Yi Hyoseok
1907–1942
Biography
Yi Hyoseok (1907–1942) was a Korean writer of short stories, and one of the most admired prose stylists of the colonial period. He was born in Pyeongchang county in Gangwon province, in the mountainous north-east of the peninsula, and he studied English literature at Gyeongseong Imperial University in Seoul, graduating in 1930. For about ten days he worked in the censorship section of the colonial police administration, a job that his literary friends sharply criticized, and then he turned to teaching and writing. He wrote under the pen-name Gasan.
His first story to attract notice, City and Ghost, appeared in 1928. In those early years his fiction was openly political and sympathetic to socialism, concerned with poverty and with the lives of women forced into prostitution. In 1933 he helped found the Group of Nine, a circle of writers that pushed Korean fiction toward a more aesthetic and lyrical style. From 1934 he taught at Soongsil College in Pyongyang. His most famous story, The Buckwheat Season, appeared in 1936 and was filmed in 1967. He died of tubercular meningitis in 1942, aged thirty-five.
Two of his works are on this site under their Korean titles, 벽공무한 and 화분 (Pollen). Pollen, from 1939, is among the works critics have read as dealing with same-sex desire, and it shows how far his writing had moved from the political fiction of his early career.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
벽공무한
by 이효석
The novelist Mun Hun leaves Seoul on the Manchurian express, with a bouquet in his hand, for a journey that carries him into the cities of the north, the dance halls and cafes, and a tangle of love with several women. Yi Hyo-seok's novel of 1940 is a cosmopolitan story of…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.화분
by 이효석
In a house hidden behind green vines on the edge of Pyongyang, a household of women and young people lives out one season of desire, with a man who has the power to bind them and a taste for the pleasures of the city. Yi Hyo-seok's novel of 1939 is a lyrical tale of bodies and…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.