‘Plagiarism Suspicion’ Shin Kyung-sook returns after 6 years

Writer Shin Kyung-sook attended the online press conference on the 3rd. [사진 창비]

“I lived with the feeling of staring at the pitchfork on the back of my instep because of a mistake I did unknowingly in my youth. When I think of the readers who read my work, I feel like I’m standing in front of a cliff, and my heart is heartwarmed. Once again, I deeply apologize for my carelessness.”

Novelist Shin Kyung-sook (57) mentioned the suspicion of plagiarism six years ago at an online press conference introducing a new work on the 3rd. Shin writes a new feature film, “I went to my father” (Changbi) on the 5th. The book is for the first time in 8 years (“The story I want to tell the moon”, 2013), and the long film is in 11 years (“Somewhere, the phone rings to find me”, 2010). “I went to my father” is a work that has been serialized in Changbi’s web magazine since June of last year, and was used as a daughter’s point of view over her father’s life.

The new writer stopped her activities after being suspicious of plagiarizing the sentence of Yukio Mishima’s novel “Friendship” in the short “Legend” in 2015. At the time, he said in a media interview, “I think plagiarism is right,” and “I will have time to put down everything including the literary awards judges and self-sufficiency.” Afterwards, in 2019, he published the mid-length “Kang Don’t Know What was on the Boat” in the quarterly summer issue of Creation and Criticism, and wrote, “A moment of inattention in my youth has caused a serious mistake in my writing.”

On the 3rd, he said, “I went to my father,” he said, “I wrote it with the feeling of writing a letter to each reader.” “To me, readers mean the same thing as Mother Nature. No matter how much I thought about it, I had no choice but to get up again while touching the ground that I fell, and that was writing a work for me. I will continue to write new works with a heavy weight on the past faults and disregards.”

Regarding the last 6 years of life, he said, “It was a time to rethink my thoughts on the writings I’ve been writing for 30 years.” At the same time, I quoted the lines of the characters in this work. “There is a nuance in the novel that people have to live even if they can’t start something new, but it was also a word to me. Literature was like an alibi in my life, so I couldn’t do it. I will continue to write, and even after 10 or 20 years, if someone asks me what they did, I will try to be the person who answers that I wrote.”

After being asked to apologize from the reader, I couldn’t speak for a while. “How can I convey my heart… . During that time, I thought about it day by day. Since I am a writer, I will continue to write works that I can write, and I will try to find some sort of disappointment that I have given to the readers.”

“I went to my father” is a story about a daughter who returns to her hometown to take care of her father who was left alone, looking back on her father’s life. Modern history, such as the trauma of the Korean War, the April 19 Revolution, and migrant labor in the Middle East, is melted. Shin explained, “There was an author’s desire to find the words in the hearts of fathers who passed through difficult modern history in Korea.” He said, “I wanted to write a scene that sprouts on a blue leaf even after an era has passed.” The final chapter of the novel contains a scene where a father and a daughter discover new sprouts from a fallen old tree in their hometown.

Shin also announced plans for his next work. “I am going to write about a worker’s day and the problem of death related to him. I have many thoughts about this, but since I haven’t written my work yet, I will save my words.” He said, “When I was asked about my next work, I replied,’I will write about a man who was suddenly blind one day.’

Reporter Kim Ho-jeong [email protected]