Kang Kyŏng-ae


Kang Kyŏng-ae was a Korean writer, novelist and poet involved with the feminist movement. She is also known by her penname Kang Gama.

Biography

Kang Kyŏng-ae was born in Songhwa County, Hwanghae Province, Korean Empire and had an unhappy childhood. She was the daughter of a servant and lost her father at the age of five. She was then forced to move to Changyeon where her mother remarried a man with three children. All of these circumstances resulted in substantial unhappiness.
Kang was something of a prodigy and started teaching herself to read the Korean alphabet when she was eight years old using her step-father's copy of the Tale of Ch’unhyang at a time when female literacy was not greatly valued. By age ten, she had been nicknamed the “little acorn storyteller” by neighborhood elders for whom she read traditional Korean tales. She was also praised in school for her essay writing and often read stories for her friends.
Kang enrolled in a Catholic boarding school with the help of her brother-in-law. She was later expelled for orchestrating and participating in a sit-in against the school's strict policies and a particularly cruel dorm mistress. She met a college student who was visiting from Tokyo, moved to Seoul with him, and began an affair. When the affair ended, she moved back to her family home in Hwanghae-do.
In 1931 Kang began publishing her writing, and moved to Manchuria as a newlywed, married to a communist who had divorced his first wife. She lived as a housewife in Yongjin and began to churn out literary works. This period lasted seven years after which Kang ceased writing fiction altogether. This was partly related to the fact that she became the managing editor of the Manchurian Chosun Ilbo.
On April 26, 1944, one month after her mother died, Kang Kyŏng-ae died at her home in Hwanghae Province.

Work

Kang is often mentioned by literary critics as one of the foremost female writers of the colonial period. Different from other prominent female authors of the time, such as Na Hye-sok and Heo Jong-suk, she focused solely on fiction and essay writing and did not branch out into other forms of artistic expression such as painting. She produced works focusing on the Korean underclass often based on her experiences with extremely poor Koreans in Manchuria, where many of her works took place. These include: "The Broken Geomungo", "Vegetable Garden", "Football Game", and "Mother and Child". She also wrote proto-feminist works focusing on women's oppression including "Mothers and Daughters". Most of her works are anti-love/anti family, in which only those women who cut their ties with their failed relationships can achieve freedom.
From Wonso Pond, which many consider her best work, is her only novel and deals with a multiplicity of class and gender issues.

Works in English




Works in Korean

The Broken Geomungo

Mothers and Daughters

Comet

The Front Line

Vegetable Garden

Football Game

Existence, Nonexistence

Fathers and Sons

The Human Problem

Salt

Drugs/''Magic Medicine

Mother and Child

Writer's Fee: 200 won

Layoff

Underground Village

Mountain Man

Darkness''