Kim Myeong-sun

Korean writer (1896–1951)

Kim Myeong sun (hangul=김명순; 20 January 1896 – 22 June 1951) was a female Korean novelist and poet of the early 20th century. She wrote under the art names Tansil (hangul=탄실) and Mangyangcho (hangul=망양초).

Kim Myeong sun was born in Pyongyang, Joseon in 1896. Kim attended Chinmyeong Girls' School in Seoul in 1908 where she was considered a good student, but she was bullied due to her mother's status as a kisaeng. She was also mistreatment by her step mother's family, leading her to drop out of school in 1911. In 1913, she went to Tokyo to study at Kojimachi's Girls' School, but did not complete her studies there. She soon returned to Korea to earn her degree at Sungmyeon's Girls' School. In 1919, she joined the Creation group, Korea's first literary circle, which was organized by Kim Dong in and other Korean students in Tokyo. She briefly worked as a reporter for the newspaper Maeil Sinmun, and from 1927 to 1930 she worked in film. She then suffered from financial problems and succumbed to mental illness late in life.

Kim made her literary debut in 1917, in a magazine edited by Choe Nam seon called Youth (소년, Sonyeon), with a novella titled Mysterious Girl (의문의 소녀, Uimun ui sonyeo) She began publishing her poetry in 1921, and became known for her keen psychological portraits, with her 1921 novella Turkey (칠면조, Chilmyeonjo), which was published in the magazine Enlightenment (개벽, Gaebyeog). She continued publishing as late as 1925. Relatively little is currently known about her work because, as Kim Yung Hee notes, scholars have not studied her and are currently "attempting to excavate her lost works in order to better assess her position in the lineage of modern Korean women fiction writers."