Hwang Sun-won

Hwang Sun-won
Hangeul	황순원
Hanja	黃順 元
Revised Romanization	Hwang Sun-won
McCune- Reischauer	Hwang Sunwon
See also : Korean name

Hwang Sun-won (born March 26, 1915 in Taedong-gun , P'yŏngan-namdo , † September 14, 2000 ) was a South Korean writer .

Life

Hwang Sun-won was born in 1915 in Taedong County, P'yganngan-namdo (now North Korea ). He made his debut as a schoolboy in 1931 with his poems My Dream (나의 꿈) and Fear Not My Son (아들 아 무서워 말라) in the magazine Licht des Ostens (Tonggwang). From 1934 he attended the preparatory school for Waseda University . During this time he founded a theater group called "Tokyo Student Art Group" (Tonggyǒng haksaeng yesuljwa) with fellow students Lee Hae-rang and Kim Dong-won. In November 1934 the writer published his first collection of poems Gesang (방가 放歌). In 1936 he began to study at the English Department of Waseda University. Since 1957 he was a member of the South Korean National Academy of Arts . From 1957 to 1992 he was a professor at Kyung Hee University and was made an honorary professor in 1982.

By 1937, Hwang Sun-won published two collections of poetry. After that, however, he devoted himself to writing short stories and novels. His works are characterized by lyrical beauty.

Hwang Sun-won was a contemporary witness of the suffering of Koreans as a result of oppression, colonialism, the ideological war , the Korean War , industrialization and military dictatorship. Instead of depicting misery, he tried to depict in his works the resilience of the Korean spirit and the emergence of love in the most unlikely situations. In Kraniche (학), for example, it is about two childhood friends who, because of their ideological affiliation, now stand against each other, but still find their love for one another again. The rain shower (소나기) emphasizes the pathos and beauty of love between two children. Children often appear in Hwang Sun-won's short stories and represent purity. Concern about the brevity of childhood is also expressed in The Swamp (늪) and The Stars (별). Hwang Sun-won's later novels, however, deal more directly with the turbulence of Korean history. The descendants of Cain (카인 의 후예) depicts the tragic consequences of the class conflict between a young couple in love. Trees on the slope (나무 들 비탈 에 서다) describes the process through which the war-traumatized Korean youth find healing and forgiveness again. Hwang Sun-won's short stories and novels are some of the most important fictional works in modern Korean literature.

In honor Hwang Sun-won was in the circle Yangp'yŏng a village called Sonagi built, named after his famous work Sonagi (The rain). It consists of an exhibition hall about Hwang Sun-won and his works as well as a kind of themed garden. Visitors can also enjoy the rain shower there.

He is the father of Hwang Tong-gyu .

Work

Korean

Poetry collections

• 방가 Singing (放歌) (1934)
• 골동품 Curiosities (1936)

Short story collections

• 황순원 단편집 Hwang Sun-won short story collection (1940) later renamed 늪 The Swamp
• 별 The Stars (1941)
• 목넘 이 마을 의 개 The dog of Mongn Mongmi village (1948)
• 기러기 wild geese (1951)
• 곡예사 Acrobats (1952)
• 학 Cranes (1953)
• 잃어버린 사람들 Lost Souls (1958)
• 소나기 The rain shower (1959)
• 너와 나만 의 시간 Only your and my time (1964)
• 탈 Masks (1976)

Novels

• 별 과 같이 살다 Life with the Stars (1950)
• 카인 의 후예 The Descendants of Cain (1954)
• 인간 접목 Human Graft (1957)
• 나무 들 비탈 에 서다 Trees on the slope (1960)
• 일월 Sunshine, Moonlight (1964)
• 움직이는 성 The Moving Castle (1973)
• 신들 의 주사위 The gods' cubes (1982)

Translations

German

• Trees on the slope (나무 들 비탈 에 서다), Königshausen & Neumann (2011) ISBN 3826046226
• Only your and my time (너와 나만 의 시간), in: Anja K. Haftmann (Ed.): Collected lights. Modern Korean Stories, Vol. 2, Bielefeld: Pendragon 2002, ISBN 3-934872-34-4

English

• Lost Souls , Columbia University Press (2009) Short stories by Hwang Sun-won
• The Descendants of Cain (카인 의 후예), ME Sharpe (1997)
• Trees on a Slope (나무 들 비탈 에 서다), University of Hawaii Press (2005)
• Trees on the Cliff (나무 들 비탈 에 서다), Larchwood Publications Ltd. (1980)
• Sunlight, Moonlight (일월), Si-sa-yong-o-sa, Inc (1990)
• The Moving Castle (움직이는 성), Si-sa-yong-o-sa, Inc (1985)
• The Stars and Other Korean Short Stories , Heinemann Asia (1980)

Awards

• 1955: 아시아 자유 문학상 ( Asian Freedom Prize for Literature )
• 1961: 예술 원상 ( Award of the Republic of Korea Art Academy )
• 1966: 3.1 문화상 ( Culture Prize of March 1st )
• 1987: 제 1 회 인촌 상 문학 부문 ( Inch'on Prize in the Literature category )
• 2000: 금관 문화 훈장 ( Order of Culture in Gold )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Author Database of LTI Korea: Hwang Sun-won ( Memento of the original from June 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed on February 27, 2014 (English) 
2. ↑ Sonagi: 황순원 약력 , accessed February 27 (Korean)
3. ↑ Author Database of LTI Korea: Hwang Sun-won ( Memento of the original from June 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed on February 27, 2014 (English) 
4. ↑ Sonagi: 소나기 마을 의 특정 , accessed February 27 (Korean)
5. ↑ 네이버 인물 검색: 황순원 , accessed February 27, 2014 (Korean)

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Korean. Hwang is the family name here, Sun-won is the first name.