Ministry of National Defense Republic of Korea

MND 13th Military Literary Award, dream of literary writing comes true

Sergeant Kim Hyeon-Seok, Army, Sergeant Kim Byeong-Cheol, Marine Corps, and Sergeant Lee Don-Hee, Army, gained the highest honors in the fields of poetry, essay and short story, respectively, at the 13th Military Literary Awards held at the MND Convention on December 3. 

5,244 soldiers in total competed, and for each field, one for first prize, two for excellence and three runners-up were selected and received an award from the Minister of the National Defense.

The poem, “Salmon”, written by Sergeant Kim Hyeon-Seok, won first prize by common assent because of its well-described love of a mother willing to stand with the salt water of the ocean, enduring long years and hunger. And Sergeant Kim Byeong-Cheol, who wrote the essay, “Two Fathers”,  created an impression by describing gratitude for his supporting commander, the father in his heart, who encouraged him to overcome the wearying Army life.

Sergeant Lee Don-hee, the winner in the field of short story, received good reviews for his literary work, “Old Man’s Bullet”, which showed the ordeal of a bullet that penetrates our contemporary history through the life of an old man who lived his all life with a bullet in his body, going through the 6·25 and Vietnam Wars. The panel of judges of the Korean Writers Association(KWA) highly appreciated the soldiers’ energetic creative will, saying that they found sincerity and fresh charm in the entries, and were happy to review them.

The first prize winner was granted a certificate of award from the Minister of National Defense and a prize of 3 million won as well as qualification for membership in the KWA, which is the opportunity to start his literary career. The excellence winners and runners-up earned a certificate of award from the MND and prizes of 2 million won and 1 million won, respectively.

Vice Defense Minister Baek Seung-Joo, who conducted the awards ceremony, said, “I admire the soldiers’ passion and hard work in creating high quality literary works despite their busy training schedule.”

By Chul-Hwan, Kim < droid001@dema.mil.kr >
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