Poet of Pigeons of Seongbuk-dong, imprisoned as a teacher for inspiring national thought, and a recognized independence contributor
| Life | 1905 ~ 1977 |
| Era | 근현대 |
| Clan | 전주 김씨 |
Kim Gwang-seop (金珖燮, 1905-1977) was a poet born on 22 September 1905 in Gyeongseong County, North Hamgyeong; his clan seat was Jeonju and his pen name Isan (怡山). He graduated from Jungdong High School in Gyeongseong in 1923, went to Tokyo in 1927 and graduated from Waseda University's English literature department in 1933. He began writing with the poem Mosquito Net in 1927, and from 1931 he taught English at Jungdong while publishing poems such as Solitude, The Fall of the Blue Sky and The Climate of Anguish as a member of Munye Wolgan. In 1933 he joined the Dramatic Arts Research Society. His works of 1932-1938 are said to show the anguish of an intellectual and a strong national consciousness.
In December 1941 he was arrested by the Japanese police on suspicion of inspiring national thought in students, sentenced to six years and six months and imprisoned until liberation on 15 August 1945. The experience is recorded in his memoir My Prison Notes. The government awarded him the National Foundation Commendation in 1977. After liberation he served as head of the public information bureau in the presidential secretariat in 1955-1956 and was professor of Korean literature at Kyung Hee University in 1961-1962.
He collapsed from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1965 but kept writing; his representative poem of the period, Pigeons of Seongbuk-dong, sings of the shadow of industrialization through pigeons who lost their home to urban development, and appeared in high-school textbooks. His collections include Dongkyeong (1938), Maeum (1949), Haebaragi (1957), Ijaeg-eul Jul-ul Ttae (1965), Seongbuk-dong Pigeons (1969), Banung (1971), the Complete Poems (1974) and Gyeoulnal (1975). He received the Order of Civil Merit, Moran Medal, in 1970, announced his retirement from poetry in 1975, and died of a stroke on 23 May 1977 at his home in Yeouido, Seoul; his wife Yi Sun-hak had died in 1970. The Isan Literary Prize was created in his memory in 1989, and in 2008 he was chosen for the culture, religion and press field in the special lecture series People Who Built the Republic of Korea.
Pigeons of Seongbuk-dong depicts the shadow of industrialization through pigeons that lost their home to development, and is the title poem of the 1969 collection of the same name.
The Isan Literary Prize was created in 1989 to honor his spirit and literature, and is run by Moonji Publishing.
His wife was Yi Sun-hak. See also the Jeonju Kim clan page.