On an island located an hour from Seoul, North Korea sits visible from cartoonist Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s home and studio. The spectre of the infamous dictatorship looms over daily life. In My Friend Kim Jong Un, the Harvey Award-winning Korean graphic novelist explores the life of the supreme leader, and the long shadow North Korea casts over Korean society. Weaving her personal accounts together with interviews with former South Korean president Moon Jae-in, North Korean defectors, researchers, journalists, and even Kim’s former chef, this book is a cautionary tale on what makes a dictator, at a time when these lessons are more relevant in the West than ever. In this rare Canadian appearance, Gendry-Kim will speak with acclaimed translatorJanet Hong, who has translated all her books into English.
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KEUM SUK GENDRY-KIM was born in Goheung in Jeolla Province. She has cartooned the graphic novels Grass, The Waiting, La saison des pluies, Jiseul, Jun, The Naked Tree, and Alexandra Kim, a Woman of Siberia; the autobiographical comic The Song of My Father; the three-volume children’s comic Coquinette; the picture books The Baby Hanyeo Okrang Goes to Dokdo and A Day with My Grandpa; and the children’s book My Mother Kang Geumsun. Grass (Drawn & Quarterly, 2019) appeared on Best of the Year lists from the New York Times and the Guardian, and received the Cartoonist Studio Prize for the Best Print Comic of the Year, the Big Other Book Award for Best Graphic Novel in 2019, the Harvey Award for Best International Book, and the Krause Essay Prize in 2020.
JANET HONG is a writer and translator based in Vancouver, Canada. She is a recipient of the TA First Translation Prize, the LTI Korea Translation Award, and the Krause Essay Prize, as well as a two-time winner of the Harvey Award for Best International Book for her translations. She has been a mentor for ALTA’s Emerging Translator Mentorship Program since 2020. Her debut novel, When We Swallowed the Sea, is forthcoming from Flatiron Books in 2027.
