“The Darkroom of the Map” (1931), Yi Sang’s first Korean short story, is often considered to be his most difficult work. As the text opens, we are led into the labyrinthine mind of an insomniac named “Ri Sang,” but the prose is extremely experimental, even by Yi Sang’s iconoclastic standards. Most notably, the use of pronouns is highly ambiguous throughout. As a result, the narrator, the character Ri Sang, and his friend “K” often become impossible to distinguish. A sentence might begin with the narrator speaking, but by the end, the apparent words of the narrator have become Ri Sang’s thoughts.
Yi Ik-sang’s “The Banished” tells the sad tale of how the tenant farmer Deukchun and his wife come to experience ever-increasing displacement and degradation in their search for a better life. Although poor, Deukchun prides himself on his intelligence and his wife’s beauty. The couple’s desire to escape from their dire poverty leads them away from their small country hometown, to another farming village, then finally to a bustling town. The couple finds, however, that a series of hardships await them instead. Depicting in detail the experiences of dispossession, “The Banished” serves as an example of the literature coming out of the early stages of the proletarian literature movement in colonial Korea.
Myeongho and his wife Hyejeong are intellectuals who have chosen to leave behind their lives in the big city and live close to the earth in the countryside. Yet things do not work out as neatly as they had hoped; Myeongho lacks the motivation to begin farming, and Hyejeong becomes more frustrated with her husband as the days go by. When they finally walk barefoot on the rich, dark soil and put their hands to their tools, they feel a joy they have never felt before. Yet the two continue to struggle with the choices they have made for their lives. Yi Ik-sang’s portrait of this young couple breathes life into a depiction of a common contradiction of early Korean history: the disconnect between the intellectuals and the lives of the peasants they held up as a pure ideal.
Yi T’aejun was one of twentieth-century Korea’s true masters of the short story—and a man who in 1946 stunned his contemporaries by moving to the Soviet-occupied northern zone of his country. In South Korea, where he is known today as “one who went north,” Yi’s work was banned until 1988. His momentous decision did not lead him to a safe haven, however: though initially welcomed into the literary establishment, North Korea sent him into internal exile in the 1950s, and little is known of his fate. Dust and Other Stories offers a selection of Yi’s stories across time and place, showcasing a superb stylist caught up in the midst of his era’s most urgent ideological and aesthetic divides. This collection unites his earlier modernist masterpieces from the colonial era with his little-known work penned during North Korea’s founding years, offering a rare glimpse into the making—and crossing—of the border between south and north. During the turbulent final years of Japanese rule, Yi’s elegant yet subdued stories championed both his native tongue and the belief in the capacity of art. In the heavily politicized environment of the North, his later works maintain a faith in the art of storytelling and a concern for the disappearance of customs in the throes of modernization. Throughout both eras, Yi focused on ordinary people: old men struggling to understand a changing world, lovers meeting up among ancient ruins, a lively widow targeted by a literacy campaign, a bourgeois couple trying to sustain themselves during the war by breeding rabbits, and more. Magnificently translated by Janet Poole, Yi’s work bears witness to global turmoil with a melancholic sense of enduring beauty.
Yi T'aejun was a prolific and influential writer of colonial Korea, and an acknowledged master of the short story and essay. Born in northern Korea in 1904, Yi T'aejun settled in Seoul after a restless youth that included several years of study in Japan. In 1946, he moved to Soviet-occupied North Korea, but was caught up in a purge of southern communists and forced into internal exile a decade later. It is believed Yi T'aejun passed away sometime between 1960 and 1980. His works were banned in South Korea until 1988, when censorship laws concerning authors who had sided with the north were eased. The essays in this collection reflect Yi's distinct voice and lyrical expression, revealing his thoughts on a variety of subjects, ranging from gardens to immigrant villages in Manchuria, from antiques to colonial assimilation, and from fishing to the recovery of Korea's past. Written when fascism threatened the absorption of every Korean into Japan's wartime regime, Yi's essays explore the arts and daily life of precolonial times and attempt to bring that past back to life in his present. A final long essay takes the reader through Manchuria, where Yi laments the scattering of Koreans throughout the Japanese empire while celebrating human perseverance in the face of loss and change.
This book contains the poems in classical Chinese composed by Yi Byŏng-ho (1870‒1943), born toward the end of the Chosŏn Dynasty, the last monarchy in Korea, to live through the period of privation of her national sovereignty. Yi Byŏng-ho composed poems that reveal the undying spirit of poesy reasserting the beauty of life, despite the spiritual torpor that inevitably devastated the life of the whole nation during the darkest age in all Korean history. One of the last Korean poets who composed in classical Chinese before modern Korean poetry started resorting to the vernacular and the national orthography, han-gŭl, Yi Byŏng-ho was a poet who excelled in poetic composition in classical Chinese, not only in strict conformity to the classical Chinese poetic tradition, but with a strong touch of uniquely Korean sentiments. Sung-Il Lee, a scholar of English literature, has rendered his grandfather's poems in classical Chinese into English. Though his field of study is far from the literary domain the original works belong to, he has overcome the linguistic chasm lying between classical Chinese and English, while attaining spiritual reunion with his grandfather.
This is a concise reference for the Taegeuk forms (poomsae) of Taekwondo. Grandmasters Sang H Kim and Kyu Hyung Lee have combined their extensive knowledge of traditional taekwondo forms to teach you the correct way to perform the 8 official taegeuk poomsae as required for all taekwondo students up to black belt level. Each of the 8 Taegeuk forms is thoroughly illustrated with clear and technically precise photos. The instructional text is supplemented with information about the meaning, movement line and symbol of each of the forms as well as the correct execution of each new movement introduced in the form. This is a concise reference for the Taegeuk forms (poomsae) of Taekwondo. Grandmasters Sang H. Kim and Kyu Hyung Lee have combined their extensive knowledge of traditional taekwondo forms to teach you the correct way to perform the 8 official taegeuk poomsae as required for all taekwondo students up to black belt level. Each of the eight Taegeuk forms is thoroughly illustrated with clear and technically precise photographs. The instructional text is supplemented with information about the meaning, movement line and symbol of each of the forms as well as the correct execution of each new movement introduced in the form. Learn the following: Poomsae Taegeuk Il Jang; Poomsae Taegeuk Ee Jang; Poomsae Taegeuk Sam Jang; Poomsae Taegeuk Sah Jang; Poomsae Taegeuk Oh Jang; Poomsae Taegeuk Yuk Jang; Poomsae Taegeuk Chil Jang; Poomsae Taegeuk Pal Jang.
The series Religion and Society (RS) contributes to the exploration of religions as social systems- both in Western and non-Western societies; in particular, it examines religions in their differentiation from, and intersection with, other cultural systems, such as art, economy, law and politics. Due attention is given to paradigmatic case or comparative studies that exhibit a clear theoretical orientation with the empirical and historical data of religion and such aspects of religion as ritual, the religious imagination, constructions of tradition, iconography, or media. In addition, the formation of religious communities, their construction of identity, and their relation to society and the wider public are key issues of this series.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.