On May 22, Takhwan Kim gave a special lecture titled “Look into the Person.” The lecture was held from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences building (N4), and was followed by an introduction to the KAIST Book Club’s mileage system. The KAIST Book Club has been inviting famous authors each semester to give a lecture to the students. Takhwan Kim is reputed for writing historical novels that take place in the mid- to late Joseon Dynasty. His works include historical dramas such as Immortal Admiral Yi Sun-Sin, Roll of Thunder, Sad, to be forgotten, and Hwang Jini. He is currently the head of The Lab Shake, a research center that studies the essence of life and the arts, and is currently working on writing a novel about the historical figure Jeong Do-Jeon.

The lecture was about his life as a historical novelist. He started the lecture by emphasizing the importance of the choice of vocabulary in novels. Contrary to what the majority of the audience thought, Kim explained that he reads dictionaries more than any other types of books. He said, “There is only one word that can describe what I want to describe. Finding the right word is the most important job for me.”

Kim then described the difficulty of a historical novelist in reducing the gap between the historical figures and himself while writing. Historical figures lived in a different time period, government system, class system, and the economy system. To become the historical figure himself, Kim chose to isolate himself from the current environment for several days to learn to think like the historical figure.

Another difficulty in writing Kim talked about was trying to include different types of characters with different personalities and backgrounds in a single novel. He told the audience that he reads his work repeatedly to see the true character of his work because the written piece comes to life only when read out loud. He came to the conclusion that just thinking about different characteristics of different characters while writing was the reason for his disastrous earlier works, in which all of his characters started to use the same tone and voice by the end of the novel.

  

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