Anyone with any interest in Korean literature has come across the name of Kevin O’Rourke. Coming to Korea in 1964 at the age of twenty-four as a member of the Columban Fathers, he received his Ph.D. in Korean literature at Yonsei University and has been teaching at Kyunghee University since 1977. Professor O’Rourke has published countless translations as well as his own poetry. The enormous scope of his work covers both prose and poetry, and extends from the roots of Korean literature in hyangga and Koryŏ kayo through poetry in Chinese up to modern poetry and fiction. His published translations, spanning three decades from the early 1970s to the present, include Ten Korean Short Stories, The Square (Ch’oe Inhun), Our Twisted Hero (Yi Munyŏl), Tilting the Jar, Spilling the Moon (a Poetry Book Society recommended translation), Selected Poems of Yi Kyubo, The Book of Korean Shijo and many others, as well as numerous scholarly articles on Korean fiction and poetry.
