The article reviews the main trends of the development of modern Korean prose in the 20th century. After presenting a periodization of the history of the 20th century literature it gives the characteristics for every period naming the most distinimished authors and describing the leading topics, genres and problematics of the fiction in question. Using a wide range of examples the author marks out three main types in the Korean prose of the 20th century: literature works based on the traditional patterns, modern/postmodern prose and socially oriented literature.