Some Important Authors and Works of Korean Literature

Fiction

The beginning of classical fiction is marked by New Stories from Golden Turtle Mountain written by Kim Si-seup (1435-1493). This work contains five stories in the tradition of Chinese wonder tales and includes tales about love affairs between humans and ghosts as well as dream journeys to underworld or a dragon palace in the sea or rivers. Although influenced by the Chinese tradition, these stories are set in historically significate places of Korea and depict Korean culture.

The most famous Korean novel is the Tale of Hong Gil-Dong by Heo Gyun (d. 1618). This novel is a fictionalized account of a real thief and rebel from the 1400s. The story is told in a three-part structure, recounting (1) Hong’s youth, (2) his time as head of a robber gang, and (3) his time as king of an island—this last section is written as a utopia. Heo uses the novel as social criticism, such as critiquing the policy that sons born to concubines were not eligible for either military or civil service. The story remains extremely popular in Korea to the present day. (Read more about the author in the “Literary Criticism” section below.)

Another very popular work is The Cloud Dream of the Nine by Kim Man-jung (1637-1692). Kim was an important Neo-Confucian scholar, and it is thought that he wrote his novel during one of his exiles from the imperial court. The novel is set in the Chinese Tang Dynasty and follows the story of a Buddhist monk who, because of lustful desires for eight fairies, is punished to be reborn as what can only be described as the ideal Confucian man. He rises from poverty through the ranks of the Tang government. He marries all eight of the fairies, who all have been reincarnated as women. In the end he overcomes his desires and awakens to realize it had all been a dream. In addition to the important Buddhist concepts and themes, this novel contains Confucian social criticism, especially of the king who had exiled the author.

Other Literature

One of the most important Korean anthologies of literature is the Selections of Refined Literature of Korea compiled in 1478. It covers the late Three Kingdoms Period (300-668) to early Joseon (1392-1897) and contains some 5000 works by almost 600 literati.

Only two chapters are extant of the Lives of Eminent Korean Monks (1215), which was written by the Buddhist monk Gakhun (dates unknown). These two chapters cover some 500 years and the lives of over 20 monks. In addition, it details the establishment of Buddhism in Korea.

Another important Buddhist work is the anthology Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms (c .1285), which was written by the Zen Buddhist monk, Iryon. Memorabilia collected myths, legends, and stories mainly from the Three Kingdoms Period, but also from other periods as well. It had a significant influence on later popular fiction.

Literary Criticism

Buddhism was the official state religion of the Goryeo Dynasty (918-1392) and contributed greatly to Goryeo literature. It was during this time that the idea of teaching theology and moral behavior through storytelling and writing was common.

By the late Goryeo period the Chinese civil service examination was adopted and this created a groundswell of candidates trained in classical Chinese writing, especially poetry. Similarly important in the late Goryeo was the influence of the Chinese Ancient Prose Movement and the idea of ancient Chinese texts serving as models for good writing. Along with this influence, literati began to discuss composition, rhetoric, and the value of poetry. Two particularly important ideas emerge from the discourse of this period: 1) a concern with language and writing in Chinese and 2) a debate between form and creativity.

Central to this debate was the “Eminent Assembly in the Bamboo Grove,” a group of literati who were important to the creation of literary criticism in Korea as they debated literary theory and artistic creation. One important member of this group was Yi Kyubo (1168–1241). Yi believed poetry should respond to the real world and to the demands of the time rather than simply imitating the ancients. He emphasized creativity without entirely dismissing form.

Later the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1897) established Neo-Confucianism as the state ideology. The overriding meaning was that literature should guide one both morally and socially. This eventually led to an argument over individual creativity versus established tradition. Scholars began to study and debate the importance of the sources of texts, the author’s relation to a text, and the importance of language.

Two literati can be said to represent the values in literature of this time. The first is Yi Saek (1328-1396), who studied in China and was very important in bringing Neo-Confucianism to Korea. Unlike some others, however, he didn’t reject Buddhism but instead sought for the co-existence of Confucianism, Buddhism (and Daoism).

The second was Jeong Do-jeon (1342-1398), a contemporary of Yi Saek. Jeong is known foremost because he wrote a code of laws that became Joseon’s constitution. He also was very Neo-Confucian in his ideas towards literature: literature is for perfecting virtue. In other words, this is the idea that one is born with an inner morality that must be cultivated, and literature is one of the important means through which one can cultivate virtue. Therefore, proper literature brings about proper order in society.

The Japanese invasion of 1592–97 demarcates the earlier Joseon and later Joseon. In the late Joseon, while some literati re-emphasized Confucian values of family, state, and the great kings of the past, others championed writing as an expression of emotion or intent of the heart and the idea that it can evoke an echo in the reader.

Heo Gyun (1569-1618) is another of the literati who can be considered as representing the new ideas that emerged in the later Joseon. Heo sought to promote a society that was not constrained by the rigid ideas of Neo-Confucianism. Heo felt that poetry was the truest expression of feelings, and he criticized imitating classical Chinese and promoted vernacular Korean. Heo further argued that each period in history has unique literary trends and writers should write from their own experience rather than copying the past. In this latter idea Heo can be thought of as building on Yi Kyubo’s ideas. He is most famous for potentially being the author of the novel Hong Gildong. Heo was exiled and eventually executed for his ideas.

A generation later, Kim Man-jung (1635-1720) extended discussions of literary criticism to vernacular Hangul writings and started a shift in literary criticism away from classical Chinese to native Korean literature. He is also author of The Cloud Dream of the Nine.

Around the time of Kim’s writing another influential literary school appeared, the Practical Learning School. They attacked Neo-Confucianism and promoted a practical approach to governing including social reform. Many of those associated with this school also identified as students of Western thought and technology.

Seongho Yi Ik (1681-1763) was one important figure of this new movement. One of Yi Ik’s writings, Introductory Essays on Songs from Everyday Life, discussed the views of the Practical Learning School. According to Yi, everyday experience was to be promoted rather than imitating models of the past, and therefore literature must reflect the many ways of life both now and in the past. He felt that the focus of literature should be on understanding society and the best way to understand society was to understand the love between men and women.

In the late 1700s there also emerged the Wihangin literary movement. The poets of this movement sought to write with greater realism and individuality by rejecting ancient Chinese models. They sought to promote instead the sincerity and natural expression of the common people and they referred to their poetry as “poems of the people.”