Winner of 47th Yi Sang Literary Award

Jo Kyung-Ran’s Foreward: An ode to narrative style and strength

Approaching Ordinary People’s Lives with Warmth

A Labor of Love Strung Together with Immaculate Style

Since 1977, the Yi Sang Literary Award has rightfully earned its reputation as one of Korea's most prestigious literary awards. Now, it has reached its 47th year. The judges for the 47th Isang Literary Award in 2024 (Kwon Young-min, Gu Hyo-seo, Kim Jong-wook, Yoon Dae-nyeong, Jeon Gyeong-rin) have selected Jo Kyung-Ran's Foreward as the recipient of this year's award after careful selection from a number of great works published domestically in 2023.

The story of Foreward unfolds softly, grounded in the author's deep understanding of ebbs and flows of ordinary life. Set against the backdrop of neighbors in a suburban neighborhood, both embracing and colliding with each other, the narrative skillfully captures the subtle changes in the protagonist's inner consciousness hidden underneath the harsh realities of life. The masked protagonist, who once dreamt of revenge looking for a certain someone, ultimately finds redemption by confronting the wounded child within themselves- here, the novel reaches its literary height.

The thematic consciousness of Foreward demonstrates profound empathy through the harmonious blend of narrative technique and style. Therefore, we highly commend it as the recipient of the Grand Prize at the 47th Yisang Literary Award in 2024. Grand Prize winners Seong Hye-ryeong ("The Caregiver") and Choi Mirae ("The Woman with a Pot on Her Head") deal with issues of caregiving. Seong Hye-ryeong's caregiver overcomes their grim fate not by the logic of “in spite of this,” but rather by the logic of "so what?" In Seong’s work, the scene where the caregiver dresses the protagonist (patient) in their undergarments creates a lasting impression in the reader’s memory for a long time. Choi Mirae's protagonist is a young babysitter who struggles to balance caregiving, childcare, and household chores. The final act of taking out a spoonful of rice represents a will to survive beyond mere livelihood.

Kim Ki-tae ("Pax Atomica") poses questions about the uncertainty of future. The novel begins with a diagnosis. Our world has been turned into a wasteland due to nuclear war, everyday calamities, and the violence of danger His work combines sociological imagination with psychological states of anxiety and compulsion.

Park Min-jeong ("All the School Kids Love Them") and Park Sol-mul ("Two of Us") inquire about the refuge of art. Park Min-jeong questions the violence occurring within the art scene, while Park Sol-mul twists conventional time and space to create a spatiotemporal dimension of literature.

Seong Hye-ryeong started her literary career in 2021 when she won the Changbi New Writer Award for her short story "Yoon. So. Jeong." She also won the 14th Young Writer Award.