Yang Gui-yes

Yang Gui-yes
Hangeul	양귀자
Hanja	梁貴子
Revised Romanization	Yang Gwi-ja
McCune- Reischauer	Yang Kwija
See also : Korean name

Yang Gui-ja (born July 17, 1955 in Chŏnju in North Chŏlla Province ) is a South Korean writer.

Life

Yang Gui-ja was born in 1955 as the second youngest of seven siblings. She had five older brothers and a younger sister. "In the village they called us the 'blessed by sons'. Five strong boys in a row and then two daughters as if called." (from The Summit Han'gyeryŏng ).

In 1960 the father died, which is why the eldest brother had to take on the job of providing for the extended family. Her guilt towards her eldest brother is expressed in the short story The Summit Han'gyeryŏng . The critic Hong Chŏng-sŏn pointed out that the stories of Yang Gui-ja convey a feeling of deep shame in front of her life as well as a desire for reparation towards the eldest brother.

From 1967 onwards, Yang Gui-ja attended middle school, spent most of his time in the library, and read a lot. In 1970 she went to high school, took part in various literary competitions and began to write ambitiously. In 1974 she was selected as a scholarship holder to study literature at Wongwang University in Iksan . After graduating in 1978, she worked as a Korean teacher at the Honam High School in Chŏngŭp City . But after a month she quit and applied to Kŭmsang High School on a small island. In May 1980, she made her debut with the two stories New Beginning Morning and The Closed Door in the literary magazine Literatur und Denk (Munhak sasang). In 1980 she gave up teaching, got married and moved to the Seoul suburb of Wonmidong . From 1981 she wrote short stories and finally published her first anthology in 1985 and in 1987 The People of Wonmidong . The series stories received a great response, and Yang Gui-ja became one of the most representative authors of the 1980s. After this success she published The Path to Ch'ŏnmach'ong . During this productive period, she left Wonmidong, where she had lived for ten years, and moved to Kugidong , Seoul. Your novel I desire what is forbidden to me led to the feminism controversy and was made into a film. She received the Yi Sang Literature Prize for the story The Hidden Flower , which she published that same year . In 1993 she published the third anthology Also grief becomes strength . After that, she focused on novels. She stressed the need to shift writers' awareness to respond to the changing times and called for direct communication with readers. She also took the position that literature should drop the elitist attitude and regain its real substance, the narrative and the emotion. The novel Thousand Years of Love , published in 1995 , became a bestseller , as was the novel The Contradiction (1998) a great public success.

Work

Volumes of stories

• 귀머거리 새 ( The Dove Bird ) Minŭm, 1985.
• 원미동 사람들 ( The people of Wonmidong ) Munhak-kwa chisŏngsa, 1987.
• 슬픔 도 힘 이 된다 ( Even mourning becomes strength ) Munhak-kwa chisŏngsa, 1993.

Novels

• 희망 ( Hope ) Sallim, 1990.
• 나는 소망 한다 내게 금지 된 것을 ( I desire what is forbidden to me ) Sallim, 1992.
• 천년 의 사랑 ( Millennial Love ) Sallim, 1995.
• 모순 ( The Contradiction ) Sallim, 1998.

Translations

German

• The people of Wonmidong Bielefeld: Pendragon, 2000 ISBN 978-3929096750 .
• Hope St. Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 2002 ISBN 3830671261 .

English

• A distant and Beautiful place Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003.
• Contraditions Cornell Univ. East Asia Program, 2005.
• Rust Seoul: Jimoondang Publishing Company.

Awards

• 1999 - Literature Prize of the 21st Century
• 1996 - Prize for Contemporary Literature
• 1992 - Yi Sang Literature Prize
• 1988 - Yu-Chu-hyŏn Literature Prize
• 1978 - Award for young authors from Munhak sasang magazine

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 네이버 인물 검색: 양귀자 Retrieved January 21, 2014 (Korean)
2. ↑ LTI Korea: Author Database: Yang Gui-ja ( Memento of November 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on July 10, 2013 (Korean).
3. ↑ Korean Author Database: Author Database: Yang Gui-ja ( Memento of November 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on July 10, 2013 (English).

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Korean. Yang is the family name here, Gui-ja is the first name.