Kim MyungIn (born 1946) is a South Korean poet and author.
1. Life
Kim MyungIn was born in Uljin, North Gyeongsang Province. He attended Hupo High School and graduated from Korea University with a degree in Korean literature. He received his Ph.D. in Korean literature from Korea University in 1985. Kim made his literary debut in 1973 when his poem "Chulhangje" (출항제 Celebration for the Ship Leaving Port) won the JoongAng Ilbo New Writer's Contest. He went on to form the literary coterie Bansi (Anti-Poetry) along with Kim Chang-wan, Lee Dong Soon, Jeong Ho-seung, and other poets. Kim is the recipient of the Kim Daljin Literary Award, the Sowol Poetry Award, the Dongseo Literary Award, the Hyundae Literary Award, the Isan Literary Award, the Daesan Literary Award, among others. He taught Korean literature at Kyonggi University and creative writing at Korea University until his retirement in 2012. Kim has also been a visiting professor at Brigham Young University, USA, and at Far Eastern College, Russia.
2. Writing
Running throughout Kim's poetry is an abiding concern with memory—not one of a beautiful past but one of suffering. In Kim's work, memory resembles a sickness, a disease which limits one's ability to move about freely. While memory is concerned with the past, it also possesses the power to torment the self living in the present. Insofar as it is only through direct confrontation with memory that the self can be healed, this memory of a scarred, wounded past, however, cannot be secreted away or forgotten. Memory in Kim's poetry centers around two overwhelmingly dark images: his father and the Korean War.
Born in 1946, Kim's childhood was inextricably entwined with the experience of war. This memory of a childhood shattered by war emerges in the poem "Kenteokiui jip 1" (켄터키의 집 1 Kentucky House 1). As we see in the poem "Bitsogui abeoji" (빗속의 아버지 Father in the Rain), the memory of receiving no protection in the midst of the extremities of war points to the rejection of a certain absolute, symbolized here by the father. By reviving memories of childhood suffering, the poet aims to release himself from past experiences which cloud his life in the present. Memory enables the poet to discover the other within the self; this other, in turn, opens new possibilities for the self. In Kim's poetry, then, confrontation with the past seeks to broaden one's range of emotions in order to open the possibility of true experience. As his career moved on, Kim MyungIn began by writing poems directly inspired by the sufferings of orphans and the most wretched in society, but then turned to subjects more often related to nature and more directly reflective of his own inner world.
