Kim Jeong-hwan was born on January 22, 1954 in Seoul. He graduated with a degree in English from Seoul National University in 1980. He has participated in the Writers' Association for the Realization of Freedom and is a chairperson of the Working Men's Association of Culture and Art Movement. He made his official literary debut in the summer of 1980, with the publication of six works including "Mapo, At A Riverside Town" in Creation and Criticism.
Work
Kim's first poetry collection, A Song That Cannot be Erased, depicts the internal turmoil and strife of an intellectual who suffers under the dire political conditions and absence of free thinking in the Korea of the early 1980s. The poetry of this era did not often offer a direct or mainstream depiction of contemporary social realities, but was rather an expression of sympathy and admiration for the minjung and their sorrow and resentment. His serialized poetry collection, The Story of Yellow Jesus, surpasses the narrow scope of his early poems, and offers a personal and positive perspective on saving minjung. In this collection, the poet allows the reader to hear the messages for minjung's independence and struggle through the words of Jesus and from the perspective of Heaven. Kim's voice in Our Working Men is more declarative than in his earlier poems, an indication of the increasingly political nature of his works. Laborers are also central figures who reject hypocrisy and falsity to quest instead for freedom in a land where they suffer from exploitation and oppression. The poet's examination of a society actualized chiefly by the working class, is his most lucid, clearly constructed work, and clearly exhibits the poetic transformation undergone in the late 1980s. In the late 1990s, Kim published another collection of poetry entitled About Trains. The poems in this collection, through simple, concise diction free of the occasional monotony of prose, effectively reveal the worldview and character of the working class. Kim has also published several realist poems that deal with the sufferings, frustrations and hopes of minjung. A series of Kim's poetry collections similarly reflect the development of the Minjung Movement and the consciousness of the intellectual. This examination of progress is considered to be the force that creates. tension in the works and captures the imagination and attention of readers.
