Kim Yeong-nang (January 16, 1903 – September 29, 1950) was a Korean writer from Gangjin county, South Jeolla province, in present-day South Korea, where he spent most of his life. He participated in the Korean independence movement and as a teenager was jailed for six months in Daegu. Though he was a noted performer of traditional Korean music, he also loved classical Western music and was one of the few of his time who could read and appreciate English language poetry, Keats and Yeats being among his favorites.
Contents
When the Japanese oppression was at its height, he alone in Gangjin refused to change his name or offer worship at the Shinto shrine. Many of his earlier poems clearly express opposition to Japanese rule, and after Korea's liberation in 1945 he voiced his disquiet at the political polarisation that was tearing the country apart. When the growing unrest came to threaten the life of his family, he moved to Seoul, where he died as the result of a shrapnel wound to the stomach during the Korean War.
Writing
Under the penname Yeongrang, Kim Yeong-nang was especially active in literature during the 1930s and 1940s. Most of his poems experiment with modernism at the same time as exploring native Korean rhythms and he was well known for writing in the unique Jeolla dialect. Partly this was because Japanese prohibitions led patriotic Koreans to emphasise traditional aesthetics. [1]
His translator, Brother Anthony of Taizé, has commented on the poet's reputation that it is currently growing in Korea. At first he tended to be overlooked in political times because he was only briefly in prison (in 1919), and later because he died before the post-Liberation literary influences and cliques formed. For a long time he was known only as the writer of a single poem, the much anthologized ("Until Peonies Bloom"). [2] The Government's posthumous presentation in 2008 of its highest award for achievement in the field of culture, the Gold Crown Order of Cultural Merit, set the seal on his recognition. The recent translation of his complete poems is now bringing him to the attention of those outside his country.
Related Research Articles
Jeong Yak-yong was a Korean agronomist, philosopher, and poet. He is also known by his art name Dasan. He was one of the greatest thinkers in the later Joseon period, wrote highly influential books about philosophy, science and theories of government, held significant administrative positions, and was noted as a poet. He was a close confidant of King Jeongjo and his philosophical position is often identified with the Silhak school, and his concerns are better seen as explorations of Neo-Confucian themes.
Korean literature is the body of literature produced by Koreans, mostly in the Korean language and sometimes in Classical Chinese. For much of Korea's 1,500 years of literary history, it was written in Hanja. It is commonly divided into classical and modern periods, although this distinction is sometimes unclear. Korea is home to the world's first metal and copper type, the world's earliest known printed document and the world's first featural script.
Ko Un is a South Korean poet whose works have been translated and published in more than fifteen countries. He had been imprisoned many times due to his role in the campaign for Korean democracy and was later mentioned in Korea as one of the front runners for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Kim Suyeong was a Korean poet.
Seo Jeong-ju was a Korean poet and academic who wrote under the art name Midang. He is widely considered one of the best poets in twentieth-century Korean literature and was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in literature.
An, also romanized Ahn, is a Korean family name. A total of 109 Korean clans are named 'An', but with different origins. In 2000, there were 637,786 people bearing this surname in South Korea, making it the 20th most common family name in the country, with roughly 2% of the country's population. North Korea does not release figures for surnames, but the percentage is expected to be more than in South Korea.
Baek Seok was a Korean poet.
Gary Gregory Gach is an American author, translator, editor, and teacher living in San Francisco. His work has been translated into several languages, and has appeared in several anthologies and numerous periodicals. He has hosted Zen Mindfulness Fellowship weekly for 12 years, and he swims in the San Francisco Bay. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, BuddhaDharma, Coyote’s Journal, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Hambone, In These Times, Lilipoh, Mānoa, The Nation, The New Yorker, Words without Borders, Yoga Journal, and Zyzzyva.
Jeong Hoseung, also Jeong Ho-seung, is a popular South Korean poet.
Kim Young-moo was a South Korean poet, literary critic and translator born in Paju near Seoul.
Kim Dongni, also sometimes Gim Dongli, was a Korean writer.
Kim Nae-seong was a Korean writer. Born in Pyongyang in what is today North Korea, he graduated from the German literature course at Waseda University in Tokyo. He later moved to Seoul in what is today South Korea and made his debut in 1939 with The Demon Man, published in The Chosun Ilbo. He later worked on detective novels such as The White Mask and The White Tower. An unparalleled mystery fiction writer in colonial Korea, he was praised for his meticulously designed narratives and foreshadowing. As a writer of popular novels, he thought deeply on the mass appeal of literature and was active as a radio script writer after Korea's liberation from the Japanese rule. Ttolttoriui moheom, penned and designed by Kim, was the first Korean children's drama, which also signaled the beginning of radio drama series. Beginning in 1949, his masterpiece Story of the Youth was published in serial form in the Hankook Ilbo. Many of his works were turned into TV shows and films. While working on The Star of Lost Paradise, which was serialized in the Kyunghyang Shinmun, he died of apoplexy in 1957.
Cho-ui Seonsa (1786–1866) is often called "The Saint of Korean Tea" or the "Father of Korean Tea". He was a Korean Buddhist Seon (Zen) Master who in the first half of the 19th century introduced the Way of Tea and the practices of Buddhism to many aristocratic scholars who were dissatisfied with the rigid neo-Confucianism of the Joseon era. He was himself noted as a calligrapher and artist, as well as a poet, and he formed deep friendships with other famous figures of his time, especially Jeong Yak-yong and Kim Jeong-hui.
Park Sang-ryoong is a South Korean novelist and short story writer. His most famous work is A Study of Death (1975), a novel which describes forty days leading to the death of an unnamed monk. He refers to his work as "Japsseul" (잡설) or a talk on everything because his writings all form a large metaphysical musing on the nature of humanity, transcendence, and death. He has a reputation for being a formidable and challenging writer not only because of his exhaustive range of symbolism and allusion, but also because of his complex, experimental style. The work was adapted to film and went to the 1996 Cannes Film Festival where it was shortlisted for Critics Choice. As of 2012, he has published five novels, three short story collections, and one essay collection and is considered one of the most notable Korean authors of his generation.
Kim Kwang-kyu is a South Korean poet and translator.
Brother Anthony is a translator, scholar, and member of the Taizé Community. He was born Anthony Graham Teague in the United Kingdom but has since become a naturalized citizen of South Korea under the Korean name An Sonjae (Korean: 안선재).
Kim Kyungrin was a South Korean poet. In a changing world, he pursued poetry that embodied modern gazes and expressions. Along with Park In-hwan and Lee Bong-rae, Kim led the modern poetry movement in South Korea in the 1950s. When postmodernism became a global trend in the 1980s, he actively accepted and incorporated concrete poetry, projective verse, and minimalism in his poetry and poetics.
Kim Ok was a Korean poet. He is one of the representative poets who led the early modernism movement in the Korean poetry scene, translating Western poetry and poetics and writing his own poetry. He published the first collection of translated poetry Onoeui mudo (1921) and the first modern poetry collection Haepariui norae (1923). He taught Kim Sowol as his student, and the two of them composed folk-poetry.
Choe Cheok jeon is a classic Korean novel by Jo Wi-han. It is set in the late 16th and early 17th century in Joseon, Japan, China, and Vietnam, and depicts a family's diaspora and reunion during the turmoil of wars that swept East Asia. The protagonists Choe Cheok and Ok-yeong overcome the atrocities of war and reunite. The narrative is primarily written in Chinese and considered biographical.
Yoo Yeong was a South Korean literary scholar, translator, and poet. He was a professor at the Department of English Language and Literature of Yonsei University (연세대학교) in Seoul, South Korea from 1956 to 1983. He taught English Poetry at school, his specialty being in John Milton and Rabindranath Tagore. He was given the Dongbaeg Medal by the South Korean government for his contribution to education when he retired from his professorate in 1983. He translated many literary works such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Milton’s Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained into Korean. He was the first Korean to translate the complete collection of Tagore’s poetry. He is also known for his acquaintance with one of the most well-known poets in Korea, Yun Dong-ju. After the poet’s death, Yoo’s memorial poem for his friend was included in the first edition of Yun’s posthumously published collection of poems. Being a poet himself, Yoo published his own poems under the titles Day and Night (日月) (1970), The Preface of Air and Earth (天地序) (1975), The Mind is a Wing (1992) and so on. A translation award is being given under his name since 2007.
References
- Most biographical and stylistic information is drawn from Until Peonies Bloom: The Complete Poems of Kim Yeong-nang (details below)
- ↑ Ramesh Sharma, “New trends in modern literature” in East Asian Literatures: Japanese, Chinese and Korean, Delhi 2006, p.102
- ↑ Korean Studies
External links
- Biographical information and list of major works Archived 2014-11-13 at the Wayback Machine
- Brother Anthony of Taizé, Until Peonies Bloom: The Complete Poems of Kim Yeong-nang, ISBN 978-1-937385-03-3, University Of Hawai'i 2010.
| Kim Yeong-nang |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
