Kim Sok-pom

Born in Osaka to parents of Jeju origin,[1] Kim accompanied his family to Jeju, a Korean island, where he became acquainted with supporters of the Korean independence movement. In 1945, when he had returned to Osaka, the war ended. Directly after that, he went to Seoul, but came back to Japan again after that, where he would stay. He attended Kansai University, and graduated from the Department of Literature at Kyoto University, having specialized in literature.[1] Soon after his graduation, the April 3 massacre broke out in his ancestral hometown of Jeju, an incident which became a motif of his later work.[1]

In 1957, Karasu no shi and Kanshu Baku Shobō appeared in Bungei Shuto magazine. Around this time, Kim was involved in organising Chongryon, the pro-North Korean ethnic association in Japan, but after Karasu no shi was published as a stand-alone book with three other short stories of his, he left the organisation. With the change to be published further, Kim focused on writing in Japanese, in 1970 writing Mandoku yūrei kitan, which confirmed his position as a novelist. The same work would be published in serial form between 1976 and 1981 in Bungakukai literary magazine under the title Tsunami; afterwards, the name was changed to Kazantō'.

Kim has not obtained South Korean citizenship following the division of Korea after the Korean War.[2] In 1988, at the invitation of a civic group, Kim travelled to Seoul and Jeju Island, despite having no citizenship. When fellow Zainichi Korean novelist Lee Hoesung took South Korean citizenship in 1998, Kim criticised him, and a debate between the two developed in the media. Kazantō, his book about the 1945 Jeju Massacre has been controversial in South Korea, and he was denied entry to South Korea twice: in 1980 and in 2015.[2]

Major themes in Kim's works include imperialism, notions of home, survival and popular nationalism; he touches upon controversial topics such as identity politics and state genocide.[3] His work are seen as an allegory on what it means to be a Zainichi Korean in postwar Japan.[1]

(English titles not official)