Munhakdongne Korean Literature Collection 014
Kim Hoon's novel The Song of the Sword

Kim Hoon, the greatest writer of our time, restores historical figures from a different angle than their official evaluations, using his elegant style.
His major works, such as 『Song of the Sword』, 『Song of Strings』, and 『Namhansanseong』, which focus on the inner lives of individuals who lived through historical moments, are recalled as "historical novels that contain non-historicality," and showed critics and readers that a new form of historical novel was possible.


『Song of the Sword』(2007) contains the events that Yi Sun-sin experienced from the time he was imprisoned for refusing the king's orders, but was released when the tide of the war turned and became the commander of the three provinces' naval forces, until he was hit by enemy bullets in the Battle of Noryang and passed away.
Kim Hoon realistically portrays the human agony that Admiral Yi Sun-sin, who wanted to die honorably on the battlefield, must have experienced due to circumstances outside of war.
The anxiety caused by the ancestors' mismanagement, the resentment of a weak nation that had to protect its country by appeasing the powerful Ming Dynasty, and the sadness of a single father who could not save his family are revealed in more detail than the course of the war.
"The Song of the Sword" is a masterpiece that sharply depicts the lonely and anxious inner self of Yi Sun-sin, who had to constantly stand up again and again in a limiting situation where he had no allies, while abandoning the cliché war narrative that has always been a constant when portraying Yi Sun-sin, using Kim Hoon's characteristically masculine writing style.


"Song of the Sword," which depicts the "human Yi Sun-sin" as "the existential agony of the warrior Yi Sun-sin," was selected for the 2001 Dong-in Literary Award, receiving praise as "a blessing that poured down like a bolt from the blue on Korean literature."
Additionally, this work was translated and introduced by the French publisher Gallimard as part of the 'World Literature Series', which selects and publishes only the most outstanding literary works since the 20th century.
Among Korean literary works, this is the only one selected and published in this series.