The Korea Times reports that Korean netizens choose Kim Hoon as top writer for 2012, as:
Korean netizens chose Kim Hoon, the popular writer of novels Song of Sword and Heuksan, as this year's best Korean writer in an annual online poll, an online bookstore that conducted the vote said Thursday.I don't think anything of Hoon's [김훈] has been translated into English (though I am kind of curious about his prize-winning 언니의 폐경 ...) -- but the runners-up suggest the poll isn't completely without literary merit, as:
Novelist Lee Mun-yul came second, getting 8.9 percent of the votes, followed by poet Ko Un(Lee Mun-yol is, of course, also know as Yi Mun-yol (ah, transliteration ...), author of books such as Our Twisted Hero, and Ko Un is the great poet (see, e.g, Traveler Maps).)