Diary of a Murderer
Kim Young-ha · 2013
About this book
A retired serial killer with Alzheimer's suspects his daughter's boyfriend is also a killer. This darkly comic novella interrogates unreliable memory, moral ambiguity, and the way Korean society conceals its violence behind respectability.
Start reading in Korean
Upload any page from Diary of a Murderer and get sentence-by-sentence translations, grammar notes, and vocabulary building — free.
Start reading for freeMore korean books
The Vegetarian
Han Kang · 2007
A woman's quiet refusal to eat meat triggers a violent family crisis in this International Booker Prize-winning novel. Han Kang exposes the patriarchal authority, conformity, and suppressed violence that run beneath the surface of Korean family life.
Human Acts
Han Kang · 2014
A devastating polyphonic novel about the 1980 Gwangju Uprising and its lasting trauma. It is essential reading for understanding how state violence shaped modern Korean democracy and collective memory.
Please Look After Mom
Shin Kyung-sook · 2008
When an elderly mother goes missing in the Seoul subway, her family is forced to confront their neglect and guilt. The novel captures the generational tensions of Korea's rapid modernization and the sacrificial role of mothers in Korean culture.
The Familiar Things
Hwang Sok-yong · 2011
Set on a vast garbage dump, this novel follows marginalized people scraping by on society's waste. Hwang exposes the underside of South Korea's economic miracle and the human cost of unchecked capitalism.