Literary Utterances ofa Vibrant Spring

Spring 2016 is a welcome guest for Korea and Korean literature. After surmounting the MERS crisis that hit ushard last year and surviving a winter that was unusually severe, the first stirrings of spring invigorate us andgive us renewed hope.Accounts of people overcoming adversity become the stuff of literature. The site of literature is the humanworld and life itself. Literature is a colorful narrative of human experiences and a catalyst that revitalizes our lives.Our latest issue of _list has been prepared with this in mind.The Featured Writer Section focuses on Hwang Sok-yong, a writer renowned both in Korea and abroad.Hwang’s writing focuses on the lower classes who were forced to leave their homes during Korea’s modernization,and the weary-hearted who are unable to put down roots in reality. His early works, such as The Road to Sampoand Far from Home, are among the first works of Korean literature to confront issues of the working class head on.Following up on these seminal works, Hwang took on the role of a public figure working to mend North and SouthKorea’s strained relationship as he wrote several masterpieces exploring this theme.The epic Jang Gilsan, generally regarded as one of Hwang’s finest works, was written over the course of adecade, from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. It chronicles the exploits of Jang Gilsan, a fabled Robin Hood figureactive during the Joseon dynasty, and captures an earnest dream of reforming the world through alliance andhorizontal class solidarity. Hwang did not stop at portraying the life of a historical figure from over 400 years agobut presented us with a way to overcome the murky political situation Korea was plunged into at the time.The Special Section covers much ground, approaching modern and contemporary Korean poetry along thelines of “short poems, lingering impressions.” Poetry offers solace from the difficulties of life, and overcoming life’shardships by vocalizing them through poetry is in itself the pursuit of a healthy, artistic spirit. N. Hartmann’sremark that realism is a healthy trend in art alludes to this poetic model.Traditional forms of Korean poetry such as sijo and Zen poetry are not buried in past traditions but retaintheir venerability even today. Established Korean poets with long years of practicing their art have realizedand expressed the profound and mysterious meaning of life in short lines of poetry. This is a sophisticatedliterary accomplishment that demonstrates a state of mental awakening in the thick of quotidian life. The scaleof a nation’s literature holds no special meaning if the literature is not at a stage where it can leave a lingeringimpression through a few lines of poetry.In particular, the recent literary trends of extreme lyricism and “Dicapoem” movements can be said to bealternatives devised to meet the changing times and as breakthroughs from poetic conventions. These trends hintat how our literary perceptions and expressions will get handed down to the coming generations. Younger writerswho wade through cultural currents to produce a wide range of works are to be cherished in this respect. TheYounger Writers section, focusing on Kim Junghyuk and Hwang Jungeun, is a reflection of a literary continuityand expectations for the future, and will leave you with feelings of a warm, generous spring day. 

by Kim JonghoiLiterary Critic and Professor of Korean LiteratureKyung Hee University