If You Live to 100, You Might as Well Be Happy

Rhee Kun Hoo is one of Korea's most popular, bestselling essayists and a retired psychiatrist with a cult following. Born in 1935, the only son to a former Korean Independence activist, he has lived through such historical milestones as Imperial Japan's occupation of Korea and the Korean War. In 1960, he was arrested and served time as one of the student leaders of the April Revolution, a democratic movement against the then-dictator that would contribute to the young democracy of South Korea in the following decades. Once released, he went on to change the abusive mental health system in South Korea and was the first to implement an open ward system and patient-friendly treatments such as psychodrama therapy in the Korean asylum system. Translator Suphil Lee Park is a bilingual writer, poet, and translator who was born and grew up in South Korea. She knows the author through family and has met with him several times. She received a BA in English from New York University and an MFA in poetry from the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of the poetry collection Present Tense Complex, and a winner of the Marystina Santiestevan Prize (Conduit Books & Ephemera, 2021). Her poetry chapbook, Still Life, was selected by Ilya Kaminsky as the winner of the 2022 Tomaz Salamun Prize (forthcoming from Factory Hollow Press). She also won the 2021 Indiana Review Fiction Prize and received a fiction prize from Writer's Digest.