User:Ccmontgom/Kim Yeon-su

Kim Yeon-su is at present overshadowed by big literary names such as Hwang Sok-yong, Yi Mun-yol, and Ko Un, but he certainly is at the top of the list for the subsequent generation of prominent writers in Korean literature. He was born in 1970, in Gimcheon, a medium-sized city located halfway between the capital city Seoul and Korea’s second largest city Busan. He was an English major in college and worked for a short time as a reporter for a woman’s magazine. He made his literary debut as a poet in 1993, and he published a novel the following year. He was initially a poet, but it is difficult to conclude what kind of influence this had on him. At any rate, in 2001, he began to garner recognition with a contentious full-length novel Goodbye, Mr. Yi Sang, for which he received the Dongsuh Literary Award. In fact, Kim went on to win all the major Korean literary prizes in the first decade of the 21st century. He received the Dongin Literary Award with his evidently autobiographical novel, When Still a Child, and the Daesan Literary Award in 2005 with I Am a Ghostwriter, which has come to characterize Kim’s writing style. In 2007, he was the recipient of Hwang Sun-won Literary Award for “The Comedian Who Went to the Moon,” and in 2009 he won the Yi Sang Literary Prize for his short story “Five Pleasures for Those Who Take Walks.” In spite of his splendid literary accomplishments, it looked as though Kim could not overcome the common fate of an artist; that is to say, notwithstanding lavish critical praise, he was viewed as a writer whose books sold in relatively small numbers. Then last year something major happened to him. World’s End Girlfriend, published in September, sold 40,000 copies within a short period of its publication.


 * http://www.list.or.kr/articles/article_view.htm?Div1=9&Div2=&Idx=368