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The Soil scrap

by Yi Kwang-Sugo link November 15, 2014

Author Bio 작가 소개

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Yi Kwang-Su

Yi Kwang-su (1892–1950) was a Korean writer and independence and nationalist activist. His pen names were Chunwon and Goju. Yi is best known for his novel Mujeong (무정 The Heartless), sometimes described as the first Korean novel. 1. LifeYi Kwang-su was born Yi Bogyeong in 1892 in Jeongju. He was orphaned at age 10 and grew up with Donghak believers. In 1904, around the time of the Donghak Peasant Revolution, he moved to Seoul in order to avoid the authorities. In 1905 he went to Japan for his education. In 1909 he published his first story, written in Japanese, "Ai ka" (愛か Maybe Love), in Meiji Gakuin’s Shirogane gakuhō, his school newsletter. Upon returning to Korea in 1913, he taught at Osan School in Jeongju. He later moved back to Tokyo and became one of the leaders of the anti-colonial student movement. In 1919 he moved to Shanghai and served in the Korean Provisional Government and became president of The Independent, a newspaper in Shanghai. Yi returned to Korea in 1921 and founded the Alliance for Self-Improvement, established on principles of enlightenment and self-help. From 1923 to 1934 Yi pursued a career in journalism working for several newspapers, including two that survive today, the Dong-a Ilbo and the Chosun Ilbo. After the war, the Special Committee for the Investigation of Anti-nationalist Activities found Yi guilty of collaboration. In 1950 Yi was captured by the North Korean army and died in Manpo on October 25, most likely of tuberculosis.2. WritingYi was a fiction writer and essayist. His essays originally focused on the need for national consciousness. His fiction was among the first modern fiction in Korea and he is most famous for his novel The Heartless. The Heartless was a description of the crossroads at which Korea found itself, stranded between tradition and modernity and undergoing conflict between social realities and traditional ideals. His career can be split into thirds. The first period (that of The Heartless), from 1910-19 featured a strong attack on Korea's traditional society and the belief that Korea should adopt a more modern, "Western" worldview. From the early 1920s to the 1930s, Yi transformed into a dedicated nationalist and published a controversial essay, "Minjok gaejoron" (민족 개조론 On the Remaking of National Consciousness), which advocated a moral overhaul of Korea and blamed Koreans for being defeatist. The third period, from the 1930s on, coincided with Yi's conversion to Buddhism, and his work consequently became noticeably Buddhist in tone. This was also the period in which, as noted above, Yi became a Japanese collaborator. Yi's professional judgment could be as fickle as his politics. In one famous case he befriended then abandoned the fellow writer Kim Myeong-sun, allegedly because his own beliefs about modernism had shifted. Yi has also been considered one of the pioneers of queer literature in Korea, publishing the short story "Ai ka" (愛か Maybe Love) in 1909, at the age of seventeen.

Part 1-Chapter 1

 

After returning from the night school where he taught, Heo Sung lay down, resting his neck upon his schoolbag and lacing his fingers behind his head to form a pillow. Lying still, he could hear mosquitoes buzzing to and fro as they tried to get around the mosquito-repellent smoke. Now that the seventh month of the lunar calendar was half past, the wind felt a bit cool after nightfall.

For a couple of years, Heo Sung had lived in Seoul with little possibility of hearing the mosquitoes’ buzz. In his hometown, even listening to them again pleased him.

“How tall and beautiful Yu Sun has become,” Heo Sung murmured to himself. Her image appeared before him, healthy and strong with gently rounded features. Though her face was tanned dark from the mountain region’s strong sunlight, her eyes, nose, and mouth stood out sharply without losing the softness of a young woman’s features. Reflecting moonlight, her face had been beautiful, almost like moonlight itself. Only her roughened hands did not fit. Used for weeding fields and working in water, they were not the porcelain hands of a city woman. She wore a stiff skirt and a traditional summer jacket of hemp cloth, along with black rubber shoes. She went without socks, which left the tops of her feet darkly tanned. Equally dark were her hands, wrists, and neck, as well as her calves below the short bloomers and shorter skirt, as if the summer sunlight had wished to kiss her body whenever offered a chance, desiring her beautiful and healthy skin.

Heo Sung tried to compare Yu Sun with Jeong-seon. The latter was daughter to Mr. Yun, the aristocratic official in whose Seoul residence Sung was the house tutor. Jeong-seon was a fragile woman with fair skin, almost transparent, and hands so small and soft that they seemed likely to shatter at a touch. She had been one of the loveliest beauties in Sookmyung Girls’ High School.

In Sung’s eyes, Jeong-seon was the celestial maiden of the moon, so unreachable. He had roomed in the servants’ quarters of the Yun family while tutoring their young son in primary school studies, and for such a poor man from the countryside without parents or property, a beautiful woman like Jeong-seon, the only daughter of a noble and wealthy family, was one in whose presence he felt unworthy even to lift up his eyes.

But he might be able to secure at least a woman like Yu Sun for himself. In his current situation, Yu Sun’s parents might be reluctant to offer him their daughter’s hand, but they would perhaps consider him as a future son-in-law after he had graduated from college.

With those thoughts, Sung sighed over his circumstances.

Sung’s family had been among the well-off families in the village. His father Gyeom, a graduate of Daesung School in Pyongyang, had been arrested several times under the Japanese Military Police Government as a suspect in the Sinminhoe, Bukgando, and Seogando affairs, as well as in the independence movement. His various sentences added up to about eight years, but he spent over ten altogether behind bars, including detentions at the police station after his arrest and his time confined during the investigations.

The family fortune had been used up in supporting him those long prison years, and sustaining the household itself was difficult, let alone providing for Sung’s school fees. Once out of prison, Gyeom had used the family’s rice paddies and other lands as collateral for funds from a financial cooperative to start a business. But having no experience with that kind of work, he failed, losing all the collateral land, and so turned to alcohol out of anger, only to die of typhoid fever. His wife and daughter, Sung’s younger sister, also became infected and died, leaving Sung with nothing but the clothes on his back.

Sung thus had no place of his own, and the house where he was now staying belonged to his cousin Seong.

Yu Sun’s family lived over a hill from where he was staying. Her parents were simple farmers. Sun’s father Jin-hi was still young, and her grandfather had succeeded in the first-level national exam, attaining the title chosi. The Heo clan had lived in Sung’s village for several hundred years. The Yu clan had lived equally as long in the village over the hill. Both had produced family members who had succeeded in the national exams, or who had lived in the tile-roofed houses of the rich. But according to Grandfather Yu, “There’s been no use for scholarship or in being yangban nobility since the Reformation of 1894.”

As the two villages slowly declined, the courageous gave up their government offices, tied headbands to their brows, and threw away their books and brush pens to wield hoes in rice paddies instead. Some, however, buckled down, sticking to their offices and hoping for the glory of old times. But a few like Sung’s father stood “at the forefront of reform,” keeping their hair cut short and wearing Western-style clothes. Some of these ended up in prison. Members of Yu Sun’s family were among the quiet, sly ones who looked out for their own interests. Heo Sung’s family was among those active in affairs, working to improve the world or going to modern schools. 

 

pp. 5-7

 


Writer 필자 소개

Yi Kwang-Su

Yi Kwang-Su

Yi Kwang-su (1892–1950) was a Korean writer and independence and nationalist activist. His pen names were Chunwon and Goju. Yi is best known for his novel Mujeong (무정 The Heartless), sometimes described as the first Korean novel. 1. LifeYi Kwang-su was born Yi Bogyeong in 1892 in Jeongju. He was orphaned at age 10 and grew up with Donghak believers. In 1904, around the time of the Donghak Peasant Revolution, he moved to Seoul in order to avoid the authorities. In 1905 he went to Japan for his education. In 1909 he published his first story, written in Japanese, "Ai ka" (愛か Maybe Love), in Meiji Gakuin’s Shirogane gakuhō, his school newsletter. Upon returning to Korea in 1913, he taught at Osan School in Jeongju. He later moved back to Tokyo and became one of the leaders of the anti-colonial student movement. In 1919 he moved to Shanghai and served in the Korean Provisional Government and became president of The Independent, a newspaper in Shanghai. Yi returned to Korea in 1921 and founded the Alliance for Self-Improvement, established on principles of enlightenment and self-help. From 1923 to 1934 Yi pursued a career in journalism working for several newspapers, including two that survive today, the Dong-a Ilbo and the Chosun Ilbo. After the war, the Special Committee for the Investigation of Anti-nationalist Activities found Yi guilty of collaboration. In 1950 Yi was captured by the North Korean army and died in Manpo on October 25, most likely of tuberculosis.2. WritingYi was a fiction writer and essayist. His essays originally focused on the need for national consciousness. His fiction was among the first modern fiction in Korea and he is most famous for his novel The Heartless. The Heartless was a description of the crossroads at which Korea found itself, stranded between tradition and modernity and undergoing conflict between social realities and traditional ideals. His career can be split into thirds. The first period (that of The Heartless), from 1910-19 featured a strong attack on Korea's traditional society and the belief that Korea should adopt a more modern, "Western" worldview. From the early 1920s to the 1930s, Yi transformed into a dedicated nationalist and published a controversial essay, "Minjok gaejoron" (민족 개조론 On the Remaking of National Consciousness), which advocated a moral overhaul of Korea and blamed Koreans for being defeatist. The third period, from the 1930s on, coincided with Yi's conversion to Buddhism, and his work consequently became noticeably Buddhist in tone. This was also the period in which, as noted above, Yi became a Japanese collaborator. Yi's professional judgment could be as fickle as his politics. In one famous case he befriended then abandoned the fellow writer Kim Myeong-sun, allegedly because his own beliefs about modernism had shifted. Yi has also been considered one of the pioneers of queer literature in Korea, publishing the short story "Ai ka" (愛か Maybe Love) in 1909, at the age of seventeen.

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