Park Du-jin

Park Du-jin (朴斗鎭, 10 March 1916 – 16 September 1998) was a South Korean poet. His family seat was Miryang, and his pen name was Hyesan (兮山).

He made his debut in 1939 in the literary magazine Munjang, and after more than 47 years, on 28 March 1986, at the age of 71, he ended his writing and retired. He served as professor emeritus of the Department of Korean Language and Literature at Yonsei University and as a full-time guest professor of the Department of Creative Writing at Chugye Arts School.

Life

Career

He was born in Gyeonggi Province's Anseong County, and spent his early childhood briefly in Gyeongju County, North Gyeongsang Province, and Miryang County, South Gyeongsang Province.

In 1939, Park made his literary debut in the literary magazine Munjang with works including "Hyanghyeon" (향현). He was one of the members of the "Cheongnokpa (靑鹿派)" together with Jo Ji-hoon (趙芝薰) and Park Mok-wol (朴木月). After the liberation on 15 August 1945, he stood with the right-wing camp against the left-wing Joseon Literature Artists' League, which was devoted to communism, together with Kim Dong-ri (金東里), Jo Yeon-hyeon (趙演鉉), and Seo Jeong-ju (徐廷柱). He took part in the founding of the Joseon Youth Literary Artists' Association in 1946, and then in 1949 joined the Korean Literature Association, where he also served for a time as chair of its poetry division.¹

At first he wrote poems on nature as their theme, but later he wrote poems on the excitement of liberation and on vitality of life. In his later years, through the poetry collections Suseok Yeoljeon (『수석열전』) and Suseok Yeonga (『수석연가(水石戀歌)』), which he wrote while collecting river stones himself in areas such as the South Han River, he "sang of primordial life, which is also the core of his poetry." This can be regarded as a kind of communion with nature, in which he "listened closely to the intimate voice that the stones quietly speak," while the poet himself "kept sending messages endlessly" to the stones.