Yang Gwija (born 1955) () is a South Korean writer.
Life
Yang Gwija was born July 1, 1955, in
Jeonju
Jeonju (, , ) is the capital and List of cities in South Korea, largest city of North Jeolla Province, South Korea. It is both urban and rural due to the closeness of Wanju County which almost entirely surrounds Jeonju (Wanju County has many resi ...
,
Jeollabuk-do and graduated from Wonkwang University in 1978 with a degree in
Korean Literature. She later moved to
Seoul
Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital city, capital and largest city of South Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's List of cities b ...
after her marriage in 1980. Yang made her literary debut with the short stories ''Starting a New Morning'' and ''The Door Already Closed''. In 1986 she achieved popular success with the release of her collection of linked short stories () Neighbors in Wonmi-dong, for which she is still most famous. This collection was a painstaking depiction of the lives of people on the periphery of industrial culture. In 1988 Yang won the Fifth Yoo Juhyoen Literature award and followed up by winning the even more prestigious Lee Sang Literature Award in 1992.
As the 1990s turned into a consumer culture in Korea, and a mood of disillusionment replaced the political (and to some extent economic) hope that had characterized the nation. Yang's work followed along. In 1992 she wrote ''The Hidden Flower'' which told the story, in some ways autobiographical, of an author searching for new hope after her old ideals have been destroyed. In ''The Road to Cheonma Tombs'', Yang's protagonist successfully struggles to come to terms with his past trauma and current powerlessness. ''The Hidden Flower'' and ''The Road to Cheonma Tombs'' are collected with three other stories, ''Mountain Flower'', ''Opportunist'', and ''Sadness Gives Strength'', in a collection named for the latter story.
Since the mid-1980s she has been known as more than a fiction writer, writing in women's magazines, newspapers, and other general media. In the 1990s she also opened a popular restaurant in
Seoul
Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital city, capital and largest city of South Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's List of cities b ...
.
Work
Yang's best-known early work was the 1987 ''Wonmi-dong saramdeul'' (Neighbors in Wonmi-dong), which depicted the isolation and alienated status of small towns as a result of
modernization. This work was published in English as A Distant and Beautiful Place, which reflects the literal meaning of the Korean title. During the 1990s Yang's fiction became more and more personal featuring a run of popular works that included Contradictions ('Mosun'), which was the best-selling Korean novel of 1998.
[Contradictions, YANG Gui-ja
Translated by Stephen EPSTEIN and KIM Mi-Young ]
Works in English
*
A Distant and Beautiful Place'
''Contradictions''*
Rust'
* ''Nuri, Nuri, What Are You Doing?'' (translated by Moon Seung-Won and Todd Vercoe)
Works in Korean (Partial)
* ''The Deaf Bird'' (1980)
* ''Along the River of Babylon'' (1985)
* ''Neighbors in Wonmi-dong'' (1987)
* ''Hope'' (1991)
* ''I Wish for What Is Forbidden to Me'' (1992)
* ''Sorrow Can Be Power'' (1993)
* ''Love for a Thousand Years'' (1995)
* ''Contradictions'' (1998)
Awards
* Fifth Yoo Juhyeon Literature Award (1988)
* Sixteenth
Yi Sang Literature Award (1992)
*
Contemporary Literature (Hyundae Munhak) Award (1996)
References
External links
Review of RustReview of ContradictionsReview of A Distant and Beautiful Place
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yang, GwiJa
1955 births
People from Jeonju
South Korean novelists
Living people
Yi Sang Literary Award winners