Poet Heo Jin-seok Awarded Today's Writer Prize by Quarterly 'Hanbando Literature'

Poet Heo Jin-seok (Professor at Korea National Sport University Industry-Academic Cooperation Foundation and Liberal Arts and Teacher Education Department, also a photographer) received the 'Writer of the Day Award' presented by the quarterly literary magazine 'Hanbando Literature'.

'Hanbando Literature' announced in its recently published autumn issue, "We have selected Heo Jin-seok's poem 'Buchenwald' and two other works as the winners of the 2024 Writer of the Day Award in the poetry category."

Shin Sang-sung, a novelist and former professor at Yongin University who served as a judge, commented, "The works, which are solidly built upon metaphysical imagery with profound humanistic reflection and humanism, provide increasing depth and emotion the more they are read. These are the results of Heo Jin-seok’s steadfast and sincere inquiry."

Heo Jin-seok said in his acceptance speech, "I define all my works as documentaries. There is no work produced outside of experience. 'Buchenwald' began from a winter afternoon’s contemplation. Buchenwald, where countless lives were destroyed, is not far from Weimar, the city of humanities where Goethe lived. There, sensing death, I simultaneously perceived that life inevitably begins again, overcoming ruins and despair; that this is human nature and destiny."

Buchenwald was a Nazi Germany concentration camp established in July 1937 near Ettersberg, close to Weimar, Germany.

Heo Jin-seok was born in Seoul and graduated from Dongguk University with a degree in Korean Literature. He began his literary career in 1985 through the magazine 'Hyundae Sihak'. He has published poetry collections including From the Death of the Typewriter to Illegal Sex (1994), Darkness in X-ray Film (2001), and All the Painful Places Come to Mind (2019). He received the 33rd Dongguk Literary Award in 2020 and the Korean Poetry Literature Award in 2023.