This paper aims to have a bird’s?eye view on Baek, Seok’s works who has reached the 100th anniversary and avoid the mistake of looking into the parts and not the whole.
Paek, Seok was born at Jeong?ju, Pyeong?buk on July 1912 and lived a life of extreme ups and downs. He made his literary debut through annual spring literary contest of Chosun Daily newspaper on January 1930 when he was 19 and finished his publication of works with ‘Naruteo’(Ferry) on May 1962. After he went to a cooperative in Gwanpyong?ri, Samsoo?gun leaving the central literary circle on January 1959, he lived as a shepherd for more than 30 years of his later part of life. Having been brought into sudden prominence in the literary circle with his poem book Saseum(Deer) in 1936, Paek, Seok kept his literary reputation as a writer of juvenile stories by publishing fairy poem book Jipgene Ne Hyongje(Four Brothers of the Hermit Crabs, 1957) in the North Korea. However, he had to focus on children’s literature without the freedom of writing and he could not be reinstated to Pyongyang after he had received the ‘Red Letter’ in 1959. Referred as a genius poet, however, his life was ended tragically without beingable to write what he wanted to and criticized for his lack of loyalty and ‘vestige of bourgeois.’
Total unearthed poems of Paek, Seok are 148 including recent ones discovered by Song, Joon. More of his unearthed works will be included later. His proses are total 44 with the variety of novel, essay, review, political comment, translation, etc. He focused more on translation in the North Korea and they are 197 works of translated modern poems and 11 works of fairy poems. He translated 4 long novels including Silent Don 1, Silent Don 2 and 1 collected short novel and 2 short novels. Silent Don recently discovered with the help of professor Yoon, Hae?yeon is more than 1,000 pages and has an importance as the first direct translation fro Russian into Korean by Bake, Seok. More works of him will be unearthed as time goes on. However, with those newly unearthed works, the study on Baek, Seok’s literature has already reached a new phase. Now researchers have to include those works written in the North Korea.
Unearthing the texts of important poets such as Baek, Seok is very meaningful for the study of modern Korean poetry. Considering the process of unearthing his works until now, more of his translated works will be found. However, his own creation has less possibility of being included in the list. Though there will be the difficulties such as the division of Korea into south and north, researchers should be able to get over them to continue the study of Baek, Seok.