There are two sides of love between men and women: one is noble love that makes you to rise above the secular world and ascend to ideal realm, and the other is graceful love that makes you to give birth to a child and live a fruitful life in real world. The love, which Yu-jeong Kim had on his mind was the latter. It is more primitive and practical than the former.
There are two types of love that brings salvation to human beings: One is religious love and the other is maternal love. What they have in common is that they are both unconditional. But, the religious love, which is based on afterlife, aspires towards ideal world, while maternal love is about this life. Among the two, the latter was more important to Yu-jeong Kim. He perceived maternal love to be greater than religious love. It is more primitive and practical than religious love.
According to his ideas, there are two types of terrestrial love: Jeong情, and the ‘great love’, which he suggested. Yu-jeong Kim suffered depression and was a strict believer of misanthropism, but at the same time he desired to be a part of crowds and live a humane life. A humane life is a life full of jeong情. Jeong情 is what puts together Korean society- a human friendly culture.
In this troubled chaos that is current days, the last hope that remains to us human beings is the ‘great love’. The concepts of the ‘great love’ are: First, it is the love towards community, not individuals. Second, the love towards community is more primitive than the love towards individuals. The love towards a community comes before the love towards an individual at this time of individualism. Third, it is the love towards needy grass-roots. Fourth, it is the love on the level of empathy, and not of sympathy and charity. In the end, the ‘great love’ is an expansion of jeong情.
Yu-jeong Kim literature should not be appraised as literature full of reminiscence or recollection of old days just because the ‘great love’ is primitive. It is not a regression to the past, but a new discovery.
The place where he discovered the ‘great love’ is his hometown of Shillae(currently Kangwondo Chuncheonsi Shindongmyun Jeungli). Peasants in this village had lived in a community that suggested ‘great love’ in their daily lives. He planned to embody this ‘great love’ he discovered in his hometown into his work, but could not. He spent a winter with sleepless nights putting up notes on his wall and getting lost in his thoughts, planning to start working on a new novel late in the next summer. But he passed away on March 29th before the summer came.