Cheon Un yeong

Life

Cheon un-yeong was born in 1971, in Seoul, Korea. Chun has attended university at the Seoul Institute of the Arts studying creative writing studies; Hanyang University where she achieved a B.A. in Journalism, and; the Korea University Graduate School of literature. Although Chun has only produced two volumes of short stories, she is considered a groundbreaker in Korean literature, and her works have been the subject of much analysis.

Work

The Literature Translation Institute of Korea summarizes Chun's work:

Cheon’s works depart significantly from such thematic concerns as love, extra-marital affairs, and urban or middle-class sensibilities that characterized many of the fictional works by women in the 90s. The women in Cheon’s fictional world are defined not by their reaction to the traditional views of women but by their hedonistic tendencies and the feral, primeval instincts they possess. Such a vision of womanhood is often expressed through visceral and visually shocking images. “Breath” features an old woman who works at a butcher’s shop and relishes every part of the cows she dresses out for sale. She eats pieces of raw cow brain as a delicacy; she believes liver is a cure for dizziness and entrails, for indigestion. Her love for meat is taken to its grotesque extreme when she begins hankering for the taste of cow fetus. In “The Needle,” the protagonist is a tattooist who enjoys watching the first drop of blood oozing from skin. Female aggression embodied in the act of tattooing is contrasted against emasculated manhood symbolized by a monk whose murder provides the mystery that drives the narrative forward. Cheon locates the source of such aggression in the prolonged state of oppression, alienation or fear. In “The Needle,” the protagonist’s work as a tattooist parallels her mother’s work as an embroiderer and points at her mother’s unhappy relationship with a monk. In “Your Ocean,” violent images of writhing eels being skinned alive accentuate the protagonist’s feeling of abandonment due to his father’s absence. Aggressive, animalistic behaviors are a defense mechanism triggered by the harsh reality, Cheon tells us.

Works in Translation

Adieu le cirque! (잘가라, 서커스)

Works in Korean (Partial)

The Needle (2001)(바늘)

Myeongrang (2004)(명랑)