Park Seongwon is a significant writer of the ‘Moonji’ school, which is one of the two major schools of writing that represents Korean Literature. Park Seongwon began his literary career by publishing a short story “Yuseo” (유서 The Will) in Literature and Society in 1994. He has mainly written fiction where he carefully builds his plots, and lays out a narrative that evokes the image of well trained actors performing on the stage. Park Seongwon carefully examines the gap between the prejudiced perspectives of the subject looking at the object as well as that of the object, and the actual object. Through this inevitable crack, he explains the society we live in and the lives we lead.
Another special characteristic of Park Seongwon’s fiction is that, as he has expressed in many interviews, he takes inspirations from Western pop music, particularly from 1960s~70s rock music, and uses them as if they are the story’s original soundtrack. In his first work “Haetteuneun jib” (해뜨는 집 The House of the Rising Sun) used The House of the Rising Sun by the The Animals. His 2012 work “Gobaek” (고백 Confession) used Daydream by Wallace Collection, and “Deoreo-un ne-insaeng” (더러운 네 인생 Your Dirty Life) used Anthem by Deep Purple. He uses the songs in such way in his fiction in order to clarify the theme.
1. Life
Park Seongwon is a South Korean writer and professor. He was born in 1969 in Daegu as the youngest child among 2 boys and 2 girls. He graduated from Yeungnam University in public administration, and he later graduated from Dongguk University’s graduate school in creative writing. He began his literary career in 1994 when he published his short story “Yuseo” (유서 The Will) in Literature and Society. He has served as a creative writing professor at Dongguk University, and he is currently a creative writing professor at Keimyung University.
Thanks to his much older brothers and sisters, from elementary school Park Seongwon listened to western pop songs and novels. He has spent his 20s freely, doing whatever he could get his hands on, and going wherever he could go. On a more civil note, he has worked as a essay class teacher, broadcasting scriptwriter, and he has also worked as a temporary laborer at a construction site.
He has done a trip for 7, 8 months during his 20s. One day he was aimlessly looking at the Nakdong River, and he became curious about where the source of the river was. So based on his curiosity on where this great flow of water begins, he collected his small savings from his part time job, took his sleeping bag and his tent, and went on the road. He followed up the river and finally arrived at a small pond in Taebaek, Gangwondo. From Gangwondo he followed the West Coast down, and went around the Southern Coast. When it became dark while he was walking, he would pitch a tent at a suitable place. When he ran out of money he helped out on local farms and saved up to continue. It was a trip for his curiosity.
It was also accidental that he had begun writing, including his literary debut. He became a serious reader of literature when he was in high school. He had expected that he would read literature for the rest of his life, but he never thought of becoming a writer. Whenever class ended, he would hang out at his friend’s studio without a thing to do. When he couldn’t stand the boredom, he wrote whatever he could think of on the computer. His friend once read it, and said that it should be sent to a new writer’s contest or a literary magazine. He allowed his friend to send on his behalf. Since it wasn’t the time of the year for new writer’s contests, it was sent to a literary magazine Literature and Society, and that became his debut work.
2. Writing
Korea’s 1990s was when the will of the people who participated in the pro-democracy movement blossomed. It was also a time when the desire for cultural industries escaped the oppressive ideology of the military regime, and attracted people by being newly contained within a value called freedom. Park Seongwon’s early works acutely examines such illusions offered by a society of capitalistic desires, exposing how they are false. Literary critic Seong Min-yeop, who wrote the commentary for his second collection, Nareul Humchyeora (나를 훔쳐라 Steal Myself), has said that “ if Park Seongwon’s first collection Isang isang isang (이상 이상 이상 Roger Roger Roger) was struggling to figure out how to recognize and realize what is real within a postmodernist context, where the distinction between the fake and the real is blurry, his second collection Nareul Humchyeora (나를 훔쳐라 Steal Myself) is more about how there is already a general reality of established false truth, which the author attempts to deconstruct and overthrow that given reality.”
After 2000, Park Seongwon chose the form of serialization, depicting the world in which people today live their lives in multilateral methods. Park Seongwon’s serial works – “Urineun dallyeoganda isanghan nararo” (우리는 달려간다 이상한 나라로 We Are Running to a Strange Country), “Dosineun mueoteuro irueojineunga” (도시는 무엇으로 이루어지는가 What is a City Made Of?), “Kempingkareul tago ullanbatoreukkaji” (캠핑카를 타고 울란바토르까지 To Ulaanbaatar in a Camping Car) – use peripheral characters from one short story as protagonists of another story, continuing the narrative in such ways, and they focus on the multidimensional truth of the world that is viewed from each method and situation.
Reference
위키피디아
Wikipedia
https://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EB%B0%95%EC%84%B1%EC%9B%90_(%EC%86%8C%EC%84%A4%EA%B0%80)
국제작가축제 작가인터뷰-박성원 2015
Seoul International Writers Festival, Writer Interview – Park Seongwon, 2015.
http://siwf.klti.or.kr/bbs/board.php?bo_table=C01&wr_id=13
성대신문 인터뷰 -우리는 달려간다 2005
Sungkyunkwan University News Interview – Urineun dallyeoganda (우리는 달려간다 We Are Running), 2005.
http://www.skkuw.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=4011
Park, Seongwon, “My Resume (For Myself)”, Writer’s World, Fall Issue, 2011: 45-47.
Dongin Literary Award Finalist Interview 2 ‘Dosineun mueoteuro irueojineunga (도시는 무엇으로 이루어지는가 What is a City Made Of?)’, Park Seongwon, Chosun Ilbo, September 21st 2009.
http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/09/20/2009092000931.html
Writer Interview: Author Park Seongwon, Seoul International Writers’ Festival, December 28th, 2015.
http://siwf.klti.or.kr/bbs/board.php?bo_table=C01&wr_id=13
Seong, Min-yeop, “The Truth of Fakeness, and the Novel of Ventriloquism”, Nareul Humcheora (나를 훔쳐라 Steal Myself), Moonji Publishing, 2000: 269.
