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Bora Chung demands a better world

Published: 11 May. 2025, 07:00 Updated: 12 May. 2025, 12:03

LEE JIAN
[email protected]

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As translated fiction enters the global limelight, Korean books are being discovered by a wider audience beyond the country's borders. With the help of the massive inventory retained by DB Books, Korea’s oldest independent book dealer, the Korea JoongAng Daily sought out hidden gems on its shelves. In this interview series, we find them for you and talk to the creatives behind them.

Author Bora Chung, right, and the cover of her book ″Red Sword″ newly released in English [HONFORD STAR, JOONGANG ILBO]

On April 16, 2014, a ship full of students going on a field trip capsized, claiming 304 lives.

On its one-year anniversary, thousands took to the streets to criticize the Korean government's investigation of the accident, known as the Sewol Ferry tragedy. Over a few reports of illegal behavior among individual protesters, more than 400 police officers were dispatched to break up the whole protest, deploying chemical irritants and making arrests. Hundreds of police buses encircled the memorial set up in central Seoul's Gwanghwamun, prohibiting people, including the victims’ parents, from entering to pay respects.

Bora Chung was present on those streets. She remembers being “horrified.”

“The common people and community were being threatened,” Chung told the Korea JoongAng Daily in an interview on May 3. “There was an internal voice that said I needed to stop the threat — that we needed to all live.”

That sentiment is the defining, repeated line of “Red Sword,” the Korean author's sci-fi martial arts novel, newly released in English: “Let’s get out of here, alive, together.”

English language cover of Bora Chung's ″Your Utopia″ (2024) translated by Anton Hur. [HONFORD STAR]

Following the English translations of Chung's International Booker-shortlisted “Cursed Bunny” (2021) and U.S. Philip K. Dick Award-nominated “Your Utopia” (2024), “Red Sword" follows a slave swordswoman forced to fight a relentless, lethal war on an extraterritorial planet where the enemy is unclear and the only reason to fight is to survive. The original Korean was published in 2019.

“Looking back at the book now, I’m embarrassed to say that it lacks really any real literary structure or planning,” Chung said. “It was fun writing it, though.”

Indeed, there is no direction or rule in the unfolding of “Red Sword.” That can make it a disorienting read — but not because of Chung’s confessedly arbitrary and ambiguous plotline. That sense of bewilderment is more intensely evident through the uncanny parallels readers are bound to draw between their 21st-century realities and the jagged fight tale filled with aliens, cannibal birds and human clones.

Around the time of writing “Red Sword,” Chung was working as a part-time history professor at Yonsei University, preparing a lesson on the first contact between Korea and Russia. The author has a master's degree in Russian and East European area studies from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Slavic literatures from Indiana University.

“It is typically taught, per the Russian records, that Korean immigration to Manchuria and far eastern Russia in the 1860s during the late Joseon period [1392-1910] was when the two cultures first met,” Chung said. “But with more research, I discovered that the first encounter was actually during the Sino-Russian border conflicts in the 17th century. This is recorded in Korean literature and records, but not much in Russian ones.”

A tributary state of the Qing Dynasty, Korea was called on to fight for China against Russia in the two countries’ territorial dispute along their borders.

But Korean soldiers, mainly known to be shooters, weren’t brought up to speed on their role and purpose in the fight. Chung’s study of records revealed that they likely didn’t even know of a country called Russia.

“These people were there, not knowing why, or even who they were fighting against,” Chung said. “But at the end of the day, they were fighting to keep each other alive, and that’s ultimately what I wanted my book to be about.”

English language cover of Bora Chung's ″Cursed Bunny″ (2021) translated by Anton Hur. The book was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize. [HONFORD STAR]

As “Red Sword” was intended to be fiction, she swapped the male soldiers for females and the guns for swords. “I was learning kendo at the time, too,” Chung said.

For some of the book's more libidinous, thuggish details, Chung was inspired by her Twitter (now X) followers.

“I was an avid Twitter user back when I was writing this book in 2016 and 2017, and was trying to get clues there on how to write a book that would sell well,” Chung said with sheepish honesty.

Author Bora Chung, second from left, speaks to the press, demanding better pay and conditions for Yonsei University's part-time teachers, in Mapo District, western Seoul, on Aug. 31, 2022. [YONHAP]

While her internet fans might have gotten her the hard plot points, the author’s fighting spirit and activist conscience flow throughout the novel like ocean waves.

“The story did evolve to contain the kinds of battles that I knew of and witnessed,” said the author, who is also a passionate social activist.

Chung has a busy month ahead. She is slated to attend book festivals in Australia, Poland and France in May. Also a translator, her Korean translation of the Russian novel “I Burn Paris” (1928) by Bruno Jasieński is set for release in June, in time for the Seoul International Book Fair.

But asked why she writes, Chung made clear that she did so for her own and others’ joy. “I want the readers just to relish the book as it is. I hope they have fun reading it.”

If being an author is her more enjoyable, hobby-like activity, her job and purpose in life is as a fighter.

“Protesting,” she said, “is something I feel I need to do.”

BY LEE JIAN [[email protected]]