Krys Lee is the author of the story collection Drifting House and the novel How I Became a North Korean.
In 2012 a taxi driver in Seoul told me that Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ had reached number two on the American Billboard chart. I didn’t believe him. I had lived in Seoul since the early 2000s and knew that accounts of Korean culture’s overseas success were sometimes inflated. Music, film and fashion were a source of insecurity as well as inspiring an occasionally...
On 8 August, in the middle of the busiest holiday period of the year, when people normally escape to the beaches and mountains to get away from the oppressive heat, the rain came down so heavily that the view through our car windscreen was like the white noise of poor television reception.
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