
Kang Yongjun
강용준
Fear. That was all that Minsu felt on the inside. Fear, and death. What else? What else was there before the hair-raising terror and relentless dread and crushingly obsessive thoughts took over him, was there ever any purpose to what we did, and what the hell did it matter now if there ever had been. All that is left now is a deep, dragging weariness. Yet these inexplicable fools want me to state my purpose. ─excerpted from “Cheoljomang” (철조망 Barbed Wire) Kang Yong-jun was born in 1931 to a devout Catholic family in Hwanghae Province. While attending Pyongyang University of Education in 1950, he was conscripted to fight in the Korean War, but was promptly captured by UN troops and spent three years in camp as a prisoner of war. His wartime experience deeply affected Kang and provided the inspiration for his first story, “Cheoljomang” (철조망 Barbed Wire)(1960), which reconstructs Kang's escape through the POW camp's barbed-wire fence in 1953.