VOL.78/2025.01

 

[New Ways of Walking Through Cities ①]

A City of Endless Stories: New York

 

2025.01.06

 

 

Special Project in 2025 will be a new series that introduces readers to Korean books. Since K-Book Trends targets a global audience, we have been thinking about how to connect with readers in different countries. While we have introduced many cities in Korea, we wondered what it would be like to introduce readers to the cities where they live. That’s how the new series, “New Ways of Walking Through Cities,” began. We would like to feature Korean books that are set in cities outside of Korea and walk through those cities with our readers. As the first city, we chose New York, a city you might be living in, a city you might have traveled to, or a city you might be dreaming about.
New York is like a giant heart that changes every moment. Its streets are always bustling with life, with people from all over the world weaving together many stories and languages. The tranquil wooded walkways of Central Park and the flashing neon displays at Times Square are two dramatic faces of the city. With new people arriving and leaving every day, New York is a place where settlement and transition, dreams and reality meet. Hot dogs from street vendors give a sense of the city’s everyday life. At the same time, the fancy stages of Broadway prove that it is the center of world culture. Here, success and failure, laughter and tears coexist, and everyone creates their own version of New York in freedom, where anything seems possible.

 

The light and shadow of a big city

 

 

The first Korean book set in New York is The Name of a Rose is Rose (Munhakdongne Publishing Group) by Eun Hee-Kyoung. It’s a collection of four short and medium-length novels, sometimes referred to as the “New York Quadrilogy” because they all take this city as their backdrop. In an interview, Eun said that she has been visiting New York frequently for the past 10 years because she has an acquaintance living there, and added that it’s very different from being a traveler and a local resident of the city. Maybe that’s why, in the first story of the collection, Why, for How Long, Where Were We (우리는 왜 얼마동안 어디에), there is a sentence like this:

 

* K-Book Trends Vol. 52 – Go to the interview with Writer Eun Hee-Kyung

 

 

The works in The Name of a Rose is Rose each feature a different image of New York. In Why, for How Long, Where Were We, the New York City that Seung-Ah, the protagonist, fled from her tiresome home in Korea, is old and dilapidated, unlike what she imagined. The title piece, The Name of a Rose is Rose, tells the story of a divorced woman who travels to New York City and a Senegalese college student who meets her there, capturing the irony of a big city where people can be both victims and offenders. Meanwhile, A Palace With No Sheep and Clock (양과 시계가 없는 궁전) and Lady With a Warm Heart (아가씨 유정도 하지) depict introspective reflections of characters who come to face their true selves through others in an unfamiliar city. As such, the book The Name of a Rose is Rose delves deeply into the duality of human relationships and the city against the backdrop of New York, and seriously portrays the complexity and irony of life in modern society.

 

Urban life vividly depicted by the author

 

 

The second book is City of P (EunHaeng NaMu Publishing) by Moon Ji-Hyuck, a mystery thriller set in the city that never sleeps, New York. The protagonist, a doctoral student in New York City who dreams of becoming a professor, hears a shocking story from his wife one day. But, before he can even recover from the shock, she goes missing. Will he ever find her? Following the tangled desires, love, revenge, and forgiveness of the characters, readers are ultimately led to the central theme of “suffering”—the burden of all human life. Set in New York City, the world’s most famous metropolis and the center of the world’s economy and culture, this novel’s fast-paced narrative and tightly woven details add up to a compelling read.

 

 

Author Moon Ji-Hyuck says that he started writing this novel in 2012 while studying abroad in New York City. Was his life in New York that impactful? As Moon himself has said that all novels are “revised autobiographies,” it’s no surprise that his other works are also set in New York. His novel Elementary Korean (Minumsa) tells the story of a protagonist teaching Korean at a university in New York. Through the eyes of an outsider, it humorously depicts the unfamiliarity of the Korean language and the gap between the life of a foreigner and the act of teaching it.

 

Your version of “New York” - the one you can only know by living in it

 

 

 

I’m Living in New York, an essay by YouTuber Haruday, who has become known for her vlogs documenting her daily life in New York, is a book that captures the essence of living in the big city. It tells the story of the city’s cinematic streets, romantic locals, and what it takes to become a New Yorker and not a stranger among them. The book not only provides an honest and heartfelt look at life in the city, but also reveals new information that could not have been learned through travel alone. The book, which will excite those who dream of living in New York and resonate with those who have lived there, will make you feel as if you are taking a stroll through the city.

 

 

New York is not just a place. It is a challenge for dreamers, a haven for the lost, and an endless possibility to start over again. The city’s stories cannot be summed up in a single definition, and New York is always worth seeing with fresh perspectives. Behind the flashy skyline are the mundane routines and hustle and bustle of everyday life, and the passionate pursuit of dreams in the midst of anonymous crowds. New York is a city that cannot be captured in a single experience or through a single view. Just as the city shows a different side every time, so do the books that are set in it. Let’s walk the streets of New York through books that tell their unique stories.

 

 

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Written by Choi Ha-Yeong