Bang Hyeon-seok

This is a Korean name; the family name is Bang.
Bang Hyeon-seok
Born (1961-10-03) October 3, 1961
Ulsan
Language Korean
Nationality South Korean
Ethnicity Korean
Citizenship South Korean
Bang Hyeon-seok
Hangul 방현석
Revised Romanization Bang Hyeonseok
McCune–Reischauer Pang Hyŏnsŏk

Bang Hyeon-seok is a Korean writer[1]

Life

Bang was born in 1961 in Ulsan Korea,[2] and has served as the president of Society of Young Writers For Understanding Vietnam, and he continues to devote much of his creative energy to exploring Vietnam’s troubled past.[3] His debut was in 1988 with "The Practice."[4] Bang enrolled in the Chung-Ang University's Department of Creative writing in 1980 and later, under an assumed identity, worked as a laborer in Incheon. After leaving the factory in 1994 Bang collected history and information on democratic labor unions, a collection that informed some of his work including Off to Battle a Dawn.[5] Bang has worked as a creative writing professor at Chung-Ang University, on the editorial board of Silcheonmunhak, and as the editor-in-chief of Asia: Magazine of Asian Literature.

Work

Bang Hyeon-seok's first work was The First Step Forward which focused on factory laborers and their struggle to save union. Since that debut, Bang has continued to write “labor fiction.” Having worked as a laborer and a factory worker during the 1980s and 1990s, Bang writes about the hardships of the laborers in a post-capitalist society with sympathy and insight that he acquired firsthand.[6] “No matter what, literature is life and nothing else,” Bang has declared, “and the fulcrum of my life will continue to be literature. I vow to continue to write about the world I dream of, in the manner and style I choose.” After the mid-1990s, Bang published several works that depict the dark period of military dictatorship.[7] For Ten Years focuses on the yushin dictatorship under Park Chung Hee and Your Left Side is a portrait of the dictatorship under Chun Doo Hwan who came into power through the violent suppression of May 18th Democratic Uprising in Gwangju. Bang, however, is not only a historical author. His A Form of Existence is an attempt to find “a solution through literature” to the problematic relationship between Vietnam and Korea, engendered by Korea’s participation in Vietnam War, and illuminates not just the past, but the present as well as the future of the two countries’ relationship.[8]

Awards

Works in Translation

Works in Korean (Partial)

Short Story Collections

Novels

Essay Collections

References

  1. " 방현석" biographical PDF available at LTI Korea Library or online at: "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2013-09-21. Retrieved 2013-09-03.
  2. "Naver Search". naver.com. Naver. Retrieved 13 December 2013.
  3. "Ma Jonggi" LTI Korea Datasheet available at LTI Korea Library or online at: "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2013-09-21. Retrieved 2013-09-03.
  4. "Naver Search". naver.com. Naver. Retrieved 13 December 2013.
  5. 1 2 3 Bang Hyeon-seok (2013). "Bang Hyeon-Seok". Off to Battle at Dawn. Seoul: ASIA Publishers. pp. 235–9. ISBN 978-89-94006-78-9.
  6. Korean Writers The Novelists. Minumsa Press. 2005. p. 16.
  7. Korean Writers The Novelists. Minumsa Press. 2005. p. 16.
  8. Korean Writers The Novelists. Minumsa Press. 2005. p. 17.
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