LTI Korea 
DLKL 
SIWF 
The Long Journey of a Writer Who Crossed the Borderline scrap
by Kang Jin Ho
October 20, 2016
Author Bio 작가 소개
Lee Ho-cheol
Dearest Seonsaengnim, the news of your passing came so unexpectedly.
It seems like only yesterday when you would greet us with your warm welcoming smile—how could you have parted from us so soon?
Was it because you missed your hometown so much that you left your body behind and departed with just your soul?
You were to us the icon of division and division literature. After leaving your home and family in the North and setting off southwards, as a witness who has endured all the wounds and ordeals brought by division, your path in life followed the same route as the twists and turns of our country’s history. Division colored your entire world, the subject of your existence; and exploring this with every fiber of your being, you stood tall in the wide forest of division literature.
There is one image that always comes to mind when I think of you. It is the scene from 2000 when separated family members were meeting in a room in Pyongyang. You were reunited with your younger sister for the first time in fifty years. Amid that bitter scene, where longing and regret flowed out as tears, you comforted your sister with a smile and encouragement, saying, “Let’s not cry.” Your brave composure stood in contrast to that of all the weeping families.
The reason I recount this memory is because, in truth, I think your literature is just the same. In the long sixty-five-year journey of your work you have been neither fierce nor loud, but serene and still. Your composure has been like a great river, carrying in its deep waters the agony, longing, anger, and grief along in its calm current.
The journey of your life is bound, without excess or affectation, in your literary works such as in “Big Mountain,” which recounts your memories of the large mountain that stood tall near your hometown, holding the smaller mountains in its embrace; “Far from Home” and Petit Bourgeoisie, which tell of your experiences as a wandering laborer in Busan just after you came southward; and North Wind, South Wind, about being tangled up in difficult circumstances after having just bought your first house in Cheonho-dong. You described these heart-wrenching situations with serenity, like the flow of water. These narratives were not simply confessions from your life’s story, but rather reflections on society and humanity—stories that have ultimately stood on a higher plane evoking the tragedy of the Korean people.
The “one household unification” that you often spoke of was of the same vein. You didn’t like the term “unification” did you? You said that ideological or political unification needed to be set aside, and that first, people from the North and South should be able to travel back and forth as frequently as possible—that if the people traveling north and south increased, the numbers of people sharing meals would increase, and unification would come naturally, just as water trickles from a mountain spring. You knew the best means by which we might one day be together.
Now, you have parted from this world. But the longing to overcome division, which you expressed in everything you did and everything you wrote, remains as a large mountain.
That longing will remain with us, and I believe it will become the basis for how we can overcome our separation.
You can now tread upon the soil of your hometown, the place you longed for even in your dreams to meet again all those you have longed to see. Take the hand of Hawon* too, whom you once left behind.
Respectfully, I wish you blessings in the next world.
Rest in peace. 
* A character in “Far from Home”
Writer 필자 소개
Kang Jin Ho
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