Kim Yong Ik (1920 – 1995) was an early Korean-American writer and academic.
1. Life
Kim was born in Tongyeong, South Gyeongsang Province, and was raised in Korea under Japanese rule. He studied English literature at Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo. At the age of 28, he emigrated to the US to pursue his studies at Florida Southern College and then at the University of Kentucky at Lexington, where he earned his master's in English literature. He later studied creative writing at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Kim began his literary career publishing "The Wedding Shoes" in Harper’s Bazaar in 1956. His novel The Happy Days was honored by the American Library Association as a notable children's book of 1960, and West Germany's best youth book for 1965; Blue in the Seed was on the honor list of the 1967 Austrian State Prize. Kim's story "From Below the Bridge," which originally appeared in Mademoiselle in 1957, and "Village Wine," first published in The Atlantic in 1976, are included in Martha Foley's The Best American Short Stories.
From 1957 to 1964, Kim taught at Ewha Womans University and Korea University. Kim returned to the United States in 1965 to be closer to local publishers. He taught at the University of California at Berkeley from 1972–1973 and then at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1973–1990. Kim traveled to Korea for a semester in early 1995, where he fell ill and suddenly passed away on April 11.
2. Writing
Kim's best-known works, like Blue in the Seed (1964), The Happy Days (1965), Love in Winter (1969), and The Shoes from Yang San Valley (1970) are novellas centering on young protagonists and are often categorized as young adult fiction. The title of Blue in the Seed refers to the distinct color of the protagonist Chun Bok's eyes, which make him stand out in a small Korean town. His family survives because they own a powerful ox that the young boy takes to work other farmer's fields. His mother must negotiate to place her son within the local school, where he is often ridiculed, but where he meets a very kind girl, Jung Lan. Sang Do, the first-person narrator of The Shoes from Yang San Valley, tells his story of affection for Soo, the daughter of the town's shoemaker, and his life as a refugee after an attack during the war. The Happy Days is a sentimental meditation on a bucolic Korean adolescence, and Love in Winter is a charming narrative of adolescent love and longing. [1]
"From Below the Bridge," one of Kim's representative works, places heavy emphasis on the changes—both subtle and overt—brought on by the Korea War. It explores the breakdown of traditional Korean society, as seen with the disrespect shown to the father, the need-driven willingness of the mother to be exploited, and the amoral, war-driven entrepreneurial dealings of the boy. The short story has been cited as an example of cultural translation, as it blends cultural and literary tradition from both Korea and America while also segregating some aspects of both traditions.
Reference
[1] Nelson, Emmanuel S. The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Multiethnic American Literature / 3, I - M. Westport, Conn., Greenwood Press, 2005, p. 1242.
