Baek Seok


Baek Seok was a Korean poet.
He was born in Chŏngju in North Pyongan, and started his journalist career at Chosun Ilbo in 1934. He published his first poem "Chŏngju Fortress" on 31 August 1935 issue of Chosun Ilbo. On January 20 next year, he published a collection of the poems he had written entitled Deer. Even though Deer contained 33 poems, many of which were new, 7 of them were already published on magazines or newspapers in slightly different forms. Until 1948, he published about 60 more pieces, but is not believed to have produced another poetry book.
In the Republic of Korea, the publication of his works was strictly prohibited for a while because he was labelled as a North Korean poet and a communist. However, since 1987 when a collection of his works were first introduced after the Korean War, he has been widely re-evaluated by scholars and critics. He is now regarded as having opened a new face of Korean socialist modernism with a group of literary writers. In 2007, he was listed by the Korean Poets' Association among the ten most important modern Korean poets.

Name

His real name is Baek Ki-haeng, and his nickname is Baek Ki-yeon in 1915. After the defeat of the Japanese Empire in 1945 and the liberation of the Joseon Dynasty, he changed his name to Baekseok, and his main residence was Suwon. The name Seok is known to have been used because he loved the beginning of Takuboku Ishikawa, a Japanese poet.

Life

Early life and Background

Baek Seok was born named Baek Ki-haeng in Chongju, North Pyongan on 1 July 1912, the son of Baek Si-bak and Yi Bong-woo. His father worked at Chosun Ilbo as a photographer. Baek Si-bak wasn't wealthy, but he participated in raising building funds for Osan school. Lee Bong-woo was known as a neat and good cook. In 1907, Baek Seok entered Osan elementary school and his brother, Hyeob-haeng, was born. In 1919 Osan school was entirely burned down by Japanese military polices for reason that they led March 1st Movement. Cho Man-sik, who was the principal of Osan school, was arrested and the school had to be closed for a year and a half. In 1924, he graduated from Osan elementary school and entered Osan middle and high school. Baek Seok admired Kim So-wol, who was six years his senior, and got interested in literature. He was a top-scoring student, but he couldn't enter university because of financial difficulties. In January 1930, he won the first prize with his first novel The Mother and son in a literary contest hosted by Chosun Ilbo. That made him able to study at Aoyama Gakuin University with a scholarship funded by Chosun Ilbo. In university, he majored in English Literature and also studied French and Russian. Studying abroad, he liked poems of Japanese poet Takuboku Ishikawa and was interested in Modernism.

Adult years

In 1934, he entered Chosun Ilbo Department of Corrections having graduated from the university. He edited a sister magazine Feminine and translated foreign works and papers. He started to work officially as a writer and a translator releasing an essay Earrings on 16 May 1934. Translating D. S. Mirsky's paper made him think about how valuable the Korean language is and how to preserve that with poetry. On 31 August 1935, he announced his first poem Chongju Fortress. On 20 January 1936, he published at his own expense a collection of his poems entitled Deer which was a limited edition of 100. Deer consisted of seven poems which were already published and the others new. On 29 January, A gathering to commemorate the publication of Deer was held at Taeseogwan and eleven people including Kim Kirim and Shin Hyun-jung got involved as proposers.
This year, he resigned from the company and started for his new post as an English teacher in Yeongsaeng high school in Hamhung. In Hamhung, he fell in love with Kim Jin-hyang, a kisaeng, and named her Jaya. In 1938, he proposed to her that they leave for Manchuria and live free there. But, she refused proposal fearing that she would stand in his way. She left for Gyeongseong alone. Then, he wrote Me, Natasha and a white donkey. In January 1939, he returned to Gyeongseong and met Jaya again. On 26 January 1939 He rejoined Chosun Ilbo and resigned on 21 October 1939. He wrote a travel poetry, Traveling Western traveling Pyongan and Hamgyong. In 1940 he left for Manchuria and got a job at Economics Department in Manchukuo with the help of his friends. But he resigned six months later because of pressure to follow Sōshi-kaimei. In 1942 he worked at customs in Andong.

Later life and Death

After the restoration of Korean independence, he returned to his hometown, Chongju. He studied children’s literature and was criticized by the literary world in North Korea. In June 1962, he became a shepherd in a collective farm in Samsu. In October 1962, he quitted writing as the criticism of reactionism grew intense. South Koreans and Japanese long believed that Baek Seok had died on the farm in 1963. However, it was revealed that he lived until 1996.

Work

Baek Seok utilized not only Pyongan dialect and archaic words but also other provinces. He tried to preserve Korean rural culture and language by listing traditional plays and foods in his poems. To emphasize this, he used to set a narrator as a child. His poems are generally based on nostalgia for his home. In his poem, Home is described as a place that hasn’t material affluence but spiritual values. The Folks in Fox-Lurking Village shows such features.