Yom Sang-seop (1897–1963) was a South Korean novelist and freedom fighter.
1. Life
Yom was born in 1897 in Seoul and was educated in Japan. He graduated from Posung High School in 1915 and entered Keio University. After one semester, however, he dropped out and started a literary magazine with fellow writer Hwang Seok-u. Around this time, he became involved with the March 1st Movement and began to plan a rally in Osaka, Japan. For these efforts, he was arrested and put in prison but was subsequently acquitted on appeal.
In 1920, he returned to Korea and took a position as a reporter at the Dong-A Ilbo newspaper. He began writing fiction in earnest, associating the literary coterie Pyeheo. In 1921, Yom published his first story, "Pyobonsirui cheonggaeguri" (표본실의 청개구리 A Frog in the Specimen Room) in Kaebyok magazine.
During the 1920s, he became a proponent of a national literature for Korea and was one of the few writers who did not write in Japanese or publish fawning articles at the height of Japan's colonization. In 1928 he joined the Chosun Ilbo as main editor of the Arts and Science section. During the 1930s, he also served in editorial positions at the Maeil Shinbo and the Mansun Ilbo.
In 1946, following World War II, he became editor-in-chief of the Kyunghyang Shinmun. At the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, he was appointed an officer in the Navy and served in a journalistic capacity at naval headquarters. He was appointed President of Seorabal College of Art in 1954 and, three years later, received an honorary degree in Public Administration from the Korea National Defense University.
Yom died of cancer on March 14, 1963, at the age of sixty-seven.
2. Writing
Yom Sang-seop was a pioneer of modern narrative in Korea and a "writer of the period of dissatisfaction". In this role, he was one of the first naturalistic and realistic writers in Korean literature. Early in his career, his role in the resistance to Japanese colonialism resulted in his arrest.
Yom made his literary debut in 1921 with "Pyobonsirui cheonggaeguri." The following year, Yom published one of his most famous works, the novella Mansejeon (만세전 On the Eve of the Uprising). From 1926 to 1928 Yom returned to Japan, where he wrote the novels Isim (이심 Two Minds) and Saranggwa joe (사랑과 죄 Love and Crime). Upon his return to Korea, while working at the Chosun Ilbo, Yom wrote a third novel, Gwangbun (광분 Running Wild).
Perhaps his most famous work is Samdae (삼대Three Generations), which was published in 1931. As was common at the time, the novel was published in serial format, in the Chosun Ilbo. The novel was not initially recognized as important and was not published as a book until 1948. In Three Generations, Yom calmly depicts the Korean people living in the colonial era. The focus of his observations in Three Generations is, so to speak, the lives of intellectuals and urban middle class families living in the 1930s.
As time went by, Yom’s importance to Korean literature was recognized. In 1953 Yom was honored with the Seoul Culture Award, three years later receiving the Asia Freedom Literature Award, and a year after that, in 1957, the National Academy of Arts’ Contribution Award. One year before his death in 1963, he was also awarded the March 1st Culture Award and the Korean President’s Medal.
