Soongsil University Professor Kim Young-sik Wins Second Midang Academic Award for Seo Jeong-ju Research

Kim Young-sik, a professor of creative writing at Soongsil University, has received the second Midang Academic Award for a study of poet Seo Jeong-ju’s work.

Kim won for his paper, “A Study of the Communal Speaker ‘We’ in Seo Jeong-ju’s Selected Poems and the Ways the ‘World That Should Exist’ Is Realized.” The study analyzes the collective voice “we” in the poetry collection and the vision of an ideal world expressed through it.

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A paper that reads Seo Jeong-ju’s Selected Poems carefully and humbly, finding good questions and reasonable answers there.

The award is organized by Dongguk University’s Midang Research Institute. It seeks to broaden the scope of research on Seo Jeong-ju and identify and encourage new scholarly work. This year’s judging covered criticism, books, academic papers, dissertations and unpublished papers on Seo Jeong-ju released or submitted since January 2024.

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I wondered whether I was qualified to receive an academic award of such great significance, since most of my career has been spent as a creator rather than a researcher.

Lee Nam-ho, a former Korea University vice president who chaired the judging panel, described Kim’s paper as “a paper that reads Seo Jeong-ju’s Selected Poems carefully and humbly, finding good questions and reasonable answers there.” Kim said he had spent most of his career as a creator rather than a researcher and had questioned whether he deserved such a significant academic honor. He called the award good fortune that came from the judges recognizing his effort to pursue even a modest subject steadily and sincerely.

Kim added that both literary creation and literary research rest on an understanding of human beings. He said he would make the patient effort to understand a poet’s work and world without a blindly fixed perspective the starting point for literature and literary research. Kim began his career as a poet after receiving the 1998 New Writer Award from Poetry and Thought. He has published seven poetry collections, including From the Blank Paper, along with prose, poetics, criticism and research books. He has also received the Midang Literary Award, the Park In-hwan Literary Award, the Kim Hyun Literary Plaque and the Daesan Literary Award.

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I will make the patient effort to understand a poet’s work and world without a blindly fixed perspective the starting point for literature and literary research.