Li Mirok

Korean spelling
Hangeul	이미 륵
Hanja	李 彌勒
Revised Romanization	I Mireuk
McCune- Reischauer	Yi Mirŭk
Birth Name
Hangeul	이의경
Hanja	李 儀 景
Revised Romanization	I Ui-gyeong
McCune- Reischauer	Yi Ŭi-gyŏng
See also : Korean name

Li Mirok (pseudonym; civil: I Ui-gyeong; born March 8, 1899 in Haeju , today Hwanghae-namdo in North Korea ; † March 20, 1950 in Graefelfing near Munich ) was a Korean writer who was in exile in Germany around the middle wrote Korean short stories in German in the twentieth century.

Growing up next to four siblings as the youngest child and the only son of a landowner, he grew up in the strict Confucianist social order of old Korea. At the age of 4 he was introduced to the Chinese script and the Chinese classics by his father and from 1905 he attended the village school of the old Korean style ( sodang ). After moving to a Haidju elementary school in 1910 according to the educational concept of Japan, which had formally sealed the colonization of Korea that year, he was married to his wife Choe Mun-ho a year later at the age of 11.

In 1914 he resumed attending the “New School”, but had to break off his education due to an illness that would accompany him throughout his life. In order to still be able to pass the university entrance examination, he continued to study for 2 years by means of distance learning and was able to start studying medicine at the Kyungsung University of Medicine in Seoul in 1917 . During this time his two children were born: his son Myung-gi in 1917 and his daughter Myung-ju in 1919.

Li's participation in the 1919 protests against the Japanese occupation forces - he helped print and distribute leaflets - got him into trouble and, at the urging of his mother, fled to Shanghai , China that same year . There he participated in the provisional government in exile of Korea and prepared his further trip to Germany.

In May 1920 he reached his goal and continued his medical studies in Würzburg in 1922 and a year later in Heidelberg. However, his illness caught up with him in Germany and he had to interrupt his studies for a long time.

He was only able to resume his studies in Munich in 1925, but changed the subject and now studied zoology, botany and anthropology. In 1928 he submitted his doctoral thesis on the subject of “Regulatory phenomena in planar regeneration under abnormal conditions” and received his doctorate.

From 1931, Li published smaller texts, such as "At night in a Korean alley" in the magazine "Dame". He found support from the art historian Alfred Seyler , who became his patron, and moved to Graefelfing with him. In 1946 he published his autobiographical novel " The Yalu Flows ", which was translated into South Korea in 1959 and made him famous at once. Li took the Korean name "Mi-rok" of the Bodhisattva Maitreya in place of his maiden name Ui-gyeong for his writing activities .

Li devoted the last two years of his life to his work as a lecturer for Korean language, Chinese and Japanese literature and history at the East Asian Institute at the University of Munich. Li died on March 20, 1950 in Graefelfing; his grave can still be found in the Graefelfingen cemetery. Li burned large parts of his literary work shortly before his death and they were therefore not preserved for posterity.

Because of his commitment in Germany, Li is revered among his friends and supporters as an “ambassador between cultures” beyond death.

In the summer / autumn of 2008 a three-part TV series called “The Yalu Flows” was created, which tells Mirok Li's life again. The client is the South Korean television broadcaster SBS - in cooperation with Bayerischer Rundfunk, the executive production is Starmax. The Munich production company Naumann Film took over the organization for the scenes that were shot in Germany at original locations (Heidelberg, Münsterschwarzach Monastery, Munich). Directed by Jonghan Lee. Mirok Li is played by 3 actors: as a child by Min Woo Noh, as a young man (1920–1932) by Sung-Ho Choi and in the scenes up to his death (1933–1950) by Byok-Song Woo. November 2008 was named as the broadcast date in South Korea: three parts of one hour each.

Works

• The other dialect . Sungshin Women's University Press, Seoul 1984.
• Iyagi. Short Korean stories . EOS-Verlag, St. Ottilien 1996, ISBN 3-88096-300-2 .
• Japanese poetry . Müller & Kiepenheuer, Munich 1949.
• From the Yalu to the Isar. Narratives . Benedict-Press, Waegwan 1982.
• The Yalu flows . A youth in Korea . EOS-Verlag, St. Ottilien 1996, ISBN 3-88096-299-5 (reprint of the Munich 1946 edition).

Web links

• Li Mirok in the Bavarian literature portal (project of the Bavarian State Library )
• Dr. Mirok Li homepage
• Memorial page of the literary society Graefelfing for Mirok Li

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Korean. Li is the family name here, Mirok is the first name.