No South Korean writer has enjoyed more respect and fame than Park Kyung-ni. The loss of such a writer is extremely sad for the entire nation. Park died of lung cancer on Monday at the age of 82. It is a pity that she lost her battle against cancer. But her literary legacy will remain alive in the minds of the people.
Born in 1926 in Tongyeong, South Gyeongsang Province, she went through Korea's turbulent times, including Japanese colonial rule and the Korean War. It is no wonder that modern Korean history and her life inflamed her literary passion and imagination. She lost her husband during the war and her baby son right after the conflict.
One of her masterpieces is ``Land'' (Toji). The 16-volume epic novel depicts the turbulence at the turn of the 20th century when the Korean people struggled against Japanese imperialism. The book is an embodiment of Koreans' life and their sufferings from the downfall of the Joseon Kingdom and brutal rule by Japan until the August 1945 liberation of Korea.
It took Park 25 years to complete the long story of 700 characters in 1994. She gave reasons for existence to each character in the work. The writer described the nation's eventful and tumultuous history through the love of vast ``Mother Earth.'' Park began her writing career with the publication of a short story, ``Calculations,'' in 1955. She won numerous literary prizes, including the Woltan Literature Award, for ``Land.''
It is doubtful whether any Korean writer can ever be comparable to her in literary creativeness. Her greatness lies in how she portrayed major changes in Korean society from the dissolution of the traditional sociopolitical hierarchy and family system to the influx of Western materialism, and the reality of colonial rule and Koreans' struggle for independence.
Her brilliant achievement was attributed to her efforts to sublimate her own experience, sorrow and desires in the form of literature. ``Land'' is also the incarnation of her thoughts stressing the importance of nature and life. She made strenuous efforts to cover the interactions between human beings, the environment and the universe.
It was Park who first proposed the idea of restoring the Cheonggyecheon stream flowing through the heart of Seoul. She wanted to restore a stream in which culture and ecology come together harmoniously. We are at a loss on how to fill the vacuum left by the death of the master writer. We have to leave no stone unturned in order to develop her literary legacy.