Hwang Sun-won

Infobox Korean name
hangul=황순원
hanja=黃順元
rr=Hwang Sun-won
mr=Hwang Sunwŏn

Hwang Sun-wŏn (1915 - 2000) was a Korean short story writer, novelist, and poet. He was born in Taedong, South Pyongan, in modern-day North Korea; however, following the division of Korea he lived in the South, becoming a professor at Kyunghee University.

Although he wrote many volumes of poetry and eight novels, Hwang achieved his greatest acclaim as the author of short fiction, which was regarded as the premiere literary genre through most of the twentieth century in Korea. Hwang is the author of some of the best-known stories in the modern Korean literary canon, including “Stars” (1940), “Old Man Hwang” (1942), “The Old Potter” (1944), “Cloudburst” (1952), “Cranes” (1953) and “Rain Shower”(1959). Hwang began writing novels in the 1950s, his most successful being "Trees on a Slope" (1960), which depicts the lives of three soldiers during the Korean War. "Sunlight, Moonlight" (1962-65) depicts the lives of members of the former untouchable class in urban Seoul. "The Moving Castle" (1968-72) depicts the complex and problematic synthesis of Western and indigenous cultures in rapidly-modernizing Korea. It is also one of the few depictions in fiction of gender roles in Korean shamanism.

elected work

English Translations of Hwang Sun-wŏn's fiction:

*"The Book of Masks" (short stories)
*"The Descendants of Cain" (novel)
*"The Moving Castle" (novel)
*"Shadows of a Sound" (short stories)
*"Sunlight, Moonlight" (novel)
*"Trees on a Slope" (novel)
*"Cranes" (short stories)

Cranes Article by Hwang Sunwon

References

*cite book |title=Who's who in Korean literature |chapter=Hwang, Sun-won |pages=151-153 |author=Im, Hon-yong |year=1996 |publisher=Hollym |location=Seoul |id=ISBN 1-56591-066-4