Park Bum-shin

Park Bum Shin
Park at the 2013 Seoul Book Fair
Born	(1946-08-24) August 24, 1946 (age 70) Nonsan, Chungcheongnam-do
Occupation	Novelist
Language	Korean
Nationality	South Korean

Park Bum Shin (; born August 24, 1946) is a South Korean writer

Park Bum Shin was born in Nonsan, Chungcheongnam-do. He graduated from Jeonju National University of Education, Wonkwang University and Korea University. While working as a Korean language teacher at a middle school, he made his literary debut in 1973 with the short story Remains of the Summer (Yeoreum ui janhae), which won him the JoongAng Ilbo's New Year's Literary Contest. In the same year, along with the poets Kim Seung-hui and Jeong Ho-seung, Park founded a literary group called the 73 Group.

After 28 years of teaching in Myongji University's creative program, he retired in 2011. Upon his retirement from the academe and the release of his 39th novel My Hand Turns into a Horseshoe, Park moved back to his hometown, where he concentrates only on writing. He also writes his diaries, which he plans to publish.

In 1979, Park began serializing his first novel Lie Like a Leaf of Grass (Pullipcheoreom nupda) in the JoongAng Ilbo, which would become known as his signature work. For the work's sensitive, even poetic, descriptions of the losses sustained by the Korean people in the period of rapid urbanization, Park received the 1981 Korean Literature Prize.

More serialized novels followed, which exhibited Park's lyrical but realistic style, which details the dreams and frustrations of average citizens adrift in a world of base materialism and brutal opportunism. Of special note are Country of Fire (Bur ui nara) and Country of Water (Mul ui nara), which appeared in The Dong-a Ilbo in the early and mid-1980s and won critical recognition. The stories are satirical portrayals of the upsets, ambitions and disappointments of two country boys Baek Chan-gyu and Han Gil-su, who move to Seoul as it rushes toward industrialization and urbanization. The novels reflect the author's own experience of urban life as a young man.

In 1979, Park began serializing his first novel Lie Like a Leaf of Grass (Pullipcheoreom nupda) in the JoongAng Ilbo, which would become known as his signature work. For the work's sensitive, even poetic, descriptions of the losses sustained by the Korean people in the period of rapid urbanization, Park received the 1981 Korean Literature Prize.