Oh Han-ki, along with Jeong Jidon and Lee Sangwoo, is a member of the group ‘Analrealism ’, which is shocking the Korean literary circle in the 2010s. ‘Analrealism’, is a parody of ‘intestinal realism’ from The Savage Detectives by the Chilean writer Robert Bolaño, who wanted to attack the existing literary circle, and to jeer at the conventional order. Such details and processes are well depicted in an interview with Jeong Jidon. “In the summer of 2012, I created the analrealism group with Oh Han-ki. During the call, when I said that I wanted to start analrealism, Oh Han-ki rolled on the floor with laughter, his phone still in his hand. Analrealism is a parody of intestinal realism from The Savage Detectives (Roberto Bolaño).” However, it’s still too early to tell how the members of ‘analrealism’, in other words the ‘analrealists’, have attacked and criticized established Korean literature. They have succeeded in drawing attention from readers and literary critics due to their strange name, but it is hard to say that their works have become the new mainstream or critical methods for Korean literature. They are still writers who are developing in their careers.
1. Life
Oh Han-Ki is a South Korean writer. He was born in 1985 in Anyang, Gyeonggido. He graduated in creative writing from Dongguk University. He began his literary career when his short story “Parasoli jeobhin ohu” (파라솔이 접힌 오후 An Afternoon With a Folded Parasol) won the Hyundae Literary Award in 2012. He has published a short story collection Ui-inbeob (의인법The Way of the Righteous). He has won the 2016 Young Writer’s Award.
During the time when novelist Park Seongwon was a professor of fiction writing at Dongguk University’s creative writing program, Oh Han-ki studied under him and became a writer. During this time, he met his literary partner Jeong Jidon, and formed the group ‘Analrealism’. This humorously named group has many writer and critics, such as writers Lee Sangwoo, Park Solmoe, and critics Geum Jeong-yeon, Kang Dongho, and Hwang Ye-in. Currently, they are editors of Moonji Publishing. Such factors are one of the reasons why it is worth noting them. At least, they possess good conditions under which they can present their works, and draw critical attention to them.
Currently, Oh Han-ki is working in the marketing department of a coffee franchise. He writes fiction by night.
2. Writing
One of the common factors among young Korean writers who were born during the 1980s, including Oh Han-Ki, is that they had grown up reading various world literature published during the 1990s. The classics of world literature were introduced into Korea in phases. The first were classics that were introduced through Japanese translators during the colonial times before 1945. This tendency continued into the 1970s. Many collections of world literature published in Korea were mostly a lineup starting from Homer’s epics, to works studied closely by fiction theorists such as Cervantes, Goethe, Balzac, Flaubert, Stendhal, Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and James Joyce. However, the publishing boom of world literature collections of the 1990s showed works of writers who were writing new fiction in South America, Eastern Europe, Britain, and the United States. Such works became intellectual nourishment that matured writers who had spent their youth during the 2000s.
Along with the name of “the gathering of analrealism’, Oh Han-Ki intentionally reveals the title of the short story that he had actually published, called “Yeol-ne sal” (열네 살 Fourteen). In “Ui-inbeob” (의인법 Impersonation), which is a story that artificially closes the distance between the narrator ‘I’, and the writer ‘Oh Han-Ki’, he summarizes the process of the development of ‘I’ as well as how he became a writer in the following. “March 1994, writer Charles Bukowski died. I was 10 at the time, and all the fiction I knew were The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and Sherlock Homes. I had no idea that I would be writing fiction later. I’m not sure why I came to want to be a writer when I was a university student, and I don’t really know why I mentioned Charles Bukowski’s death in the preface. Just like how I was born in the world and have lived until now.” What such statements reveal is that Korea’s new writers, including Oh Han-Ki matured with intellectual nourishment coming from international literature. That is why they are able to criticize Korean literature under the name of ‘analrealism’.
Reference
해석 불가 규정 불가, 80년대생 젊은 작가들 첫 소설집, 한국일보기사 2015
“Impossible to Interpret or Regulate, The First Collections of Young Writers Born in the 80s”, Hankook Ilbo, 2015.
http://www.hankookilbo.com/v/4aef53a77b03401fae790e213fd2fbea
[이동진의 빨간책방] 김중혁의 숏컷19회, 20회 -오한기 소설가 2016년 8월
Lee Dongjin’s Red Library: Kim Jung-hyuk’s Shortcut Episode 19 – Writer Oh Han-Ki 1, August 2016.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEQB34AyI5c
Lee Dongjin’s Red Library: Kim Jung-hyuk’s Shortcut Episode 20 – Writer Oh Han-Ki 2, August 2016.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy_1YujZ0_o
「사랑」(『문학들) 2015년 겨울호), 오한기, 2016년 1월 이달의 소설, 문학과 지성 웹
“Sarang”, Literatures, Winter Issue, 2015 – Oh Han-Ki, This Month’s Fiction, January 2016, Moonji.
http://moonji.com/monthlynovel/10432/
｢나는 후장사실주의자다!｣, 『Cine21』, 2015. 12. 15.
“I am an analrealist!”, Cine21, December 15, 2015.
(http://m.cine21.com/news/view/?mag_id=82409)
