안막 安漠

Literary critic and KAPF theorist, husband of the dancer Choe Seung-hui; went north right after liberation, served as vice-minister of culture and propaganda and was purged

Life & career

An Mak (安漠, born 1910) was a literary critic and theorist of the KAPF proletarian arts federation, of the Juksan An clan and presented in the Old Juksan An line. His birth name was An Pil-seung (安弼承); he took his new name from the Japanese dancer Ishii Baku, and his pen name was An Chu-baek. He was born on 18 April 1910 in Gosam, Anseong, Gyeonggi. He had an elder full brother An Yong-seung, a younger half-brother, the dance critic An Jae-seung, and a brother-in-law Choe Seung-il. The novelist An Hoe-nam was his sixth-degree cousin; the composer An Seong-hyeon is said to be a nephew, though even Wikipedia is inconsistent on the degree. His year of death is unknown.

In 1929 he studied Russian literature at Waseda University in Japan and joined the socialist movement. From 1930 to 1933 he was a KAPF theorist and central committee member, writing criticism such as On the Formal Problem of Proletarian Art (1930), The Urgent Task Facing Korean Proletarian Artists (1930) and For a Re-Discussion of the Problem of Creative Method (1933), and with Im Hwa and Kim Nam-cheon wrote essays criticizing Kim Gi-jin. He married the dancer Choe Seung-hui in 1931; their daughter is the ballet dancer An Seong-hui. After KAPF was dissolved and he was imprisoned, he was hardly active in the mid-1930s and acted as his wife's manager.

He went north immediately after liberation in 1945, served as a Workers' Party committee member, and was vice-minister of culture and propaganda from December 1955 to September 1957. In 1958, when KAPF-line figures were cleared out as preparatory work to remove the novelist Han Seol-ya, he was purged with Seo Man-il and Yun Du-heon as a bourgeois critic, though the details and year of his death are unknown. Wikipedia's text has no statement on collaboration, and this page only notes that it was not confirmed. He was a critic who led proletarian literary theory in the colonial period and later took part in North Korean cultural administration; assessments differ sharply by ideology and era.

Criticism in the KAPF Years

He published On the Formal Problem of Proletarian Art and The Urgent Task Facing Korean Proletarian Artists in 1930 and For a Re-Discussion of the Problem of Creative Method in 1933.

Going North and the Purge

He went north in 1945, served as vice-minister of culture and propaganda (1955-1957) and is said to have been purged in 1958.

Descendants

Wikipedia lists his daughter as the ballet dancer An Seong-hui.

Other 죽산 안씨 figures