Novelist, poet and filmmaker; author of The Evergreen and 'When That Day Comes'
| Life | 1901 ~ 1936 |
| Era | 일제강점기 |
| Clan | 청송 심씨 |
Sim Hun (沈熏, 1901–1936) was a novelist, poet, filmmaker and independence activist of the Japanese colonial period, of the Cheongsong Sim clan. Born Sim Dae-seop, with the pen name Haepung, he was the third son of Sim Sang-jeong, born in Heukseok-ri, Gwacheon County (today's Heukseok-dong, Dongjak-gu, Seoul).
As a student at Gyeongseong First Higher Common School he joined the March First Movement in 1919, was imprisoned and expelled. In 1920 he went to China, studying at Zhijiang University in Hangzhou, and is said to have associated with Sin Chae-ho and Yi Hoe-yeong in Beijing. Returning in 1923, he threw himself into theater, film and fiction and joined the Dong-A Ilbo in 1924.
He acted the lead in the 1925 film Janghanmong, serialized Talchum, regarded as Korea's first film novel, in 1926, and after studying film in Japan wrote, adapted and directed Meondongi Teul Ttae, a hit at the Dansungsa theater. His novels The Lover of the East and The Phoenix were both halted by colonial censors in 1930; that year he wrote the poem 'When That Day Comes', but censorship blocked his poetry collection, which appeared only posthumously in 1949.
Settling in Dangjin, South Chungcheong, in 1932, he serialized The Eternal Smile and Jiknyeoseong, and in 1935 his novel Sangnoksu (The Evergreen) won the Dong-A Ilbo's fifteenth-anniversary contest. Depicting young people's self-sacrificing rural enlightenment work, it drew on the night school and cooperative farming led by his nephew Sim Jae-yeong in Dangjin. He died of typhoid in 1936 while preparing it for book and film.
His works are marked by national consciousness, resistance and humanism, and he is credited with leading the way from rural enlightenment fiction to full-fledged peasant literature. He was posthumously awarded the Order of Merit for National Foundation (Patriotic Medal) in 2000; Pilgyeongsa, the house in Dangjin where he wrote The Evergreen, is a South Chungcheong Provincial Monument, and the Sim Hun Memorial Hall stands in Dangjin.