Re-Writing The Placeholder
The Strange and Wonderful Experience of Re-writing The Placeholder in Korean
Hello everyone - it’s been a while since I posted here. I sincerely apologize for not being punctual with updates.
I wonder how everyone is doing with their own Placeholder exploration. One of my latest experiments was to re-write The Placeholder book in Korean, which was both strange and wonderful.
Last August in 2025 when I was in Korea, I got a book deal with the Korean publisher Sigongsa to publish The Placeholder. Their response to the original Placeholder book was positive. They thought it would offer very refreshing perspectives on work for Korean audience.
At first, I thought it’d be a pretty straightforward and simple process—because I was simply “translating” the book. But I was deadly wrong with my assumptions in two ways.
Two Wrong Assumptions
First of all, translation wasn’t easy nor simple. As a bilingual speaker/writer in both English and Korean, I liked the fact I could translate my own book from English to Korean. However, translation was basically another version of creation. I probably sound ignorant as I completely didn’t understand the art of translation, but it was true. It wasn’t just about replacing one English word or sentence into Korean. Due to the vast difference between two language systems, I had to put a lot more thoughts into how to re”create” each English word and sentence into Korean to convey what I really meant.
At this point, you might ask: “Umm, have you tried AI?” Of course, I tried getting help from ChatGPT to Claude and Gemini and other AI tools specialized for translation. While these tools helped creating an okay first draft of translation, they weren’t effective at all in understanding nuances and intention of my original writing. They simply didn’t get me, the original author; therefore, I ended up “recreating” most of it. I now see why we would still need human translators for both fictions and nonfictions, even in the age of AI.
Secondly, I ended up re-writing 60% of the original Placeholder to relate to the Korean audience. This was a conscious decision. In discussion with the publisher, Sigongsa, I realized some stories from people I interviewed in The Placeholder wouldn’t be relatable to Korean audience due to cultural differences. Therefore, I decided to swap the original interviews of six people in the original Placeholder with interviews of Korean people.
The schedule was tight; the Korean manuscript was due December 22, 2025. After the book deal was signed in September, I had only three months left to recruit six Korean people who had experiences of placeholders and weave their stories into the book, on top of translation of the original book. It was anxiety inducing three months. Yet all the stars were aligned and I could find six amazing Korean Placeholder way finders and their stories were just perfect; I couldn’t have asked for better.
On Dec 22, 2025, I finally submitted the Korean manuscript to my editor at Sigongsa and we went through the revision process twice as I write this now. The Korean title will be different from The Placeholder, as there is no equivalent and relatable word for “placeholder” in Korean. It’s likely to be published in May in Korea. The Placeholder will get to have the second life in Korea.
What Writing a Book in Two Different Languages Taught Me
Working on this Korean edition was such a strange and wonderful experience at the same time. This experience of writing a book in two different languages taught me a couple of things:
Perspective Taking: Although it was my thesis I thought deeply about and wrote about last year, I had to re-evaluate everything from a very different cultural background when I was re-writing in Korean. Through this experience, I realized how much “westernized” or “Americanized” my belief system has become. This is understandable given that I lived in the U.S. for the past 20 years; yet it made me culturally more aware.
Appreciation of Different Cultures through Different Languages: Translating from one language to another is the quickest way to understand cultural differences for sure. However, it not only points out the differences at the technical and superficial level but also unravels the ontological differences between cultures.
English is a language of description, optimized for expression from inside out. You can describe almost anything by combining various words and phrases and the clear communication is prized. Korean is a language of implication, with a white space or grey area. Each word has their own meaning but it can be understood differently depending on the context, tone or the speaker. It leaves a lot of rooms for interpretation intentionally, which can feel confusing or destined for misunderstanding from the POV of English speakers. Learning more deeply about these subtle nuances between these two languages helped me appreciate both even more!
At times, being a bilingual felt like a disadvantage, especially when I notice that I am not being “perfect” with either language after all. There is always 10-20% of me feeling I am not explaining myself nor understood clearly in either language. Yet, this experience made me further appreciate my bilingual inner world, albeit imperfect. After all, I get to play with great aspects of both languages!
The Universality of Placeholder Experiences: Discovering stories of placeholder among Koreans was another wonderful thing. At first, I was concerned what if some elements of Placeholder experiences doesn’t apply to Korean audience, especially the perspective to “experiment like a mad scientist”. However, as I interviewed Korean interviewees for their placeholder experiences, I discovered so many amazing daring out of the world experiments. Their stories were so amazing that support the theme of the book extremely well. Plus, by expressing such deep longings for “creating the work that matters to them,” Korean stories made the Placeholder even more compelling and universal.
Reliving the writing process of The Placeholder in Korean after English was a very unique experience. Not many writers get to do that. It was a lot of work, but my conviction about the Placeholder became even stronger thanks to it.
Like I learned in the first round with The Placeholder, once it’s done, this book will have its own life. I am definitely curious to see what kind of life it gets to live but I let go of the rest.
I’ll share more about this book in the future - the new title (in Korean) and the book cover. Stay tuned!
With Metta
Miroo