Hyun Kil-un

Hyun Kil-un
Hangeul	현길언
Hanja	玄 吉 彦
Revised Romanization	Hyeon Gil-eon
McCune- Reischauer	Hyon Kiron
See also : Korean name

Hyun Kil-un (born February 17, 1940 on Cheju-do ; † March 10, 2020 ) was a South Korean writer .

Life

Hyun Kil-un was born on Cheju Island in 1940. He studied Korean language and literature at Jeju National University and continued his studies in this field at Sungkyunkwan University and Hanyang University in Seoul . Until 2005, he taught as a professor of Korean language and literature at Hanyang University.

Hyun Kil-un began his literary career in 1980 with the publication of The Sound of the Castle Crumbling ( 성 무너 지는 소리 ) in Hy Monatsndae munhak's monthly magazine (contemporary literature). The author's birthplace is Cheju Island, and its history and customs were an inspiration for his fictional tales. The stories in his first volume of short stories, The Dream of Pegasus ( 용마 의 꿈 ), deal with the traumatic events of the Cheju uprising in 1948. Hyun Kil-un re-examined what happened back then and tried in this way to grieve in the face of the deaths of numerous innocent people People express and process. Another issue was the ideological and historical distortion of truth. In Shell and Meat ( 껍질 과 속살 ) (1993) the metaphor of surface and depth is used to depict the relationship between official, often ideologically manipulated “truth” and the human truth buried beneath it. He also took up this problem in the stories Fieber ( 신열 ) and Ein Strange Band ( 이상한 끈 ). In addition to short stories and novels, Hyun Kil-un also wrote scientific books on literature ( e.g .: 소설 쓰기 의 이론 과 실제 Theory and Practice of Prose Poetry , 1997). Hyun died in March 2020 at the age of 80.

Work

Korean

Short story collections

• 용마 의 꿈 The dream of Pegasus. 1984.
• 신열 fever. 1984.
• 우리들 의 스승님 Our teachers. 1985.
• 우리 시대 의 열전 Biographies of our time. 1988.
• 무지개 는 일곱 색 이어서 아름답다 A rainbow is beautiful because it has seven colors. 1989, ISBN 0-00-023823-6 .
• 우리들 의 조부님 Our grandfathers. 1990.
• 배반 의 끝 At the end of the betrayal. 1993, ISBN 89-320-0647-4 .

Novels

• 여자 의 강 The river of the woman. 1992.
• 회색 도시 Gray city. 1993, ISBN 89-12-06196-8 .
• 한라산 Hallasan. 1995. (multiple volumes)
• 잊지 못할 일들 은 너무 빨리 잊어 버린다 Forgetting unforgettable things too quickly. 1999, ISBN 89-418-0187-7 .
• 숲 의 왕국 Kingdom of the forest. 2012, ISBN 978-89-88653-53-1 .
• 낯선 숲 으로 난 길 Path to an unknown forest. 2012, ISBN 978-89-544-2821-7 .

Translations

German

• Short stories by Hyun Kil-Un. In: In the land of the morning calm. Poems and prose from South Korea. (= Drehpunkt- The Swiss literary magazine. No. 106). Lenos, 2000.
• Nail marks. Translated by Kim Hiyoul and Kirstin Grönitz. Edition Peperkorn, Thunum 2006.

English

• Dead Silence and Other Stories of the Jeju massacre. EastBridge, 2007.

French

• La Ville Grise. Editions Imago, 2013.

Awards

• 1985: 제 5 회 녹원 문학상 (Nokwon Literature Prize)
• 1990: 제 35 회 현대 문학상 (Modern Literature Prize)
• 1992: 대한민국 문학상 (Korean Literature Prize)

Web links

• Literature by and about Hyun Kil-un in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Naver 지식 백과: 현길언 , accessed February 24, 2014 (Korean)
2. ↑ Peperkorn: HYUN Kil-un , accessed on February 24, 2014 (German)
3. ↑ Author Database of LTI Korea: Hyun Gil-eon ( Memento of the original from September 21, 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 24, 2014 (English) 

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Korean. Hyun is the family name here, Kil-un is the first name.