''Song of Ariran'' (New York: John Day 1941) is a book of reportage by an American journalist,
Helen Foster Snow
Helen Foster Snow (September 21, 1907 – January 11, 1997) was an American journalist who reported from China in the 1930s under the name Nym Wales on the developing Chinese Civil War, the Korean independence movement and the Second Sino-Japan ...
under the name
Nym Wales
Helen Foster Snow (September 21, 1907 – January 11, 1997) was an American journalist who reported from China in the 1930s under the name Nym Wales on the developing Chinese Civil War, the Korean independence movement and the Second Sino-Japan ...
. Snow traveled to
Yan'an
Yan'an (; ), alternatively spelled as Yenan is a prefecture-level city in the Shaanbei region of Shaanxi province, China, bordering Shanxi to the east and Gansu to the west. It administers several counties, including Zhidan (formerly Bao'an) ...
, the wartime capital of the
Chinese Communist Party
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Civil ...
, which welcomed and supported many Koreans in the fight for independence from Japan. The colorful and personal information on the history of the
Korean independence movement
The Korean independence movement was a military and diplomatic campaign to achieve the independence of Korea from Empire of Japan, Japan. After the Japanese Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910, annexation of Korea in 1910, Korea's domestic resistance pe ...
and the
Chinese Communist
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Civil ...
movement in the 1930s is based on extensive interviews with a Korean communist
Jang Jirak
Kim San (; April 14, 1905 – October 19, 1938) was a socialist revolutionary and Korean independence fighter. His real name was known as Jang Jihak () according to Nym Wales, or Jang Jirak () according to Japanese authorities' documents. Born in ...
() who is called Kim San () in the book.
Influences
The Korean translation of this book was published in South Korea in the 1984. During the period,
pro-democracy social activism in the country had become radicalized with the military coup of 1979 and the
massacre in Gwangju, a southwestern city of Korea, in 1980. College students and social activists including labor-movement activists were deeply influenced and radicalized by reading some books and pamphlets, and the Korean translation of this book was one key text among such ones in South Korea of the 1980s. The Korean translation was published in new paperback editions in 1993 and 2000 and in a new hardcover edition in 2005 by the same Korean publisher, and the book is still being read by Korean readers and inspires them as of the 2010s.
[님 웨일즈, 김산, 아리랑: 조선인 혁명가 김산의 불꽃 같은 삶, (동녘, 2005). 송영인 옮김.]
References
1941 non-fiction books
{{Korea-hist-book-stub
Works about the Korean independence movement