Kim Ja-rim

Kim Ja-rim^[b] (21 August 1926 – 26 September 1994) was a Korean playwright, essayist, and teacher. She was the first professional Korean female playwright.

Her childhood name was Kim Chŏngsuk.^[c][d]

Kim was born in Pyongyang during the period that Korea was under Japanese rule. She was the third daughter of nine children. Her father was a professor of pharmacy whose family followed traditional Confucian principles, and her mother was a Christian elementary school graduate. When she was young, Kim's mother was ill, so she was raised in "an enlightened and liberal environment" by her maternal grandmother.^{[1]: 193–194}

After dropping out of Pyongyang Normal School, she worked as a teacher in Pyongyang before moving to Seoul in 1949. She married the poet Yang Myong-mun in 1952, marrying for love rather than a traditional arranged marriage.^[1]: 195 She continued to work as a teacher before making her debut in 1959 as a playwright with Dolgae-baram,^[e] a one-act play published by Chosun Ilbo, South Korea's oldest daily newspaper.^[2]: 84

Kim was the first professional Korean female playwright, among a group of others who wrote and had their work performed beginning in the 1960s, called the 'first generation of women playwrights' by scholar Lee Mi Won.^[2][3] According to Kim, she chose a career in drama because she believed in the social functions of art to "lead culture, purify emotion, and reveal humanity."^[1]

In 1959, she published her debut one-act play, Dolgae-baram.^[e] She received sharp criticism for it, the play being dismissed as a "common love story."^[2]

In 1965, she established the Women's Theater (Yoin Kukchang), a theatre company with the intention of "awakening" women through plays that dealt with women's issues from a female perspective.^[1]: 195

Kim was the first female playwright to stage a play in the National Theater of Korea, her 1966 play Iminsun,^[a] which is considered to be her magnum opus. It features more than 28 characters on stage, and depicts a Korean farming community trying to move to Brazil to make more money.^{[2]: 86–87}

An anthology of her early plays was published in 1971, also titled Iminsun.^[a][4] This collection includes her 1970 one-act Hwa-don.^[f][2]

As of 1984, she had produced twenty plays, five radio and TV dramas, and one novel.^[1]: 192

• Kim, Ock-Ran (October 31, 1999). "The Femininity and Modernity of Kim Ja-Rim's Drama in 1960s". The Journal of Korean Drama and Theatre (in Korean) (10). The Learned Society Of Korean Drama And Theatre: 93–136 – via Korea Journal Central.
• Kwon, Jingyeong (August 2023). 1960년대 여성 극작가의 가족 형상화 방식 : 김자림과 박현숙을 중심으로 [The Family Figuration of 1960s Women Playwright : Focusing on Kim Ja-rim and Park Hyon-sook] (Thesis) (in Korean). Korea University. doi:10.23186/korea.000000276503.11009.0000126.