Yun Dong-ju
A Critical Biography

Song WooHye (Author), Flora M. Kim (Translated by), David Krolikoski (Foreword by), WooHye Song (Author)

9781978841680

Paperback / softback, published 14 October 2025

284 pages, 19 B-W images
23.5 x 15.6 x 1.5 cm, 0.454 kg

Historian and novelist Song WooHye chronicles the life of Yun Dong-ju (1917-1945), one of the most beloved and important poets in the modern Korean literary canon, widely considered Korea's "National Poet". Beginning with the history of the North Gando region (now Yanbian, China), where Yun was born, and ending with facts behind the publication of his only and posthumous poetry collection, Sky, Wind, Star, and Poem, this critical biography elucidates who Yun Dong-ju really was, with factual descriptions of the bleak and turbulent period of Japan’s colonization of Korea.
 
While first working on the book in the 1980s, Song had interviewed the poet’s surviving relatives and friends, most of whom have since passed away. Without her interviews, these important first-hand accounts would have been lost. Song had an added advantage of an “insider,” as she is a niece of Song Mong-gyu, who was the poet’s first cousin and inseparable friend for life. Incorporating newly discovered materials and using interviews with the beloved poet's family and friends, this biography is the most comprehensive, definitive biography of Yun Dong-ju to date, now available in English for the first time.
 

This book is published with the support of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea). 

Contents
Foreword by David Krolikoski
Translator’
s Note
 
Chapter 1. Birth of the Poet
Chapter 2. Myeongdong, the Place of Freedom Fighters
Chapter 3: Yongjeong, the Heart of the Haeran River
Chapter 4. Song Mong-gyu
Chapter 5. Seven Months in Pyeongyang
Chapter 6. Return to Yongjeong
Chapter 7. Yonhui Junior College, A Station for Youths
Chapter 8. Japan, the Place of a Six-Tatami Room
Chapter 9. Arrest, Trial, Imprisonment, and Death
Chapter 10. Here Lies Yun Dong-ju the Poet
Chapter 11: Glory of the National Poet
 
Notes
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors