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The Village that Formed the Backdrop of Twelve Novels: The Literary Village of Kim Yujung scrap
by Son Yun-gwon
November 10, 2014
When lakes, fog, dakgalbi (a spicy chicken dish), mime festivals, the pop song “Soyang River Girl,” and the TV mini-series Winter Sonata are mentioned, the city of Chuncheon is the first place that comes to most Koreans’ minds. Chuncheon is also the birthplace of the writer Kim Yujung (1908-1937), who died prematurely of tuberculosis, leaving behind such classic folk works as Spring ∙ Spring and Dongbaekggot (Yellow Ginger Blossom)1 . His essay collection, A Mountain Valley in May, published one year before his death, was a dedication to his hometown.
left: The Academy Geumbyeong-uisuk where Kim Yujung taught students. right: Kim Yujung
Kim once wrote, “My hometown is in the mountains of Gangwon-do (province). If you go twenty li (eight kilometers) from the town of Chuncheon-eup and follow a winding path through the mountains, you’ll come upon a tiny village. The village is nestled cozily in the middle of steep mountains that surround it on all sides. Buried in the mountains like that, the village looks just like a siru (high-sided rice cake steamer), so it’s called Sille. The homes are mostly old straw-thatched houses on the verge of collapse, and even so, there are less than 50 of them. You could say it’s a very poor hamlet.” (From Chogwang, May 1936)
Kim was the youngest son of a wealthy family in Sille, but having grown up in Seoul, he didn’t get a proper look at Sille until his late twenties. After his love affair with the famous singer Park Rokju ended, Kim withdrew from school and returned to his poor hamlet in despair. His older brother had nearly squandered the family fortune with his prodigal ways. Kim established the private educational institute Geumbyeong-uisuk where he taught the children of Sille, a village that had become impoverished under colonialism, and explored the village’s treasure trove of stories about farm life. He carefully documented the mountains and fields of Sille, people’s speech and mannerisms, and the events that stirred up the town: the 19-year-old wandering prostitute, who ran away from a fake marriage to an old Chongro Intersection bachelor and returned to the village after hiding her ailing husband in a water mill (The Wanderer in the Valleys); Chunho, who made his wife sell her body in order to finance his gambling (The Summer Shower); the farmhand who worked himself to the bone in the hopes of getting married, then got into a big fight with his father-in-law because of his pent-up rage (Spring ∙ Spring); 17-year-old Jeomsun who tempted the tenant farmer’s son into having sex with her on the mountainside where yellow ginger flowers were blooming (Dongbaekggot); Yeongsik who ruined a perfectly good field of beans because he was fooled into thinking there was gold hidden underneath (Picking Gold in a Beanfield); and Mungtae, the biggest bum in the village.
left: Gimyujeong Station named after the writer right: View of The Literary Village of Kim Yujung
Kim Yujung, who based his works on these tales whenever he could, returned to Seoul in 1933 and began writing in earnest with the publication of The Wanderer in the Valleys. He also incorporated his stories of scraping by on the outskirts of Seoul, and those of the people around him, onto the page. Of the 30 works that he published until the end of his life, 12 were set in Sille. He devoted himself to preserving a folk style based on the Chuncheon dialect in order to place it on equal footing with the modernity that was the prevailing trend at the time. He told stories of poor farm life, but in the process of writing in order to entertain his readers, Kim Yujung’s unique literary style was created. Of the 30 works that Kim published until the end of his life, 12 were set in Sille. He devoted himself to preserving a folk style based on the Chuncheon dialect in order to place it on equal footing with the prevailing trends.
Kim Yujung made Sille of Chuncheon into one of the foremost farming villages of the 1930s rather than just a small mountain village in Gangwon-do. In the late 1990s, the city of Chuncheon purchased the site, which had passed into others’ hands, to restore the house where Kim was born and build a memorial to show their appreciation of him. The name of the hamlet was then changed to the Literary Village of Kim Yujung, as the entire village served as the backdrop for 12 of his short stories. The memorial was officially opened on August 6, 2002, and has since become the first stop of choice for tens of thousands of readers taking cultural field trips. In 2004, the train station nearest the entrance of Sille was renamed Gimyujeong Station after the writer. It was the first station in Korea to be named after a person. Now anyone taking the train from Seoul and getting off at Gimyujeong Station can see Sille of the new millennium where the descendants of Mungtae, Chunho, Yeongsik, and Jeomsun farm and live their lives, just as in Kim’s stories.
1 Complete Works of Kim Yujung, Vol. 1 & 2
Kim Yujung, Garam Planning, Co., 2003, 322pp.
ISBN 89-8435-159-8 (set)
2 Dongbaekggot
Kim Yujung, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd., 2008, 464pp.
ISBN 89-320-1552-X
3 Dongbaekggot
Kim Yujung, Seoul Wangmunsa, 1952, 409pp.
4 Ttaraji
Kim Yujung, Mungongsa, 1982, 250pp,
5 The Summer Shower and Other Stories
Kim Yujung, Samseong Publishing Co., Ltd., 1981, 449pp.
1 Dongbaekggot was first published as The Camellias, however, the Literary Village of Kim Yujung has since pointed out that this was a mistranslation. Camellias refer to the red blossoms of the dongbaekggot plant; however, the flower Kim Yujung was referring to in his novel was the yellow blossom of the ginger plant, which is also called dongbaekggot in Gangweon-do.
Writer 필자 소개
Son Yun-gwon
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