Active Writers in Korean Literature

Active Writers in Korean Literature
Choi Jae Bong
Korean Novel Market
Love stories which are more or less like melodramas are prevailing in the Korean “popular” novel market. Perfume of
Chrysanthemum by Kim In Ha, The Eleventh Apple Tree by
Lee Yong Beom, Flower of Tears by Kim Min Gi and other
works mesmerize the public with sublime and absolutely pure
love stories under adverse circumstances rather than cold
reality. Fish of Bones by Jo Chang In, in which the author
tells us a story of a father whose wife left him and who is
taken ill but looks after his children devotedly by himself until
he dies; and Mother by Kim Jeong Hyeon, a story of a mother who gathers her separated family members and rebuilds
her family, seem to just substitute the relationship between
parents and children for the love between a man and a woman. Except for “fantasy” novels, which are just martial arts
novels, modernized to attract teenage readers, other genres
of novels including detective stories, thrillers and science fiction, have not yet gained ground in Korea.
In the non-fiction domain, humanities and social science
are on the decline while practical books such as foreign language learning books, and books on health and how to make
money are selling well. In Sangdo (Business Morality), a bestselling novel by Choi In Ho, the author tells us the story of a
merchant in the Chosun Dynasty and makes a strong impression on readers who want to learn something about how
to make a fortune. Choi made his debut in the late 1960s
with short stories about lonely individuals in the city and
caught the public’s attention. But after his work Home of Stars
became a commercial success, he has “converted” to “commercial” literature. Lost Kingdom, a history novel and A Road
without a Road, a Buddhist novel, attracted a lot of attention
from the public, but were hardly appreciated in terms of
“quality literature”.
Perfume of Chrysanthemum by Kim In Ha
Sin Gyeong Suk
but that changed to “literariness of literature”, i.e. literary
perfectionism, in the 1990s. The literary tendency which might
be called “estheticism” gained ground. Responding effectively to the changing demand of the time, Sin Gyeong Suk
and Yun Dae Nyeong emerged as representative writers of
the 1990s. Saseum Beolre Yeoja, a recent work by Yun Dae
Nyeong, combines existential questions with a few science
fiction devices through the story of an amnesiac man.
It is characteristic of the Korean literature in the 1990s that
more female writers were active than ever. They attracted
women readers not with heavy and epic stories but with
amusing ones. Their favourite themes for their novels were
isolation and the meaningless life which housewives feel,
their escape from them, the shameful consequences of adultery and difficult struggle against the order of the patriarchal
system. Two female writers, Eun Hee Gyeong and Ha Seong
Ran, impressed readers with Minor League and Hero of My
Movie. On a Boat of Glass, I Am Floating on a Strange Sea, a
recent novel by Jeon Gyeong Rin, depicts very vividly the
love adventure of a woman who loves two men at the same
time but in different ways.
Recent Trends
At the turning point from the 1980s to the 1990s, “from society to individuals” seemed to be the biggest issue for Korean literature. Writers and critics both regretted and criticized
the superfluous ideology of the preceding decade. They made
efforts to bring the existential anguish of an individual to
light, free from socio-historic burdens. The evaluation criteria of a literary work had been its theme and effectiveness,
Eun Hee Gyeong and her novel Minor League
Fish of Bones by Jo Chang In
A new bookshop in Seoul (photo courtesy of “The Book & The Computer”)
ABD 2001 Vol. 32 No. 1
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Hwang Seok Yeong
Song of Sword by Kim Hun
“Literaturism”, which was prevailing in the Korean literary scene in the 1990s, became the target of criticism at the
end of the decade. The realization that literature dealt with
overly individual and trivial matters and that the sole emphasis was on esthetic perfectionism, led to criticism that it
ignored socio-historic issues and its social function. Now
there was a demand for literature to be more interested and
engaged in social issues in different forms. Along with this
consciousness, regret about the commercialism which had
tainted literature in the 1990s, and criticism about the “literature power” were brought up. The fact that the so-called
“literaturism” in the 1990s was nothing but an excuse for
the commercialism of literature publishers, and that critics
were silent about such deterioration or even advocated it,
became very clear. Kim Myeong In, Kwon Seong Wu, Lee
Myeong Won and other young critics attacked the close relationship between publishers and critics and their striving for
power.
Notable Writers and Their Novels
Hwang Seok Yeong, who was imprisoned for 5 years because
of his unauthorized visit to North Korea, is a breath of fresh
air to the Korean novel scene. In Old Garden, published in
2000, he rehabilitated the ideology of utopia which had been
dominant in Korea, and the “fighters” who had devoted themselves to it. In 2001, his talent was reconfirmed through his
second novel Guests after he got out of jail. The latter deals
with the reinterpretation of the massacre of innocent people
in Sincheon, Hwanghae Province, North Korea, during the
Korean War. While the North Korean authorities wrote in the
history books that the massacre was committed by the American army, the author, through his visit to the town and interviews with witnesses and persons related with the massacre,
found out that it had been committed by Christians. He wrote
his novel based on his findings. He describes “Christianity”
and “Communism”, both foreign ideologies introduced to
the Korean peninsula in the 20th century, as “guests”, and
focuses on their effects on the Koreans and the problems
which they have caused. In particular, he narrates the story
through a shaman’s ritual for a dead person from Hwanghae
Province, North Korea, and thus attempts to expand the extensive domain of the realism.
Kim Hun, who was once a literature reporter for a newspaper, got his talent as a novelist verified in his second novel
Song of Sword, whose protagonist is the admiral Lee Sun
Sin, the hero of the Korean-Japanese War from 1592 to 1598.
He contrasts the cold-hearted admiral with the feeble-minded king who is full of doubts, and brings their characters to
light through the former’s short and dry sentences and the
latter’s long sentences full of rhetoric and exaggerations,
which he does very skillfully. In addition to the two novels,
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Kim Seong Dong
he also released Jindo, the Intact Island, a prose collection
with photos, which presents the nature and culture of the
island in the south of the Korean Peninsula, and also its history and people.
Kim Seong Dong, the author of Mandara, also released a
novel entitled Dream after a long break. In this novel, he depicts, through the form of a very short dream, the wanderings and searching of a young monk who tries to harmonize
love for a woman and ways of searching after truth. He also
tells us about his father, who was killed during the Korean
War because he was allegedly a leftist, and the author’s own
experience of excommunication because he had allegedly
attempted to harm the Buddhist order, which is quite remarkable in his novel.
Lee Dae Hwan released Slow Bullet, in which he tells us
very calmly about a Korean man who participated in the Viet
Nam War and suffers from the aftereffects of defoliants;
whose disease is inherited by his son and thus destroys his
family.
(translated by Moon Seung Hyun)
Lee Dae Hwan and his novel Slow Bullet
(photos of books and authors courtesy of the author and Korean Publishers
Association)
Choi Jae Bong
Born in 1961, Yangpyeong, Korea. After he got M.A. in English Literature, Kyonghee University, Seoul, he joined Hankyoreh Shinmun, a
Korean daily newspaper in 1988. Since 1992, he worked as a reporter
for its department of literature. Writings: Literary Travel to Meet History, Press Dept., Hankyoreh Shinmun, 1997
Choi Jae Bong
Reporter, Hankyoreh Shinmun, 103-1403, Hanil Town, 881, Jowon-dong, Jangan-gu,
Suwon, Rep. of Korea
ABD 2001 Vol. 32 No. 1