Pak Kyongni literature fest to be held in Russia

SEOUL, Jun 19 (Yonhap) -- A literature festival honoring the late great South Korean female novelist Pak Kyongni will take place in Saint Petersburg, Russia, later this week, the writer's cultural foundation said Wednesday. "The festival will be held at the modern sculpture park of Saint Petersburg State University on Friday on the occasion of the anniversary of the unveiling of a Pak Kyongni bronze statue on the campus," the Toji Cultural Foundation in Seoul said. It's the first time that the Pak Kyongni Literature Festival is to be held abroad, although the annual event has been locally held since 2010 in Wonju, 132 km east of Seoul, the foundation said, adding that it and the Korea-Russia Dialogue, a civilian dialogue channel, have jointly organized the event. During the festival, some of the poems and part of the novel "Toji (Land)" written by Pak, who died in 2008, will be recited, and a lecture on her literary world will be given, according to the foundation. "Toji" is a 20-volume masterpiece that was born over 25 years of painstaking work after she began it as a serial publication in the September 1969 issue of the literary magazine "Contemporary Literature." The historical epic saga depicts the turbulent history and hardships of the Korean people from the late 19th century to 1945, when the 36-year Japanese colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula ended, through the rise and fall of a wealthy family in a rural area over several generations. The novel's Russian translation was published in October 2016, following translations in English, German, French, Chinese and Japanese. (END)