The Korean Vernacular Story: Telling Tales of Contemporary Chosŏn in Sinographic Writing
Si Nae Park
Published by Columbia University Press

As the political, economic, and cultural center of Chosŏn Korea, eighteenth-century Seoul epitomized a society in flux: It was a bustling, worldly metropolis into which things and people from all over the country flowed. In this book, Si Nae Park examines how the culture of Chosŏn Seoul gave rise to a new vernacular narrative form that was evocative of the spoken and written Korean language of the time.

The vernacular story (yadam...