Recipient of the 2025 Arts Council Korea Literature Fellowship
"I find myself on another Earth today/Turns out the planet that lookedfamiliar from afar had been my home for a long time" -Kang Jeong,"True Prayers," in Smile, Dragon (Munhakdongne PublishingCorp., 2024)
1. Life
Could it not be possible to liken Kang Jeong to a kind of material promoting a new ethics of encountering the Other? According to Kang's ethics in Kiss, we cannot reconstruct the Other according to our own tastes, nor can we let everything slide, either. Kang goes beyond caresses that stay on the surface in Kiss, preferring to tear the surface and become mixed up and completely dissolved with you. It all starts with a kiss. His tongue is not for speaking. Nor is it for caressing her lips. No, it only exists in order to tear her skin and chew her up, devouring her until she is completely assumed into the material called "I." No matter that this rapacious "kiss" may lead to "giving birth to a well-mixed and kneaded bastard of a thing" ("The Expansion of Night), the poet calls himself a "docile beast" that is merely putting its fearless love to practice.
Now, while I likened Kang's choice of subject material in Kiss to lovemaking, or rather what goes beyond lovemaking, Kang's poetry also resembles his "cutting kiss." If we were to define lovemaking as caresses that go on forever, with no purpose or order, Kang's poems fall under that definition. He is not the kind of producer who begins his first line with the overall composition in mind, or one that chooses each word with care, thinking about each line that precedes and follows it. There is something inherently embarrassing about produced lovemaking. Kang writes for the sake of writing, without beginning or end. And so his sentences and the spaces in between are positively dripping with his explosive energy. Might we be witnessing the poet's experiment to prove that even brittle language can become a damp kind of material? Is this an attempt to break open the doors of language and dissolve what lies within and without? Kang's Kiss is a pulsing mass expanded to its extreme, on the brink of explosion. Pursuing its lines with one's eyes emptied and the armor of one's flesh cast off, Kang's Kiss will spontaneously become as one with you.
–Cho Yeon-jeong, literary critic. Critic's Notes, Kiss (Moonji Publishing co., Ltd. 2008)
2. Writing
Could it not be possible to liken Kang Jeong to a kind of material promoting a new ethics of encountering the Other? According to Kang's ethics in Kiss, we cannot reconstruct the Other according to our own tastes, nor can we let everything slide, either. Kang goes beyond caresses that stay on the surface in Kiss, preferring to tear the surface and become mixed up and completely dissolved with you. It all starts with a kiss. His tongue is not for speaking. Nor is it for caressing her lips. No, it only exists in order to tear her skin and chew her up, devouring her until she is completely assumed into the material called "I." No matter that this rapacious "kiss" may lead to "giving birth to a well-mixed and kneaded bastard of a thing" ("The Expansion of Night), the poet calls himself a "docile beast" that is merely putting its fearless love to practice.
Now, while I likened Kang's choice of subject material in Kiss to lovemaking, or rather what goes beyond lovemaking, Kang's poetry also resembles his "cutting kiss." If we were to define lovemaking as caresses that go on forever, with no purpose or order, Kang's poems fall under that definition. He is not the kind of producer who begins his first line with the overall composition in mind, or one that chooses each word with care, thinking about each line that precedes and follows it. There is something inherently embarrassing about produced lovemaking. Kang writes for the sake of writing, without beginning or end. And so his sentences and the spaces in between are positively dripping with his explosive energy. Might we be witnessing the poet's experiment to prove that even brittle language can become a damp kind of material? Is this an attempt to break open the doors of language and dissolve what lies within and without? Kang's Kiss is a pulsing mass expanded to its extreme, on the brink of explosion. Pursuing its lines with one's eyes emptied and the armor of one's flesh cast off, Kang's Kiss will spontaneously become as one with you.
–Cho Yeon-jeong, literary critic. Critic's Notes, Kiss (Moonji Publishing co., Ltd. 2008)
Reference
Poetry
Execution Theatre 처형극장 (Moonji Publishing co., Ltd. 문학과지성사1996)
I've Called It a Horse to Tell You about It But 들려주려니 말이라 했지만 (Munhakdongne Publishing Corp., 문학동네, 2005)
Kiss 키스 (Moonji Publishing co., Ltd 문학과지성사, 2008)
Bow 활 (Munye Joongang, 문예중앙, 2011)
Ghost 귀신 (Munhakdongne Publishing Corp., 문학동네, 2014)
The Idiot's Arithmetic (Minumsa Publishing Group 민음사, 2016)
And Then I Went Blind 그리고 나는 눈먼 자가 되었다 (Munhak Silhum 문학실험실, 2019)
White All Over 커다란 하양으로 (Minumsa Publishing Group 민음사, 2021)
Smile, Dragon 웃어라, 용 (Munhakdongne Publishing Corp., 문학동네, 2024)
Essays
Route and Code 루트와 코드 (Samtoh샘터, 2004)
Bad Taste 나쁜 취향 (Random House Korea 랜덤하우스, 2006)
Comma, Seed 콤마, 씨 (Munhakdongne Publishing Corp., 문학동네, 2012)
Slowpoke 느림보 마음 (Maumsup 마음의숲, 2009)
I Just Want to Cry When I Want to Cry 그저 울 수 있을 때 울고 싶을 뿐이다 (Dasan Books 다산북스, 2017)
Reptilian Heart 파충류 심장 (Minumsa Publishing Group 민음사, 2021)
Crazy, Exhausted, Enraptured 미치고, 지치고, 홀린 (Marmmo Press 마름모, 2024)
Profile information provided by the Arts Council Korea (ARKO)
LTI Korea 
DLKL 
SIWF 