Grande dame of Korean literature dies at 81

Seoul  -  Park Kyung Ni, one of South Korea's best-known novelists, died Monday at 81, the Culture, Sport and Tourism Ministry said.

Park had been in a coma since April 4 after suffering a stroke, the national news agency Yonhap reported, citing the author's friends.

Her 16-volume saga Toji, or Land, which took her 25 years to write, is considered a masterpiece of 20th-century Korean literature and was chosen to be in the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works.

It depicts the development of modern Korea through the story of three generations of one family, following them from the final phase of the Chosun Dynasty, which ended in
1910, to Korea's 1945 liberation from Japanese rule.

Kim was born in the south-west of the Korean Peninsula on October 28, 1926. She became recognized in the 1960s with the publication of her novels Pharmacist Kim's Daughters and Marketplace and Battlefield.

She also published a respected magazine on contemporary literature and received numerous national and international awards for her writing.

She and the novelist Pak Wanso were considered the grande dames of contemporary Korean literature.

Park was diagnosed with lung cancer in July but refused to be treated in hospital, according to Yonhap. She instead settled in a rural area near Wonju, about 70 kilometres east of Seoul, in the belief that being close to nature would heal her, the news agency said. (dpa)