Kang Yong-hŭl

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Kang Yong-hŭl
Hangeul	강용흘
Hanja	姜 鏞 訖
Revised Romanization	Gang Yong-howl
McCune- Reischauer	Kang Yonghl
See also : Korean name

Kang Yong-hŭl or Kang Younghill (born May 10, 1898 in Hongwŏn , Hamgyŏng-namdo , † December 2, 1972 in Florida ) is a Korean-American writer .

Life

Kang graduated from Yŏngsaeng Middle School. After the independence movement of March 1, 1919, he moved to the United States via China. He studied medicine at Boston University and graduated from Harvard University in English and American literature . He began writing while working as an editor for the Great Britain Encyclopedia .

His autobiographical first work Das Grasdach (The Grass Roof [Ch'odang], 1931) is divided into two parts and 24 chapters. Part 1 tells of the protagonist's youth in Korea up to the annexation by Japan in 1910. In part 2, the protagonist, now a student of Western literature, takes part in the independence movement of March 1st. On the run from the police, he immigrates to America with the help of a missionary. The work was published in the United States in 1931 by Charles Scribner's Sons and has since been translated into more than ten languages, including German and French, but only the first part appeared in Korean in 1947. This English-written novel of a Korean Author, set in Korea, problematizes the definition of Korean literature, a hotly debated topic in the August 1936 issue of Samcheolli magazine .

After his debut as a novelist, he continued his academic research at universities in Rome , Munich and Paris and taught literature at the University of New York, among others . His published works include the works Fröhlicher Wald (Happy Grove [Haengbokhan Sup]) and From East to West (East goes West [ 동양인 이 본 서양 ]), as well as the play Mord im Königshaus (Murder in the Royal House [ 왕실 에서 의 살인 ]). He also translated various works into English , partly together with his wife Francis E. Keely . After the liberation, he returned to Korea and worked as a professor at the College of Arts and Sciences at Seoul National University .

Hailed by the author Pearl S. Buck as one of the Supreme intellects of the East , Kang has received various prizes and awards, including the Guggenheim Scholarship, the New School's Louis S. Weiss Memorial Prize for Andragogy , the French Halperine Kaminsky Prize and an honorary doctorate for literature at Korea University .

He died in 1972 at his home on Satellite Beach, Florida.

Work

Korean

• 초당 The grass roof Hyewon (1994)

English (selection)

• Translations of Oriental Poetry (1929)
• The Grass Roof (1931)
• The Happy Grove (1933)
• East Goes West , Kaya Press (1965)

Translations

German

• The grass roof , List (1933)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 두산 백과: 강용흘 . Retrieved January 27, 2014 (Korean).
2. ↑ 한국 민족 문화 대백과: 강용흘 . Retrieved January 27, 2014 (Korean).
3. ↑ Author Database of LTI Korea: Kang Yongheul ( 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. . Retrieved January 27, 2014. 

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Korean. Kang is the family name here, Yong-hŭl is the first name.