The golden age of poetry
During the Japanese colonial period, poetry experienced a golden age thanks, among others, to authors such as Yi Sang, Yun Dong-ju and Pak In-hwan or Ko Un. Yi Sang (1910-1937) is considered a very avant-garde poet and was often called "the Korean Rimbaud". He died very young, at the age of 26, and brought an innovative touch to literature through his language and the literary themes he used. In 1934, he joined the Circle of Nine (with among others Kim Girim, Lee Taejun, Park Taewon...) and published several of his works in the newspaper bearing the same name as their group. In 1936, he was imprisoned in Japan for a crime of opinion. He died shortly after his release from tuberculosis. It should be understood that it was forbidden under the Japanese occupation to promote Korean culture. For this reason, he was rehabilitated and republished only after Independence. A literary prize created in 1977 bears his name. It is also possible to visit his house in the Seochon district. It is a place of cultural exhibitions. Influenced by Dadaism and Surrealism, he experimented with new forms of language and painted both his torments and his inner self without cutting himself off from the outside world. Here are some of his works to discover in French: L'inscription de la terreur ; Écrits de Sang; Perspective à vol de corneille and Les Ailes
.Yun Dong-ju (1917-1945) is a South Korean poet who also died very young in prison where he was incarcerated after being accused of committing anti-Japanese acts. He studied literature at what is now Yonsei University, where he tried in vain to get his first poems published in the collection Heaven, Wind, Stars and Poetry. The collection was finally published in 1948, making its author one of the symbols of resistance against Japanese imperialism. His work is imbued with great sensitivity. It evokes the feeling of abandonment, of leaving one's native land. In his other collection, Life and Death
, he brings light and darkness, life and death into conflict... Despair, anxiety, loneliness are recurring themes that colour his poetry. It is possible to discover in Seoul a museum dedicated to him.Pak In-hwan (1926-1956), who started out as a bookseller in Seoul, began publishing his poems in a newspaper in 1946. It is thanks to the collective collection A New City and a Citizen's Choir
, published in 1949, that he achieved a certain success. His poetry is marked by the modernization and evolution of South Korea and their consequences on people: despair, loss of reference points and identity. As for Ko Un (born 1933), a Buddhist monk between 1952 and 1962, he was very active in the pro-democratic movement against the military dictatorship and followed a rich literary path: he was president of the Free Writers' Association of Korea and president of the People's Writers' Association and received numerous awards. He published his first poems in 1958. The main themes were despair, the absurdity of existence, and later the struggle for equity and justice. Here are some of his works translated into French: Qu' est-ce ; Sous un poirier sauvage; Poèmes d'Himalaya ; Fleurs de l'instant.Contemporary authors
Let's start with Jae-Hoon Choi, born in 1973 in Seoul. He has written, among others, Le Château du baron de Quirval, a collection of short stories published in 2010. To write these seven short stories, the author was inspired by European literary figures such as the Marquis de Sade or Sherlock Holmes, and transposed them to contemporary Korea. He also published in 2012 the novel Seven Cat's Eyes
, which received a literary award.Let us also mention Yun Dae-Nyeong (born in 1962) who, after a rather poor childhood, entered university and graduated in French literature and language. Passionate about writing, he received his first literary awards when he was in high school. Success came as early as 1990 thanks to the New Writer's Award. This was followed by numerous awards such as the Prix du Jeune artiste d'aujourd'hui (1994); the Yi Sang Prize (1996); the Contemporary Literature Prize (Hyundae Munhak, 1998) and the Yi Hyo-seok Literary Prize (2003)! To discover, the novels I went to see an old film, Between earth and sky or Why did the tiger go to the sea?
It's impossible to miss Kim Yeong-ha (born in 1968), an author considered one of the leaders of South Korea's new literature. After his university studies and military service, he decided to embark on a literary career. In 1995, he published his first story, A Meditation Through the Looking Glass, and the following year, Death by Half a Word, for which he received the New Writer's Prize. Since then, he has written numerous books, collections of short stories and also a historical novel Fleur noire. Let's now talk about a woman's pen: Mia Yun. Born in 1956 in Seoul, Mia Yun is an author, translator and journalist. She grew up in South Korea where she had access to a large number of foreign books. It is thanks to all these readings that she knew she wanted to become a writer too. She wrote her first poems at the age of 11. She left South Korea to attend university at City College in New York where she still lives. In 1998, she published her first novel, translated into French only in 2007, under the title Les Âmes des enfants endormis. In this story, Mia Yun paints the portrait of a woman who, in the 1960s, has to support her three children as best she can. A few years later, in 2004, she published Translations of Beauty
.Born in 1948, Yi Mun-yeol is one of the most widely translated Korean authors into French. He is the author of political columns as well as short stories. He has written, among others, Le Fils de l'homme, L'Ombre et l'obscurité, La Promenade de l'escargot. Through his writing, he likes to take an interest in social injustices, what happens within communities, loss of identity and also existential questions. It is with his short story Pour l'empereur
that he won all his letters of nobility. In this story, he evokes the competition for power throughout Korea from the 19th century to the Korean War. Yi Mun-yeol has received many awards over the decades. Hwang Sok-yong was born in 1943 under Japanese occupation. During the Vietnam War, he was involved in erasing evidence of civilian massacres. He recounts this traumatic experience in his award-winning short story The Pagoda (1970), which opens the doors of literary life for him. It was his novel Jang Gil-san (published in 1974) that became a best-seller and brought him great fame. We should also mention the novel The Guest (2001) about the division of Korea, and more recently All Things in Our Life (2011) about the lives of the sorters in the Seoul garbage dump, and Sunset (2017).The Manhwa
Manhwa is the equivalent of manga in Korea. Born under Japanese occupation about a century ago, this Korean comic strip was for a long time subject to censorship and prohibitions by the colonization and then by the authoritarian regime, and it was not until the 1980s that it was finally recognized at its true value in South Korea and was able to express itself freely. Magazines such as IQ Jump or Young Champ were created on the model of Japanese magazines and authors gave free rein to their creative desires, thus multiplying the styles of expression. Today, Korean comics are published in their millions, and are almost as popular as manga in Japan. In France, Korea was the guest of honour at the 30th Angoulême International Comics Festival in 2003, and the Manhwa craze has been growing ever since. Among others, the publisher Casterman now translates many Manhwa, notably in its "Hanguk" collection devoted exclusively to Korean works.
Children's literature
For the youngest among us, here are also some authors and books to discover. The authors of children's literature propose a mix between contemporary and abstract art and folk and traditional art. Chan-Ok and Picquier Jeunesse are two publishers specializing in Asian literature. South Korean albums can also be found at Didier Jeunesse and MeMo éditions.
It was in the years 1900-1920 that children's literature began to blossom under the influence of certain intellectuals who wanted to see future generations transform and save the nation. The first magazine for young people, Sonyeon, was created in 1908 by the writer Nam-sun Choi (1890-1957): educational and also literary texts are offered. Unfortunately, Japan's invasion of Korea caused it to disappear two years later, as it was forbidden to write patriotic texts! School textbooks are also banned. Quite simply, the Japanese by a decree of 1911 banned the teaching of Korean and Korean history. It was not until 1922 that the teaching of Korean was reinstated. Jeong-hwan Bang (1899-1931) published a collection of stories entitled Gift of Love , which included such tales as Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. It is the first literary work for children published in Korea. From 1923 he also participated in the publication of a literary and cultural magazine for children called Eorini
. Nursery rhymes and poems were also published during all these years until 1938, when Korean was banned again. Between 1945 and 1950, there was a new boom in poetry and children's magazines. The war between the two Koreas again slowed down production. It was not until the 1960s and 1970s that children's publishing flourished. It was also the birth of book collections with translations of classical works and Korean works. For example, the author So-chun Kang (1915-1962) wrote children's books that were considered moralistic, imaginary and naive. Alongside him, author Won-soo Lee (1911-1981) wrote more realistic and critical works in which war and poverty have their rightful place. Korean albums were born in the 1980s, and from the 1990s onwards, there was a real boom in children's literature. The publishing industry is particularly interested in Korean culture. Some popular writings were rewritten and illustrated, and little-known authors were rediscovered.
