Whether you are planning to travel to Korea or not, pick one of these books to learn about the rich culture and history of the country. Well, two countries.
Last updated: October 28, 2025
Explore Korea through Books
Korea had never been on my mind as a future travel destination until I explored the country’s beautiful landscapes, dove into its rich culture, and gasped in horror at the selected scenes from its gruesome history as I read one book about Korea after another.
The Korean Peninsula is controversial. One the one hand, the region (South Korea) is world-famous for its technological inventions, television dramas, K-pop music, and innovative skin care and medical treatments. On the other hand, there is North Korea. Traveling here is not recommended and often even strongly advised against.
Korea that I first met in books was one country, united, but oppressed as a colony of Japan and later broken by the harshness of wars. In this article, I’ll keep it the same way, merged and unified. Whenever it’s necessary and if the books we are about to read require it, I’ll separate North Korea from South Korea. Otherwise, the term “Korea” applies to the entire Korean Peninsula.
BOOKS TO READ BEFORE TRAVELING TO KOREA
1. The Island of Sea Women
A historical fiction book set on Jeju Island, now South Korea, by Lisa See
Mi-ja and Young-sook share a friendship so deep and caring. It guides the Korean girls through the years of scarcity during the Japanese colonialism and long seasons and dangers of the sea both around their home island Jeju and in the foreign waters hundreds of miles away.
Yet after countless dives together and years spent more like sisters than just friends, the young women drift apart. The forces that separate them are greater than each of them can handle or forget.
The book The Island of Sea Women is based on historical events that occurred in Korea during the 1930s and 1940s, World War II, and the Korean War that divided the peninsula into two separate countries.
2. Pachinko
A historical fiction book set in Korea and Japan by Min Jin Lee
Sunja, born and raised in Korea, works at a boarding house owned by her parents. The girl has a plain appearance, but catches the attention of the wealthy and influential Koh Hansu. The two have a complicated relationship that ends when the young woman becomes pregnant. To save her family’s face, Sunja marries Baek Isak and leaves Korea for Japan.
Spared from the death and devastation that destress their home country, the new immigrants encounter humiliation and racism the Japanese treat Koreans with. Yet there are some fleeting moments of happiness and even bigger tragedies that the growing Korean family is yet to live through in their new home.
Buy: Pachinko
3. Honolulu
A historical fiction book set in Korea and Hawaii by Alan Brennert
In the early 1900s when the faraway, dream land of Hawaii starts employing farm workers from Asia, Jin escapes Korean rigid social norms as a picture bride. In Korea where every family dreams of a son, she is unlucky to be born a girl. Her parents were so devastated that they even named her Jin, which literally means “regret”.
Regret crosses the ocean to be reunited with her young husband and pursue her dream of education, but finds none upon arrival. The poor, embittered laborer who used an old picture of himself to lure a young bride takes his frustration out on his new wife.
Jin changes her name and escapes once again. But even now life in the “paradise” is a daily struggle for survival and freedom.
Buy: Honolulu
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