Literature of the Bittersweet: Kim Sung-ok and 1960s Korea

This paper centers on the erstwhile novelist Kim Seung-ok with a focus not only on his watershed works of the 1960s, but also on his lesser-known works of the 1970s as well as on the circumstances and possible reasons for his decision to quit writing in the 1980s. His works from the 60s address certain basic human contradictions and are in this respect timeless, and these same works are also firmly grounded in their larger socio-cultural contexts of 1960s Korea. This article attempts to place the word firmly here sous rature. In new critical terms, the Kim's settings can not be understood as anything but Korea, in the then and now. This characteristic is shared, however, with highly ideological literature that at times seems to want to beat the reader over the head with the problems and author-sponsored solutions of then and now. In order to understand Kim's paradoxical position in Korean literary history, one must view his works from within the context of the debate between pure and engagement literature.