University, then went on to gain a PhD in Slavic literature from Indiana University Bloomington.[2][4] She taught the Russian language, literature, and science fiction studies at Yonsei University.[2][5]
Career
Chung has written three novels and three collections of short stories.[5][4] She lists as her literary influences the works of Park Wan-suh, Bruno Schulz, Bruno Jasieński, Andrei Platonov and Lyudmila Petrushevskaya,[3] as well as Samguk yusa folktales.[5] In 1998, she won a Yonsei Literature Prize for her short story The Head.[6] She is also a recipient of second prizes at the Digital Literature Awards (2008) and Gwacheon Science Center SF Awards (2014).[6]
In 2022, the English edition of her short story collection Cursed Bunny translated by Anton Hur was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize.[3] The ten stories borrow from different genres, including magical realism, horror and science fiction.[2][5] In September 2023 the book was longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature.[7]
In January 2024, another short story collection of hers, Your Utopia, came out in English translation, as did the novella Grocery List from Hanuman Books in June 2024,[8] both were translated by Anton Hur. Hur announced that Chung's third novel, Red Sword, will be published in English translation in 2025.[9] Her fourth novel, Midnight Timetable, will also be translated into English by Hur, published in 2026.[10]
Red Sword and Midnight Timetable were both finalists for the 2026 Locus Award for Best Translated Novel.[11]
Chung translates contemporary prose from Russian and Polish into Korean.[2][4]
Political views
Chung is a social activist, advocating for LGBTQ and women's rights.[5][12] She has spoken out about the need for the inclusion of the themes of minority groups in modern science fiction.[13]
Following Russia's invasion on Ukraine in 2022, Chung expressed her support for Ukraine and Poland for the support of Ukrainian refugees.[14] During the Gaza war, Chung condemned Israel's action and expressed her support for Palestine; she also signed a letter calling for boycott of Israel.[15][16]
Chung has criticised Artificial intelligence, stating "From what I read, human beings really don't understand what we created, and artificial intelligence and deep learning, machine learning, all these things are structured so that the machine would accumulate experience and data and information and analyze them and draw conclusions more like human beings do. So that means our prejudices, our misconceptions, our own hate and misunderstanding and discrimination is part of the data human beings created. So technology is not impartial. Information is not neutral. And that is backfiring. And that will backfire. But probably engineers don't agree with me. So yeah, I'm afraid of machines."[17][18]
Bibliography
Novels
Short stories collections
- Seed (2013) [13]
- The King's Prostitute (2013)[13]
- Cursed Bunny (2017)[13]
- Your Utopia (2024)