Bang Hyeon-seok

Bang Hyeon-seok
Hangeul	방현석
Revised Romanization	Bang Hyeon-seok
McCune- Reischauer	Pang Hyŏnsŏk
See also : Korean name

Bang Hyeon-seok (born October 3, 1961 in Ulsan , South Korea ) is a South Korean writer .

Life

Bang Hyeon-seok was born on October 3, 1961 in Ulsan, South Korea. In 1988 he published his first work The First Step (내딛는 첫발 은). The short story is about factory workers and their efforts to save the union. Since his debut, Bang has established himself as one of the most famous writers of "working class literature". Bang, who himself worked as a factory worker in the 1980s and 90s, writes about the needs of workers in a post-capitalist society with sympathy and insight that he acquired firsthand.

He realized that literature is nothing but life and that the fulcrum of his life will continue to be literature. He promised to continue writing about the world of his dreams in a way and style that suits him. Although more and more writers are turning their backs on social and political problems, Bang remains a loyal observer and chronicler of Korean society and history. From the mid-1990s he published various works that tell of the dark period of the military dictatorship. For ten years, he focused on the Yushin dictatorship under Park Chung-hee and Your Left Side (당신 의 왼편) is a sobering portrait of the dictatorship under Chun Doo-hwan caused by the brutal suppression of the Kwangju uprising on May 18 1980 came to power.

However, Bang does not write exclusively about the past. A form of existence (존재 의 형식) is an attempt to find a solution through literature to the conflict between Vietnam and Korea, which arose through Korea's participation in the Vietnam War . The work not only sheds light on the past, but also on the present and future of relations between the two countries. Vietnam continues to be of interest to him both literarily and personally: Bang is currently the president of the Association of Young Writers for the Understanding of Vietnam (베트남 을 이해 하려는 젊은 작가 들의 모임) and invests a great deal of time and creative energy in the investigation the past of Vietnam.

Work (excerpt)

Korean

Short stories edited volumes

• 내일 을 여는 집 The House That Opens Tomorrow (1991)
• 랍스터 를 먹는 시간 Time to Eat Lobster (2003)

Novels

• 십 년간 For ten years (1995)
• 당신 의 왼편 Your Left Side (1999)

Essay collections

• 아름다운 저항 Wonderful Resistance (1999)
• 하노이 에 별 이 뜨다 A Star in Hanoi (2002)

Translations

English

• Off to Battle at Dawn in Bi-lingual Edition Modern Korean Literature, Volume 20, ASIA Publishers (2013) ISBN 978-8994006789

Awards

• 2003 - 제 03 회 황순원 문학상 ( Hwang Sun-won Literature Prize )
• 2003 - 제 11 회 오영수 문학상 ( O-Yŏng-su Literature Prize )
• 1991 - 제 09 회 신동엽 창작 상 ( Sin Tong yŏp novel prize )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Preferred spelling of the name according to the Korean Literature Authors Name Authority Database: 방현석 ( Memento of the original from October 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed on June 11, 2014 
2. ↑ 두산 백과: 방현석 Retrieved June 11, 2014 (Korean)
3. ↑ Author Database of LTI Korea: Bang Hyun-seok ( Memento of the original from June 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed on June 11, 2014 
4. ↑ 네이버 인물 검색: 방현석 Retrieved June 11, 2014 (Korean)

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Korean. Bang is the family name here, Hyeon-seok is the first name.