The Banished

Yi Ik-sang

nov 2014 · 20th Century Korean Literature Libro 39 · Literature Translation Institute of Korea

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Yi Ik-sang’s “The Banished” tells the sad tale of how the tenant farmer Deukchun and his wife come to experience ever-increasing displacement and degradation in their search for a better life.  Although poor, Deukchun prides himself on his intelligence and his wife’s beauty.  The couple’s desire to escape from their dire poverty leads them away from their small country hometown, to another farming village, then finally to a bustling town.  The couple finds, however, that a series of hardships await them instead.  Depicting in detail the experiences of dispossession, “The Banished” serves as an example of the literature coming out of the early stages of the proletarian literature movement in colonial Korea.

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A novelist as well as a journalist, Yi Ik-sang (1895 – 1935) worked as a reporter for newspapers such as The Chosun Ilbo, The Dong-A Ilbo, and Korea Daily News. He was born in Jeonju, North Jeolla Province, in 1895, completed his schooling at Boseong High School, and then graduated from the journalism department of Nihon University in Japan. As a university student he was exposed to socialist thought, which was popular at the time, and he threw himself into the progressive literature movement. He made his debut as a novelist with a publication in The Light of Learning in 1921, and in 1923 he became a member of PASKYULA, the first proletarian literary organization in Korea; when PASKYULA merged with the Society of the Blazing Throng (Yeomgunsa) to form the Korea Artista Proleta Federacio, or KAPF, Yi Ik-sang was one of its initial members.

His most prominent works include short stories such as “Frenzy” (Gwangnan), “Baptism of Soil” (Heulgui serye), and “The Banished” (Jjotgieo ganeun ideul).