Kim Soom

Kim Soom is a South Korean writer. She is known for her “elaborate descriptions and aesthetic style” and for her “vivid allegories.” Her recent novels critically examine modern and contemporary Korean history. In particular, Han myeong (한 명 One Left) deals with the issue of Comfort Women in the Imperial Japanese army and L eui undonghwa (L의 운동화 L’s Sneakers) with South Korean democratization.

A grotesque rendering of the world is a hallmark of Kim’s early novels. Rather than portraying life with verisimilitude, her characters reveal life’s underlying anxieties through their faint presence and strange language. This is why readers often get the impression that the setting of her novels and dynamics between characters are a literary, or even theatrical, reproduction of the world. This does not mean that Kim’s novels deal with issues that don’t pertain to reality. On the contrary, they can offer a more in-depth look at truths existing in reality.

Two novels have been published since 2016: Han myeong (한 명 One Left) addresses the issue of Comfort Women, while L eui undonghwa (L의 운동화 L’s Sneakers) tells the story of student activist Lee Han Yeol, whose death catapulted the June Democracy Movement of 1987. These two works are different from Kim’s previous novels; their subject matter involves historical incidents that were critical to forming South Korea’s sense of solidarity as a nation and a democracy. This shift in her focus should be noted alongside a contemporary’s work on the Gwangju Uprising, namely, Human Acts (소년이 온다) by Han Kang.

Kim was born on July 23, 1974 at a seaside town in Bangeojin, Ulsan. When she was six, her father went to the Middle East for a manual labor job, leaving the rest of the family to move into her grandfather's house in Geumsan, South Chungcheong Province, where she ended up spending her childhood. Upon entering high school, she joined a literature club called Cheong-un Literary Society and dabbled in writing poetry. In 1997, she won the Daejeon Ilbo New Writer’s Award for her first short story “Neurimae daehayeo” (느림에 대하여 On Slowness), which she wrote because she wanted to experiment with longer pieces of writing than poetry. In 1998, Jungseui sigan (중세의 시간 Time in the Middle Ages) received the Munhakdongne New Writer Award, kicking off her career as a novelist. After graduating from university, she worked for a newspaper outside of Seoul as a proofreader, and then for a publisher as an editor over many years.