Ju-Kwan Cho

Ju-Kwan Cho (; ; born 1953) is a South Korean academic and translator of Slavic literature. He is well recognized for his major contributions to the field of Russian Studies in South Korean academia. He served as the president of the Korean Association of Russists from 1998 to 2000 and published many Korean-language translations of Russian literature, for which he was awarded a Medal of Pushkin by the Russian Government in 2000. In 2017, Cho also received an Order of Honor from the President of Georgia for his translation of Shota Rustaveli's The Knight in the Panther's Skin into the Korean language. Furthermore, he was awarded a Presidential Citation for his translations of Korean literary works into Russian by the South Korean government in 2018. He is a professor emeritus of Russian Language and Literature at Yonsei University.

Life and career Ju-Kwan Cho was born in Okcheon county, North Chungcheong province, South Korea in 1953. Cho and his family moved to Daejeon shortly after his birth. Inspired after reading The Brothers Karamazov during his mandatory military service, he went on to study Russian language and literature at Korea University, and completed his bachelor's degree in 1981 as part of the department's first cohort. He completed his master's degree in the same department in 1983. He then received his doctorate in Slavic Language and Literature at Ohio State University in 1991 as a Korean government fellow. Later, he briefly taught at Seoul National University as a lecturer. From 1997 to 2000, he served on the committee of the International Association of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature (МАПРЯЛ) and as the 3rd president of the Korean Association of Russists (KAR) from 1998 to 2000. As president of KAR, he endeavored to facilitate academic outreach with local research institutes in Russia, including the Gorky Institute, marking the first effort at educational outreach between the two nations, enabled by the opening of diplomatic relations between South Korea and the Soviet Union in 1991.

Noting the scarcity of critical discussion and research on pre-19th century Russian Literature in Korean academia, Cho worked to publish more than 30 first translations of 11-18th century Russian and Slavic works of literature into Korean, an endeavor which took him over 10 years to complete. Among these translations were Shota Rustaveli's The Knight in the Panther's Skin, for which he was awarded an Order of Honor from the Georgian president Giorgi Margvelashvili in 2017, becoming the first Korean to receive the honor. Margvelashvili remarked that Cho's work was instrumental in laying a "steady foundation for academic outreach between South Korea and Georgia." Following this accomplishment, Cho became a 2017 inductee of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Korea (NAS) and received a Presidential Citation by the South Korean government in 2018. In 2019, as part of a mutual exchange between the Literature Translation Institute of Korea and Belarusian publisher Mastatskaya Litaratura, In 2019, Cho contributed to the publication of 그래도 봄은 온다 (Spring will Come), a Korean-language collection of Belarusian poetry featuring the work of Yanka Kupala, Maksim Bahdanovič, and Yakub Kolas.

In his later career and retirement in 2019,

Russian literature and visual art in dialogue A significant portion of Cho's academic bibliography deals with the influence of the visual arts on the works of Russian writers, and the influence of Russian literature on visual artists. In 2008, he published "Dostoevsky's Iconography Code especially in and " (도스또옙스끼의 도상코드: <시스티나의 마돈나>와 <죄와 벌>을 중심으로), an intertextual study between Raphael's Sistine Madonna and Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, which was later developed into the full-length book Drawings beloved by Dostoyevsky. The book traces the writer's affection for the visual arts and its influence on his work, accompanied by the illustrations contained in Dostoyevsky's own notes. It features re-translations of seven novels (The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, Demons, Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground, The Adolescent and Polzunkov) alongside a historiography of Dostoyevsky's appreciation for paintings and galleries, and an analytic survey on his philosophy of art. The book was published in 2022 to critical acclaim; Journalist Hyun-Jung Park of Hankyoreh news notes that she found the work "accessible and fascinating, even to new readers unfamiliar with Dostoyevsky or the artworks discussed." In 2012, he published "The Artistic Imagination in Dialogue between Dostoyevsky and Munch" ("도스토옙스키와 뭉크의 대화적 상상력"), the first full-length comparative study of Norwegian painter Edvard Munch's well-documented idolization of Dostoyevsky and his work, from which he drew heavy influence and his paintings, which are heavily inspired by Dostoyevsky's writing. Cho argues that many of Munch's paintings are in "artistic dialogue" with Dostoyevsky's novels.

Accolades

2000 Pushkin Medal 2000 Outstanding Accomplishment Professor Award , Yonsei University 2009 Outstanding Research Professor Award , Yonsei University 2012 Minister's Award , Korean Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology 2015 Korean Association of Rusists Research Award , Korean Association of Rusists 2017 Order of Honor, President of Georgia 2018 Presidential Citation, President of South Korea

Publications

Books

Hypertext of Russian Literature (러시아 문학의 하이퍼텍스트, 2005) ISBN 9788971153710 The Poetics of Old Russian Literature (고대러시아 문학의 시학, 2008) ISBN 9788957331453 A Contemporary Investigation into Crime and Punishment (죄와 벌의 현대적 해석, 2009) ISBN 9788971418994 Metacognition in Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground (도스토옙스키의 메타지식 : 지하로부터의 수기, 2017) ISBN 9791186430491 Drawings beloved by Dostoyevsky: A Visual Guide (도스트옙스키가 사랑한 그림들, 2022) ISBN 9788950942373 The Breadth and Depth of Russian Literature (러시아 문학의 넓이와 깊이, 2023) ISBN 9791166841484

Selected essays

"Body Signs in The Novels of Nineteenth Century Russian Writers" (19세기 러시아 작가들의 몸 기호학) 러시아연구 (2007) The Baroque Weltanschauung and Topoi in Derzhavin's Poetics 러시아어문학연구논집 (2007) Problems of Evil in Old Russian Literature 러시아어문학연구논집 (2007) Dostoevsky's Iconography Code especially in and (도스또옙스끼의 도상코드: <시스티나의 마돈나>와 <죄와 벌>을 중심으로) 러시아어문학연구논집 (2008) The Artistic Imagination in Dialogue between Dostoyevsky and Munch 러시아어문학연구논집 (2012)

Selected translations

Dushenka by Ippolit Bogdanovich Vadim of Novgorod & Misfortune from a Carriage by Yakov Knyazhnin The Minor & The Brigadier-General by Denis Fonvizin Dmitry the Pretender by Alexander Sumarokov Boris Godunov & Mozart and Salieri by Alexander Pushkin The Knight in the Panther's Skin by Shota Rustaveli Sky, Wind, Star and Poem by Yun Dong Ju (into Russian) To the Daffodil by Jeong Ho-Seung (into Russian) Ah, Those Things Without Mouths by Yi Seongbok (into Russian) In addition, Cho has edited and published several Korean-language collections of Slavic poetry. These feature the work of Anna Akhmatova, Andrei Voznesensky, Bella Akhmadulina, Gavrila Derzhavin, Yanka Kupala, Maksim Bahdanovič, and Yakub Kolas, Bulat Okudzhava, and Osip Mandelstam.