| Kim Young-ha | |
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photographed 24 June 2006 |
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| Born | November 11, 1968 Hwacheon, South Korea |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Nationality | South Korea |
| Period | 1995-present |
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kimyoungha.com |
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Kim Young-ha (born November 11, 1968) (Hangul: 김영하) is a South Korean writer.
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Kim was born in Hwacheon. He moved from place to place as a child, since his father was in the military. As a child, he suffered from gas poisoning from coal gas and lost memory before ten.[1] He was educated at Yonsei University in Seoul, majoring business administration, but he didn't show much interest in it. Instead he focused on writing stories. Kim, after graduating from Yonsei University in 1993, began his military service as an assistant detective at the military police 51st Infantry Division near Suwon. His career as a professional writer started in 1995 right after discharge.
His first novel, published in Korean in 1996, was I Have the Right to Destroy Myself. It has been translated into English, French, German, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Chinese, and Vietnamese. Kim’s novels and stories focus on articulating a new mode of sensitivity to life’s thrills and horrors as experienced by Koreans in the ever-changing context of a modern, globalized culture. In his search for a literary style, as is often the case with internationally renowned post-modern novelists, Kim attempts to embark on exhilarating and provoking crossing of the boundaries of high and low genres of narratives. His historical novel Black Flower, which won the Dong-in Literary Award in 2004, tells the story of the first generation of the Korean diaspora forced into slave labor in a Mexican plantation and later involved in a Pancho Villa-led military uprising in a style. Sources of inspiration for this novel came from classical Bildungsroman, stories of sea trips as illustrated by the popular film Titanic, ethnography of religion, as well as Korean histories of exile and immigration. Another instance of Kim’s fabulously mixed style is found in Empire of Light, his fourth novel, in which he raises the question of human identity in a democratic and consumerist Korean society by presenting a North Korean spy and his family in Seoul in the manner of a crime fiction combined with a truncated family saga and naturalist depiction of everyday life. It has been translated seven languages including English(US title: Your Republic Is Calling You).[2]
As a young Korean master of storytelling, Kim is especially popular with Korean film directors, who have found in his works to be a repository of plots and characters that make for superb film-making. Two films have already been based on his fiction, and the cinematic adaptation of Empire of Light is currently in progress. His latest novel, The Quiz Show, was also made into a musical.
Kim previously worked as a professor in the Drama School at Korean National University of Arts and on a regular basis hosted a book-themed radio program. In autumn 2008, he resigned all his jobs to devote himself exclusively to writing. Currently a visiting scholar at Columbia University in the City of New York, he lives in New York City, USA.[3]