Yi Sang


Kim Haegyŏng, also known by his art name Yi Sang, was a writer and poet who lived in Korea under Japanese rule. Although he was a poet, he did not receive specialized education in Korean language or creative writing, and instead majored in architecture at Gyeongseong Industrial High School, now known as Seoul National University of Science and Technology. After contracting tuberculosis in 1933, Yi Sang quit his job as a public official and ran a café, continuing his literary exchanges with the Guinhoe group. He died in Japan in April 1937.
He is well known for his poems and novels, such as Crow's Eye View and The Wings. Among them, Crow's Eye View received strong protests from the people at the time as not being a proper poem. Fellow poet Park Tae-won wrote in his memorial essay that people called Crow's Eye View "the sleep talk of a lunatic." Yi Sang's work contains various scientific symbols and terms, and is structurally very difficult to understand as it contains many experimental attempts. He uses wordplay through homonyms and also uses pictures in his works. He is considered as a pivotal and revolutionary figure of modern Korean literature.

Biography

Early life

Kim Haegyŏng was born in Seoul, Korea, on September 23, 1910, as the eldest of two sons and one daughter of Kim Yeun-chang and Park Se-chang.
Yi's great-grandfather, Kim Hak-jun, held the rank of 'Jeong 3 Pum Dangsangwan' in the Joseon Dynasty. He lived in a very affluent household, but the annexation of Korea by Japan led to a decline in the family's fortunes. His father worked in letterpress printing for a palace before his birth, but after an accident that cut off his finger, he became a barber instead. Yi Sang was raised by his uncle Kim Yeon-Pil as an adoptive son since 1913, as Yeon-Pil and his wife had no children at the time of his birth. Later, however, Yeon-Pil took Kim Young-Sook as his concubine and the son she already had, Kim Moon-Kyung, became a legal son of Yeon-Pil. Yi spent time at his uncle's house even during his tenure as an official in the Government-General of Korea.
Yi Sang's had his primary and secondary education at Sinmyeong School, Donggwang School and Posung High School. He graduated from Poseong High School as a 4th graduate. He met his friend Koo Bon-Woong at Sinmyeong School. While attending Boseong High School, he became an aspiring artist with interest in art, and his academic performance reached a higher level. However, because his uncle insisted, Yi chose to enter Gyeongseong Technical College in 1926. Yi majored in architecture and graduated from the college with 1st place honors in 1928. His first known use of his art name Yi Sang was in the graduation photobook. There is testimony that Yi's art name originated from the art box he received as a gift from Koo Bon-woong. Since the art box he received was made of plum wood, Yi Sang is interpreted to mean 'plum wood box'. Additionally, in his work 'Wings', he expressed his art name as 'Ri Sang' rather than 'Yi Sang'.
In April 1929, with a recommendation from the college, he got a job as a public official in the architecture team of the Department of Domestic affairs of the Government-General of Korea. In November, he changed positions in the government to work as part of the building maintenance team of the Department of Secretariat and Accounting.
In December 1929, he became a member of the Joseon Architecture Society, which mainly comprised Japanese architects in Korea. Yi won first and third prizes in a design contest for the cover of Joseon and Architecture, a journal issued by the Joseon Architecture Society.
Kim Yeon-pil, a father's elder brother who took care of the above growth process, died of Cerebral hemorrhage on May 7, 1932.

Career

Most of Yi's works were produced during the 1930s.
In 1930, he serialized his first literature work December 12th on the Korean version of the magazine Joseon, which was a magazine issued by the Government-General of Korea to promote their colony policies.
In July 1931, Yi released the following six Japanese poems on Joseon and Architecture:
  • A Strange Reversible Reaction
  • The Scenery of Broken Parts
  • The Amusement of ▽
  • The Beard
  • BOITEUX · BOITEUSE
  • The Empty Stomach.
Eight Japanese poems under the name "Bird's-Eye View" on Joseon and Architecture :
  • Two People ····1····
  • Two People ····2····
  • A Nervously Obese Triangle
  • LE URINE
  • Face
  • Movement
  • Confession of A Crazy Woman
  • Entertainment Angel
In October 1931, he released a set of seven Japanese poems under the name "Three-Dimensional Angle Blueprint". The title of each poem is Memorandum on the Line 1, ···, and Memorandum on the Line 7.
In March and April 1932, Yi released two Korean novels: Darkroom of a Map and Suspension of Business and Circumstances on the magazine Joseon. He used different pen names on these two pieces: "Bigu" for the former and "Bosan" for the latter.
A series of seven Japanese poems under the name Building Infinite Hexahedral Bodies :
  • AU MAGASIN DE NOUVEAUTES,
  • Rough Map Under Heat No. 2 ; 열하약도 No. 2 )
  • Diagnosis 0:1
  • Twenty-two years
  • The Publication Law
  • Departure of Mr. Cha 8
  • Midday—Some ESQUISSE—.
In 1933, he released the following Korean poems:
  • A Flower Tree
  • This Kind of Poem
  • 1933, 6, 1
  • Mirror.
In 1934, Yi released the following Korean poems and essays:
  • 보통기념
  • Three States of Blood Calligraphy
  • Crow's-Eye View
  • History of the Cane
  • Soyeong Wije
  • A Fall of Walks.
Three States of Blood Calligraphy was a set of five essays:
  • Oscar Wilde
  • Sensual Forgery
  • Mr. Hyde
  • An Evil Spirit's Appreciation
  • The Third Blood Calligraphy
Crow's Eye View was a set of 15 poems, each titled from Poem No. 1 to Poem No. 15. Three poems from the series had an additional title: Poem No. 8 Dissection, Poem No. 9 Muzzle, Poem No. 10 Butterfly. Some of the poems from Crow's-Eye View were parodies of his early Japanese work, Building Infinite Hexahedral Bodies.

Jebi and Guinhoe

In 1933, Yi began coughing up blood due to tuberculosis, which forced him to quit his work as a public official. He opened a coffee house, Jebi, where he interacted with other writers and artists.
In 1934, Yi joined the Guinhoe, a literary organization formed on August 26, 1933, to pursue pure literature, as opposed to the Korean Artists’ Proletarian Federation, an organization that pursued proletarian literature. The group recruited individuals associated with the cultural departments of daily newspapers, aiming for members who could withstand criticism from the KAPF. Mentioned individuals included Lee Tae-jun, Lee Moo-young, and Kim Ki-rim. To show its character as a literary circle, famous writers at the time such as Lee Hyo-seok, Jung Ji-yong, and Yoo Chi-jin joined the Guinhoe. However, although two individuals closely associated with the KAPF had established the Guinhoe to counter KAPF, the group's character gradually solidified into that of a simple social gathering. As a result, many of the early members of the group, including Kim Yoo-young, Lee Jong-myung, Lee Moo-young, and Lee Hyo-seok, withdrew. Park Tae-won and Yi Sang filled their vacancies. The Guinhoe then began to take on a direction different from its initial purpose. The increase in members with academic backgrounds, particularly those majoring in English literature, suggests that these individuals began to emerge as a force in Korean literature.
In 1935, Yi had to close the Jebi due to financial difficulties, and he broke up with Geumhong. Cafe Tsuru and Coffee Shop 69 in Insa-dong were opened and transferred, and after managing Coffee Shop Mugi in Myeong-dong, he healed in Seongcheon and Incheon right after he closed it. He then moved back to his family’s shack settlement beneath Beontigo-gae in Sindang-ri—a slum he later dubbed “the paulownia-hill ghetto”—where extreme poverty, recurring tuberculosis, and a slum fire that destroyed some thirty homes on 31 January 1936 formed the bleak backdrop for his next poems.
In 1936, Yi Sang edited the Guinhoe's magazine, Poetry and Novels, published by Changmunsa under the aegis of Koo Bon-Woong. His "Street Exterior, Street Passage" was published in this journal. That February he also issued the five-poem cycle Ruk-Dan in Catholic Youth, breaking his habit of publishing only in summer and recording a record −20 °C cold spell and winter haemoptysis in Gyeongseong. After partially recovering and marrying Byeon Dong-rim in June, he unveiled the twelve-poem cycle Wi-Dok between 4 and 9 October 1936. Of roughly seventy poems he published during his lifetime, about seventy-five percent appeared in serial form, Wi-Dok being the last. His short story "Diary Before Death" and his personal memoir "Monotony" were published posthumously in Tokyo.
In November 1936, Yi went to Japan. In February 1937, he was investigated by the Nishi-Ganda Police Station in Tokyo on ideological charges. After being investigated for about a month, he was released from prison due to worsening tuberculosis. Yi was hospitalized at the Tokyo Imperial University Hospital, and died on April 17 at the age of 26. His wife, Byun Dong-rim, moved to Japan immediately after hearing that Yi Sang was in critical condition. After Yi Sang died, she cremated his ashes and buried them in Miari Cemetery. Later, according to Byun, she had asked him what he wanted to eat, and he died soon after leaving the words, "Sembikiya's melon." Park Tae-won, a fellow writer and friend of Yi's, mentioned the following: "He loved girls so much, loved alcohol, loved his friends, and loved literature, but not a half of that love went for his body. His death is named as death from illness, but isn't the essence of this death suicide? Such suspicions become intense."