Critic Kim Byeong-ik, living proof of modern literary history
‘100 Years of Spring Literary Contest’ has been judged for over 20 years… Han Kang’s selection of winning works helps him take his first steps as a novelist
“The status of Korean literature has been raised with the Nobel Prize.”
Even during the Yushin era, hidden books were published… “We will overcome any strong repressive policy.”
《“New Year Literary Competition Recruitment… We are looking for works from general emerging writers, so please submit a lot so that we can create a flower garden that is the icing on the cake.” This is Korea’s first ‘New Year Literary Contest’ announcement published in the January 2, 1925 issue of Dong-A Ilbo. The person who wrote this announcement, saying, “I will try to make it faithful and worthwhile,” probably did not know. The Spring Literary Festival will continue for 100 years and become the source of nourishment for a large mountain and flower garden called the Korean literary world. In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Dong-A Ilbo New Year’s Literary Festival, we met with literary critic Kim Byeong-ik (87, standing advisor for Literature and Intelligence), who can be said to be a ‘living witness’ of our modern literary history, at his home in Goyang-si, Gyeonggi-do on the 8th to reflect on the New Year’s Literary Festival and the power of literature.》
“At a time when it was difficult for our literature to sustain itself after experiencing colonial rule and the Korean War, the Spring Literary Festival was a channel to accommodate the desire for literature.”
Critic Kim summed up the role of the Spring Literary Festival in Korean history in one word: He personally participated in the Spring Literary Festival preliminaries when he was a reporter for the Dong-A Ilbo’s culture department (1965-1975), and said that the ‘100 Years of Spring Literary Festival’ was especially special. “With thousands of poems coming in and 700 to 800 novels coming in, (the Ministry of Culture) was busy in December.”
After quitting his job as a journalist to work as a full-time literary critic, he served as a judge for the spring literary contest for more than 20 years. Critic Kim explained, “Our society needed writers, and there were many people who wanted to become writers, but in the past, there was no way to objectively recognize them,” and “the Spring Literary Festival created that.”
Critic Kim also has a connection with writer Han Kang, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature last year, through the Spring Literary Contest. In 1994, as a judge for the Seoul Shinmun Spring Literary Contest, he selected a writer’s ‘Red Anchor’ as the winning work, which helped him take his first steps as a novelist. Critic Kim said, “Han Kang’s winning the Nobel Prize means that Korean literature’s share in world literature has increased and its status has risen.”
Critic Kim, born in 1938, spoke Japanese at school until the first semester of his first year at Kookmin School (today’s elementary school). I experienced liberation during summer vacation, the Korean War in my sixth year, and the April 19 Revolution in my fourth year of college. He said, “Our generation’s childhood passed amidst historical fault lines,” and “When we were liberated and began to be educated in Korean, we were introduced to culture through Korean novels written during the colonial era.” “When the country is in trouble, the last thing left is a text message. We barely managed to survive during the colonial era. “Cultural fighters are just as important as independence fighters.”
Together with Kim Hyeon, Kim Chi-soo, and Kim Ju-yeon, he was called ‘4K’ and founded the quarterly magazine ‘Literature and Intelligence’ in 1970 and led the literary world. “We decided whether or not to publish the magazine in a very democratic way. “Not a single person was allowed to object, and the atmosphere was very lively and free.”
Critic Kim also told an anecdote about the literary world during the authoritarian era. “Jo Se-hee’s series of novels, ‘The Little Ball Launched by a Dwarf’, is an extremely resistant work, but it was written in a lyrical style, so the censorship authorities ‘blinked’ and missed it. “I saw it later (and found out), but at that time it was already so big (meaning ‘widely read’) that I couldn’t do anything about it because I thought it would be even more difficult if I didn’t.”
I also remembered that when pre-censorship of publications was carried out in the 1970s and 1980s, publishers edited passages in advance to publish several books. He laughed, saying, “During the Yushin era, there were a lot of sharp expressions that I really couldn’t stand and wanted to embrace, but I was really good at changing the expressions slightly while respecting the content.”
Critic Kim recalled, “We have always lived in an era where we created ‘enemies’ and pushed them away and hated them,” and added, “In the past, ‘enemies’ were regarded as beings who should be socially expelled.”
“Even during the Yushin era, policies to suppress the press and literary writing were implemented, but with the publication of hidden books, the policy of suppressing freedom of publishing was nullified. Nowadays, replication is possible. “No matter how strong the repressive policy is, we will overcome it.”
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