In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Introduction
  • Eunice Lee (bio)

Kim Myŏng-sun was modern Korea's first published woman writer. Her award-winning fiction debut in 1917, two full-length volumes of poetry, and vibrant oeuvre of more than 170 titles (including short stories, novels, poems, plays, essays, and translations) ushered in the first generation of sinyŏsŏng ("new woman") writers and creators including Na Hye-sŏk, Kim Ir-yŏp, and Kim Wŏn-ju. Kim Myŏng-sun was also a survivor of abuse and harassment. Her work has been marginalized from the canon, despite her literary versatility, her rigorous engagement with imperialistic and misogynistic mainstream narratives in colonial Chosŏn, and her indelible contributions to various genres of Korean writing.

Kim Myŏng-sun was born in 1896 as the daughter of Pyongyang bureaucrat Kim Hŭi-gyŏng and his concubine Sanwŏl. T'an-sil (Kim's childhood nickname, later her pen name) struggled with the demonization of her mother's kisaeng (courtesan) status, and hoped that her own academic success would provide a way out of social stigmatization.1 After graduating fourth place from Chinmyŏng Girls' School in 1912, Kim moved to Japan and matriculated to Kōjimachi Girls' School in 1914, but a traumatic [End Page 353] incident prevented her from completing her studies. In 1915, Kim was raped by a colonial officer. Newspapers in Tokyo and Seoul released sensationalistic reports of the incident, non-consensually disclosing the survivor's name, age, and hometown.2 Early encounters with misogynistic violence would inform Kim's feminist writings throughout her literary career.

In November 1917, Kim made her historical debut with "Suspicious Girl" ("Ŭisim ŭi sonyŏ"), a short story published in the magazine Youth (Ch'ŏngch'un, edited by Ch'oe Nam-sŏn), winning third place in a fiction contest judged by Yi Kwang-su.3 Kim thus became the first woman writer to debut in the modern tŭngdan system, i.e., make an official literary debut with a major journal acceptance and/or award. Kim followed "Suspicious Girl" with a series of yet more trailblazing firsts. In 1920, she joined the coterie of Creation (Ch'angjo) editors as the first Korean woman to join the masthead of a literary magazine. Her 1922 translation of Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Assignation" ("Sangbong") made her the first known English-to-Korean translator of Poe.4 In 1923, Kim's one-act play Stepchild (Ŭibutchasik) made her the nation's first published woman playwright.5

In 1925, Kim became the first Korean woman to publish a poetry collection. Her first book, The Fruit of Life (Saengmyŏng ŭi kwasil; Hansŏng Tosŏ Chusik Hoesa, 1925), features twenty-four poems, seven of which I have translated for this issue.6 "Will" ("Yuŏn"), Kim's most widely read poem and a forceful manifesto against systemic abuse, skillfully synthesizes the specific and the [End Page 354] universal—while naming ("Chosŏn") and apostrophizing ("you brutal place") the nation that has repeatedly misused and abused her femininity, Kim's speaker also testifies for "the next person born like" herself, using the intentional ambiguity of this "like[ness]" to include various oppressed identities and their intersections. It is this spirit of solidarity in "Will" that I aim to replicate when I translate "na kat'ŭn saram" using the gender-neutral singular "they" ("Abuse the next person […] Abuse them").

Identities, voices, and bodies are porous and morphing, both in "Will" and in other poems from The Fruit of Life. The dreamscapes in "Cleft" ("Punsin") and "The South" ("Nambang") merge the spiritual with the physical, the exterior with the interior, the fruit with the body ("Passing by a farm dripping with tangerines, / she wears no frills"), trauma ("eyes tearful") with desire and hope ("But a song drifts to her ear"). The brutally realistic parable of "A Fight" ("Ssaum") demonstrates Kim's fluency in various modes of storytelling including anticolonial and anti-capitalist allegory: "the furrows were tough / and his landlord a ferocious man."

Critic Nam Ŭn-hye observes that Kim weaves her poems together with an acute awareness of their intertextuality.7 The "Prayer" ("Kido"), "Dream" ("Kkum"), and "Sigh" ("T...

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