Oh Kyu Won (; December 29, 1941 – February 2, 2007) was a South Korean writer."Oh Kyu Won" biographical PDF available at LTI Korea Library or online at:

Biography

Oh Kyu Won's original name was Oh Gyuok. Born on December 29, 1941 in

Miryang Miryang (perhaps pronounced as Milbeol using Idu script), formerly also spelled as 推火郡 (probably pronounced as Milbeol or Miribeol using Idu script), Milbeol (密伐) and Milseong (密城), is a city in Gyeongsangnam-do Province, South Ko ...

Keishōnan-dō was one of the administrative divisions of Korea under Japanese rule, with its capital at Fuzan (present-day Busan). The province consisted of modern-day South Gyeongsang, South Korea. Population Number of people by nationality according ...

Korea, Empire of Japan Between 1910 and 1945, Korea was ruled as a part of the Empire of Japan. Joseon Korea had come into the Japanese sphere of influence with the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1876; a complex coalition of the Meiji government, military, and business offici ...

. He attended

Busan Busan (), officially known as is South Korea's most populous city after Seoul, with a population of over 3.4 million inhabitants. Formerly romanized as Pusan, it is the economic, cultural and educational center of southeastern South Korea, w ...

Teachers' School before graduating from the Law Department of Dong-a University. He was the president of the Munjangsa publishing company, and is presently a professor in the Department of Creative Writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts."Oh Kyu Won " LTI Korea Datasheet available at LTI Korea Library or online at:

Work

Oh Kyu Won's early poems use witty, sparkling, and ironic language in an effort to destroy established forms and provide a critique of the baseness and emptiness of capitalist consumer culture. Through the process of the endless deconstruction and regeneration of his poetic material, he refashioned everyday words and recognizable images in order to produce the “unconsciousness of modernity,” and in doing so capture certain realities of everyday life particular features of our mental landscape that are generally passed by unnoticed. His poems thus derive strength from the quotidian, but only by recreating and reconceptualizing it. Irony is another of Oh's techniques adopted to criticize a false and fetishistic ideal world. By thus lifting aspects of the mundane and banal up to his scrutinizing eye, out of the fabric of our “modern unconsciousness,” he captures the contradictory and complex features of the modern petit bourgeois and helps us to rediscover our own lives. Oh's poems also demonstrate the influence of the fable and his fascination with the most common of words, which often serve him as elements of parody and ironic critique. Oh Kyu Won's work has attempted to demolish old conceptual frames and stale assumptions and to look at the world in its naked reality. In order to do this, Oh frequently uses the technique of reversal: :The coffin of the man asphyxiated by coal briquet gas :Passes through the gate of the apartment dragging two men along :A lilac tree steps out of the crowd of onlookers and leaves reality in the company of the coffin. Through such reversals of death and life, mobile and immobile, Oh tries to provide a fresh point of view, one that might even be characterized as

Brechtian Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a pl ...

. Oh has received such prizes as the Contemporary Literature Prize and the Yeonam Literature Prize as well as the Korea culture and arts prize for literature and I-San Literary Award.

Works in Korean (partial)

Collections and Anthologies * A Definite Event (; 1971) * A Pilgrimage (; 1973) * The Technique of Love (; 1975) * To a Boy Who is not a Prince (; 1978) * A Lyrical Poem Written in this Land (; 1981) * Living Making Hope (; 1985) * Life Under Heaven (; 1989) Poetics & Composition * Reality and Stoicism (1982) * Language and Life (1983) * Methods of Modern Poetic Composition. (1990)

Awards

* Contemporary Literature Prize * Yeonam Literature Prize * Korea culture and Arts Prize for Literature * I-San Literary Award

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Oh, Kyu-won 1941 births South Korean male poets Academic staff of Seoul Institute of the Arts People from South Gyeongsang Province 2007 deaths 20th-century South Korean poets 20th-century male writers Dong-a University alumni