Korean fiction is recently gaining attention and acclaim from readers around the world, including Japan, due, in part, to the recent popularity of Korean pop culture. The popularity of both Korean pop culture and Korean fiction is closely related to the fact that they are capturing the imagination of their female audience and readers, by addressing sensitive gender issues that many Asian women (and more) can relate to, with passion. The current trend of contemporary Korean fiction, especially, displays the power of Écriture Féminine, which may be one of the sources of its attraction. 

Écriture féminine in Korean literature starts with writers who in actual life met the grim and tragic fate of premature death and insanity: Na Hyesŏk died in the streets, shunned by family and cast out from society, and Kim Myŏngsun died in an asylum for the mentally deranged. The primary purpose of écriture féminine was thus for a long time, to recover the erased voices of the dead and the deranged, to restore the silenced voices of women. In the process, écriture féminine have at times set up a convention of victimhood for women, depicting them solely as objects of violence. 

However, contemporary female writers such as Han Kang and Hwang Jungeun seem to be moving away from such stereotypes; their recent works showing insight into the common ‘corporeal vulnerability’ of all people. Women are potential aggressors, as seen in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, and Hwang Jungeun’s Barbarous Mr. Alice, and men also suffer from dehumanizing metamorphosis or violence from the other, as seen in Hwang Jungeun’s ‘A Hat,’ and Han Kang’s Human Acts. Han Kang and Hwang Jungeun through stories of humans-turned-into-hats, or plants show how we at times lose our voice and language, and through stories of spectral images that talk, try to go beyond the limitations of human language, which is possibly a starting point for écriture féminine of contemporary Korean literature to go beyond talking of the female other, and utilize this experience of being objectified, being exposed to violence, toward imagining a larger community of us all, interconnected through our common vulnerability as corporeal beings.