Park In-hwan (author)


Park In-hwan was a Korean poet and author.

Life

Park In-hwan was born in Inje, Gangwon-do, Korea during the period of Japanese rule. He graduated from Kyunggi High School in 1945 and entered Pyeongyang Medical School.. Once Korea was liberated from Japanese rule, he quit school and started a small bookstore named 'Mariseosa' in Jongno, Seoul. Park had been interested in poetry ever since his early teens and in 1946 published his first poem entitled "Street" in the Kukje Shinmun Newspaper. In 1949, he co-authored a poetry book titled 'New city and unison of citizens,' together with Kim Gyeong-rin and Kim Su-yeong. This book put him in the spotlight and gave him a reputation as a modernist poet. Park was an active journalist in 1949 for the Kyunghyang Sinmun Daily and later became their war correspondent in 1951. In 1955, he traveled to the United States by ship and in the same year published the Park In-hwan Poetry Collection. These poems were known for their depiction of the Bohemian experience and propensity.
Park died in March 1956, at the age of 29. He died from heart failure after he drank in Myeongdong and came back home. One week before he died, he wrote a poem titled 'If times flow,' which became popular all over Korea.

Work

The Korean Literature Translation Institute summarizes Park's contributions to Korean literature:

Works in translation

  • Puisi buat Rakyat Indonesia

Works in Korean (partial)

Collections of Poetry