Kim Dong-in (金東仁, October 2, 1900 – January 5, 1951) was a pro-Japanese collaborator, novelist, literary critic, poet, and journalist. His family seat was Jeonju (全州), and his art names were Geumdong (琴童), Geumdongin (琴童仁), Chunsa (春士), Mandeok (萬德), and Sieodim. A literary monument to him stands to
Born~Died Oct 2, 1900 ~ Jan 5, 1951Last edited Oct 15, 2026, 2:51 PM
Kim Dong-in (金東仁, October 2, 1900 – January 5, 1951) was a pro-Japanese collaborator, novelist, literary critic, Poet, and journalist. His family seat was Jeonju (全州), and his art names were Geumdong (琴童), Geumdongin (琴童仁), Chunsa (春士), Mandeok (萬德), and Sieodim. A literary monument to him stands today in Children's Grand Park.
While studying in Japan, he took part in the February 8 Independence Declaration and the March 1st Movement of 1919, but afterward he devoted himself exclusively to novels and creative work. In the later part of the Japanese occupation of Korea, he adopted a Japanese name and took part in pro-Japanese activities. After liberation, he clashed with the literary world, which sought to expel Yi Kwang-su, and in 1946 he gathered right-wing writers to found the All-Joseon Writers' Association for Literature (전조선문필가협회). For a time, from September 1948 to February 1949, he held the post of Party Affairs Committee member of the Korean Democratic Party. In the later part of his life he suffered from insomnia, depression, and stroke, and in 1951, during the Korean War, he died of pneumonia.
He excelled at criticism and satire, and for a time he held the conviction that writers should only write. He opposed and criticized free love and the women's liberation movement, which had emerged from the colonial period. By publishing short stories in a modern style, he is regarded as a pioneer of modern Korean literature. His pen names included Kim Mandeok, Sieodim, Geomsieodim, and Geumdong. His works are already out of copyright.1
Life
🤖 This page was machine-translated by AI from 한국어 “김동인”. Please fix any mistakes.
This page is based on “김동인” from 한국어 위키백과, (r41783292) CC BY-SA 4.0 used under the license. The original authors are listed in its page history.
Kim Dong-in was born in Pyongyang. His father was Kim Dae-yun (金大閏), a wealthy magnate of Pyongyang and a Protestant elder. His half-brother Kim Dong-won was an independence activist and politician, and one of Ahn Chang-ho's close associates. From 1907 to 1912 Kim Dong-in studied at Sungdeok Elementary School, a Protestant school, and in 1912 he entered Soongsil School, which was also Protestant-affiliated. After dropping out the following year, he went to study in Japan in 1914 and enrolled in the junior high division of Tokyo Gakuin.
In 1915, when Tokyo Gakuin was closed, he transferred to the second year of the junior high division of Meiji Gakuin.
Adolescence
In 1917, when his father died, he returned to Korea for a time and inherited a large estate. At the same time, he left Meiji Gakuin without graduating, and in September of that year he left the country again to study in Japan, entering Kawabata Art School in Tokyo, an art school, where he became a student of the Western-style painter Fujishima Takeji. During his time in Tokyo he met and befriended Yi Kwang-su, Ahn Jae-hong, Shin Ik-hi, and others.
In February 1919, in Tokyo, he co-published with Ju Yo-han the magazine Changjo (創造), which is regarded as Korea's first purely literary coterie journal, and he debuted by publishing the short story "The Sorrow of the Weak" (약한 자의 슬픔). In the same year, a journal was founded that advocated pure literature and art for art's sake, and it showed a movement different from the enlightenment ideas of Yi Kwang-su. He was also the first to begin using the third-person pronoun, which had not originally developed in the Korean language.2
In February 1919, at Hibiya Park in Tokyo, he took part in the independence declaration event of the Korean students' association in Japan and was arrested, but he was released the next day. He returned to Korea on March 5, 1919. Then, on March 26, he was arrested and imprisoned for drafting the proclamation for the March 1st Movement that his younger brother Kim Dong-pyeong was to use. On June 26 he was released on a suspended sentence. He deeply sympathized with idealism, but when he heard that the Korean delegation led by Kim Kyu-sik had been rebuffed at the Paris Peace Conference, he was disheartened and became skeptical and cynical.
Career as a novelist
From the 1920s, as his family fortune declined, he began to write popular novels. In 1923 he published at his own expense his first collection of works, Life: Sieodim Collection (목숨-시어딤 창작집, Changjosa). In August 1924 he founded the coterie journal Yeongdae (영대), which he published until January 1925. From September 1930 to November 1931 he serialized his first full-length novel, Young Them (젊은 그들), in the Dong-a Ilbo. In July 1932 he took on the roles of founding member, committee member, and head of operations of the Joseon Writers' Friendship Association, a literary friendship group.
Meanwhile, Kim Dong-in, who held a negative attitude toward the free love of the new women, depicted the protagonist Yeonsil in Kim Yeon-sil Story (김연실전), which was modeled on the new-woman writer Kim Myeong-sun, as a licentious woman who "studied the works of Ellen Key and Dr. Kuriyagawa in order to better understand love," but who ultimately held the view that "intercourse between men and women is love, and the actual expression of love is sexual intercourse," and as a "dirty woman" who was completely indifferent to chastity.3 These negative remarks were aimed not only at Kim Myeong-sun personally but at the new women and intellectuals in general, who regarded free love and free marriage as means of women's liberation.3 He also mocked the novelist Kim Myeong-sun as a "maiden with many husbands" or a "widowed maiden."
He was fond of satire and mockery, and he often picked fights with fellow writers, journalists, and reporters. In 1932, when Yom Sang-seop read Kim Dong-in's short story "The Toes Look Alike" (발가락이 닮았다), he thought it was modeled on himself, a man who had married late, and he engaged in a heated argument with Kim Dong-in. The two men, who led the literary world of the time, cut off their relationship for as long as fifteen years because of this incident.4 On the side, there were rumors that Yom Sang-seop's child was someone else's, and Kim Dong-in had published "The Toes Look Alike" around that time.
Journalism and social activities
Early on, he argued that writers should write only novels and poetry in pure form. In 1923 Yi Kwang-su joined the Dong-a Ilbo and became its editor-in-chief. Kim Dong-in, who had an extreme aversion to writers becoming journalists, attacked in print the editor-in-chief Yi Kwang-su, saying he had "put on a hypocritical mask after extraordinary effort," and he said of Ju Yo-han, who had become a Dong-a Ilbo reporter, that "for Yohan to become a social figure means his ruin as a poet."5 Kim Dong-in and others called those who became journalists for a living traitors, and he championed the principle that writers should devote themselves purely to novels, poetry, and other creative works. Nevertheless, Kim Dong-in himself became a reporter for the Dong-a Ilbo in 1932.
In April 1933 he joined the Chosun Ilbo and served for about forty days as a reporter and head of the Arts Department. Afterward he acquired the monthly magazine Yadam (野談) and published it from December 1935 to June 1937.
His older brother Kim Dong-won was a close associate of Ahn Chang-ho and organized the Dongwu Club (동우구락부), which served as an auxiliary support organization for Heungsadan. Kim Dong-in also joined Heungsadan and the Dongwu Club. Later, when Yi Kwang-su's Sudong Alliance merged with them, he became a member of the Suyang Dongwuhoe. However, in 1937 he was arrested in the Suyang Dongwuhoe Incident, and after his release he came under suspicion of having converted.
Pro-Japanese activities
After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, he turned toward pro-Japanese tendencies. In early to mid February 1939, he visited the Social Education Division of the Bureau of Education of the Government-General of Korea and proposed organizing a "Literary Delegation" to comfort the imperial troops (皇軍) stationed in North China. The proposal was accepted, and in March he was chosen, together with Park Yeong-hee and Im Hak-su, in an election to select the comfort delegation (文壇使節). From April 15 to May 13 he served as a member of the "Literary Delegation to Comfort the Northern Imperial Army," traveled to the Chinese front to comfort the Imperial Japanese Army, and recorded the trip in writing.
Afterward, he took part as a founding member of the Joseon Literary Association (조선문인협회), an outer organization of the Government-General. In November 1941 he attended and spoke at a Naisen writers' roundtable sponsored by the Joseon Literary Association, and in December of the same year he appeared on the Gyeongseong Broadcasting Station and read a work on the current political situation. Later, in April 1943, under the direction of the Government-General, the Joseon Literary Association, the Joseon Haiku Association, the Joseon Senryu Association, and the National Poetry Federation merged into the Joseon Literary Patriotic Association (조선문인보국회). From June 15 he served as adviser to its Fiction and Drama Division. In addition, he left many writings in the Government-General's organ, the Maeil Sinbo, promoting and agitating for "Naisen Ittai" and "Kōminka." On January 20, 1944, when the first Korean student soldiers were to enter military service, he serialized in the Maeil Sinbo from January 19 to January 28, under the title "Kōminka of the Peninsula's People: Impressions on the Enforcement of the Conscription System," and in doing so he encouraged students to enlist. Besides these, Kim Dong-in left several pro-Japanese novels and essays.
On August 15, 1945, the day of liberation, at 10 a.m. he met Abe Tatsuichi, head of the Information Division and Censorship Division of the Government-General of Korea, and asked him to "help him create a new writers' group that would contribute to the national situation." However, Abe, who knew that Japan would announce its surrender at noon, refused the request.
Later life
After liberation
On August 17, at the founding meeting of the Central Cultural Construction Council (중앙문화건설협의회), led by Im Hwa and Kim Nam-cheon, he walked out in protest against the expulsion of Yi Kwang-su, but when the council was formally established on August 18, he was among its members. Meanwhile, when an atmosphere of condemnation of Yi Kwang-su appeared shortly after liberation, he was also one of the few writers who took the lead in defending Yi Kwang-su. In September the Korean Democratic Party was founded and tried to recruit him, but he declined. In November of the same year, through the goodwill of the chief of the Mining and Industry Bureau of the U.S. Army Military Government, he received a grant of a Japanese-owned house (적산가옥) in Sindang-dong, Seongdong District, Seoul.6
After December 1945 he supported the Trusteeship opposition movement, and in January 1946 he arranged for the founding of the right-wing organization All-Joseon Writers' Association. In November of the same year, the Japanese-owned house he had received was requisitioned by the U.S. military authorities, and he moved to Hawangsimni-dong.
In March 1947 he published the prose piece "Record of a Man of a Fallen Nation" (亡國人記) in Baekmin, and in May 1948 he published "Continuation of the Record of a Man of a Fallen Nation" in Baekmin. From March 1948 to August 1949 he published prose pieces such as "Traces of Thirty Years in the Literary World" in Sinchonji. In these he defended and justified his many pro-Japanese activities during the colonial period. The main content was a glorification of his conduct: "The pro-Japanese acts of the late colonial period were a resolution for national liberation and a desperate measure, an internal resistance within the system to protect 'the Korean language and Korean novels.'"
Final years
In his later years, Kim Dong-in failed in business and suffered from insomnia.7 In his old age he bought large quantities of sleeping pills at a pharmacy. Among them, he mainly took the cheapest and most potent, Paraldehyde (포수크로랄). He lived depending on sleeping pills, and became something of an expert on them.7
In July 1949 he was left partly paralyzed by a stroke. After he suffered the stroke, depression came along with his insomnia, and everyone around him left his side. In a single room in Seoul, he fought illness and loneliness, and sleeping pills and alcohol were his only companions. When the Korean War broke out in 1950, he tried to evacuate, but because of his physical condition he soon turned back. On June 28 he finally gave up on evacuating, stayed in Seoul alone, and was arrested by the Korean People's Army and interrogated.
Around the time of the January Fourth Retreat, on January 5, 1951, he died at his home in Hawangsimni-dong, Seoul, at the age of 52. Neighbors discovered his body a few days after his death, and they took care of the remains and buried him.
After death
Shortly after the Korean War, he was treated as missing, but in the late 1950s his tragic death became known. Afterward, Park Jong-hwa, Yom Sang-seop, Jang Jun-ha, and others began efforts to highlight his literary value and to commemorate him.
In 1955 the journal 'Sasanggye' established the Dongin Literary Award in his name, and it began awarding it in 1956. Afterward, the Dongin Literary Award was administered by Sasanggye from 1956 to 1967, by Dongseo Munhwasa from 1979 to 1985, and from 1987 by the Chosun Ilbo, which has continued to award it annually.
1914: Completed the course at Soongsil Higher Common School, Pyongyang, South Pyongan Province (honorary diploma awarded by Seoul Soongsil Middle School and Soongsil High School on May 31, 1946)
1915: Completed a private junior high school in Tokyo, Japan
1919: Graduated from the junior high division of Meiji Gakuin in Tokyo, Japan
1919: Dropped out of the English Literature Department of Meiji University in Japan
In the later part of the Japanese colonial period, after being imprisoned in the Suyang Dongwuhoe Incident, he turned, and worked in various pro-Japanese organizations. Kim Dong-won, a politician who served as vice speaker of the National Assembly after the founding of the Republic of Korea and who was taken to North Korea during the Korean War, was the half-brother of the novelist Kim Dong-in.
On November 27, 2009, the Truth Commission on Pro-Japanese Collaboration decided that, "through Kim Dong-in's novels and writings, he asserted the justice of Japan's war and urged participation in the war, and thereby committed pro-Japanese acts of collaboration as stipulated in the 'Special Act on the Investigation of Anti-National Acts under Japanese Rule,'" and this decision caused controversy. In response, his son argued that "it is unjust to isolate one part of a novel and declare it a pro-Japanese act." He also argued that "his conduct at the time lacked activeness," and filed a lawsuit. On November 26, 2010, the court, in its ruling, recognized the factual basis of the pro-Japanese acts.9
Minjok Problem Research Institute (July 1, 1995). "Kim Dong-in: The Collapse of Art-for-Art's-Sake and His Decline into a Pro-Japanese Literary Figure (Lim Gyu-chan)". Pro-Japanese Figures 99 (3). Seoul: Dolbegae. ISBN 89-7199-013-9.
Minjok Problem Research Institute, Dictionary of Pro-Japanese Collaborators.
Footnotes
Footnotes
Pursuant to Article 39, Paragraph 1 of the Copyright Act before its partial amendment by Act No. 11110, December 2, 2011, and Article 3 of the Addenda to the Copyright Act as partially amended by Act No. 11110, December 2, 2011. ↩
"Changes in the Seoul Dialect". Seoul 600-Year History. Seoul Metropolitan Government. Archived from the original document on September 28, 2007. Retrieved September 16, 2007. In Korean, the original ... ↩
Seo Ji-young, Asking Love of History (Iseum, 2011), p. 229. ↩↩2
Kim Dong-in (金東仁, October 2, 1900 – January 5, 1951) was a pro-Japanese collaborator, novelist, literary critic, Poet, and journalist. His family seat was Jeonju (全州), and his art names were Geumdong (琴童), Geumdongin (琴童仁), Chunsa (春士), Mandeok (萬德), and Sieodim. A literary monument to him stands today in Children's Grand Park.
While studying in Japan, he took part in the February 8 Independence Declaration and the March 1st Movement of 1919, but afterward he devoted himself exclusively to novels and creative work. In the later part of the Japanese occupation of Korea, he adopted a Japanese name and took part in pro-Japanese activities. After liberation, he clashed with the literary world, which sought to expel Yi Kwang-su, and in 1946 he gathered right-wing writers to found the All-Joseon Writers' Association for Literature (전조선문필가협회). For a time, from September 1948 to February 1949, he held the post of Party Affairs Committee member of the Korean Democratic Party. In the later part of his life he suffered from insomnia, depression, and stroke, and in 1951, during the Korean War, he died of pneumonia.
He excelled at criticism and satire, and for a time he held the conviction that writers should only write. He opposed and criticized free love and the women's liberation movement, which had emerged from the colonial period. By publishing short stories in a modern style, he is regarded as a pioneer of modern Korean literature. His pen names included Kim Mandeok, Sieodim, Geomsieodim, and Geumdong. His works are already out of .
Kim Dong-in was born in Pyongyang. His father was Kim Dae-yun (金大閏), a wealthy magnate of Pyongyang and a Protestant elder. His half-brother Kim Dong-won was an independence activist and politician, and one of Ahn Chang-ho's close associates. From 1907 to 1912 Kim Dong-in studied at Sungdeok Elementary School, a Protestant school, and in 1912 he entered Soongsil School, which was also Protestant-affiliated. After dropping out the following year, he went to study in Japan in 1914 and enrolled in the junior high division of Tokyo Gakuin.
In 1915, when Tokyo Gakuin was closed, he transferred to the second year of the junior high division of Meiji Gakuin.
Adolescence
In 1917, when his father died, he returned to Korea for a time and inherited a large estate. At the same time, he left Meiji Gakuin without graduating, and in September of that year he left the country again to study in Japan, entering Kawabata Art School in Tokyo, an art school, where he became a student of the Western-style painter Fujishima Takeji. During his time in Tokyo he met and befriended Yi Kwang-su, Ahn Jae-hong, Shin Ik-hi, and others.
In February 1919, in Tokyo, he co-published with Ju Yo-han the magazine Changjo (創造), which is regarded as Korea's first purely literary coterie journal, and he debuted by publishing the short story "The Sorrow of the Weak" (약한 자의 슬픔). In the same year, a journal was founded that advocated pure literature and art for art's sake, and it showed a movement different from the enlightenment ideas of Yi Kwang-su. He was also the first to begin using the third-person pronoun, which had not originally developed in the Korean language.2
In February 1919, at Hibiya Park in Tokyo, he took part in the independence declaration event of the Korean students' association in Japan and was arrested, but he was released the next day. He returned to Korea on March 5, 1919. Then, on March 26, he was arrested and imprisoned for drafting the proclamation for the March 1st Movement that his younger brother Kim Dong-pyeong was to use. On June 26 he was released on a suspended sentence. He deeply sympathized with idealism, but when he heard that the Korean delegation led by Kim Kyu-sik had been rebuffed at the Paris Peace Conference, he was disheartened and became skeptical and cynical.
Career as a novelist
From the 1920s, as his family fortune declined, he began to write popular novels. In 1923 he published at his own expense his first collection of works, Life: Sieodim Collection (목숨-시어딤 창작집, Changjosa). In August 1924 he founded the coterie journal Yeongdae (영대), which he published until January 1925. From September 1930 to November 1931 he serialized his first full-length novel, Young Them (젊은 그들), in the Dong-a Ilbo. In July 1932 he took on the roles of founding member, committee member, and head of operations of the Joseon Writers' Friendship Association, a literary friendship group.
Meanwhile, Kim Dong-in, who held a negative attitude toward the free love of the new women, depicted the protagonist Yeonsil in Kim Yeon-sil Story (김연실전), which was modeled on the new-woman writer Kim Myeong-sun, as a licentious woman who "studied the works of Ellen Key and Dr. Kuriyagawa in order to better understand love," but who ultimately held the view that "intercourse between men and women is love, and the actual expression of love is sexual intercourse," and as a "dirty woman" who was completely indifferent to chastity.3 These negative remarks were aimed not only at Kim Myeong-sun personally but at the new women and intellectuals in general, who regarded free love and free marriage as means of women's liberation.3 He also mocked the novelist Kim Myeong-sun as a "maiden with many husbands" or a "widowed maiden."
He was fond of satire and mockery, and he often picked fights with fellow writers, journalists, and reporters. In 1932, when Yom Sang-seop read Kim Dong-in's short story "The Toes Look Alike" (발가락이 닮았다), he thought it was modeled on himself, a man who had married late, and he engaged in a heated argument with Kim Dong-in. The two men, who led the literary world of the time, cut off their relationship for as long as fifteen years because of this incident.4 On the side, there were rumors that Yom Sang-seop's child was someone else's, and Kim Dong-in had published "The Toes Look Alike" around that time.
Journalism and social activities
Early on, he argued that writers should write only novels and poetry in pure form. In 1923 Yi Kwang-su joined the Dong-a Ilbo and became its editor-in-chief. Kim Dong-in, who had an extreme aversion to writers becoming journalists, attacked in print the editor-in-chief Yi Kwang-su, saying he had "put on a hypocritical mask after extraordinary effort," and he said of Ju Yo-han, who had become a Dong-a Ilbo reporter, that "for Yohan to become a social figure means his ruin as a poet."5 Kim Dong-in and others called those who became journalists for a living traitors, and he championed the principle that writers should devote themselves purely to novels, poetry, and other creative works. Nevertheless, Kim Dong-in himself became a reporter for the Dong-a Ilbo in 1932.
In April 1933 he joined the Chosun Ilbo and served for about forty days as a reporter and head of the Arts Department. Afterward he acquired the monthly magazine Yadam (野談) and published it from December 1935 to June 1937.
His older brother Kim Dong-won was a close associate of Ahn Chang-ho and organized the Dongwu Club (동우구락부), which served as an auxiliary support organization for Heungsadan. Kim Dong-in also joined Heungsadan and the Dongwu Club. Later, when Yi Kwang-su's Sudong Alliance merged with them, he became a member of the Suyang Dongwuhoe. However, in 1937 he was arrested in the Suyang Dongwuhoe Incident, and after his release he came under suspicion of having converted.
Pro-Japanese activities
After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, he turned toward pro-Japanese tendencies. In early to mid February 1939, he visited the Social Education Division of the Bureau of Education of the Government-General of Korea and proposed organizing a "Literary Delegation" to comfort the imperial troops (皇軍) stationed in North China. The proposal was accepted, and in March he was chosen, together with Park Yeong-hee and Im Hak-su, in an election to select the comfort delegation (文壇使節). From April 15 to May 13 he served as a member of the "Literary Delegation to Comfort the Northern Imperial Army," traveled to the Chinese front to comfort the Imperial Japanese Army, and recorded the trip in writing.
Afterward, he took part as a founding member of the Joseon Literary Association (조선문인협회), an outer organization of the Government-General. In November 1941 he attended and spoke at a Naisen writers' roundtable sponsored by the Joseon Literary Association, and in December of the same year he appeared on the Gyeongseong Broadcasting Station and read a work on the current political situation. Later, in April 1943, under the direction of the Government-General, the Joseon Literary Association, the Joseon Haiku Association, the Joseon Senryu Association, and the National Poetry Federation merged into the Joseon Literary Patriotic Association (조선문인보국회). From June 15 he served as adviser to its Fiction and Drama Division. In addition, he left many writings in the Government-General's organ, the Maeil Sinbo, promoting and agitating for "Naisen Ittai" and "Kōminka." On January 20, 1944, when the first Korean student soldiers were to enter military service, he serialized in the Maeil Sinbo from January 19 to January 28, under the title "Kōminka of the Peninsula's People: Impressions on the Enforcement of the Conscription System," and in doing so he encouraged students to enlist. Besides these, Kim Dong-in left several pro-Japanese novels and essays.
On August 15, 1945, the day of liberation, at 10 a.m. he met Abe Tatsuichi, head of the Information Division and Censorship Division of the Government-General of Korea, and asked him to "help him create a new writers' group that would contribute to the national situation." However, Abe, who knew that Japan would announce its surrender at noon, refused the request.
Later life
After liberation
On August 17, at the founding meeting of the Central Cultural Construction Council (중앙문화건설협의회), led by Im Hwa and Kim Nam-cheon, he walked out in protest against the expulsion of Yi Kwang-su, but when the council was formally established on August 18, he was among its members. Meanwhile, when an atmosphere of condemnation of Yi Kwang-su appeared shortly after liberation, he was also one of the few writers who took the lead in defending Yi Kwang-su. In September the Korean Democratic Party was founded and tried to recruit him, but he declined. In November of the same year, through the goodwill of the chief of the Mining and Industry Bureau of the U.S. Army Military Government, he received a grant of a Japanese-owned house (적산가옥) in Sindang-dong, Seongdong District, Seoul.6
After December 1945 he supported the Trusteeship opposition movement, and in January 1946 he arranged for the founding of the right-wing organization All-Joseon Writers' Association. In November of the same year, the Japanese-owned house he had received was requisitioned by the U.S. military authorities, and he moved to Hawangsimni-dong.
In March 1947 he published the prose piece "Record of a Man of a Fallen Nation" (亡國人記) in Baekmin, and in May 1948 he published "Continuation of the Record of a Man of a Fallen Nation" in Baekmin. From March 1948 to August 1949 he published prose pieces such as "Traces of Thirty Years in the Literary World" in Sinchonji. In these he defended and justified his many pro-Japanese activities during the colonial period. The main content was a glorification of his conduct: "The pro-Japanese acts of the late colonial period were a resolution for national liberation and a desperate measure, an internal resistance within the system to protect 'the Korean language and Korean novels.'"
Final years
In his later years, Kim Dong-in failed in business and suffered from insomnia.7 In his old age he bought large quantities of sleeping pills at a pharmacy. Among them, he mainly took the cheapest and most potent, Paraldehyde (포수크로랄). He lived depending on sleeping pills, and became something of an expert on them.7
In July 1949 he was left partly paralyzed by a stroke. After he suffered the stroke, depression came along with his insomnia, and everyone around him left his side. In a single room in Seoul, he fought illness and loneliness, and sleeping pills and alcohol were his only companions. When the Korean War broke out in 1950, he tried to evacuate, but because of his physical condition he soon turned back. On June 28 he finally gave up on evacuating, stayed in Seoul alone, and was arrested by the Korean People's Army and interrogated.
Around the time of the January Fourth Retreat, on January 5, 1951, he died at his home in Hawangsimni-dong, Seoul, at the age of 52. Neighbors discovered his body a few days after his death, and they took care of the remains and buried him.
After death
Shortly after the Korean War, he was treated as missing, but in the late 1950s his tragic death became known. Afterward, Park Jong-hwa, Yom Sang-seop, Jang Jun-ha, and others began efforts to highlight his literary value and to commemorate him.
In 1955 the journal 'Sasanggye' established the Dongin Literary Award in his name, and it began awarding it in 1956. Afterward, the Dongin Literary Award was administered by Sasanggye from 1956 to 1967, by Dongseo Munhwasa from 1979 to 1985, and from 1987 by the Chosun Ilbo, which has continued to award it annually.
1914: Completed the course at Soongsil Higher Common School, Pyongyang, South Pyongan Province (honorary diploma awarded by Seoul Soongsil Middle School and Soongsil High School on May 31, 1946)
1915: Completed a private junior high school in Tokyo, Japan
1919: Graduated from the junior high division of Meiji Gakuin in Tokyo, Japan
1919: Dropped out of the English Literature Department of Meiji University in Japan
In the later part of the Japanese colonial period, after being imprisoned in the Suyang Dongwuhoe Incident, he turned, and worked in various pro-Japanese organizations. Kim Dong-won, a politician who served as vice speaker of the National Assembly after the founding of the Republic of Korea and who was taken to North Korea during the Korean War, was the half-brother of the novelist Kim Dong-in.
On November 27, 2009, the Truth Commission on Pro-Japanese Collaboration decided that, "through Kim Dong-in's novels and writings, he asserted the justice of Japan's war and urged participation in the war, and thereby committed pro-Japanese acts of collaboration as stipulated in the 'Special Act on the Investigation of Anti-National Acts under Japanese Rule,'" and this decision caused controversy. In response, his son argued that "it is unjust to isolate one part of a novel and declare it a pro-Japanese act." He also argued that "his conduct at the time lacked activeness," and filed a lawsuit. On November 26, 2010, the court, in its ruling, recognized the factual basis of the pro-Japanese acts.9
Minjok Problem Research Institute (July 1, 1995). "Kim Dong-in: The Collapse of Art-for-Art's-Sake and His Decline into a Pro-Japanese Literary Figure (Lim Gyu-chan)". Pro-Japanese Figures 99 (3). Seoul: Dolbegae. ISBN 89-7199-013-9.
Minjok Problem Research Institute, Dictionary of Pro-Japanese Collaborators.
Footnotes
Footnotes
Pursuant to Article 39, Paragraph 1 of the Copyright Act before its partial amendment by Act No. 11110, December 2, 2011, and Article 3 of the Addenda to the Copyright Act as partially amended by Act No. 11110, December 2, 2011. ↩
"Changes in the Seoul Dialect". Seoul 600-Year History. Seoul Metropolitan Government. Archived from the original document on September 28, 2007. Retrieved September 16, 2007. In Korean, the original ... ↩
Seo Ji-young, Asking Love of History (Iseum, 2011), p. 229. ↩↩2