Sim Hun
1901–1936
Biography
Sim Hun (1901–1936) was a Korean novelist, poet and playwright who also worked as a journalist and in the early film world. He came from a landowning family whose members had accommodated Japanese rule, but he took part in the March First Movement of 1919 against the colonial government. He was arrested, expelled from school and held in prison for several months. After his release he went into exile in China, studying in Shanghai and Hangzhou, and when he returned to Korea he worked as a reporter in Seoul.
He wrote for the Dong-a Ilbo and other newspapers, and he also worked on stage and in film. A collection of poems he wrote to mark a student independence protest in Gwangju in 1930 was banned by the colonial censors and only published in 1949. His best-known novel, Sangnoksu (The Evergreen Tree), was written for a newspaper campaign that sent educated young people into the countryside to teach, and it won a prize. He died of typhoid fever in 1936, nine years before Korea regained its independence.
Two of his books are on this site under their Korean titles: 직녀성 (Jiknyeoseong), a novel serialized in 1934 that is believed to be inspired by his first wife's life, and 상록수 (Sangnoksu), the novel behind the Sangrok movement that encouraged educated young people to work in the countryside. Both show his concern with ordinary people trying to build a better life under colonial rule.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
상록수
by 심훈
Park Dong-hyuk, a student, and Chae Yeong-sin, a young woman of fierce purpose, leave Seoul in the early 1930s to teach the poor children and farmers of the countryside to read and to organize. Sim Hun's prizewinning novel joins their quiet love to the hard work of the Rural…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.직녀성
by 심훈
In the years after 1894, Insuk, the daughter of a fallen official, is married as a child into a rich Seoul house, whose son has other ways, and she grows into a woman who must decide what a wife owes to a family that fails her. Sim Hun's newspaper novel follows the old marriage…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.