Sejong Book Club

Thursday, March 19, 2026 · 7:00 PM (Central Time, USA)

Format: Online via Zoom (open to participants worldwide)

About Sejong Book Club

The Sejong Book Club invites readers from around the world to explore Korean literature in English translation.
Led by distinguished professors of literature, our online discussions offer a welcoming space to connect through reading, reflection, and cultural exchange.

Each session highlights a major Korean work translated into English, examining its themes, historical background, and artistic vision.
Discussions are held several times a year, and all sessions are conducted in English.

Join us in discovering the depth and beauty of Korean literature—one book, one conversation at a time.

Book

"Secret" from Shoko's Smile by Choi Eunyoung

A bestselling and award-winning debut collection from one of South Korea's most prominent young writers.

In crisp, unembellished prose, Eun-young Choi paints intimate portraits of the lives of young women in South Korea, balancing the personal with the political. In the title story, a fraught friendship between an exchange student and her host sister follows them from adolescence to adulthood. In "A Song from Afar," a young woman grapples with the death of her lover, traveling to Russia to search for information about the deceased. In "Secret," the parents of a teacher killed in the Sewol ferry sinking hide the news of her death from her grandmother.
In the tradition of Sally Rooney, Banana Yoshimoto, and Marilynne Robinson--writers from different cultures who all take an unvarnished look at human relationships and the female experience--Choi Eunyoung is a writer to watch.

source:amazon.com

Choi Eun-young

Moderator

Professor Paul Petrovic
(Associate Professor of English, Emmanuel University, GA, USA)

Professor Paul Petrovic

Paul Petrovic, Associate Professor, completed his BA and MA at Kent State University and his PhD at Northern Illinois University.

His academic interests center on Asian American literature, post-9/11 literature, contemporary American film, and the intersection between social activism and the nation-building inherent to literature. He is working on a book project about Vietnamese American literary texts that trouble both economic and legal precarity in order to uncover works that focus on more than themes of gratitude, indebtedness, and easy alliance.

Dr. Petrovic has edited the collection Representing 9/11: Trauma, Ideology, and Nationalism in Literature, Film, and Television, and published on works by John Dos Passos, Don DeLillo, and U.S. war veterans writing about the Forever Wars.

His scholarship appears in the critical collections Approaches to Teaching Asian North American Literature, Through the Black Mirror: Deconstructing the Side Effects of the Digital Age, and American Cinema in the Shadow of 9/11. He enjoys traveling and caring too much about music: indie, K-pop, and extreme metal.

source: https://eu.edu/employees/petrovic-paul/