By Kim Young-jin
If Korea’s hosting of the G20 summit raised its profile on the world stage, a group of ambassadors here believe they have just the fix to satiate any new curiosity about Korean culture — literature.
For over four years, the Seoul Literary Society, a group led by Swedish Ambassador to Seoul Lars Vargo, has facilitated educational cultural experiences for its members — mainly foreign diplomats and Koreans in literary circles — by inviting Korean writers to recite their work.
Likewise, the group, which meets bimonthly, also invites scribes from their own lands to shed light on foreign cultures. Guests have included Swedish haiku poet Kai Felkman and Czech novelist Arnost Lustig.
“In order to understand a country you must look at its soul,” Vargo told The Korea Times at the group’s most recent meeting. “The soul you find in literature. This is where people really express themselves.”
Last Monday, it was the poetry of Moon Chung-hee that shed light on the Korean experience.
Moon recited her poetry at an event co-hosted by the literacy society, the National Library of Korea and the Korea Literature Translation Institute. Held at the library’s digital wing in southern Seoul, the event aimed to deepen understanding of Korean culture ahead of the G20 summit held Thursday and Friday.
Moon proved a perfect match for the event’s theme; touching on subjects including Japan’s colonial rule over the peninsula (1910-45) and its practice of sexual slavery during WWII, the division of the two Koreas and the South’s rapid industrialization, her selections served as a historical tour of Korean history.
Moon was awarded the Swedish Cikada Prize, given to writers from Asia, at a ceremony at the ambassador’s residence, Wednesday.
The poet noted that Korea’s meteoric rise to the world stage may have come at the cost of some aspects of its culture.
“It’s the job of writers to report about these types of cultural loss, so we remember these things,” she said after the reading. “As we develop economically, the government should pay more attention to the development of Korean literature and think of ways to promote it worldwide.”
The event, she said, was an opportunity to do just that. Part of a series presented by the National Library, it was followed later in the week by lectures on Latin American and Indian literature, as well as French and Japanese film selections.
“We believe cultural understanding enables economic cooperation. We had this in mind when we teamed up with the literary society and the translation institute to plan this event,” Woo Jin-yung, chief executive at the library, which runs under the Ministry of Sports, Culture and Tourism, said.
Vargo, himself an accomplished writer who has published several books of prose, poetry and history, said his group’s objective is simply to “understand each other through literature and to get inspired to read and write.”
The diplomat also had an eye to the future, as his ambassadorship is slated to end next summer. “When I leave I’d like someone to take over as president and make sure that it lives on,” he said.