Choi Jongcheon
Choi Jongcheon was a South Korean poet. He is regarded as one of the foremost labor poets of South Korea, along with Park Nohae and Baek Mu-san. His poetry combines his personal experiences of labor with philosophical reflections to offer a critique of contemporary capitalistic society.
Background
Choi was born in Jangseong, Jeollanam-do in 1954. After graduating from middle school he moved to Seoul. In the early 1970s, he started working as a welder. Unlike other poets who learned about poetry through formal education, Choi said his forays into poetry began from doodles and scribbling. Some of the poems in his first collection Nunmuleun pureuda, for instance "Koseumoseu seom " and "Mihonmo," started out as scribbles jotted down in his childhood notebooks. Choi's boss, a college graduate, happened to see his notebook one day and was the first person to tell him about the existence of 'poetry.' He also encouraged Choi to try writing poems himself. Choi worked as a delivery person for a Chinese restaurant sometimes and would collect literary magazines from the piles he found left out on the stairs of the Hyundae Sihak magazine offices in Chungjeongno. He read these in his spare time, but never attended a writing class. After seeing a notice at the famous classical music cafe Renaissance, he joined his first amateur literary writing group and began composing poetry. He debuted in the late 1980s when his poems were published in the 1986 and 1988 issues of Segyeui munhak.After becoming a published poet, Choi continued to read poetry but not literary journals. His preferred reading was philosophy and biology. He considered his poetry to be a critique of humans; in lamenting the reality of capitalism's odious effects, he believed one can achieve a truer awareness of the self. His poetry prizes physical labor over white-collar labor, which he perceived as work that deals with symbols. Focusing on the intricate relations of labor, humans, and culture, Choi has built up a powerful body of work. He was the recipient of the Shin Dongyup Writing Prize and the Oh Janghwan Literature Prize.
Choi died of a cerebral infarction at the age of 71 on 18 July 2025.
Writing
The relationship between labor and art
Being a labor poet, Choi Jongcheon's poetry offer deep reflections about the relationship between labor and art. He was known for his ability to discern and describe artistry in the labor process and the sites in which these occur, and was often referred to as "a poet who bridges art and labor".His first collection of poetry, Nunmuleun pureuda was published in 2002, sixteen years after his debut. In one of the poems in the collection, "Buran mueosinga ", Choi addressed the ways in which he was perceived as an anomaly for being a poetry-writing laborer, and criticizes the social reality that enforces the alienation of labor from culture. This critical stance continues in the 2007 collection Naeui bapgeureusi binnanda as he calls to task the falsehood or fabricated nature of symbols. In "Naneun sobidoenda " he exposes the vanity of those who make use of the collected works of Hegel or Beethoven as empty symbols to be consumed.
Choi Jongcheon was relentless in his critique of the disparity between labor and art, which is not to say he dismissed or negated culture and the arts. True art, as he saw it, is only possible when the distance between labor and art is bridged, for it is, in the truest sense of liberated labor, itself labor.
Labor as liberation
For the labor poet Choi Jongcheon, there are two broad categories of labor: labor as miserable or wretched reality and labor as true liberation. Based on his own experiences as a welder, the poor working conditions and environments of laborers are a recurring subject in his poetry. In "Chulgeun - jigak ", a poem collected in Nunmuleun pureuda, Choi depicts the cumulative effects of fatigue and hard labor on the mind and body through descriptions of colleagues who work through the graveyard shift even as they are ill. But Choi doesn't only write exposés of labor conditions. The importance of labor's power to liberate mankind is stressed throughout. The labor class is "the true priesthood" for Choi, just as the ideology of the working class is "the ultimate philosophy and religion" and the only means of "bringing Man back to life".In Goyangiui masul, Choi champions the value of labor especially in contrast to corrupt capital. Labor is the foundation that sustains the world. Further, true liberation of and through labor is to ensure labor itself becomes art that is freeing, and freely undertaken. How far these claims lie from a subjective labor- and laborer-centrism is a matter for debate. But what is certain is that labor as liberation as espoused by Choi Jongcheon's poetry is without doubt an urgent literary topic for the 21st century, as evidenced by discussions of the exigencies brought about by "the end of work".
Works
Poetry collections
Nunmuleun pureuda, Siwa sihaksa, 2002Naeui bapgeureusi binnanda, Changbi, 2007
Goyangiui masul, Silcheon munhaksa, 2011
Yongjeopui si, Zmanz, 2013
Insaengeun jjalgo gigyeneun yeongwonhada, Bangeoreum, 2018
Essay collection
Nodonggwa yesul, Pureun sasang, 2013Awards
2002 Shin Dongyup Writing Prize2012 Oh Janghwan Literature Prize