I’m a Korean translator and lecturer who is interested in the space between distinctions and odd feelings evoked from there.
I recently completed a PhD on how empathy in gothic literature can expand the reader’s sense of self to understand the other.
런던에서 번역가, 선생, 연구자로 활동하는 김유진입니다. 정의되지 않는 존재들 사이의 공간과 거기에서 발생하는 묘한 감정들에 대해 쓰고 생각합니다. 공포와 숭고, 그리고 그것들을 미학적인 형식을 통해 체화시켜 독자에게 윤리적으로 다가가려는 작가들의 작품을 옮기고 논합니다.
Originally from Incheon, I live and work in London with my husband and daughter.
About Me
I translate and teach Korean. I have been leading the Korean course at Kingston University London since 2019, where I also spent 10 years as a postgraduate student in English literature. My passion thrives between the two languages.
I am an editor in chief at Nabillera: Contemporary Korean Literature [나빌레라 한국 현대 문학]. Nabillera is a nonprofit web magazine that showcases the works of early-stage Korean writers by translating them into English. We work with emerging translators, editors, and communicators with a passion for contemporary Korean literature.
My first translation in collaboration with Timothy Holm, My Itchy Middle Finger (손가락이 간질간질), a novel by KANG Byoung Yoong, received a publication grant from Literature Translation Institute Korea in 2021. My Itchy Middle Finger is a light-hearted queer coming-of-age novel about a teenage baseball player who happens to have a third eye on their middle finger. My second translation in collaboration with Beth Hong, Dad Likes Today (아빠는 오늘을 좋아합니다), a short story also by KANG Byoung Yoong, has been chosen for the IWP Residency in Iowa, 2022.
I translated selected poems by KIM Hakjung and organised the poet's UK tour in 2023.You can find my other translations on Nabillera.
Specialties
As an academic, I am into:
Empathy as an a mode of “feeling into”
Gothic aesthetics, particularly terror
Sublime theory
Reader/audience response
Ann Radcliffe and Virginia Woolf
Edith Stein
As a translator, I teach and write about:
Gender neutral in Korean
Soft masculinity
Contemporary Korean ghost stories: Goedam (괴담)
Modernity as a trauma
Contemporary Korean sub-culture including tattoo and shamanism: read the latest piece I translated
My PhD project, Gothic Empathy, explores empathy as a mode of “feeling into”. I question the role of the writer as a creator (or an agent, ideally) of aesthetic empathy. With the writer’s intention, empathy can offer a pleasing, self-expansive experience to the reader if it is embodied and stimulated through a certain form.
In the ancient days, they used to call the form “sublime”.
Throughout history, the idea of the sublime became secularised. I look at the muddled history of aesthetic empathy by positioning its neighbouring terms such as terror and gothic.
While clarifying their nuances and linkages to one another, I argue that terror can be a sign of the reader’s expressive desire to understand the unknown character in literature through a deeper level of empathy. In many cases, the empathy object is a ghost.
By reading ghost stories, the reader is born into a new self; the way they see the world changes. Understnaidng the gothic this way allows us to deconstruct the distinction of popular/high art and text. After all, Virginia Woolf, the modernist, admired Ann Radcliffe, the prolific gothic novelist in the eighteenth century.
Both Radcliffe and Woolf believed that novel writing could encourage the reader’s perpetual empathy. And that only Gothic, the popular version of sublime, can do the job.
Blog (Korean+English)
Past Events
The Korean Carbon Neutrality Commission's visit to the UK for climate change discussions
Interpreter
London
Nov 1st 2023
A Discussion with poet KIM Hak-jung
Moderator
Korean Cultural Centre UK
Aug 17th 2023
KLS Public Lecture Series: Poet KIM Hak-jung
Moderator and Interpreter
Kingston University London
Aug 18th 2023
Interpreter for the Korean Minister of Education
Excel London
March 29-31st 2023
Poetry Translation Workshop with the poet KIM Yeon-Sook
Interpreter
The University of Ljublijana, Slovenia
May 14th 2021
Committee
Kingston University London, UK
Jan 4-5th 2020
Korean Literature Night: The White Book by HAN Kang
Co-moderator with Steven J. Fowler
Kingston University London, UK
Jan 24th 2020
The Bakery of Coincidence: The children’s story writer KIM Hea-Yeon’s book talk
Interpreter
Paddington Academy, UK
Nov 27th 2019
London Korean Film Festival: In Conversation with Kim Sol
Interpreter
Kingston University London, UK
Nov 13th 2019