KLWAVE - Directories | Authors | Authors_View

황석영

Hwang Sok-yong scrap

황석영

Category
Literary Fiction 소설
Target User
Adult 성인
Period
Contemporary 현대

Author Bio 작가 소개

Hwang Sok-yong was born in Changchun, Manchuria in 1943. After the liberation from Japanese occupation, he moved to his mother’s hometown Pyongyang, where he lived with his mother’s side of the family. In 1947, his family moved to the South and he grew up in Yeongdeungpo. Hwang left Kyungbok High School in 1962 and left home to wander the southern provinces. He returned home in October, and in November of that year he won the New Author Literary Prize from the magazine Sasanggye for his short story, “Near the Marking Stone.” Hwang lived life as a drifter, taking up manual labor and temple jobs until 1970 when his short story “The Pagoda” won the Chosun Ilbo New Writer’s Contest and he began his writing career in earnest. He also participated in the Vietnam War. Throughout the 1970s, Hwang Sok-yong published a continuous stream of works that became well known such as “Far from Home,” “Mr. Han’s Chronicle,”“The Road to Sampo,” and “A Dream of Good Fortune,” becoming a foremost author in the Korean literary world. For the duration of the seventies, he went undercover working at the Guro Industrial Complex and took part in the resistance movement through his membership in the Association of Writers for Actualized Freedom while penning his epic novel, Jang Gilsan. In the 1980s, Hwang completed his full-length novel, The Shadow of Arms, which shines light on the capitalistic world system during the Vietnam War. He did this all while working tirelessly to organize the fight to spread the truth about the Gwangju Democratization Movement as well as a variety of other resistance movements. After visiting North Korea in March 1989, Hwang was unable to return to South Korea and took refuge as an invited author at the Berlin Academy of Arts. In 1991, he continued his exile in New York. After returning to South Korea in 1993, he was sentenced to seven years in prison, but was released in 1998 after serving five of those years. Following this, he has shown year after year that his creative spirit will not die with the publication of The Old Garden (2000), The Guest (2001), Shim Cheong (2003), Princess Bari (2007), Hesperus (2008), Gangnam Dream (2010), A Familiar World (2011), The Sound of the Shallow Water (2012), and Dusk (2015). He has been awarded the Manhae Literature Prize, the Lee San Literature Prize, and the Daesan Literary Award, among others. Hwang’s major works have been translated and published around the world in countries such as France, the US, Italy, and Sweden.

1. Life

Hwang Sok-yong was born in 1943 in Changchun, Manchuria. He spent his early childhood in Pyongyang until the outbreak of the Korean War, when his family fled to the South. He made his literary debut in 1962 with the publication of the short story `Ipseok bugeun` (입석부근 Near the Marking Stone) in the journal Sasanggye. After joining the Korean Marine Corps in 1966, he got shipped off to the Vietnam War. After the war, he became involved in activism against Park Chung-hee’s military regime, working undercover at Guro Industrial Complex, and later fought to expose the truth about the May 18 Gwangju Democratic Uprising, while penning his epic novel, Jang Gilsan (장길산 Jang Gilsan). Following his visit to North Korea in 1989, he lived in exile in Berlin and New York. Upon returning to Korea in 1993, he was promptly imprisoned and forced to serve a five-year sentence. His novel Sonnim (손님 The Guest) was shortlisted for the prix Femina étranger in France. Hwang was awarded the Emile Guimet Prize for Asian Literature and longlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize for his novel Haejil muryeop (해질 무렵 At Dusk). His novels have been translated and published in many countries across the world including in France, the United States, Germany, Italy and Sweden. He has written Gaekji (객지 Far from Home), Hanssi yeondaegi (한씨 연대기 Mr. Han’s Chronicle), Mugiui geuneul (무기의 그늘 The Shadow of Arms), (오래된 정원 The Old Garden), Sampo ganeun gil (삼포 가는 길 The Road to Sampo), among many others. Hwang’s most recent novel is Cheoldowon samdae (철도원 삼대 Three Generations of Railmen).

2. Writing

Throughout the 1970s, Hwang Sok-yong published a continuous stream of works that became well known such as `Gaekji,` `Hanssi yeondaegi,` `The Road to Sampo,` and `Dwaeji kkum` (돼지 꿈 A Dream of Good Fortune), becoming a foremost author in the Korean literary world. For the duration of the seventies, he went undercover working at the Guro Industrial Complex and took part in the resistance movement through his membership in the Association of Writers for Actualized Freedom while penning his epic novel, Jang Gilsan. In the 1980s, Hwang completed The Shadow of Arms, which uses the back-alley black markets of the Vietnam War as its stage, a market that turns into a setting more fitting than any jungle to discover and explore the core of the war. In this novel, we see the perspective of the US government and soldiers, the Vietnamese National Liberation Front, the South Vietnamese under American rule, and the “psychological refugees” who refuse to intervene and become a part of the war, searching endlessly for an escape route instead. Lastly, we have the perspective that overlaps with that of the author: the dazed ROK soldier who has somehow become involved in this foul war.[1] After being released from his imprisonment in 1998, Hwang penned The Old Garden. With this novel, he cast aside the realism of the past. Instead, a man and a woman in love each declare their own innermost thoughts and feelings, and the time that passes is recorded in a confessional style. This work boasts a form that encompasses every perspective: each character’s own writing and thoughts make up the first person perspective; the words and actions of others within their individual realities constitute the second person perspective; and lastly, the reader who studies each of these characters and their individual worlds provides the third person perspective. In this way, the love story of The Old Garden is perfected through the act of reading it.[1] The Guest, the final volume in what Hwang calls his twentieth-century trilogy, was born out of the author`s reflections that history and our individual dreamlike day-to-day existence are joined. The novel is essentially a round of shamanistic exorcism designed to relieve the agony of the survivors and appease the angry spirits who died during the fifty-day massacre that occurred in Sin-cheon, Hwanghae Province, during the Korean War. The work is modeled after the “Chinogwi Exorcism” of Hwanghae Province, which is made up of twelve separate rounds, reflected in the twelve chapters of the novel. As is the case with an actual exorcism, the dead and the living simultaneously cross and re-cross the boundaries between past and present, appearing at what seems like random intervals to share each of their stories and memories.

Works 작품

Translations 번역서