Ham Tae-hun
1907–1949
Biography
Ham Tae-hun (함대훈, 1907–1949) was a Korean theatre figure and novelist whose career ran from the late colonial period into the first years of the Republic of Korea. He was born in Songhwa county in Hwanghae province. He finished at the Joongang Higher Common School in Seoul, then went to Japan and studied Russian literature at the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages. While still a student there he helped form the Society for Overseas Literature, whose members published translations and criticism in magazines such as Haeoe Munhak.
In 1931 he joined Kim Jin-seop, Yi Ha-yun and Jeong In-seop in founding the Theatre Arts Society (극예술연구회). Its first production was Gogol's satire The Government Inspector, which Ham had translated. Among the Russian scholars of the new theatre movement he was an outstanding figure, and he influenced the modern stage a great deal. He also wrote novels on love and romance. The best known of them is Sunjeong Haehyeop (순정해협), which was filmed under the same title. In the last years of colonial rule he founded and led the National Drama Research Institute (국민연극연구소), a pro-Japanese theatre group, with Jeong In-seop and Yu Chi-jin, and he was active in the Joseon Writers' Association. Korean lists of pro-Japanese collaborators, including a 2009 official list, include him for this work.
The book on this site is Sunjeong Haehyeop (순정해협), the novel that the Korean article names as his most famous. Readers should bear his wartime record in mind when they read it. No English Wikipedia article under his name turned up, so the Korean article is the only source here, and its dates and details are worth checking.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
순정해협
by 함대훈
During a summer vacation, the family of a student home from Japan waits at the village station for the train, and the young people's loves begin to tie themselves across the strait between Korea and Japan. Ham Dae-hun's novel of 1936 follows them there and back.
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.