Author: David Krolikoski, Song WooHye
Translated by: Flora M Kim
Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 2025
Original title: 윤동주 평전, 2014
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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.
Foreword by David Krolikoski
This book is published with the support of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea).
A historian and novelist, SONG WOOHYE has published several novels and short story collections as well as biographies and collected essays. Best known for her work on Yun Dong-ju, she has also published papers on the history of North Gando and the Korean Independence Movement. She received a Samsung Literary Award in 1984.
FLORA M. KIM is a freelancing translator/interpreter based in New Jersey, where she was born. She grew up in Seoul, Korea. Formerly a lawyer and currently a librarian, she has taught Korean literature, cinema, translation, and interpreting at Rutgers University – New Brunswick.
DAVID KROLIKOSKI is assistant professor of Korean at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
Source: publisher’s website