Kim Jung-hyuk (author)

Kim Jung-hyuk is a Korean author and cartoonist.

Life
Born in Kimcheon, North Gyeongsang Province in 1971, Kim has written professional book reviews for an online bookstore, handled DVDs for a bookstore that specializes in art, writing music columns for a pop culture magazine, and contributed for a restaurant industry magazine. In addition to literature, he is interested in a wide range of fields. Given his interest in drawing and cartoons, he has drawn his own illustrations for his story collections and works freelance as a cartoonist.

Work
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.

This focus on objects instead of characters is extremely unusual in Korean fiction.

Works in Translation

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

Works in Korean (Partial)
Short Story Collections
 * Penguin News (2000)
 * Library of Instruments (2008)

Awards

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