Younghill Kang

Kang Yong- Hul or Kang Young Hill ( born May 10, 1898 in Hongwon, Hamgyŏng - namdo, † December 2, 1972 in Florida ) is a Korean- American writer.

Life

Kang Yeongsaeng graduated from the Middle School. After independence movement from 1 March in the year 1919 he moved over China, in the United States. He studied medicine at Boston University and received his degree in English and American Literature at Harvard University. He began to write while he was working as an editor for the Great Britain Encyclopedia.

His autobiographical first novel The Grass Roof ( The Grass Roof [ Ch'odang ], 1931) is divided into two parts and 24 chapters. Part 1 tells of the youth of the protagonist in Korea, to the annexation by Japan in 1910. Part 2 takes the protagonist, now a student of Western literature, the independence movement from March 1 part. On the run from the police, he immigrated with the help of a missionary to America. The work was published in 1931 in the United States by Charles Scribner's Sons, and has since been translated into more than ten languages, including German and French, but only the first part was published in Korean in 1947. This written in English novel by a Korean authors, who plays in Korea, problematizes the definition of Korean literature, a highly debated topic in the August issue of 1936 of the Samcheolli magazine.

After his debut as a novelist, he continued his scientific research at universities in Rome, Munich and Paris and taught literature, among others, at the University of New York. His published works include the works Happy Forest ( Happy Grove [ Haengbokhan Sup ] ) and from east to west (East goes West [ 동양인 이 본 서양 ] ), and the stage play Murder in the royal house ( Murder in the Royal House [ 왕실 에서 의 살인 ] ). In addition, he translated, in part, together with his wife Francis E. Keely, various works into English. After the liberation he returned to Korea and worked as a professor at the College of Arts and Sciences of Seoul National University.

Praised by the author Pearl S. Buck as one of the supreme intellects of the East, Kang won many prizes and awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the New School 's Louis S. Weiss Memorial Prize for andragogy, the French Halperine Kaminsky price and an honorary doctorate for Literature at the Korea University.

He died in 1972 at his home at Satellite Beach, Florida.

Working

Korean

• 초당 The grass roof Hyewon (1994 )

English (selection)

• Translations of Oriental Poetry ( 1929)
• The Grass Roof (1931 )
• The Happy Grove ( 1933)
• East Goes West, Kaya Press ( 1965)

Translations

German

• The grass roof, List ( 1933)