Korean
Writers
Yi Je-ha has taken the "serious novel to the zenith of the form's aesthetic possibilities." In this intended collection of twelve novels, spanning Yi's entire oeuvre, only the first novel, A Fervent Desire, has been published so far. Yi's hero is an artist crazed by the divisions of the Korean War and the resultant ethical distortions manifested in a corrupt social system. In all his works, Yi explores an aesthetic bordering on madness, within an idiosyncratic prosedy known as "elusive realism," unique within the annals of Korean literature. This project foregrounds a self-reflexivity that links the past with the present to the future of Korea, adding a thematic breadth new to the country's literary heritage.
One of the most distinguished figures of contemporary Korean literature, Pak made her debut at the age of forty, with a novel having won her a literary prize in 1978. Over the last thirty years she has produced thirteenth titles of novels, nine collections of short-stories and a great amount of literary essays. She has received most of the prestigious prizes for writers in Korea, and is now held in most respect by Korean readers. Characterized by the astute observation on the middle class society, critical sense of Korea's historical past, and skillful art of story-telling, Pak's fiction has invited reading from the a great number of critics with different persuasions ranging from traditional humanism to radical feminism. The complete collection of her short-stories will be forthcoming in five volumes from Munhakdongne.
1960s Korea has a special historical mystique, a canvas of umbilical triumphs and tensions. After a half-century of the ravages of Japanese colonialism and the Korean War, the 1960's witnessed the first visible signs of the economic energy that would move Korea out of poverty and into the first world. At the same time, there emerged a student movement in Korea arguing for democracy over autocracy, civil rights alongside economic growth. Kim Seung-ok is a richly representative writer of this conflicted era. His short novels are called a "revolution of sensitivity." The complete works, which include one short novel, are a testament to Kim's literary achievement.
Eun, the winner of the first Munhakdongne Prize for Novels, graduated from Sukmyung Women's University and Yonsei University, and first appeared with Duo in the Dongah Daily. There are all kinds of expectations for her from critics and readers. "Writing a story", she says, "is like finding the purest pieces of myself after breakdown."
Shin is one of the leading figures of contemporary Korean fiction. She entered upon a literary career with The Munyechungang Prize for New Writers in 1985, and earned nation-wide reputation with her second collection of short-stories, Where An Organ Was Ever Placed published in 1993. Characterized by peculiarly female color and autobiographical narrative her fiction represents and important current in Korean literature of the 1990s.
A master of stories about the sea, Han has written sorrowful local fictions with powerful, keen touches - sometimes in the southern dialect dialogues, at other times leading his reader from depictions of individual lives in context of society and history into the contemplation of a tragic history. Since 1968, when he began his literary career, he has received many distinguished literary awards. He has four collections of short stories and ten novels, including his masterpieces - A Barefooted Monk, In the Port Town, and Kama.
Throughout his long life (1907-89), Kim Dal-jin's poetry reveals his deep study of and preoccupation with Buddhism, the thought of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, and the sweep of Chinese literature. He was the poet-as-seeker, and the sought-after was both Buddha and the flesh and blood poor peddler. His struggle to balance an ethical system between the natural world and the phenomenology of human experience is both a testament to the aesthetic richness of the modern Korean poem and a liberating addition to Korean literary history. Kim's poetry has been deemed "the future of the modern poem" in late 20th century Korea. Against an era often called the "age of anxiety," Kim's poetry searches for a "state of spiritual satisfaction" that transcends both easy sentimentality and the defensive cynicism of much modern work. Since 1989, the Kim Dal-jin Literary Award has been rewarded to outstanding writers; there is also a Kim Dal-jin Literature Festival every year.
http://www.kcaf.or.kr/klt/index.htmlBeginning the career as a novelist after his debut through Jungangilbo contest in 1973, he has continuously impressed readers with poetic sensitivity, peculiar style and many social issues. Suddenly, however, he has announced to stop writing in 1993. After three years of silence, he resumed writing by subscribing the novel A wagon a white cow carries to Munhakdongne quarterly in 1996. Now he is a professor of literary composition at Myungji University.
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