Yi Gwansu

1) His Biography and Main Works:

Yi Gwangsu was born in Jeongju in 1892. He was raised by Donghak followers after becoming an orphan around the age of 10. He relocated to Seoul in 1904, just before the Donghak Peasant Revolution, to get away from the government. He moved to Japan in 1905 to pursue his education. In 1913, he returned to Korea and began working as a teacher at Jeongju’s Osan School. Later, he relocated back to Tokyo and rose to prominence as a key figure in the anticolonial student movement.

He relocated to Shanghai in 1919, where he worked for the Korean Provisional Government and rose to the position of newspaper president at The Independent. Yi formed the Alliance for Self-Improvement in Korea in 1921 after his return, based on enlightenment and self-help tenets. Yi followed a career in journalism between 1923 and 1934, working for a number of publications, including two that are still in operation today, the Dong-a Ilbo and the Chosun Ilbo. Yi was found guilty of collusion by the Special Committee for the Investigation of Anti-Nationalist Activities after the war. Yi was taken prisoner by the North Korean army in 1950, and on October 25, he passed away at Manpo, most likely from TB.

Some of is main works include, Is It Love, Young Sacrifice, Mujeong (Heartless), Reincarnation, A Boy’s Sorrow, Pioneer, Nameless, Soil, Crown Prince Maui, Danjong Aesa and Oil Well.

2) Main Themes in his Writings:

Yi wrote both fiction and essays. Initially, the demand for national consciousness was the main topic of his essays. He is well known for his novel Mujeong, which was among the first works of modern literature to be published in Korea. The phrase “mujeong” refers to the point in time when Korea was caught between tradition and modernization and experiencing struggle between. social reality and traditional values.

His works can be divided into three sections. The idea that Korea should adopt a more contemporary (or “Western”) viewpoint was strongly pushed during the first period (that of Mujeong), which spanned 1910–19. In the early 1920s and into the 1930s, Yi had a nationalist conversion and wrote the contentious essay “On the Remaking of National Consciousness,” in which he called for a moral upheaval of Korea and accused Koreans of being defeatist. The third period, which began in the 1930s, was around the time that Yi converted to Buddhism, and as a result, the tone of his work subtly changed to reflect this. As previously mentioned, Yi also became a Japanese collaborator during this time.

Yi’s professional judgement became as erratic as his politics. In one well-known instance, he supposedly abandoned Kim Myeong-sun after befriending him because his views on modernism had changed. With the publication of Is it Love (Ai ka) in 1909, when Yi was only 17 years old, Yi was also recognised as one of the founders of LGBT literature in Korea.

3) His influence on Korea:

The volatile historical factors, including foreign occupation, civil conflict, and division, that shook and changed the peninsula over the twentieth century have influenced modern Korean nationalism. One of the key turning points in modern Korean history is generally acknowledged to have occurred after the March First Movement of 1919, when the country emerged as the dominant form of collective identity. Pioneering novelist, newspaper editor, and nationalist movement leader Yi Gwangsu (1892–1951) had a key role in many facets of the movement’s emergence during the Japanese occupation. One of the few intellectuals who wrote consistently for virtually the entire colonial period and played a key role in numerous institutions involved in the construction of Korean identity was Yi Gwangsu.

By concentrating on Yi Gwangsu, we can see various historical narratives connecting the different parts of the nation and gain a new perspective on the March First Movement and its significance in the formation of the country. We can also see how crucially important the growth of the print industry, the emergence of a modern readership, and the development of a capitalist market for print were to the formation of the country. We can see how the March First Movement sparked the convergence of these elements through Yi Gwangsu’s efforts, allowing the country to emerge as the preeminent form of collective identity.