That was the first time I received praise from a wider community, and I decided that when I grew up, instead of a fireman or a soldier I was going to be a 'writer', though I wasn't completely sure what this meant.

In 1966–1969, he was part of the Republic of Korea Marine Corps during the Vietnam War, reluctantly fighting for the American cause that he saw as an attack on a liberation struggle: What difference was there between my father's generation, drafted into the Japanese army or made to service Imperial Japan's pan-Asian ambitions, and my own, unloaded into Vietnam by the Americans in order to establish a "Pax Americana" zone in the Far East during the ColdWar?

Based on these experiences he wrote the short story "The Pagoda" in 1970, which won the daily newspaper Chosun Ilbo's new year prize, and embarked on an adult literary career.

Hwang published a collection of stories, On the Road to Sampo in 1974, and became a household name with his epic, Jang Gilsan, which was serialized in a daily newspaper over a period of ten years (1974?84).

I improvised plays, wrote pamphlets and songs, coordinated a group of writers against the dictatorship, and started a clandestine radio station called "The voice of free Kwangju.

[4]The 1985 appearance of Lee Jae-eui's book Beyond Death, Beyond the Darkness of Age (English translation: Gwangju Diary: Beyond Death, Beyond the Darkness of Age, 1999) brought new trouble: Hwang originally agreed to take credit as the author to help market the book, and both Hwang as the assumed author and the publisher were arrested and sent to prison.

[5] Hwang's substantial and award-winning novel based on his bitter experience of the Vietnam War, The Shadow of Arms was published in 1985.

[6] In 1993, he returned to Seoul because "a writer needs to live in the country of his mother tongue" and was promptly sentenced to seven years in prison for breach of the National Security Law.

When asked whether the regime that freed him recognized his work and even sent him on an official visit to North Kores as part of a policy of opening up and promoting dialogue was a democracy, he replied: Hwang Sok-yong published his next novel, The Old Garden, in 2000.

[8] Hwang defined the reality of Korea as a "nation-wide state of homelessness", and has continuously explored the psychology of the people who have lost their "homes", symbolic or real.

"Home", to Hwang Sok-yong, is not simply a place where you were born and raised but a community life rooted in the feeling of solidarity.

"For the Little Brother' (Aureul wihayeo, 1972), "The Light of Twilight" (Noeurui bit, 1973) and "Passionate Relationship" (Yeorae, 1988) are the stories of the author's adolescence, which embraces issues such as rejections of one's parents, hatred of competition, and the feeling of humanity and solidarity shared by the people at the periphery of the society.