Download or read book Plays of Colonial Korea written by Se-dŏk Ham and published by Signature Books. This book was released on 2006 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Japanese occupation of Korea, young intellectuals, like Se-dok Ham, who were convinced that the traditional Korean way was in great need of transformation, introduced the arts, philosophy, and technology of the West and thought of themselves as providing a form of enlightenment. It was in this fast-changing world that Ham?s plays first made their appearance. The life and career of Se-dok Ham were as tragic as the course of the Japanese occupation. For more than 40 years he was blacklisted after being declared a leftist and because he defected to communist North Korea. Both the publication of his works and any form of scholarly investigation into his life and work were banned until 1988 when the South Korean government, on the eve of the twenty-fourth Summer Olympic Games in Seoul, ?rehabilitated? him along with a score of other artists known to have sympathized with communist North Korea. Although the literary reputation and reception of Ham are casting a new light on the global reexamination of Korea?s colonial literature, this is the first volume of his plays to be translated into English.