Dong-A Insan Literature Fellowship Goes to Choen Woon-Young

The Dong-A daily has chosen the novelist Cheon Woon-Young as fellow in the third Insan literature creation fellowship, which was designed to support young writers financially.

Mr. Cheon will receive ₩10million and he will have a medium-length story based on the writing plan he submitted in the application for the fellowship printed in the monthly magazine Shindonga. The ceremony of awarding will be held on 20th floor of Dona Media Center at Sejong-ro at 3: 30 on July 11th.

This year, a total of 15 young writers applied for the Insan fellowship. Novelist Kim Joo-young, novelist Song Woo-hye and Kwan Young-Min, president of the college of liberal arts at Seoul National University and literature critic as judges reviewed all the writing plans and decided to give the grand prize of the Insan fellowship to ‘Runny Nose’ (provisional title) of Mr. Cheon.

The novel, set in Dongducheon, Gyeonggi-do, is a story about Soon-Hee, an ethnic Korean staying in China, who came illegally in South Korea to make money, Lisa, a Cambodian dancer, and Min-Jung, a Korean who heals sores in her heart watching the two people’s lives. He said that he wanted to write about the process in which people of different origins communicate each other, and that he would also depict the sorrow of the Korean people in the novel.

He said, “I got an inspiration from my concerns over workers from the third world and I wanted to think over ‘shame’ in the novel and I am happy to have an opportunity to take a look at their lives and to get information about them.”

The judges said, “We considered the writers’ activities after their debut in the literary circles as one of the criteria and we focused on the question of how serious they are in dealing with the lives of people.” The judges also said that they saw Mr. Cheon’s serious efforts to approach the question of life in his writing plan and they expect a great work.

Mr. Cheon made his debut in the literary community by winning a prize in the spring literary contest by Donga Inbo.with his short story titled ‘needle.’ He graduated from Han-Yang University with a major in journalism and he also majored in literary creation at Seoul Institute of the Arts.

The Donga Insan Fellowship provides young novelists with more than 5 years’ activities after their debut with grants. The program is based on the money donated by late Insan Oh Chang-Heun(1908-1989) who asked the money to be used to encourage young writers.

The first fellowship went to Cho Jyung-Ran, a novelist, and Kim Woon-Ha (real name: Kim Chang-Sik). And Kim Oak-Chae won the 2nd fellowship.

Yi-Young Cho lycho@donga.com