A Young Man Crossing Mount Eokbul Inspires a Vivid People's History
Creatrip Team
2 months ago
This article visits Pogok Village in Jangheung, birthplace of novelist and activist Song Gisu (1935–2021). Song’s fiction, including the novel Jaratgol-ui Biga, draws on the village’s landscape—notably the pavilion tree and a ceremonial stone—and on his lifelong experience of Korea’s modern upheavals (Liberation, the Korean War, April 19, Yushin, May 18 Gwangju Uprising, and the June Struggle). A scholar and outspoken critic, Song taught at Chonnam National University, led education reform efforts (the “Uri Education Guidelines” protest against the Yushin-era National Charter), endured dismissal and imprisonment for his activism, and later helped document the Gwangju uprising through a massive oral-history collection that corrected distorted accounts. His major works—such as Nokdu Janggun (about the Donghak Peasant Revolution), Amtaedo, and Oweol-ui Miso—focus on the rural and urban marginalized, portraying the people as agents of history. The piece frames Song as a committed public intellectual whose life, teaching, and writing remain influential; his grave is in the National May 18 Democratic Cemetery. (Pogok: village name; Donghak: 19th-century Korean peasant-reform movement; Uri Education Guidelines: educators’ manifesto opposing authoritarian curriculum.)
