[Articles] The Exit from Modernity, Illuminated by the Spirit of Realism: Paik Nak-chung’s D.H. Lawrence, a Western Gaebyeok Thinker by Kim Hyeongsoo and more
The Quarterly Changbi 212, Summer 2026
In the Articles section, poet Kim Hyeongsoo offers a profound exploration of the culmination of Paik Nak-chung’s fifty-year study, D. H. Lawrence: The Western Gaebyeok Thinker, through the lens of the “dual task of adapting to and overcoming modernity,” guiding them into a world of new insight. He illuminates Paik’s discovery and reflections that the civilizational critique of the twentieth-century British writer Lawrence converges with the Gaebyeok thought of the Korean Peninsula, naming and reflecting on it as a “spirit of realism” that transforms life here and now, while also questioning the path of our autonomous practice toward a civilizational great transition. Political philosopher Jin Tae-won, revisiting the stained past of Korea’s modern and contemporary history and the December 3 palace coup, powerfully conveys the significance of publishing Biographical Dictionary of Anti-Constitutional Actors. He emphasizes that the paradox of “guardians of the constitution who destroy the constitution” has operated since the origins of Korea’s constitutional history, where fascism lies at its root, and argues for the necessity of a “solidarity of mutual testimony” to renew the principles of democratic constitutionalism.