India, Oct. 18 -- 1How did your new novel, The Midnight Timetable, come about? There are bits and pieces from all over the place. The title of it came from a small bus station near where I live. I live in a port town in South Korea, so because of foreigners the sign was also written in English. And instead of saying Night Bus, the sign read Midnight Timetable. I thought it was so intriguing and romantic, in a way. So, I took a picture and made a mental note that I'd use it as a title someday. During the pandemic, everything was closed, and the whole atmosphere felt ghostly. The buses still ran, just very few. The emptiness felt eerie. And my university was the same. Classes were online, but us teachers still had to go in occasionally for meetings. The empty classrooms and corridors were very unsettling. That's where the idea of The Institute in the book came from. 2Your writing is often called "horror", "speculative" or "weird fiction." Do you embrace these labels, or do you feel that your work gets limited because of these genre classifications? I love being a horror writer. I am proud to be one. When I say I write ghost stories, other Asians immediately start telling me their ghost stories - and that's the best thing! We Asians are proud of our ghosts. They're connected to our history, our culture, our collective memory. They're like this treasure trove of life, experience and points of view. Every time I hear an Asian ghost story, I see the commonality among all Asian people. So, I prefer to introduce myself as a horror writer, because it opens more doors for people to share their stories with me. 3How has your Korean readership responded to your work, compared to your international readers? They didn't respond because I didn't sell [laughs]. Nobody really knew me. We have a handful of diehard genre readers. I think, like, 12 people read me, and that was about it. After the International Booker craze (the 2017 novel Cursed Bunny was on the shortlist), I was shocked because I never regarded my own literary endeavours so highly. For me, it was something I did for fun. 4How has the massive audience you now have, through Anton Hur's translations, changed your work? For the translation process, I don't bother Anton. I trust him completely. I just dump [the novel] in his lap and don't think about it. As for the global readership, it's really exciting to meet new ghost stories. I came across this Malaysian writer from Singapore whose fantasy book I loved. So, I translated it into Korean. Same for another debut author from Poland. Now I get to meet people from other cultures, which is different from my very narrow scope of speciality. That is a blessing for me, as a reader and a writer....