Paek Min-sŏk

Paek Min-sŏk
Hangeul	백민석
Revised Romanization	Baek Min-seok
McCune- Reischauer	Paek Min-sŏk
See also : Korean name

Paek Min-sŏk (* 1971 in Seoul , South Korea ) is a South Korean writer .

Life

Paek Min-sŏk was born in Seoul , South Korea in 1971 . He made his debut in 1995 when his short story My Beloved Candy (내가 사랑한 캔디) was published in a magazine. His works are representative of the prevailing aesthetic of Korean literature in the mid-1990s - so-called Bizarre Literature. This is in contrast to social norms and recognized systems and often depicts the strange and cruel in a humorous way. Paek's works are characterized by their high degree of fantasy and are full of bloody and cruel images. He often makes direct allusions to the bizarre, for example in his representative work The bizarre story of the cotton field (목화 밭 엽기 전). Because of this, Paek's works are classified as Bizarre Literature.

Most of his main characters are boys. Even his adult characters tend to behave like children. For example, the protagonist of Dead Owl Farm (죽은 올빼미 농장) is a thirty-year-old man who only talks to dolls. In these works the characters look for growth and development. The ultimate result, however, is usually far from being considered natural ripeness. With these characters fighting the tide, Paek criticizes the influence of power and questions what we call the norm.

In the anthology Der Laufbursche vom Landgut (장원 의 심부름꾼 소년) ghosts also appear again and again, but they are not the kind of ghosts that appear in fairy tales and fantasy novels. They represent our everyday reality, and that's where the real horror lies - growing up means becoming a member of a depraved society, which is why everyday adult-dominated reality is terrifying in itself.

In 2004 Paek announced that he would stop writing; since then he has stopped all writing activities.

Work

Korean

Novels

• 헤이 우리 소풍 간다 Hey we're having a picnic (1995)
• 내가 사랑한 캔디 My Beloved Candy (1996)
• 불쌍한 꼬마 한스 Poor little Hans (1998)
• 목화 밭 엽기 전 The bizarre story of the cotton field (2000)
• 죽은 올빼미 농장 The Dead Owl Farm (2003)
• 러셔 Rusher (2003)

stories

• 16 믿거 나 말거나 박물지 16 Stories from the Believe-It-Or-Not Museum (1997)
• 장원 의 심부름꾼 소년 The country man's errand boy (2001)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 네이버 인물 검색: 백민석 Retrieved June 11, 2014 (Korean)
2. ↑ Author Database of the LTI Korea: Baek Minseok ( Memento of the original from June 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed on June 11, 2014 
3. ↑ 다음 책: 백민석 , accessed on June 11, 2014 (English)

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Korean. Paek is the family name here, Min-sŏk is the first name.