The Globalizing World and the Human Community

Publication of the proceedings of the 3rd Seoul International Literature Forum held in May 2011 will make the papers presented at the forum available to a readership larger than the audience that participated in its various events. The theme of the forum was "The Globalizing World and the Human Community." Included under this general theme were sections dealing with various problems the writer faces in today's world: the conditions of increasing pressure in an enlarged market, which the writer cannot help but be aware of and be influenced by; the changing nature of the readership as it becomes more multicultural and global; and the status of writing in the developing multimedia world. Continuing with the topics of previous forums, there were also sections on ecological problems, which are being made all the more acute by the process of globalization-problems of enormous importance for all of humanity, but more sensitive issues for writers, with their deep involvement in the reality of people, whose life cannot be lived too far away from the earthly environment. The second part of the main theme stated above, "The Human Community," expresses what we suppose to be a major concern of many writers writing today: the possibility of a human community emerging out of the globalization-though we grant at the same time that absorption of a deeply personal kind in human reality also belongs among the writer's privileges. -From the Foreword by Kim Uchang