Bok Geo-il
South Korean writer
Bok Geo-il (Korean: 복거일; born March 20, 1946) is a South Korean novelist, poet, literary critic and social commentator.
Early life and education
Bok was born in Asan, South Chungcheong Province, United States Army Military Government in Korea. Bok graduated from the Business School of the Seoul National University and held various jobs in banking, manufacturing, and trading until 1987 when he made his literary debut with the novel, In Search of the Epitaph (Bimyeongeul chajaseo). That same year, his poems were recommended for publication in Contemporary Literature and the following year, his first collection of poems, Ojangwon (Ojangwon) was published. Bok has been controversial for his theories supporting the universalization of English in Korea.
Career
Bok is an unusual among writers in South Korea as he debuted by writing and publishing a novel without having gone through the traditional literary contest procedure by which the title of "author" is bestowed in South Korea.
Bok first gained fame for his debut novel In Search of the Epitaph, published in 1987. This novel built an alternative history of Korea based on the assumption that Ito Hirobumi - governor-general of colonized Korea, who was assassinated had lived sixteen years longer and Korea was never liberated from Japan.
A writer of many interests and multifarious voices, Bok has also experimented with science fiction as a vehicle for exploring the effect of scientific innovations and technological development on human life. Notable among his science fiction are Under the Blue Moon (Parandal arae, 1992) which was serialized on internet and A Wayfarer in History (Yeoksa sogui nageunae, 1991) which features time travel back to mid-Joseon Dynasty period.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Bok Geo-il” as south Korean writer. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as south Korean writer. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q626098. VIAF identifies the subject as 32306053. The Library of Congress control number is nr91043340. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1946, 1987, 1992 and 1991.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bok Geo-il” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.