[1][2] He is known for his arguments on building a rational society based on “aesthetic rationality” and moving beyond the dichotomy of conservatism and liberalism, modernism and post-modernism, nationalism and globalism, and literature as an ideology to empower the masses and literature as an art free of any political context.
[5] Kim Uchang’s criticisms focus on how people can reclaim their humanity in a modern capitalist society.
Kim sees rationality as “the best means to perceive the marvels of the physical world or lifeworld.”[8] He established the criteria for evaluation on creative works that internalize conflict and intelligence by confronting social reality through expression.
As a result of synthesizing and analyzing the binary oppositions of technique-theme, subjectivity-objectivity, and self-reality, he proposed structural weaknesses and potential of Korean poetry.
His criticism contemplates literary works through the lens of humanities theory, including politics, aesthetics, and ethics.
In reconstructing the role and function of literature through humanistic contemplation, Kim demonstrated that such is the ethical medium that fundamentally constitutes a pluralistic relationship between a literary work and its author.
His theoretical depth and his discourse on literary history presented positive potential in South Korean literature.
Poets in a Destitute Time is a collection of Kim’s critical essays that was published by Minumsa in 1977.
Part 1 contains critiques that view the formation and development of modern literature in principle, with a focus on poems and novels written during the Japanese colonial era.
It is subtitled “Self-formation and its Path, a Task in the Humanities.” This is the ninth book of Kim’s ‘Humanities Lectures Series.’ Kim said that “self-evolving is what allows human beings to complete themselves.” In this respect, this work examines the problem of self-formation using logical and systematic thinking.
Humans are incomplete beings when they are born, both physically and mentally, and they each develop their own world that allows them to meet their survival needs.