Celebrate Park Kyung-ni's 100th Birthday at Mapo Central Library's Book&Talk Series!

Mapo Central Library, a public library operated by Mapo-gu (district mayor Park Kang-su), will run a reading discussion program called "Book&Talk" to mark the 100th birth anniversary of novelist Park Kyung-ni, as part of the Seoul-style author meet-and-greet series "Jakga Hip-Talk."

"Jakga Hip-Talk" is a reading culture program designed to activate public libraries as community hubs, bringing together writers from literature, humanities and the arts with residents every Friday evening for book-centered conversation.

This year marks the centenary of Park Kyung-ni, one of the defining figures of Korean literature. Mapo Central Library organized the program to give participants a chance to read her works together and explore her life and literary world.

The program runs every Friday from June 19 through July 10, at 7 p.m. in the Cultural Lecture Room on the fourth floor of Mapo Central Library, for a total of four sessions.

The sessions will be led by Lee Seung-yun, a professor at Incheon National University and president of the Toji Academic Society, who has authored works including "Reading Park Kyung-ni's Toji Through 10 Spaces" and "Toji: A Portrait of Its Characters."

Participants are expected to read the assigned work before each session and take part in group discussion. The final session on "Toji" is open to those who have not read the full novel.

The first session draws on "Our Time" and "There Is So Little Left to Leave Behind, I Feel Quite Free" to explore Park as "a novelist who wanted to be a poet," while the second focuses on "Age of Mistrust" to examine the universal themes woven into her early short fiction.

The third session turns to "Pyo-ryudo" to trace the beginning of her full-length novels, and the fourth and final session takes up her masterwork "Toji" to explore the birth and significance of a new kind of historical fiction.

Across the four sessions, participants can follow the arc of Park Kyung-ni's literary career — from her earliest works to "Toji" — and gain a multidimensional view of her writing.

Registration is available through the Mapo Central Library website. For further inquiries, contact the Lifelong Learning Division's Library Operations Team.

"We put this program together so that, in the centenary year of Park Kyung-ni's birth, people can read and discuss her works together and explore her life and literary world," district mayor Park Kang-su said. "I hope Friday evenings at the library become a meaningful time for sharing thoughts through books."