“Even while battling colon cancer, I was struggling to renovate the ‘square’”

2024-07-18 07:17:45

Choi In-Hoon’s 6th anniversary… His son remembers his father
“When I write ‘Hwadu’, I don’t go out of the house for a year.
“After the internet bookstore opened, I read the reviews carefully.”
Memorial documentary to be released at debate today

The writer of ‘The Square’, Choi In-hoon, will be celebrating his 6th anniversary of death on the 23rd. The writer carrying his son, Yoon-goo, on his shoulders. His wife, Won Young-hee, is smiling while looking at her son. The photo below is the writer’s handwriting that remains in the Mokpo High School graduation anthology. Courtesy of Choi Yoon-goo

Ahead of the 6th anniversary of the death of author Choi In-hoon, who wrote ‘The Square’ (23rd), a discussion will be held at 2:30 PM on the 18th. It will be titled ‘Memories of the 20th Century and Topics of the 21st Century’ at Sogang University’s Gabriel Hall in Mapo-gu, Seoul. The documentary commemorating the author, ‘Choi In-hoon, the Book of the Times’, will be screened for the first time. Through a telephone interview with Choi’s son, Yoon-goo, we will convey a little-known side of the author ahead of time.

Author Choi In-hoon loved animation. He especially loved ‘The Dog of Flanders’. It is said that he rushed home right after finishing his lecture at Seoul Institute of the Arts so as not to miss the final episode of this animation that was airing on TV in the 1980s. The middle-aged author sat in front of the TV with his son, who was in middle school at the time. It is said that tears welled up in the author’s eyes when the male protagonist Nero died tragically.

The writer in his later years was battling colon cancer. Even during that time, he said he was thinking about revising ‘Gwangjang’. He was so exhausted that he could only exchange glances or make short conversations, but he wanted to improve the perfection of ‘Gwangjang’ until the very end. The scene where the main character Lee Myeong-jun tortures his friend Tae-sik was supposed to be a ‘dream’, and he was worried about changing it to ‘reality’. However, after much thought, the writer decided not to change it.

When he was writing, he was so focused that he forgot to sleep or eat. Rather than writing like he was exercising at the same time every day, he was the type to be caught up in his thoughts and then pick up the pen and write when he felt it was time to write. That is why he is said to have hardly left the house for almost a year when he was writing ‘Hwadu’, which is considered his masterpiece along with ‘Gwangjang’.

Choi In-hoon was curious about the opinions of ordinary readers. After the Internet bookstore was created, he asked his son to print out the readers’ reviews and read them carefully. The author said he was especially happy to hear that “The Square” was not just accepted as an old novel about the Korean War, but was being reinterpreted as a kind of coming-of-age novel for young readers.

The documentary to be revealed at the discussion on the 18th contains the story of author Choi’s writing of ‘Gwangjang’, the situation at the time of the publication of ‘Saebyeok’ magazine, and the behind-the-scenes story. Professor Woo Chan-je of Sogang University’s Department of Korean Language and Literature will moderate the discussion, and Professor Kim Sang-hwan of Seoul National University’s Department of Philosophy and Professor Yeon Nam-gyeong of Ewha Womans University’s Department of Korean Language and Literature will participate in the lectures and discussion.

Reporter Kim So-min [email protected]

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2024-07-18 07:17:45