Modern Writers

From 1910 to 1945 Korea was under Japanese rule, and the writers who made modern Korean literature worked inside that fact. This chapter follows five of them, a novelist, a monk, a folk-song poet, an avant-garde architect and a student who died in a prison, and shows what the sources say about each, and what they leave doubtful.

The Setting

Chapter 1's article gave a few dates for this period: the 1894 Gabo Reforms, the newspaper Taehan Maeil Shinbo (July 1904 to May 1909), the 1919 Samil Movement and the magazine Changjo, and Japanese rule from 1910 to 1945. It also tagged, as "citation needed", the claim that uncensored Korean publishing became impossible once the Government-General took over that newspaper. The five articles below add individual lives; none of them describes the censorship system itself.

Yi Gwangsu: The First Modern Novel

The article calls him "a Korean writer, Korean independence activist, and later collaborator with Imperial Japan". His novel Mujeong (The Heartless, 1917) is "often described as the first modern Korean novel", and "reflected the complexities of Korea's modernization efforts". In the 1910s he was a reformist and a critic of Confucianism; his essay "On the Remaking of National Consciousness" (1920s to 1930s) "advocated a moral overhaul of Korea". He was the lead author of the February 8 Declaration of Independence (1919), which the article says helped catalyse the March First protests. After a 1937 imprisonment he "recanted his anti-Japanese stance and leaned more towards collaboration", and in 1939 became the first head of a pro-Japanese writers' association. The article cites the historian Michael Shin on nationalists' growing scepticism of him. It says he was captured by the North Korean army and died in Manpo on 25 October 1950, "most likely of tuberculosis".

The article hedges several things: the reasons for his 1921 arrest are "reportedly unknown", his Tolstoy influence is "reportedly" described, and a claim that he was a pioneer of queer literature is tagged "citation needed". My reading, not the article's: he is a good case for why this course reports a life with the hedges attached, and does not turn a writer into a hero or a villain.

Han Yong-un: Monk, Activist, Poet

The article describes Han Yong-un (1879 to 1944) as a Buddhist reformer, poet and independence activist, born Han Yu-cheon in Hongseong, who took the religious name Han Yong-un in 1905 (Manhae was his art name). In 1913 he published a work on restoring Korean Buddhism that criticised its isolationist outlook. He signed the Korean Declaration of Independence in 1919 and took part in the March First Movement, for which he was imprisoned about three years and acquitted in 1922. Nim-ui Chimmuk (1926; the article glosses it "Lover's Silence") is "his most significant and enduring literary achievement", with poems that mix nationalism and romantic love. The article does not discuss the ambiguity of nim (a beloved); the nearest it comes is that "love for his country plainly appears under the guise of longing for the loved one", which is the article's reading, not a documented statement by the poet.

Kim Sowol: Folk-Song Rhythm

The article says Kim Sowol (1902 to 1934, born Kim Jeong-sik in Kwaksan) wrote early modern poetry in the style of traditional folk songs. His father became insane soon after his birth, which the article says shaped his early life. He studied under the poet Kim Eok, who mentored him for life, and managed a local branch of the Dong-a Ilbo. The Azaleas (1925), his only collection in his lifetime, was written mostly while he was a teenager. His teacher's essay says "the poet's true genius lay in composing lines in the rhythm of Korean folk song", and the article adds that this musical quality is hard to capture in English. He died at 32; the article gives a "reported suicide in 1934" and later years of heavy drinking.

Yi Sang: An Architect's Experiments

The article gives Kim Haegyeong (pen name Yi Sang, 1910 to 1937) as a Korean writer and architecture-trained avant-garde figure. He studied architecture at Gyeongseong Technical College and worked as a government building official until tuberculosis made him leave in 1933; he then ran a café and joined the Guinhoe literary group in 1934. Crow's Eye View (Ogamdo) was a 1934 newspaper series of 15 experimental poems that drew strong public hostility, and the article says the series was cut short. The Wings (Nalgae) is his best-known story, using stream-of-consciousness to portray alienation. The article calls him a modernist shaped by Dada and Surrealism and links his training to diagrams, numbers and equations. Much of his early poetry was written in Japanese, and the article warns that early Korean translations were loose and inconsistent. He had little recognition in his lifetime; his work was reprinted from the 1950s, his reputation grew in the 1970s and the Yi Sang Literary Award was established in 1977. He died in Tokyo on 17 April 1937, aged 26, after being detained for questioning on ideological charges and then hospitalised as his tuberculosis worsened. The article gives differing interpretations of the circumstances of his death, and carries maintenance tags for translation quality and missing citations; some scholarly readings (quantum mechanics, relativity, Christianity) are not clearly attributed.

Yun Dong-ju: A Collection After Death

The article says Yun Dong-ju (1917 to 1945) was born on 30 December 1917 in Longjing, Jilin, in China, among Korean settlers. He graduated from Yonhi College (now Yonsei University) in Seoul in 1941, went to Japan in 1942 to study English literature at Rikkyo and then Doshisha, and was arrested by Japanese police in 1943 over alleged anti-Japanese activity. He died in Fukuoka Prison on 16 February 1945, aged 27. The article says the cause of death is uncertain, mentions accounts of saltwater injections and medical experiments, and carries a "citation needed" tag on that passage, so I treat it as unverified. Sky, Wind, Star and Poem was published after his death: a first selection of 31 poems in January 1948 with an introduction by the poet Chong Ji-yong, and an expanded 1976 edition of 116 poems. The poems are in Korean. The article describes childlike narrators, a lost hometown, shame at not living a conscientious life, introspection, anxiety about the darkness of the period, and a later resolve to overcome despair through hope and courage.

Exercises

Next chapter: Division and War.