Han Sŏrya was born in Hamhung as Han Byongdo (한뵹도) in 1901. After graduating from his local high school, he enrolled at Nippon University (니혼/日本) in Tokyo in 1924. He lived in Manchuria between 1925 and 1927 before returning to Seoul.
Han made his literary debut after his novel “That Night” (그날밤) was chosen for publication by the Choson Mundan (조선 문단). He was a founding member of the Korean Proletarian Artists Alliance (KAPF) and the Korean Proletarian Literature Alliance (조선프롤레타리아예술동맹). During and after the liberation of Korea, he became a high-ranking member of the North Korean Federation of Literature and Arts (NKFLA) and served as the chairman of the Korean Writers’ Union in 1953. He served as the Cultural Education Minister under Kim Il-Sung but was purged in the 1960s.
Han is best known for his political writing which focuses on experiences of laborers under colonial rule and his early staunch support of Kim Il-Sung.
Details of his death in North Korea remain unclear; his gravestone at Patriotic Martyrs’ Cemetery in Pyongyang marks the date as April 1976.
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