Author Kim Geum-hee Rejects Yi Sang Literary Award Over Copyright Transfer Demand

by Park Pyunghee

Published 06 Jan.2020 08:34(KST)

Photo by Yonhap News Agency

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Byung-hee] Novelist Kim Geum-hee (photo), author of 'The Heart of Affection' and 'A Love in the Midday Sun,' refused to accept the Excellence Award at the 44th Yi Sang Literary Award in 2020. The reason was her inability to accept the demand from Munhak Sasangsa Publishing, which oversees the Yi Sang Literary Award, to transfer copyright for three years.

The Yi Sang Literary Award, established by Munhak Sasangsa in 1977, is a leading domestic literary prize. Each January, a collection of the Grand Prize and Excellence Award-winning works is published, making it highly unusual for a recipient to voluntarily return the award.

It is known that Kim Geum-hee refused the award because she could not accept Munhak Sasangsa's requirement that the award-winning work's copyright be transferred to the publisher for three years and that the author could not feature the work as the title piece in their personal short story collections.

This is not the first controversy surrounding the copyright of the Yi Sang Literary Award collections. In 2000, the Korea Literary and Academic Copyright Association, which manages authors' copyrights, filed a lawsuit claiming that some works included in the Yi Sang Literary Award collections published between 1977 and 1986 were posted without proper transfer contracts. The court ruled in favor of the authors.