Kim Young-ha (born 1968) is a South Korean novelist.
1. Life
Kim Young-ha was born in Hwacheon, Gangwon province. He grew up moving frequently as his father was in the military. As a child, he suffered carbon monoxide poisoning and lost his memories before the age of ten. Kim studied business administration at Yonsei University. He completed his military service with the 51st Infantry Division near Suwon and began his literary career upon his discharge in 1995, publishing the short story "Geoure daehan myeongsang" (거울에 대한 명상 Reflections in the Mirror) in the quarterly Review magazine. The following year, he won the inaugural Munhakdongne New Writer's Award with his first novel, Naneun nareul pagoehal gwolliga itda (나는 나를 파괴할 권리가 있다 I Have the Right to Destroy Myself). Throughout his career, Kim has published eight novels, most recently Jakbyeorinsa (작별인사 Saying Goodbye), five short story collections, and numerous essay collections. He has won the Hyundae Literary Award, the Dong-in Literary Award, and the Yi Sang Literary Award, among others. His works have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He lives in Seoul, South Korea.
2. Writing
Kim Young-ha’s fiction engineers a radical paradigm shift by short-circuiting existing narrative programs altogether. Reading his matter-of-fact accounts of a suicide coordinator and a human lightning rod—characters who are anything but “representative” in the traditional sense—one gets the impression that for Kim, the “old” is less a thing to be rejected than dismissed as irrelevant. A sense of release that readers have responded to enthusiastically in his fiction stems precisely from such utter lack of concern for issues long considered the staple of literary activity.[1]
In his debut novel, I Have the Right to Destroy Myself, the narrator contends that in this (post) modern age in which only a life controlled by the big Other is possible, the only autonomous action that humans can take is voluntary death. Kim’s narrator assists in the suicide of those who lack the courage to take their own lives. His shocking, contradictory protagonist signals the passing of Korean society into a new dimension. In a similar vein, Geomeun kkot (검은 꽃 Black Flower) uses magical realism to portray the peculiarity of Korean modernization through the perspective of Korean laborers who immigrated to Mexico, representing how Korea assimilated unilaterally into Western universalism without inheriting almost any of the uniqueness of Korean culture.[2]
Bichui jeguk (빛의 제국 Your Republic is Calling You) chronicles a day in the life of a North Korean spy who, after sneaking into the South decades prior, has turned into another docile body obedient to the South’s symbolic order. The protagonist is left in a daze after receiving a sudden directive from the North. It is a gripping account of the exhaustion and suppression of Korean people’s freedom on account of the state of exception due to the division of the peninsula.[2]
Sarinjaui gieokbeop (살인자의 기억법 Diary of a Murderer) presents a serial killer battling Alzheimer’s disease, who, while sensitive to the gaze of others, feels no guilt about the murders he has committed. Through the murderer’s “way of remembering,” Kim gives us a surprising portrayal of how modern man’s compulsion to simply survive in a society of endless competition turns him into a monster.[2]
Reference
[1] Yi, Nam-Ho, et al. Twentieth Century Korean Literature. Eastbridge Books, An Imprint Of Camphor Press, 2005. p.84-85. http://anthony.sogang.ac.kr/20CKoreanLit.pdf
[2] Korean Literature Now. Vol. 28, Summer 2015. https://kln.or.kr/lines/essaysView.do?bbsIdx=1502
