Azalea 6: Journal of Korean Literature and Culture

Azalea 6 gathers once again a remarkable range of poetry, fiction, memoir, and other materials. Heo Gyun was widely credited as the author of the well-known Robin Hood-like story, the “€œTale of Hong Gildong.”€ Translator and copious annotator Minsoo Kang succinctly indicates the unlikelihood of that attribution, while also asserting another claim, the right to use the official “€œKorean”€ romanization system for the Korean language rather than the McCune-Reischauer system preferred by this journal and many Western scholarly publications. An entirely fitting and apt move, Professor Kang'€™s hope to allow future generations of readers the right to choose is one that, for all the tension it may produce as readers make their way from one system to the other in our pages, Azalea is glad to endorse.

From the seventeenth–or as Minsoo Kang argues, more likely the nineteenth–century story of Hong the bandit, readers can turn their attention to poetry, recollections, illustrations by Kim Young Jin, and a comics version of the story by Shun Dong Wu. Across a wide range of contemporary literature and other arts, a compelling array of works will make their own claims upon the reader's attention.

• David R. McCann, Editor