Reason for Award

Professor Emeritus Kwon Youngmin has established a historical framework for Korean modern literary criticism through an integrative approach and made outstanding contributions to laying the literary foundation for Korean studies abroad. His research has played a pivotal role in the globalization and internationalization of Korean literature. In particular, by combining diverse literary theories with historical contexts, he has highlighted the originality and value of modern Korean literature, offering profound inspiration to future generations of scholars.

Acceptance Speech

It is an immense honor to be selected as a recipient of the 20th Kyungam Academic Award. I would like to express my deep gratitude to the Kyungam Education and Cultural Foundation for giving me this opportunity to reflect on my journey as a literary scholar.

My path in literary research began in my senior year of university, when I was awarded in the New Year's Literary Contest for literary criticism. At the time, however, I was nothing more than a naive young man who, despite being labeled a critic, had yet to master his own language. After entering graduate school, I buried myself in the library, delving into magazines and newspapers from the Japanese colonial era. I began compiling bibliographic records and creating summary cards for major literary works. As this work continued, I came to understand how key figures in modern Korean literature entered the literary world and what meanings they attributed to literature. This decade-long endeavor resulted in tens of thousands of index cards and allowed me to verify, through documentation, the historical development of modern Korean literature.

After completing this empirical foundation, which I believe was one of the most important tasks in Korean literary research, I turned my attention to a deeper question: how to establish a comprehensive perspective and methodology for understanding literature’s aesthetic value and the spiritual world it seeks to convey. Literary research transforms artistic experience into intellectual logic, but it should not replace literature itself with ideological constructs. Rather, it is essential that literary research reveals the nature and meaning of literature as it exists within social reality.

Since the emergence of "new literature" in Korea, our literary tradition has often failed to inherit the aesthetic values of earlier eras and has been overly eager to follow Western trends. In response, I organized a vast range of literary materials and rewrote literary history from an integrative perspective. While teaching literature in Japan, the United States, and China, I also worked to establish Korean literature's rightful place within world literature. I firmly believe that ensuring Korean literature's presence on the global stage and sharing its universal value with readers around the world is a vital and ongoing mission.

I would like to once again express my heartfelt thanks to the Kyungam Award Committee for recognizing the solitary work I have devoted myself to for over half a century. I also wish to take this opportunity to thank my family, who have supported me with quiet love and encouragement throughout my journey. Above all, I am especially grateful to my beloved students, who are at the heart of my literary life. I am filled with joy that I can once again take pride in calling myself not just a professor, but a literary scholar.