User:Dckewon5131/서항석

Seo Hang-seok (March 18, 1900 – September 27, 1985. ) was a Korean theater artist. The pen name was Gyeongan. His domicile was Daegu.

Life
Born in Hongwon, Hamgyeongnam-do, he studied in Gyeongseong-bu and graduated from Jungang High School in 1918. He then moved to Japan and graduated from the Department of German Literature at the Imperial University of Tokyo in 1929. Since studying in Tokyo, he has participated in overseas literature schools and paid attention to the field of theater.

After graduating from Tokyo University, he returned to Korea and immediately joined the Dong-A Ilbo, and served as the head of the arts department through the local government. Encouraged by the success of the theater and film exhibition held in 1931 with Yoon Baek-nam and Hong Hae-sung, he organized the Drama Arts Research Association that year and entered the new drama movement in earnest. Seo Hang-seok, who majored in German literature, mainly translated and introduced German plays in the organization, which involved a large number of overseas literary groups, and also worked as a theater critic.

In 1937, he directed "Resurrection" of the original work of Lev Tolstoy with the 17th performance of the Drama Arts Research Society, which was criticized for losing the founding spirit of the drama seeking pure drama and focusing on box office success. With this opportunity, he resigned from his position as a reporter for the Dong-A Ilbo and entered theater and film in earnest. Since the theater changed to the theater company and was dissolved in 1939, he has mainly made efforts to direct musical plays. The opera "Gyeonwoo Jiknyeo" was performed during this period.

At the end of the Japanese colonial period, he served as a director of the Joseon Theater Culture Association, Jujube treea, pro-Japanese play written by Yoo Chi-jin in 1942, and submitted it to the first theater competition sponsored by the Japanese Government-General.

It was included in the theater/film category of the list of prospective pro-Japanese biographical dictionaries selected by the Institute for Ethnic Affairs in 2008, and in the 705 pro-Japanese anti-national activities released by the Committee on the Truth of Pro-Japanese Anti-National Act in 2009.

However, during the Pacific War, he was mainly involved in the activities of a musical troupe that adapted and raised Korean subjects, so his pro-Japanese activities were relatively less prominent among the people who were considered pro-Japanese in the field of theater.

Even after Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule, he performed the opera "Chunhui," while performing the opera "The Thirty-eight Sons of the enemy", "The Fatherland", and "Emile Bell". He served as the director of the National Theater of Korea and the chairman of the National Gugak Center. He was also awarded the Order of Goethe by the German government for translating "Faust" and staging it at the National Theatre in the 1960s. He served as a professor of theater at Seorabeol University of Arts and a lifelong member of the Korean Academy of Arts. He was awarded the Order of National Foundation Cultural Merit in 1962 and the Moran Medal of National Merit in 1973.