Oh Jung-hee (author)

Oh boy-hee
Hangeul	오정희
Hanja	吳 貞 姬
Revised Romanization	Oh Jeong-hui
McCune- Reischauer	O Chŏnghŭi
See also : Korean name

Oh Jung-hee (born November 9, 1947 in Seoul ) is a South Korean author .

Life

Oh Jung-hee was born in Seoul in 1947. She was the fifth child of a total of four daughters and four sons. Because of the Korean War , Haeju's family had to flee to Seoul in the North Korean province of South Hwanghae and from Seoul to Hongju in Ch'ungch'ŏng province . After living as a refugee for five years, the family moved to Inch'ŏn in 1955 and moved back to Seoul in 1959 when their father was transferred. The author processed the experiences on the run and in the city of Inch'ŏn in My Childhood Court and Chinese Street .

From 1960 she attended Ehwa Middle School. Due to retarded body growth, she was the smallest student in her year. From 1963 she attended the Ehwa high school. In 1966 she began her studies at Sorabol University with a major in literature. In 1968 the author received the JoongAng Ilbo literary prize for her story The Woman in the Toy Store and began her writing career. In her first interview, she amazed the interviewer by saying that the name was not so important and that she therefore wanted to publish her work as anonymously as possible; besides, she would never write stories for anyone else. After her debut, she worked for various publishers and magazines while continuing to write. In 1974 she married and three years later she had a son. In the same year she published her first anthology, Der Fluss des Feuers . A year later, she and her husband, who was employed as a research assistant at Kangwon University, moved to Ch'unch'ŏn , where she still lives today. In 1979 she received the Yi Sang Literature Prize and is now one of the most important authors in South Korea. Her works mainly deal with female main characters and their families. They were u. a. Translated into English, French and German.

Works

Korean

Volumes of stories

• 불의 강 ( The River of Fire ) Seoul: Munhak-kwa chisŏngsa, 1977
• 유년 의 뚤 ( My childhood courtyard ) Seoul: Munhak-kwa chisŏngsa, 1981
• 동경 ( Longing ) Seoul: Tongsŏ munhwa, 1983
• 바람 의 넋 ( The Soul of the Wind ) Seoul: Munhak-kwa chisŏngsa, 1986
• 불꽃 놀이 ( Fireworks ) Seoul: Munhak-kwa chisŏngsa, 1995

Novels

• 새 ( Birds ) Seoul: Munhak-kwa chisŏngsa, 1996

fairy tale

Songi, open the window, it's morning . Seoul: Hanyang 1993

Translations

German

• Copper mirror , Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann 1986
• To be very quiet in: die horen , magazine for literature, art and criticism, 41st vol., 4/96
• The soul of the wind. Stories. Translated from the Korean by Miy-He Kim and Sylvia Bräsel. Edition Peperkorn, Göttingen 1998, ISBN 3-929181-16-9
• My childhood courtyard. Stories. Translated from the Korean by Kyung-He Brixel and Christa Wittermann. Edition Peperkorn, Thunum 2001, ISBN 3-929181-35-5
• My childhood courtyard . Contained in: Anja K. Haftmann (Ed.), Collected Lights . Pendragon, Bielefeld 2002, ISBN 3-934872-34-4
• The Chinese street . Contained in: Helga Picht, Heidi Kang (ed.), At the end of time . Pendragon, Bielefeld 1999, ISBN 3-929096-84-6
• Birds. Novel. Translated and with an afterword by Edeltrud Kim and Kim Sun-Hi. Pendragon, Bielefeld 2002, ISBN 3-934872-26-3 ; Unionsverlag, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-293-20329-9
• The memorial stone. Stories. Translated and with an afterword by Kim Sun-Hi and Edeltrud Kim. Pendragon, Bielefeld 2006, ISBN 3-86532-036-8

English

• Chinatown Seoul: Jimoondang Publishing Company 2003
• The Old Well: The Stories of Oh Jung-Hee Emerson College, 2000
• WAYFARER Women in Translation, 1997
• Words of Farewell Sealpress, 1989

Awards

• 1979: Yi Sang Literature Prize
• 1982: Tongin Literature Prize
• 1996: O-Yŏng-su Literature Prize
• 1996: Tongsŏ Literature Prize
• 2003: LiBeraturpreis

Web links

• Literature by and about Oh Jung-hee in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Naver: People: 오정희 , accessed July 29, 2013 (Korean).
2. ↑ LTI Korea: 문인 DB: Oh Jung-hee ( Memento of the original from November 11, 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 July 15, 2013 (Korean). 
3. ↑ LTI Korea: Author Database: Oh Jung-hee ( Memento of the original from November 3, 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 July 27, 2013. 
4. ^ Lectors' Association Korea: German Literature Prize for a novel from Korea . Retrieved January 21, 2014 (Korean).

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Korean. Oh is the family name here, Jung-hee is the first name.