Scenes from the Enlightenment ― A Novel of Manners

Scenes from the Enlightenment: A Novel of Manners was published in 1939, toward the end of the Japanese colonial period in Korea, and depicts seemingly trivial events in the lives of the residents of a small town northeast of Pyongyang: a wedding between two local families, the arrival of box upon box of fascinating new Western products at the Japanese-run general store, a long-awaited athletics meet held at the local school. But in these events, and in the changing familial and social relationships that underpin them, we see a picture of a changing Korea on the cusp of modernity. When two boys decide to cut their hair in the Western fashion, the reader sees the conflict between tradition and modernity presented not in abstract terms, but in one of the myriad ways it affected the lives of those who lived through this time of change.

Kim Namcheon was born in 1911 in South Pyongan Province, located north of Pyongyang in what is today North Korea -- he was, in fact, from the area about which he wrote in Scenes from the Enlightenment. After graduating from high school he went to study in Japan at Hosei University in Tokyo, but he did not complete his studies there. He was active in the proletarian literary movement, and after his return to Korea in 1931 he played a leading role in the Korean Artists Proletarian Federation (KAPF). His early works pursued socialist realism, but he was criticized for focusing too much on the class struggle and not enough on actual human beings living their lives. He sought to rectify this fault, and his efforts resulted in the work for which he is probably best known, Scenes from the Enlightenment. Shortly after liberation from the Japanese he crossed over into North Korea, but it is reported that he was executed in 1953 as part of a cultural purge.