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Han Sorya and North Korean Literature
The Failure of Socialist Realism in the DPRK
Brian Myers (Author)
9780939657841
Hardback, published 30 April 2011
224 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2.2 cm, 0.454 kg
A significant contribution to international scholarship on North Korea. Myers's study is an extremely valuable contribution to our understanding of what remains, even today, an opaque society.... Given the paucity of materials in English on North Korean literature, his book opens an important window onto a virtually unknown subject. A landmark of Korean Studies in the United States... a great help to English-speaking readers interested in North Korean literature. A witty, precise study.
This first and only study of North Korean literary history by a Western scholar deals with the crucial role played by Han Sōrya, chairman of the D.P.R.K.'s Federation of Literature and Art from 1948 to his purge in 1962, both in devising the iconography of Kim Il Sung's personality cult and in defining the early course of North Korean letters. Through brief studies of Han's own canonical works the author also sets out to dispel the widely-held assumption that North Korean literature is compatible with Soviet and Chinese socialist realism. The appendix includes a complete translation of Han's 1951 novella Jackals (Sungnyangi).