The History Of Modern Korean Fiction 1890 1945

This book explores the history of modern Korean literature from a sociocultural perspective. Rather than focusing solely on specific authors and their works, Young Min Kim argues that the development of modern media, shifting conceptualizations of the author, and a growing mass readership fundamentally shaped the types of narratives that appeared at the turn of the twentieth century. In particular, Kim follows the trajectory of the sin sosŏl (new fiction) as it meshed with the new print and media culture to give rise to innovative and hybrid genres and literary styles. In doing so, he compellingly illuminates the relationship between literary systems and forms and underscores the necessity of re-locating literary texts in their sociohistorical contexts.

This book traces the emergence of modern Korean literature and its trajectory towards the turn of the twentieth century. In examining the entanglements of literary style, form, and contemporaneous institutions, Young Min Kim illuminates an oft-overlooked period in modern Korean literary history.

The sixth book in Kegan Paul International's "Korean Culture Series", this volume contains thirty stories that have been selected on the basis of historical interest and literary worth, each representing a monumental moment in the history of Korean Literature. The ten stories in the first part share the common theme of the Korean experience of the confrontation between man and woman; in some stories the relationship is portrayed as innocent and pure, in others the relationship becomes more sophisticated and complex. The ten stories in the second part all deal with old Korean or the old Korean way of life - the Korea of byegone days, which is gradually disappearing in the face of industrialization and internationalization. The third group of stories reveals modern Korea in the process of change during the period of the Japanese Occupation, the liberation from the Occupation, and the Korean War. All thirty stories may serve as social documents. From the time of ideological chaos following the independence of Korea in 1945 up to the fall of the USSR in the 1980s, modern Korean literature has been powerfully swayed by Marxist ideology one way or another. Literature has an important role to play in its portrayal of the relations between society and individual people, and it has a particularly vital social function in developing or undeveloped countries. However, the stories in this anthology are not just historical documents. They represent the peak of literary achievements by great and gifted writers in the first half of this century. It is remarkable to find so many talented writers producing so many powerful works of art in a short span of just over 50 years between 1908 and 1965. This anthology is an invitation to readers to grasp how much Korea has attained in the process of its modernization. The authors whose works appear in this volume are: Yi Kwang-su, Kim Dong-in, Hyun Chin-kon, Yi Hyo-suk, Kim Yu-jong, Yi Sang, Kim Dong-ni, O Yung-su, Hwang Sun-won, Sohn, So-hi, Hahn Mu-suk, Sunwu Hwi, Kang Shin-jae, Oh Sang-won, Suh Ki-won, Han Mal-suk, Choi In-hun, Kim sung-ok, Yi Mun-ku.

A Ready Made Life is the first volume of early modern Korean fiction to appear in English in the U.S. Written between 1921 and 1943, the sixteen stories are an excellent introduction to the riches of modern Korean fiction. They reveal a variety of settings, voices, styles, and thematic concerns, and the best of them, masterpieces written mainly in the mid-1930s, display an impressive artistic maturity. Included among these authors are Hwang Sun-won, modern Korea's greatest short story writer; Kim Tong-in, regarded by many as the author who best captures the essence of the Korean identity; Ch'ae Man-shik, a master of irony; Yi Sang, a prominent modernist; Kim Yu-jong, whose stories are marked by a unique blend of earthy humor and compassion; Yi Kwang-su and Kim Tong-ni, modernizers of the language of twentieth-century Korean fiction; and Yi Ki-yúng, Yi T'ae-jun, and Pak T'ae-won, three writers who migrated to North Korea shortly after Liberation in 1945 and whose works were subsequently banned in South Korea until democratization in the late 1980s. One way of reading the stories, all of which were written during the Japanese occupation, is that beneath their often oppressive and gloomy surface lies an anticolonial subtext. They can also be read as a collective record of a people whose life choices were severely restricted, not just by colonization, but by education (either too little or too much, as the title story shows) and by a highly structured society that had little tolerance for those who overstepped its boundaries. Life was unremittingly onerous for many Koreans during this period, whatever their social background. In the stories, educated city folk fare little better than farmers and laborers. A Ready-Made Life will provide scholars and students with crucial access to the literature of Korea's colonial period. A generous opening essay discusses the collection in the context of modern Korean literary history, and short introductions precede each story. Here is a richly diverse testament to a modern literature that is poised to assume a long overdue place in world literature.

This book examines one of the seminal chapters in the history of the modern Korea. Through an analysis of texts of various genres and types, the author analyzes Japanese colonialism and modernity and its impact on Korean culture and society during the first half of the twentieth century.

To represent the past century of Korean fiction, this definitive collection extends beyond familiar writers, challenges cultural norms, and crosses political borders. By inlcuding stories from neglected female, North Korean, and wolbuk writers (those who migrated to the North after 1945 and whose works were widely banned in South Korea) and by bringing politically engaged works together with experimental ones, this anthology articulates the ruptures and resolutions that have makred the peninsula. From sketches of desperate peasants in straitened circumstances to fast-moving, visceral tales of contemporary South Korea, the works in this collection bear witness to the dramatic transformations and events in twentieth-century Korean history, including Japanese colonial rule, civil war, and economic modernization in the South. The writers explore these developments through a variety of literary and political lenses, revealing wtih precision and poignancy their impact on Korean society and the lives of ordinary Koreans. This anthology includes an introduction, which synthesizes the key developments in modern Korean literature, and a comprehensive bibliography of Korean fiction in translation.

"No other modern Korean writers living under Japanese rule (1910-1945) experienced the history of their country more intimately and intensely than did Han Yong-un and Yi Kwang-su, for they were more than writers. Han was an eminent Buddhist monk, and Yi was an equally prominent national leader. Their careers crossed often, involving politics, journalism, literature, and religion. And yet they lived a world apart, pursuing opposite paths. Han was revered for his fierce commitment to Korean independence and his single volume of poems, The Silence of My Beloved. Yi, despite all his contributions to the development of modern Korean literature, particularly his first novel Heartless, has been branded a traitor for his collaboration with the Japanese. Even during their lifetimes both attained a mythical status and have since become legends of modern Korea." "In this first book-length study of Han and Yi in English, Beongcheon Yu seeks to demythify them and reassess their achievements as writers. He surveys their careers, reviewing significant events and patterns in their lives, and then confronts their literary works, weighing whatever permanence they may claim. Yu's introduction provides a historical background of modern Korea, and his conclusion brings Han and Yi together, pairing them as has never been done, in an attempt to understand them more clearly as men and as writers." "As is evident in their biographical sketches, Han and Yi had full careers - so colorful and fascinating that they constantly disrupt our proper critical attention to their writings. Yu, in his deliberate contrast of their literary achievements, provides a study of these two highly influential men that is informative and stimulating to general readers and at the same time provocative and challenging to specialists."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved