Foreword

Time these days seems like snow that falls heavy during the night but is gone by afternoon. It is amazing that the winter is already melting away to spring, the mornings coming earlier, the evenings ending later. Cold snaps still happen, but the nights have gone from -12° Celsius to 10° Celsius. 

As winter colors to spring, we are proud to publish another issue of Samjoko Magazine.

It has been fourteen months since the inaugural Winter Issue I was released. We have had an opportunity to read great writing in our submissions queue. This has increased with each period, making the task of selecting which pieces to accept significantly more difficult. We feel privileged to be able to publish that select few, and hope visitors to the site will take the time to enjoy the fiction, non-fiction, poetry and dramatic plays as much as we did.

Being introduced to new writing has been the greatest bonus of starting a digital magazine. So many writers exist whose work you normally never have the opportunity to discover. Yet with submissions from around the world sent to Samjoko Magazine every quarter, we are given the opportunity to peruse writing that moves us, that makes us think and see the world in new and unexpected ways.

For this Issue, we have truly remarkable pieces that surprise with their inventiveness. We would have never thought this would happen, but we actually published a zombie story. The fresh take on this lumbering trope that refuses to die caught us up with its ingenuity and cleverness.

We would also like to announce that we are in partnership with BLiM Theatre of Taipei. We hope that you visit their site, join their Facebook Page, and if you are ever in Taiwan, take in a show of one of their plays.

Here at Samjoko Magazine, we would like to continue to evolve, delving into as many venues of content creation as possible. We love interacting with other creative individuals passionate about the arts, and will try to continue to branch out into many different artistic avenues.

Finally, we would like to encourage those who are able to to support us financially on Patreon or Buy Me a Coffe so that we can pay as many writers as possible for their writing. The sense of accomplishment a writer gets for being paid for their words cannot be overstated. Samjoko Magazine is only considered a token market, being that we pay contributors $20 for accepted pieces.

Occasionally when we announce a submissions period has reopened, people will grouse about how low our payment is. It is an interesting complaint in light of the fact that though $20 is considered paltry by publishing standards, the thousands of visitors to our webpage, and the hundreds of people who have submitted to our magazines, have all thought that $20, and indeed $10, $5, and even $1, is far too much to have contributed in support of keeping this publishing venue alive. As of today, we still have no patrons, and have only had a single individual donate to Buy Me a Coffee.

For all of those in the world who would like to see these types of publishing markets exist, we thank you If you can give a token payment. All patrons we receive will be recycled back into keeping the magazine around for years to come. We would love to pay writers $30 one day, then $50, then $100, for the effort they put into this craft we all love. So if you visit the magazine and appreciate what we are doing here, consider being a patron.

It is with great pleasure that we release the fifth issue of Samjoko Magazine, Winter Issue II 2022.