Kim Won-il (born 1942) is a South Korean writer.

Life

Kim Won-il was born on March 15, 1942 in Gimhae, Gyeongsangnam-do. Kim was only a child when his father, a communist activist, defected to the North during the

Korean War , date = {{Ubl, 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953 (''de facto'')({{Age in years, months, weeks and days, month1=6, day1=25, year1=1950, month2=7, day2=27, year2=1953), 25 June 1950 – present (''de jure'')({{Age in years, months, weeks a ...

. The father left his wife and four children behind, to a legacy of great poverty and a cloud of ideological suspicion. Kim attended Daegu Agriculture High School, and holds bachelor's degrees from Sorabol College of Arts and

Yeungnam University Yeungnam University is a private research university located in Gyeongsan, North Gyeongsang, South Korea. The university's predecessors, Taegu College and Chunggu College, were founded in Daegu in 1947 and 1950 respectively. In 1967, the two ...

and a master's degree in Korean Literature from

Dankook University Dankook University (commonly referred to as Dankook), abbreviated as DU or DKU, is a prestigious private research university in Yongin and Cheonan, South Korea. The university was established in 1947. It was the first university established after ...

. He made his literary debut in 1966 when his short story “Algeria, 1961” was chosen as the winner of a contest sponsored by Daegu Daily News. The following year, his story “A Festival of Darkness” (Eodumui chukje) was selected for publication in Contemporary Literature (Hyeondae munhak). As of 2013, Kim works in the Creative Writing Department at

Sunchon National University Sunchon National University (Acronym: SNU; Korean, , ''Suncheon Daehakgyo'', colloquially ''Suncheondae'') is a national research university founded in 1935, located in Suncheon, Jeollanam-do, South Korea. SNU composes six colleges and five p ...

, where he works with Korean poet

Kwak Jae-gu Kwak Jae-gu is a South Korean modern poet. Life Kwak Jaegu was born in Gwangju, Jeollanam-do in 1954. He graduated from Chonnam National University. After his poem (At Sapyeong Station) won a literary contest sponsored by the JoongAng Ilbo i ...

Work

With this background, Kim began writing in the early 1970s. His first works were short stories studded with childhood trauma and bitter memories, with families destroyed by unspecified conflicts. In other words, retellings of his own experiences, He published his first collection of stories, Soul of Darkness, in 1973 and it garnered the Hyundai Munhak Literary Prize in 1974. His first full-length novel, Twilight, was published in 1978. Kim was a representative of "peoples literature," the literature in which authors argued, or portrayed a world in which, all the tragedies of Korea were the result of the separation of the nation by foreign powers directly after liberation. This literature argued that without the division there would not have been ideological feuding between the North and South, no sundered families, and no need for the dictatorships that ensued in the South. Consequently, in the 1980s, Korean authors began to focus on the issue of division and its results. This was called the "literature of division" and Kim Won-il was one of its strongest writers. Kim believed that the war and division have left scars that economic prosperity cannot erase. In his novel Winter Valley (apparently Korean only), Kim retells the story of the massacre of the entire village of Koch’ang, who were killed on the suspicion that the village had worked with communist guerrillas during the

. Kim captures the psychological landscape of the scared-witless villagers caught between the

Scylla and Charybdis In Greek mythology, Scylla), is obsolete. ( ; grc-gre, Σκύλλα, Skúlla, ) is a legendary monster who lives on one side of a narrow channel of water, opposite her counterpart Charybdis. The two sides of the strait are within an arrow's ran ...

of leftwing and rightwing ideologies and the communist guerrillas hiding at the edges of Koch’ang. The overall message contained in Kim Won-il's work, which ended in the 1993 nine-volume novel The Evergreen Pine is that historically determined suffering can be overcome, as can human frailty. Kim's autobiographical novel A House with a Deep Garden was turned into a popular TV series in 1990. In volume 7, no 1 of Acta Koreana, Kim's ''Prison of the Heart'' was translated by Michael Finch and is als
available online in a translation by Brother Anthony of Taize

Works in Translation

Evening Glow
br /
The Wind and the River
br /
Soul of Darkness
br /> Prisons of the Heart
House with a Sunken Courtyard
The Scorpion

(French)
Das Haus am tiefen Hof (German)
rлyбoким двором: Pоман (Russian)
La casona de los patios (Spanish)
La cárcel del corazón y otros relatos (Spanish)

Works in Korean (Partial)

Spirit of Darkness (Eodum ui chukje, 1973)
Today’s Wind (Oneul buneun baram, 1976)
Evening Glow (Noeul, 1978)
Meditations on a Snipe (1979)
Chains of Darkness (Eodumui saseul, 1979)
A Festival of Fire (Buleui jejeon, 1983)
Wind and River (Baram gwa gang, 1985)
Winter Valley (1987)
House with a Deep Garden (1989)
The Long Road From Here to There (Geugose ireuneun meon gil, 1992)
The Evergreen (Neul pureun sonamu, 1993)
The Scorpion (Jeongal 2007)

Awards

Contemporary Literature (Hyundae Munhak) Award The company Contemporary Literature (“Hyundae Munhak” in Korean), founded in South Korea in 1954, is one of the leading publishing companies in the literary field and has been publishing the nation's most prestigious monthly literary magazine ' ...

(1974) * The Republic of Korea President’s Award in Literature (1978) * The Korean Creative Writers’ Prize (1979) * The

Dong-in Literature Prize The Dong-in Literary Award ( ko, 동인문학상) is a South Korean literary award named after novelist Kim Dong-in, established in order to praise the literary achievement of The Republic of Korea. In commemoration of the Korean modern literature ...

(1983) * The

Yi Sang Literature Prize The Yi Sang Literary Award (이상문학상) is a South Korean literary award. It is one of South Korea's most prestigious literary awards, named after Yi Sang, an innovative writer in modern Korean literature. The Yi Sang Literary Award was estab ...

(1990) * The

Han Musuk Literature Prize Han may refer to: Ethnic groups * Han Chinese, or Han People (): the name for the largest ethnic group in China, which also constitutes the world's largest ethnic group. ** Han Taiwanese (): the name for the ethnic group of the Taiwanese p ...

(1998).Korea. December 2009 VOL. 16 NO. 12 P. 44. search.Korea.net:8080/kpr/KOREA_200912.pdf

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kim, Won-il 1942 births South Korean novelists Living people Yi Sang Literary Award People from Gimhae Dankook University alumni Yeungnam University alumni