With this number, the eighth in the series, our publication begins its third year. We would like to express our gratitude to the Korean Culture and arts Foundation, especially its Chairman Moon Kodk-su and its Secretary General Kim Kwang-in, for their constant support without which the series would not have seen the light of day. we must also thank the Korea Foundation for having undertaken to mail copies to such a large variety of institutions and libraries across the world. We are also very grateful to our readers, who have been most generous in welcoming the appearance of this new series. 
In selecting the writers and works to publish, we always try to keep a balance between various schools and in this issue again we publish translations of works from the two main sides, usually seen in terms of 'social' or 'realistic' as opposed to 'pure' or 'aesthetic' although it may very well be true that, in the final account, all these qualities are present in any worthwhile work of literature. Equally important, we try to include works from the Japanese period, from the War and immediate post-war period, and from recent years. 
Among early writers of modern Korean fiction, Hyon Chin-gon stands out as one of the fathers of Realism. In his "A society that Drives you to Drink" (1921) we find a powerful evocation of the hardships endured by Korean women in th Japanese occupation, when education was largely denied them. The story is about the difficult transition from the old Korea to a modern form of society. His work is strongly realistic, yet not without its own intense lyricism. 
The story "Superfluous Men", which was awarded the Tongin Prize, is set in the intense poverty of post-war Korea. The author lived for many years in exile in Japan and composed brilliant sketches of Korean life in those years. Here too we find the necessary combination of art with a portrayal of reality. 
Im Chol-woo's work "With Her Oil Lamp, that Night" is set in the same period and is remarkable for its portrayal of affection in the midst of pain. His tale has an almost archetypal theme of death and rebirth, as it strives to find reasons for hope comfronted with the ideological divisions of Korea. 
Poetry is, by its very nature, lyrical but still Korean Poetic circles have known fierce and sometimes bitter debate about the proper articulation of the social and the aesthetic. In this issue we have translations of poems by Pak Mok-wol, the founder of Korean Imagism in whose poems nature is often evoked with lyric simplicity. The more modern poetry of Yi Su-ik is written within that same Imagist tradition, although with perhaps a greater complexity in its exploration of differing levels of experience. By constrast, the poems of Kim Kwang-kyu are strongly marked by humour and have a lightly satirical touch that is rare in Korean poetry. 
In this issue we at last include a masterpiece of modern Korean drama, Lee Gun-sam's "A New Common Sense" which has been produced many times since its creatio in the 1960s. In it the first comic dramatist of modern Korea holds up to mockery the materialism of the 1960s, with a series of characters all intent on achieving their goals in society by fair means or foul. 

Tae-dong Lee  
Brother Anthony