Joon-Hwan Kim (editor, translator, and annotator)
Yonsei University Press, September 2024, xiii + 1123 pages
About the book: The Complete Works of Ki-Rim Kim, set to be published in a total of 6 volumes, is a new critical edition of the oeuvre of the pioneering Korean modern/modernist poet, critic and scholar Ki-Rim Kim (김기림 金起林, 1908-195?). These volumes present the original texts of Kim’s writings from 1930 to 1950 in chronological order, allowing readers to retrace the trajectory of his works in the context of regional and global developments from the period of Japanese colonization (1910-1945) through liberation and U.S. military government (1945-1948) to the establishment of divided political systems in North and South Korea and the outbreak of the Korean War (1948-1950).
The first volume of the complete works comprises a collection of approximately 278 poems ranging from Kim’s first published poem, “Go Forth to a New Life,” (September 6, 1930) to his last, “Song of the Homeland” (May 24, 1950). This complete critical edition locates the original text of each poem on the left-hand pages, while the corrected and revised versions, adapted according to recent Norms of Standard Korean Orthography, are situated on the right. In addition to including subsequent versions of Kim’s poems which were later republished, this collection also provides a variety of informative notes on textual variants, uncommon words and dialects, and cultural and historical contexts.
About the editor: Joon-Hwan Kim was a HYI Visiting Scholar from 2003-04, and an Associate from 2012-13 and 2019-20.