Romancing on Jeju

This atmospheric novel about friendship and self-discovery from Korean author Hyun-Joo Park buzzes with romance, mystery, and just a hint of danger.

Romi is an illustrator and hopeless romantic. When she can’t stop obsessing over a brief encounter with a handsome stranger, there’s just one thing to do: hop on a plane and find him.

But Romi’s not leaving without her two best friends. Hadam, a budding filmmaker, suggests the trip in the first place. Facing her fear of failure, she envisions Romi’s search for love as the perfect subject for her first documentary. And Chakyung, marketing pro, sees a chance to build a new ad campaign for her cosmetics client—plus get some quality “me time” to figure out why she’s secretly so unhappy.

The journey from Seoul to Jeju Island goes off without a hitch. The emerald waterfalls and sandy beaches are a balm to the trio’s souls. But then misunderstandings, mistaken identities, and a mysterious stalker stir up trouble in paradise. Will a conspiracy to nab a legendary queen bee keep these friends from discovering real love—and purpose?

Born in Seoul, South Korea, Hyun-Joo Park is a novelist, essayist, translator, and critic. She studied English language and literature at Korea University and graduate-level linguistics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. While a graduate student, Hyun-Joo began work as a translator of English literature and a literary critic focusing on mystery and romance novels.

Returning to Korea, Hyun-Joo continued her work as translator and critic. In 2018, she won the Yoo Yeong Translation Award for her rendition of Jill Alexander Essbaum’s Hausfrau. She also began to write books of her own, including an essay collection, The Romance Pharmacy, and the two-volume novel My Occult Days. Romancing on Jeju is the English translation of her second novel, Searching for Honeyman. In 2023, Hyun-Joo published At 2 a.m. Laundromat, a sequel to My Occult Days.

Hyun-Joo hosted a podcast called The Drama from 2017 to 2018 and appears regularly on a TV critic program aired nationwide in Korea.