Author Bio 작가 소개
Yi Kwang-su (1892–1950) was a Korean writer and independence and nationalist activist. His pen names were Chunwon and Goju. Yi is best known for his novel Mujeong (무정 The Heartless), sometimes described as the first Korean novel. 1. LifeYi Kwang-su was born Yi Bogyeong in 1892 in Jeongju. He was orphaned at age 10 and grew up with Donghak believers. In 1904, around the time of the Donghak Peasant Revolution, he moved to Seoul in order to avoid the authorities. In 1905 he went to Japan for his education. In 1909 he published his first story, written in Japanese, "Ai ka" (愛か Maybe Love), in Meiji Gakuin’s Shirogane gakuhō, his school newsletter. Upon returning to Korea in 1913, he taught at Osan School in Jeongju. He later moved back to Tokyo and became one of the leaders of the anti-colonial student movement. In 1919 he moved to Shanghai and served in the Korean Provisional Government and became president of The Independent, a newspaper in Shanghai. Yi returned to Korea in 1921 and founded the Alliance for Self-Improvement, established on principles of enlightenment and self-help. From 1923 to 1934 Yi pursued a career in journalism working for several newspapers, including two that survive today, the Dong-a Ilbo and the Chosun Ilbo. After the war, the Special Committee for the Investigation of Anti-nationalist Activities found Yi guilty of collaboration. In 1950 Yi was captured by the North Korean army and died in Manpo on October 25, most likely of tuberculosis.2. WritingYi was a fiction writer and essayist. His essays originally focused on the need for national consciousness. His fiction was among the first modern fiction in Korea and he is most famous for his novel The Heartless. The Heartless was a description of the crossroads at which Korea found itself, stranded between tradition and modernity and undergoing conflict between social realities and traditional ideals. His career can be split into thirds. The first period (that of The Heartless), from 1910-19 featured a strong attack on Korea's traditional society and the belief that Korea should adopt a more modern, "Western" worldview. From the early 1920s to the 1930s, Yi transformed into a dedicated nationalist and published a controversial essay, "Minjok gaejoron" (민족 개조론 On the Remaking of National Consciousness), which advocated a moral overhaul of Korea and blamed Koreans for being defeatist. The third period, from the 1930s on, coincided with Yi's conversion to Buddhism, and his work consequently became noticeably Buddhist in tone. This was also the period in which, as noted above, Yi became a Japanese collaborator. Yi's professional judgment could be as fickle as his politics. In one famous case he befriended then abandoned the fellow writer Kim Myeong-sun, allegedly because his own beliefs about modernism had shifted. Yi has also been considered one of the pioneers of queer literature in Korea, publishing the short story "Ai ka" (愛か Maybe Love) in 1909, at the age of seventeen.
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