Chang Yong-hak (1921—1999) is a South Korean writer. Along with Son Chang-sop, he is one of the most prominent writers of postwar Korean literature during the 1950s. Through philosophical reasoning and abstract descriptions, he primarily focused on dealing with the existential conditions of the modern human.1)
1. Life
Chang Yong-hak was born in 1921 in North Hamgyeong Province (present-day North Korea). He graduated from Gyeongseong Secondary School and studied at the Department of Business and Economics at Waseda University in Japan. He was drafted into the Japanese army and served as a student soldier until liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945, when he finally returned to Korea.
After liberation, he worked as a teacher at Cheongjin Girls’ Middle School, until he permanently defected to South Korea in 1947 because he “hated communism, and wanted to write plays.” He worked as a teacher at Hanyang Technical High School and Muhak Girls’ High School. His short story “Jidongseol” (지동설Heliocentrism) was recommended for publication in the literary journal Munye in 1950, and his short story “Miryeon somyo” (미련소묘 Drawing of Lingering Attachment ) was recommended for publication in the same journal in 1952, and he thus made his official debut as a writer. When the Korean War broke out, he left Seoul and evacuated to Busan. While living with his elderly mother in a slum, he published his most well-known work, Yohan sijip (요한시집The Poetry of John). From this moment on, his taste for the abstract started to more prominently appear and he began focusing on the existential conditions surrounding modern humanity. In the early 1960s, he worked as a professor at Duksung Women’s University, but then shifted to journalism in 1962 and worked as a lead editorial writer for newspapers such as the Kyunghyang Daily News and the Dong-A Daily.
For a period of approximately ten years starting in 1964, he was inactive and did not create any new works. Afterwards, he published the novel Yuyeok (유역 River Basin) in 1982 and his final work, “Hayeoga haeng” (하여가행 A Trip In Any Case) in 1987. He revealed that he quit writing because he wrote with a sense of resistance during the military dictatorship regimes, but with the onset of freedom after democratization, he lost his energy to write. He passed away on August 31, 1999 from liver cancer.
2. Writing
General Characteristics 3)
In contrast to the way typical novels unfold through the characters’ actions or the progression of scenes, Chang Yong-hak’s novels are developed through a thorough focus on the characters’ beliefs and ideas. In general, the characters in his stories adhere to a pessimistic and nihilistic stance towards all circumstances.
Chang Yong-hak and Existentialism 4)
Chang Yong-hak was heavily influenced by existentialist thought, which was prevalent throughout the world during his early writing career. As a philosophical thought that asserted “existence precedes essence,” existentialism emphasizes existence as an individual over humanity’s general nature. Having experienced the reality of the destruction and ruins resulting from the Pacific War, the Korean War, defecting to South Korea, and refugee life, Chang Yong-hak concentrated in particular on the philosophical exploration of the individual’s existence. His stories’ abstract descriptions, allegorical form, use of irony, and evangelistic imagination can be seen as the aesthetic form and principles resulting from his internalization of existentialism, and this kind of style can be seen as directly connected to the consciousness specific to the postwar generation.
The Poetry of John: The Korean Transformation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea
Written from the depths of the melancholy postwar reality, The Poetry of John (1955) can be seen as a work that abandoned the traditional narrative framework of novels and publicized the abstract and conceptual style characteristic to Chang Yong-hak. In this work, the author invents a unique style that blends a fable on a rabbit, a soliloquy by a person facing an extreme situation, and a philosophical war. At the then-refugee site of Busan, Chang Yong-hak randomly came across Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea. Shocked by its contents, he then used the subject of the Geoje Island POW (Prisoner of War) camp 5) in order to write this work. The Poetry of John critically depicts the process through which the individual’s existence and meaning is harmed during war through abstract and empty language, such as ideology, the People, and social class. 6)
Wonhyeongui jeonseol (원형의 전설The Legend of the Circle, 1962)—The Meeting of Concepts and Stories 7)
Wonhyeongui jeonseol (1962) is a novel that synthesizes the meeting of the concepts and stories that were previously seen in Chang Yong-hak’s short stories. This work contains glimpses into his ideological stances, such as the author’s method of perceiving the world, the problem of humankind’s existence, criticism of ideology, and struggles with delusion. According to the narrator of the work, the world was originally a circle and it was through modern, abnormal civilizations that its boundaries and knots, beginning and end, were formed. Furthermore, humankind is imprisoned within subjective prejudices and invented consciousness within this world fashioned through these kinds of binaries. The work’s treatment of the topic of incest reflects a thematic consciousness that aims to break the taboos of modern civilization, while also symbolizing the circular nature of fate through the protagonist, whose life as the head of a village both begins and ends from incest.
Critical Reception
Chang Yong-hak is an author who has polarized critics. Appraised as one of the most difficult and abstruse authors of 20th century Korean literature along with Yi Sang, he has simultaneously received denunciation and praise.8) He has received positive praise for tenaciously posing philosophical and abstract questions regarding war, while boldly surmounting the basic aesthetics of novels. 9) However, critics have also pointed out his excessive use of abstract expressions which limit the general public’s accessibility and reception to his works.10)
Controversies and Disputes 11)
Chang Yong-hak had a dispute with Yu Jong-ho for advocating the combined use of classical Chinese characters with Korean in writing. Believing that exclusively using hangeul led to avoidance of difficult words, as well as unfamiliar and difficult content, Chang Yong-hak believed that the exclusive use of hangeul ultimately led to the disappearance of novels’ depths. On the other hand, literary critic Yu Jong-ho advocated for the exclusive use of hangeul, criticizing Chang Yong-hak’s writing style as not entirely Korean and that he used classical Chinese characters because the tone of his writing style was closer to crude Japanese. According to Yu Jong-ho, the kinds of sentences that Chang Yong-hak wrote would ultimately never manifest excellent Korean literature. Centering around the issue of using classical Chinese characters in writing, Chang Yong-hak and Yu Jong-ho’s dispute continued over approximately ten months over 13 print cycles. As the history of writing exclusively in hangeul expanded, Korean novels became defined after the 1990s as works without classical Chinese characters that were written almost entirely in hangeul.
Reference
1) Naver Encyclopedia of Korean Culture: “Chang Yong-hak”
https://terms.naver.com/entry.nhn?docId=538482&cid=46645&categoryId=46645
2) Naver Encyclopedia of Korean Culture: “Chang Yong-hak”
https://terms.naver.com/entry.nhn?docId=538482&cid=46645&categoryId=46645
Wikipedia (Korean): “Chang Yong-hak”
https://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EC%9E%A5%EC%9A%A9%ED%95%99
3) Naver Encyclopedia of Korean Culture: “Chang Yong-hak”
https://terms.naver.com/entry.nhn?docId=538482&cid=46645&categoryId=46645
4) Doosan Encyclopedia: “Existentialism”
https://terms.naver.com/entry.nhn?docId=1119535&cid=40942&categoryId=31528
Kim Jeonggwan. “Research on the Epistemological Structure of Existentialism in Chang Yong-hak’s Early Novels.” Gukje eoneo munhak [International Language and Literature] 30, 2014.
5) This was the largest POW camp created in Korea in order to detain North Korean and Chinese Communist soldiers during the Korean War. The site was turned into the Historic Park of the Geoje POW Camp which currently has exhibitions on information relevant to the site’s history and focuses on education.
http://www.pow.or.kr/_main/main.html
6) Naver Unabridged Dictionary of Modern Korean Literature: “Yohan sijip”
https://terms.naver.com/entry.nhn?docId=335464&cid=41708&categoryId=41737
Kwon Yeongmin. The History of Contemporary Korean Literature, Vol. 2, Minumsa, 2020, pg. 105-106.
7) Naver Unabridged Dictionary of Modern Korean Literature: “Wonhyeongui jeonseol”
https://terms.naver.com/entry.nhn?docId=335465&cid=41708&categoryId=41737
Kwon Yeongmin. The History of Contemporary Korean Literature, Vol. 2, Minumsa, pg. 106.
8) Kim Yunsik, Kim Hyeon. The History of Korean Literature. Minumsa, 1996, pg. 413.
9) Kim Gyoseon. “The Novels of Chang Yong-hak.” Gugeo munhak [Journal of Korean Literature] 18, 1976, pg. 5.
10) Kim Dongri. “The Mythological Consciousness of the Contemporary Times.” Seoul Shinmun, 24 October 1955.
11) Han Hyeonggu. “On the Nationalistic Orientation Towards Language of Yu Jong-Ho’s Early Works of Criticism.” Hanguk hyeondae munhak yeongu [Journal of Korean Modern Literature] 27, 2009.
