Jeonbuk National University (JBNU) Department of English Language & Literature Professor Wang Cheol has been selected as the recipient of the 2nd Jeon Sook-hee Literary Award.

The 'Jeon Sook-hee Literary Award' was established last year to honor the late Byeokgang (璧江) Jeon Sook-hee (1916–2010), a leading Korean essayist who also served as a Lifetime Vice-President of International PEN.

Professor Wang received the award in recognition of the literary merit of his essay collection published this year, Praise of Mourning: Forms of Longing in Literature.

The judging panel, composed of novelist Kim Won-il, literary critic Kim Chi-su, and philosopher Kang Shin-ju, evaluated Praise of Mourning as "deeply and convincingly demonstrating that literature is, fundamentally, an act of mourning intended to compensate for the loss of what it loves," and described it as "a cool and sober literary work that unfolds a persistent critical consciousness about literature as an act of mourning in a compelling essay form," thereby selecting him as the awardee.

The Jeon Sook-hee Literary Award carries a prize of 10 million won. The award ceremony will be held on September 19 at 6:00 PM at the Korea Modern Literature Hall in Jangchung-dong, Seoul.

Professor Wang graduated from JBNU's Department of English Language & Literature and earned an M.A. in English literature from Clarion University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. He has held fellowships from the Earhart Foundation, the University of Cape Town Academic Foundation, and the Fulbright Foundation. For his distinguished translations, he received the Yoo Young Translation Literature Award in 2011 and has been awarded JBNU's Outstanding Academic Award.

A literary critic and translator who debuted in the magazine Hyundae Munhak, he was the first in Korea to translate almost all of the novels by J. M. Coetzee, the 2003 Nobel Prize laureate in Literature. His translations include nearly 40 volumes, among them bestsellers such as A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner. His authored works include J. M. Coetzee's Dialogic Novels (selected as an Excellent Book by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism) and Masters of Literature (selected as an Excellent Book by the National Research Foundation of Korea), along with dozens of academic papers.