{"title":"Theme Picks: General Bestsellers","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"소년이-온다","title":"Human Acts","description":"\u003ch2 style=\"font-size:1.8em; font-weight:700; margin:0 0 16px;\"\u003eDescription\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;margin:16px 0;\"\u003e\u003ciframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ks72L8_HXTM\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-39363\" height=\"1532\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/9788\/6692\/files\/39361_Screen-Shot-2020-10-26-at-4.04.11-PM_234433e0-813c-42a5-ae77-63e6fe88f524.jpg?v=1786439687\" style=\"display:block; max-width:100%; height:auto;\" width=\"822\"\u003e","brand":"IBOOKPARK","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49624068063460,"sku":"20201026995","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/9788\/6692\/files\/Screen-Shot-2020-10-26-at-4.03.38-PM.jpg?v=1786423953"},{"product_id":"예수의-생애","title":"The Life of Jesus","description":"Description\n\n*Strongly recommended by Park Wi and Song Ji-eun of Wiracle*\n\n\"My dear children, I want you to know the story of Jesus Christ.\"\n\nA Warm Legacy Charles Dickens Left for His Children\n\nCharles Dickens is celebrated alongside Shakespeare as one of the great masters of English literature. The Life of Jesus is a story he wrote solely to share with his own children — not intended for publication, but written by hand as something deeply personal he wished to leave behind for them. Dickens left instructions that this manuscript should never be made public, nor even privately printed. And so, for 85 years, it was kept as a treasured family secret, until it was finally brought into the world at the wishes of his grandchildren.\n\nDickens gently guides readers through the entire life of Jesus, from His birth to His resurrection, explaining it in a way that even children can easily understand. Throughout the text, he addresses his readers warmly as \"my dear children,\" and through these tender words, a father's gentle voice and warmth shine through.\n\n\"Every parent hopes their child will come to know Jesus and live a life filled with His love. Perhaps God looks upon us, His children, with that very same parental heart. The Life of Jesus offers warm guidance to anyone who holds such hope in their heart.\"\n— Song Ji-eun, from the \"Recommendation\"\n\nThe Original Book Endorsed by Director Jang Sung-ho of King of Kings\n\nThe animated film King of Kings made headlines by claiming the No. 1 spot for Korean films at the North American box office. It took director Jang Sung-ho ten years to complete this remarkable work — and it all began with this very book, The Life of Jesus. As the novel that inspired King of Kings, Jang wrote a special foreword for this edition.\n\n\"What I find fascinating is how Dickens's desire to introduce Jesus to his children — his love for them — became intertwined with his hope that they would come to know Jesus,\" Jang shares. Just as his words suggest, it's fascinating to trace how this novel inspired the film's screenplay, offering readers another layer of enjoyment.\n\n\"Jesus is an undeniable historical figure whose influence on human history has been profound. The message of love He came to share holds meaning that transcends time and place.\"\n— Jang Sung-ho, from the \"Special Foreword\"\n\nThrough The Life of Jesus, take time to draw closer to and deeply understand the boundless love and mercy of Jesus — a life that transcends time and space, and one that feels truly miraculous. May His great love be etched into your heart, and may your longing to become more like Him grow ever stronger.","brand":"IBOOKPARK","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49624372379876,"sku":"11072025994","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/9788\/6692\/files\/9791173477911.jpg?v=1786426869"},{"product_id":"절창","title":"Absolute Verse","description":"Description\n\n\"She is my... question. The most profound, most difficult question ever given to me.\"\n\nA girl grows up in an orphanage, never knowing whether her parents are alive or dead. One day she discovers she has a special ability: by touching another person's wound, she can literally \"read\" their thoughts. As a child, when she pressed her palm against a friend's bleeding injury to stop the bleeding, she dimly became aware of this power through a flood of words pouring into her mind — but she grows up never imagining she could actually use it.\n\nMeanwhile, a businessman named Mun O-eon happens to learn of her ability, and he understands better than anyone how it might be used. After leaving the orphanage, she lives a difficult life until she comes to him seeking help. O-eon gives her a new name, new clothes, and a new life — and builds an enormous mansion to hide her from the world. Though he uses her and shows no hesitation in being cruel to others, he also offers her a kindness and consideration she has never known in her entire life, and she begins to develop complicated feelings for him. That is, until he commits an act against her that can never be undone.\n\nAfter 'that incident' — one that leaves her feeling deeply betrayed — she closes her heart to him completely. O-eon, wanting her to finally understand him fully, longs for her to use her ability to read him. But she answers only with fierce hatred: \"I could read every person in the world if I had to, until the day I suddenly drop dead. But you — I will never read you.\"\n\nInto the space between them comes a live-in reading tutor. She is the narrator of this story, and she watches — with both suspicion and curiosity — the relationship between the 'young lady' with her extraordinary power and O-eon, who regards her as his own 'most profound question.'\n\n\"Do you prefer comedy to tragedy?\"\n\"Does it matter? It's all a lie anyway.\"\n\nA woman with the mysterious power to read others' hearts through touch, and a man who longs to be read by that very power. As you follow the story of Absolute Verse — cloaked in mystery, or perhaps strange romance — you come, almost as if entranced, to realize that this is ultimately a story about the act of 'reading' itself.\n\nReading another person, like a text, is something we do from the moment we are born until the moment we die — and that act inevitably produces distortion. To read another person is impossible without some degree of misreading. If that is reading's essential irony, is there truly no way to overcome it? If someone possessed a special power that could erase the barrier of reading altogether, could we then understand one another without any misunderstanding at all? Absolute Verse seems to pose this very question to its readers. And if there exists a desire to read another person exactly as they are, and a desire to be read by another without any distortion — can we not call that love? In that sense, this novel might also be described as a story about profound love.\n\nAnother fascinating aspect is that, from beginning to end, we hear the story of these two people only through the testimony and perspective of 'I,' the reading tutor who narrates it. This suggests that even this story itself is built upon an inevitable distortion. For instance, the narrator presents two different versions of the circumstances the 'young lady' faced before she came to O-eon, then asks us: \"Which version seems more plausible, and more fitting for them?\" In the end, we can only guess at the truth through her telling of the story — and this creates yet another layer within the novel: 'reading that includes distortion.' Perhaps, the author seems to suggest, that is simply the fate of every story.","brand":"IBOOKPARK","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49624376803556,"sku":"01222026999","price":21.6,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/9788\/6692\/files\/9791141602451.jpg?v=1786426895"},{"product_id":"너무-잘하려고-애쓰지-마라-나태주-시집","title":"Don't Try Too Hard to Be Perfect - A Poetry Collection by Na Tae-ju","description":"Description\n\n\"Don't try too hard to be perfect.\"\nJust as you are now, you are lovely enough.\nA message of comfort and encouragement for this shining day.\n\nYou don't have to try so hard to do everything right.\nJust as you are now, you are lovely enough.\nEven when you sometimes make mistakes and stumble,\nyou are still someone worth loving.\n— from \"To a Young Friend\"\n\n\"How much longer will we have days like this, evenings like this, together?\"\nToday was good because you were here.\nTomorrow is the day I'll see you—\nand the place where I meet you becomes heaven,\nand aren't you an angel too?\nFrom today, I live in heaven\nand meet an angel.\n— from \"Tomorrow\"\n\nThe poet has always spoken of the presence of a \"you\" who gives us strength through life's hardships. The warmth of the \"unstinting love\" we share in daily life becomes \"the reason morning comes each day,\" and the reason to begin a new day. Love for the \"you\" who makes \"even a brief thought light a small lantern in my heart\" becomes the strength \"to rise again.\" To those who allow us \"to hope for tomorrow once more,\" the poet bows his head and holds \"a grateful heart close.\" \"Because the time we shared was deep and profound, it will not be forgotten.\" The poet earnestly wishes that they will \"stay with us for a long time.\"\n\nSimply knowing that \"someone is thinking of me\" makes \"life gradually feel worth living again.\" Perhaps I, too, \"might become someone who prays for others, someone who wants to cry alongside them.\" Because \"love itself is dazzling, beautiful, and full,\" it makes us \"more humble\" toward one another, and \"more generous, gentle, and kind.\"\n\nIn these difficult times of COVID-19, though we \"cannot lean on each other's shoulders or embrace one another,\" we must hold onto our daily lives, believing that \"a better day will surely come.\" \"Though my heart feels heavy today, before long, the day I meet you\" will arrive, and \"like small, nameless birds, I too will chirp with joy.\" \"The day we meet again will surely come\"—and as we keep our bright hearts and wait, \"each day is the best day, and every moment is truly precious.\"\n\nThe poet is moved even by the ordinary act of asking each other, \"Is everything alright?\"—calling it, upon reflection, \"a truly tearful, precious thing.\" Things are more beautiful and more precious precisely because they do not last forever. \"How much longer will these greetings continue?\" Because life is so \"precious and beautiful,\" and because this life is \"the one and only, happening just once,\" we must live it fully, grateful to the point of tears, doing our very best—so the poet's gentle voice seems to say.","brand":"IBOOKPARK","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49624376869092,"sku":"01222026995","price":16.8,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/9788\/6692\/files\/9791170400608.jpg?v=1786426896"},{"product_id":"괴테는-모든-것을-말했다","title":"Goethe Said Everything","description":"Description\n\nSelected as Book of the Month on \"B tv Lee Dong-jin's Faiakia\"!\nWinner of the 172nd Akutagawa Prize (2025)\n★ Recommended by critics Lee Dong-jin, Shin Hyung-cheol, and writer Eun-yu\n★ The first Akutagawa Prize winner born in the 2000s\n★ A debut novel written in just 30 days that shook the literary world\n\nA single sentence has the power to change a life\n\n\"Goethe said everything.\"\n\nThere's a joke in Germany: no matter what you say, if you add \"as Goethe said—\" it instantly becomes convincing. Suzuki Yui's novel Goethe Said Everything begins from this very sentence.\n\nThe protagonist, Hiroba Doichi, is Japan's foremost Goethe scholar. At a restaurant he visits on his wedding anniversary, he discovers an unfamiliar sentence printed on a tea bag tag: \"Love does not confuse everything, but mixes.\" It bears Goethe's name, yet even he—who has devoted his entire life to studying Goethe—has never seen this quote before. What begins as the professor's search for the source of this famous saying gradually transforms into an intellectual adventure that crosses the boundaries between citation and truth, language and belief.\n\nThe astonishing debut novel of a genius writer born in 2001\n\nGoethe Said Everything is the debut novel of Suzuki Yui, born in 2001, written in a university library in just 30 days. With this work, she became the first writer born in the 2000s to win the Akutagawa Prize, shaking the Japanese literary world. The judges praised it as \"the birth of a new kind of literature,\" and Japanese media compared her to Umberto Eco, Calvino, and Borges, calling her \"a rising star of Japanese literature.\"\n\nBehind this acclaim lies a literary foundation built on reading an astonishing 1,000 books a year and a deep immersion in classical literature. At the heart of the novel is a theme the author has grappled with since childhood: the nature of \"words\" themselves. As an elementary school student during the Great East Japan Earthquake, she witnessed adults saying contradictory things, which planted in her a deep skepticism about language and the fundamental question of \"which words can be trusted?\" This experience became the seed of Goethe Said Everything.\n\nCombining profound literary sensibility with the experience of her generation, this work shows what a new classic of the 21st century might look like. For those of us living through these rapidly changing, uncertain times, the novel's central message—as translator Lee Ji-su put it, \"even if it's said that 'everything has already been said,' words only become real when spoken again in one's own voice\"—resonates with deep meaning.\n\nHow to read love at the edge of language\n\nIn Goethe Said Everything, various literary devices are humorously woven into the everyday lives of the characters, naturally intertwining scholarship and love, language and daily life. As Doichi says of Goethe's Faust, \"It's truly an absurd, irredeemable creation, but it's been wrapped in a ribbon called love\"—and in the same way, this novel ultimately ties everything together with that very \"ribbon of love.\" The everyday lives of Doichi, his family, his students, and his fellow researchers unfold like layers of language, each sentence eventually converging into a single meaning.\n\n\"Goethe said everything.\"\n\nWhether that statement is a joke or the truth, this novel asks us: in a world overflowing with countless words, what do you want to say? What is the one sentence that would complete your life? And does that sentence contain love?","brand":"IBOOKPARK","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49624382439652,"sku":"03182026999","price":20.4,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/9788\/6692\/files\/9791194530701.jpg?v=1786426927"},{"product_id":"자본주의-시대에서-살아남기-위한-최소한의-경제-공","title":"The Bare Minimum Economics You Need to Survive in the Age of Capitalism","description":"Description: A 'lucky break' is fleeting—become a true economic player who survives the market for the long haul!\n\nContent about economics and investing is everywhere. From dopamine-triggering titles and thumbnails, to stocks you 'must buy today,' themes 'about to surge tomorrow,' and courses promising multiples of returns—the choices are endless, but there's little reliable guidance to actually follow. It's hard to tell which promises are empty and where to even begin studying. Many people study hard and start investing, yet still end up losing money.\n\nThe author of this book turned an initial investment of 15 million won into 1 billion won in just five years. With a combined following of 620,000 across YouTube and Instagram, and countless students met through hands-on lectures and study groups, the author firmly states: \"Investing for a quick win is destined to fail.\" The reason is clear—real investing can't rely on a single stroke of luck; it's an ongoing process of staying in the market and steadily growing your assets. To survive and grow within the capitalist system, you must first learn economic fundamentals and principles rather than flashy techniques and shortcuts. As the author emphasizes, \"The essence of studying economics isn't about earning faster than others—it's about building the endurance to last longer than others.\"\n\nThe 'economic player' this book refers to isn't someone special. Whether you're an office worker, a business owner, or a freelancer, the path of an economic player opens the moment you start consciously managing your income, assets, and time. This book defines an economic player as someone who doesn't dive into investments out of fear or greed only to regret it later, someone who doesn't just consume economic news but learns to interpret it independently, and someone who manages their own numbers rather than envying someone else's portfolio.\n\nHow long will you keep entrusting your investment fate to someone else's words? Investing by blindly following others—without your own economic perspective—is bound to fail.\n\nRather than shouting 'earn more,' this book delivers the message: 'understand correctly first.' Instead of trying to explain economics, investing, real estate, industry, and financial statements all at once, it first builds the minimal framework you can apply in daily life, then lets each reader build their own strategy on top of that foundation. Whether you're an ordinary salaried worker, a beginner investor, someone torn between real estate and stocks, or someone who's always followed others' advice out of fear of financial statements, you'll find in this book a routine for developing your own standard of judgment.\n\nThe reason many people give up on studying economics is simple: without properly understanding basic terms and principles like interest rates, GDP, inflation, exchange rates, and money supply, they rush ahead and study each area—stocks, bonds, real estate, ETFs, pensions—separately. Instead of offering fragmented knowledge, this book focuses on connecting all these elements into a single economic map.\n\nChapter 2 sets up the basic structure of economics and finance. It explains how microeconomics and macroeconomics connect, and how interest rates, exchange rates, monetary policy, and global affairs influence markets—helping readers see the news as a flow rather than isolated bits of information.\n\nChapter 3 isn't about specific techniques or stock picks, but builds foundational investing strength: compound interest and the concept of time, portfolios, and asset allocation. It organizes the roles of stocks, bonds, ETFs, currencies, growth stocks, dividend stocks, and safe assets, and candidly addresses the structural characteristics, opportunities, and limitations of the Korean market. It also covers investment psychology and correcting bad habits.\n\nChapter 4 unpacks real estate—essential knowledge for Koreans—starting from the true nature of physical assets. It organizes real-world concerns within an economic context: fixed location and regional characteristics, interest rates, population, local economies, transportation infrastructure, jeonse and monthly rent structures, the subscription (cheongyak) system, loan regulations and DSR, and preventing jeonse fraud. It reframes the question \"When should I buy a house?\" from a matter of timing into a matter of structural criteria.\n\nChapter 5 offers a three-dimensional introduction to the key industries driving the modern economy: semiconductors, AI, defense, energy, automobiles, banking, securities, insurance, electric vehicles, cloud computing, healthcare, raw materials, and consumer staples, covering industry structures,","brand":"IBOOKPARK","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49624385028324,"sku":"04022026998","price":33.6,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/9788\/6692\/files\/9791193282533.jpg?v=1786426938"},{"product_id":"싯다르타","title":"Siddhartha","description":"Description: Siddhartha, the Greatest Spiritual Teacher of Our Time\n\nA novel condensing Hermann Hesse's deep interest in and affection for Eastern philosophy.\n\n\"If all the desires and impulses within the heart fell silent, then the innermost thing within his being, that which is no longer the self, the great secret, would awaken.\"\n\nSiddhartha, the son of a Brahmin—the highest caste in India—leaves home with his friend Govinda to seek enlightenment, despite his father's objections. He has the opportunity to study under Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, but comes to realize that he must find enlightenment through his own path rather than through the Buddha's teachings, and so leaves his friend Govinda behind to journey alone. As he grows into middle age, Siddhartha meets a woman he loves and a wealthy merchant, indulging in worldly desires, until he discovers himself consumed by them and abandons everything to become a ferryman.\n\nSiddhartha was published after Hesse recovered from a severe depression that had made creative work nearly impossible for almost a year and a half, following psychiatric treatment. The novel can be seen as a kind of religious coming-of-age story that poetically elevates the spiritual heritage of both East and West, capturing a yearning for the eternal and a will toward transcendence that probes deeply into the human inner self, all rendered in simple yet lyrical prose. Delicately portraying the anguish between rigid religious doctrine and self-sufficient spiritual reflection, the novel suggests that there is no single path to self-discovery, challenging the fixed notion of blindly relying on philosophy, religion, or any other belief system.","brand":"IBOOKPARK","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49624385159396,"sku":"04022026995","price":9.6,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/9788\/6692\/files\/9788937460586.jpg?v=1786426939"},{"product_id":"프로젝트-헤일메리","title":"Project Hail Mary","description":"Description\n★ #1 Bestseller in 30 Countries\n★ Strongly Recommended by Barack Obama and George R. R. Martin\n\nA sweeping epic with the most dazzling ending in the history of science fiction.\n\n\"Is there a more captivating space journey than this?\" — The New York Times\n\"A work that dares to stand alongside the greats.\" — The Boston Globe\n\nA \"Hail Mary\" is the desperate final pass thrown in American football when a team is running out of time and needs a miracle to win. In this novel, the spaceship Hail Mary is named for exactly that reason—it represents humanity's last chance to save Earth from destruction.\n\nA man wakes up in the middle of space after a long sleep, unable to even remember his own name. He is alone on the ship; his fellow crew members are all dead. As his memories slowly return, he realizes two things: he is humanity's last hope, and he is a scientist who will never make it back to Earth. To save a planet on the brink of annihilation—caused by a mysterious life-form called Astrophage that is cooling the sun—he embarked on a one-way mission into space.\n\nThen, an unidentified signal appears on the ship's instrument panel. Just when saving humanity already feels impossible, he encounters something entirely unexpected. Will he be able to complete his mission?\n\nProject Hail Mary is a proven page-turner, built on a foundation of scientific precision, where crises pile up and resolve without pause. From Euler's formula to aerodynamics to the Goldilocks zone, no detail is left unconsidered. But what truly drives the story forward is something else entirely: a protagonist who never loses his sense of humor even in the face of despair, and the author's signature optimism woven into every sentence.\n\nAndy Weir, who was hailed as a \"genius\" for working at a U.S. national laboratory starting at age fifteen, is a writer who fully leverages his greatest strength—scientific knowledge—within his fiction. He is already renowned among science-loving readers for pushing his stories forward without breaking a single law of physics. Once again, every detail, from Euler's formula to aerodynamics to the Goldilocks zone, operates with meticulous precision.\n\nBut the power of this novel doesn't lie in accuracy alone. In a structure where crises constantly arise, get resolved, and expand into even bigger problems, readers find themselves turning pages faster and faster. Set against the vast backdrop of space, the tension never lets up.\n\nEven in the face of humanity's potential extinction, the protagonist never loses his wit, and the author's characteristic optimism runs through every line, keeping the story's warmth alive. Andy Weir has said the source of that warmth is his \"belief in humanity\"—the small, ordinary acts of goodwill that never make the news but happen every day.\n\nProject Hail Mary tells the story of people who choose to do what they can, wherever they are, instead of waiting for superhuman heroes: scientists collaborating across borders, and a teacher who makes a small decision with her students' future in mind. These small acts of kindness, gathered together, ultimately reveal the power that saves humanity.\n\nNow, the dazzling moment everyone has been waiting for can finally be experienced on the big screen.","brand":"IBOOKPARK","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49624387191012,"sku":"04222026999","price":26.4,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/9788\/6692\/files\/9788925588735.jpg?v=1786426948"},{"product_id":"백만장자를-위한-공짜-음식-1","title":"Free Food for Millionaires 1","description":"Description\n\nThe anguish and pain of a young woman who can belong fully neither to America nor to Korea—a new way of living, born from mutual healing and understanding. The present-day voice of the Korean diaspora, speaking with a familiar face in an unfamiliar land.\n\nMin Jin Lee, the author who illuminated the lives of Koreans before and after liberation through the four-generation saga of a Zainichi Korean family in Pachinko, wrote her debut novel Free Food for Millionaires as a story woven with autobiographical threads—chronicling the successes, failures, love, and heartbreak of second-generation Korean American youth.\n\nThe first generation of Korean immigrants, who lived through the Korean War, succeeded in putting down roots in American society through their characteristic diligence and perseverance. Casey's parents are no exception. Running a dry-cleaning business, they poured everything into giving their daughter the education they themselves had sacrificed in their youth—and their efforts bore fruit. Yet even a talented, well-educated daughter of immigrants finds that American society still erects rigid walls of gender, race, and pedigree. Carrying both guilt for failing to meet her parents' expectations and quiet fury at the prejudice faced by Korean American women, Casey walks alone through a seemingly endless, dark tunnel of a life.\n\nThe title, Free Food for Millionaires, can be read two ways: as the world's favors freely granted to the privileged, or as the privileged class's unhesitating enjoyment of every favor the world offers. To be recognized as full members of American society, Casey and her friends graduate from prestigious universities, take respectable jobs, make friends, and fall in love. And yet, no matter how persistently they knock on the world's doors, the world is never kind to them. Just when they seem to have achieved a small success, it reveals an even colder face. Even when they prove their abilities, they are not respected—and at times, they experience the very same discrimination their parents once endured.\n\nIn a 2021 interview, Min Jin Lee said, \"When the book was first published in 2007, readers felt uncomfortable with the protagonist, Casey Han. But now, I feel she has finally met her era.\" The America that the curious, talented, rebellious yet independent Casey confronted back then doesn't seem so different from the Korea of 2022. The vivid, almost tangible picture the novel paints—of a world endlessly kind to the privileged but coldly turning its back on talent and effort, and of an older generation who cannot understand the frustration of those on the threshold of success after a lifetime of hard work alone—feels startlingly relevant.\n\n\"I wanted to pay my respects by telling the truth as fully as I knew it—by bringing both the flaws and the beauty into the open without hiding them. I wanted the characters in this book to be imperfect and gifted, because I believe that's what we all are.\" —Min Jin Lee\n\nBut the sons and daughters of immigrants in Free Food for Millionaires learn to live life in their own way. Unlike their parents' generation, who endured and sacrificed everything for family, they boldly desire, express themselves, and announce their presence to the world. They love more freely, part ways, and teach themselves the lessons no one else will. Though Casey's life becomes full of wounds through repeated mistakes and failures, paradoxically, the more she stumbles, the clearer the meaning and value of the things that sustain her become. In clumsily comforting the pain of those she loves, she too finds solace. Choosing understanding over conflict brings her, in the end, a sense of liberation and freedom.\n\nMin Jin Lee has described Free Food for Millionaires, Pachinko, and her forthcoming work American Hagwon (working title) as a 'Korean Diaspora' trilogy. Following Pachinko, a story of survival for people who lost their homeland, and Free Food for Millionaires, which traces a second generation's journey through wandering and struggle toward a sense of identity, all eyes are on what story of 'Korean-ness' American Hagwon will tell.\n\nTranslator Yoo So-young, who brought Casey's New York to life with vivid, contemporary language, has written that Free Food for Millionaires can be a source of courage for the many immigrants who have settled in Korea and their children as well—offering a chance to reflect on the discrimination and barriers that exist within our own society. Written in English and first embraced by American readers...","brand":"IBOOKPARK","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49624387485924,"sku":"04272026997","price":20.4,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/9788\/6692\/files\/9791168340633.jpg?v=1786426948"},{"product_id":"혼모노","title":"Honmono","description":"Description\n\n\"A party of pure immersion. Full of stories I'd love to see made into films.\" —Actor Park Jung-min\n\nWhat is real and what is fake? Standing at that boundary, this book asks: what does it mean to be \"honmono\"?\n\nThe first thing that catches the eye about Honmono is its title, whose meaning isn't immediately clear. \"Honmono\" is a Korean transliteration of the Japanese word 本物 (honmono), meaning \"the real thing.\" The term once gained wide recognition online as slang mocking obsessive fans or difficult customers. In an interview, the author explained that just as this originally positive word came to be used with a twisted meaning, she wanted to speak to our current era—one in which falsehoods become truth simply because enough people believe them. This collection explores the boundary between \"real\" and \"fake\" while posing a fundamental question: what does it truly mean to be real?\n\nIn the title story \"Honmono,\" the narrator Munsu, a male shaman with thirty years of experience, realizes one day that the spirit he has served—Grandmother Jangsu—has left him. Just then, a young shaman in her twenties named Sin-aegi moves in across the way and tells him that the grandmother spirit came to her instead, saying, \"You've grown too old\" (p. 145). This shakes the very foundation of Munsu's belief that his own faith was the \"real\" one. Munsu struggles to keep up appearances as a \"real\" shaman even while living as a \"fake\" one—refusing to take on horoscope readings that he considers beneath him, work fit only for a \"quack shaman\" (p. 122), even as he searches for a prop blade for his rituals. Though he resents Sin-aegi, who mocks him by saying, \"What would someone who's just faking it know?\" (p. 120), he still finds himself worrying over the shouting he hears from her house. He is left to keep asking himself \"what is real, and does it truly exist in a place separate from the fake\" (from the afterword by Yang Kyung-eon).\n\nMeanwhile, the clash between middle-aged Munsu, who has served Grandmother Jangsu in the traditional way, and the young shaman Sin-aegi—who seems to stand \"on equal footing with the grandmother spirit\" (p. 144)—vividly captures the friction between old and new generations so common in today's society. In this way, \"Honmono\" goes beyond examining individual desire and anguish, boldly raising questions about broader social issues such as generational conflict and the clash between tradition and modernity.\n\nAn Overwhelming Narrative That Draws You In Without Pause—\nA Glimpse of the Future of Korean Literature, Shining With Talent Worth Stealing\n\nAnother story that tackles these themes with timely specificity is \"Smooth,\" which portrays, in the style of a black comedy, a single day in the life of Dewey, a third-generation Korean American who works as an agent for the world-renowned artist Jeff and is visiting Korea for the very first time. Dewey, who had been so ignorant as to imagine Korea as \"a crime-ridden district lined with shops selling snake wine and dog meat\" (p. 69), is in some ways \"more American\" (p. 69) than actual Americans. While in Korea for Jeff's exhibition, he gets lost and unwittingly finds himself swept into a crowd of people carrying \"American flags and 'Taeguk-gi'\" (p. 84). Amid this \"festival\" (p. 86), he encounters warm, kindhearted elderly people and begins to feel a sense of connection and belonging to Korea. But the moment one of these warm strangers refers to Gwanghwamun Square as \"Syngman Rhee Square,\" the story—which up to that point we had been enjoying almost like Jeff's smooth, spherical artworks, where \"anxiety and lack had been sanded away\" (p. 82)—suddenly leaves us with a chill.\n\nThe opening story of the collection, \"Guilty Club: Touching the Tiger,\" is narrated by a member of the Guilty Club, a fan group devoted to world-famous film director Kim Gon, made up of so-called \"real\" (p. 12) devoted fans. Kim Gon has faced public moral criticism for an incident from his past, but the members of the Guilty Club believe that the role of a \"true\" fan is to cover it up and stay silent. The narrator, too, driven by a desire to be \"real,\" denies the incident—but when Kim Gon actually admits his wrongdoing and apologizes, she feels something inside her break open. Later, while visiting a zoo in Chiang Mai and taking part in a \"touch the tiger\" experience, she comes to understand what that feeling truly was. In this way, \"Guilty Club: Touching the Tiger\" uses the familiar world of fandom culture to vividly portray the contradictory desire known as \"guilty pleasure,\" while also questioning how easily we label something as...","brand":"IBOOKPARK","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49624400888036,"sku":"08072026995","price":21.6,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/9788\/6692\/files\/9788936439743.jpg?v=1786430897"}],"url":"https:\/\/ibookpark.com\/en\/collections\/%ed%85%8c%eb%a7%88%ec%b6%94%ec%b2%9c-%ec%9d%bc%eb%b0%98-%eb%b2%a0%ec%8a%a4%ed%8a%b8%ec%85%80%eb%9f%ac.oembed","provider":"IBOOKPARK","version":"1.0","type":"link"}