Younghee Park

A South Korean poet , novelist , literary critic , and pro-Japanese collaborator . His pen names were Hoewol (懷月) and Songeun (松隱), his childhood name was Park Geobok (朴巨福), and his Japanese name was Yoshimura Kodo (芳村香道).

He was born on December 20, 1901 in Hanseong-bu (present Seoul ). After that, he graduated from an ordinary school such as Baejae High School and went to Japan. He moved to Tokyo where he studied at Seisoku (正則) School .

After returning to Korea, in 1921, he published a doujinshi with Hwang Seok-woo. In 1922, he became a member of <Swan> and fell into the trend of romanticism (degenerate romanticism famous for Lee Sang-hwa , etc.) according to the general trend of the time. Until this time, he was active as a poet.

And in 1925, following the trend of socialist ideas that were coming through the Japanese school of study and the Soviet Union , which was founded after the Russian Revolution , Park Young-hee and her colleagues began publishing works that were close to the new school . Park Young-hee learned from Kim Ki-jin and Park Young-hee spread it to Baekjo members. Park Young-hee's 'Hunting Dog' was written at this time. And in the same year, he joined KAPF , which was created through the merger of Yeomgunsa (founded in 1922) and Pascula, which claimed to be socialist cultural organizations .

However, to be precise, KAPF is the integration of Yeomgun and Pascula.[1] They didn't start at the same time. This is because it required a period of time to combine the ideology of Yeomgunsa and Pascula's tendency. First of all, he founded the magazine Literary Movement (founded in February 1926) to secure space and form an organization, and in December 1926, a year later, at the extraordinary general meeting of the Joseon Professional League, the program and regulations were announced to reveal the reality of the organization. At that time , 22 members were: Lee Ki-young, Kim Young-pal, Lee Ryang, Jo Myung-hee, Hong Ki-moon, Kim Gyeong-tae, Lim Jeong-jae, Yang Myeong, Lee Ho, Kim On, Park Yong-dae, Kwon Gu-hyeon, Lee Jeok-hyo, Kim Ki-jin, Lee Sang-hwa, Kim Bok-jin, Choi Hak-song, Choi Seung-il, Park Pal-yang, Park Young-hee, Kim Dong-hwan, and Ahn Seok-ju . . The writers of the existing literary world, such as Choi Nam-seon and Lee Kwang- soo, were completely ignoring and claiming to be socialist movements, but not only socialist, but anarchist writers and writers who were participating in the communist movement were mixed. And in 1927, it reorganized again and led the KAPF craze in the literary world from the late 1920s to the mid-1930s.

In 1927, Kim Ki-jin 's brief comments on Park Young-hee's 'Vigil' and 'Pilgrimage to Hell' introduced him to socialist literature, and Kim Ki-jin and the early KAPF went through important debates to set the direction. This debate, called content-form debate, is about whether form or content dominates in literature. It may seem useless, but it was an important debate among writers who wrote class literature at the time. As a result of this debate, it is concluded that it is important to promote the content, that is, the subject consciousness of literature, in this case, the class struggle consciousness through class literature, even if it means sacrificing the form, that is, the aesthetic form of literature (techniques such as composition and description). will come to an end Still, Kim Ki-jin, who expressed a conciliatory opinion about whether he should also look at the technique of literature, will lose his position at KAPF. And Park Young-hee, who won this debate, emerged as a leading figure of KAPF. And as a result of this debate, this incident in which the direction KAPF was to pursue was modified is called the first change of direction.

In September 1927, a national convention was held and a system of thorough class consciousness was established, resulting in a change in direction to Bolshevik literature with a revolutionary and militant character. This means that ideology has become more important. In this debate, Im Hwa and others who sided with Park Young- hee newly appeared in KAPF, and anarchists such as Kim Hwa-san were expelled. And at this time, he joined the Singanhoe and became active.

As the activities of Singanhoe became active, Park Young-hee reflected on the existing class movement, that is, the existing class literature movement limited to the intelligent class, and acknowledged that practical efforts were lacking. In other words, he himself was criticized for failing to effectively carry out mass organization and foundation building and repeatedly engaging in abstract ideological debates. Park Young-hee, who confirmed this, advocates the 'theory of purpose consciousness' and emphasizes the need to acquire practical concreteness rather than being bound by the pursuit of class consciousness (Park Young-hee <Change in the Direction of the Literary Movement>, April 1927, <Chosun Jigwang> p. 65). And this was to separate the ‘area of ​​artistic movement’ and ‘popular political struggle’.

When this 'theory of sense of purpose' was raised, a serious conflict arose within KAPF. After 1927, a controversy arose between the Gyeongseong branch (Park Young-hee, etc.) and the Tokyo branch (Lee Buk-man, Im Hwa, and the Third Front). Most of these are about the change of direction of the class literature movement and the direction of its practice. The point was whether or not the class literature movement would come to the fore in the popular political struggle. Contrary to Park Yeong-hee and the Gyeongseong branch, which set the limits through ideological struggle, the North Bay and Tokyo branches emphasized political advances and mass struggles. In the meantime, KAPF did not grow qualitatively, but it grew quantitatively, forming branches all over the country and expanding the organization.

And then, in February and July of 1928, the Communist arrest incidents occurred. They are called the 3rd and 4th Communist incidents, respectively, and all social movements were discouraged by these two arrest incidents. Even the Shin Ganhoe, which was called the national unified party, lost its vitality due to the arrests of communists who were in a leading position. And then, in December of the same year, the Secretariat of the Comintern Executive Committee adopted a decision on the reorganization of the Korean Communist Party. This was later called the December Theses.

And, as the Tokyo branch of KAPF reacted to this December thesis, it began to deviate from the support for the Singanhoe line that Park Young-hee and others were deciding. The reason was that the Communist Party had lost its power and could not support the Shinganhoe, which was dominated by national reformists. In May 1929, they independently established a publishing company called Musanjasa (無産者社) and began to actively develop political struggles. And in November 1929, the dissolution of the Tokyo branch of KAPF was officially announced. What they were shouting was the theory of Bolshevikization of the art movement.

And Park Young-hee said that from this time on, he began to have doubts about KAPF. No matter how I look at it, it looks like I'm upset because I can't do what I want.

KAPF also leaves Park Young-hee's hands and begins to change according to the insistence of the existing Tokyo branch, which established Musansa. First, Shinganhoe was disbanded in 1931, and it instigated strikes in Pyongyang and other places to expand the organization and struggle capacity of the working class. And it begins to change into the foundation of the Communist Party reconstruction movement. And the Japanese police begin to pay attention to this situation.

As soon as the Japanese police found out that KAPF had led the disbandment of the once legal Shinganhoe and that the purpose of rebuilding the Communist Party was hidden behind their actions, they began suppressing KAPF's activities with the first arrest of KAPF. There were 35 people involved and a total of 17 people were sentenced to prison, including Park Young-hee. Due to this incident, the reconstruction of the Korean Communist Party failed and the political advancement of KAPF's class literature movement was also aborted. And the Japanese Government-General took this as an opportunity to completely ban all ideological movements within Joseon. Park Young-hee will be released three months after being detained.

And in May 1932, the small group in Tokyo, who were in control of the organization, embarked on the task of reorganizing the organization in the name of rebuilding the organization that was hit by the arrest and overcoming the situation of losing public support after the 1st roundup of KAPF. . And 10 people who will be in charge of the central committee were announced, and Park Young-hee and Kim Ki-jin were excluded from this. It was the loss of the leadership of the Gyeongseong Headquarters faction. However, it is ambiguous even to say that the small group in Tokyo won in this situation because the small group did not fully demonstrate their control over the organization and KAPF began to disintegrate slowly after that. Even if Im Hwa is great, it is an example that reveals that Park Young-hee's role as a theoretical leader from the beginning of KAPF cannot be ignored.

And Park Young-hee withdrew from KAPF on December 10, 1933. And in 1934, he revealed the background of his withdrawal from KAPF through his critique, 〈The New Development of Recent Literary Theory and its Trend〉, which he contributed to the Dong-A Ilbo, and left a famous expression, "What he gained was ideology and what he lost was art himself." And after that, Karp tried to find a breakthrough, and on May 20, 1935. It was dismantled in the aftermath of the second round of arrests called the Jeonju Incident or the New Construction Incident (1934, 38 people were detained).

And in 1935, Park Young-hee, who was caught up in the Shinkong incident that directly caused the dissolution of KAPF and served a year in prison, was confined to a probation office as a thought criminal and was monitored, and changed his direction to pure literature and artisticism.

However, as the Sino-Japanese War began, he was elected as a representative of the converts in 1938 and took the lead in pro-Japanese activities after participating in an event called the National Committee for Responding to Current Conditions held in Tokyo. After he returned to Korea, he formed the Ideological Patriots Association, the National Countermeasures Front, and served as the secretary of the Chosun Writers Association in 1939, the cultural committee member of the National Total Power Chosun Federation in 1940, and the executive of the Joseon Writers Patriots Association in 1943. Along with Kim Dong-in and Lim Hak-soo, he was included in the consolation writers' corps for the imperial army and wrote travelogues after being dispatched to the Chinese front. And he changed his name to Yoshimura Kodo (芳村 香道) . A perfect pro-Japanese anti-nationalist . Park Yeong-hee's pro-Japanese activities during this period are too obvious, and there are too many details to describe here, so detailed explanations will be omitted (...)

After liberation, he hid in Chuncheon, Gangwon-do because of his pro-Japanese history, and then joined the Bodo League and worked as an executive because of his leftist activities . However, when the 6.25 broke out, he was unable to evacuate quickly and was arrested and abducted by the Korean People's Army , and his whereabouts after that are unknown.