Park Chong-hwa

• Name — Park Chong-hwa • Born — October 29, 1901 • Died — 3 January 1981 • Language — Korean Park Chong-hwa (October 29, 1901 – January 13, 1981) was an early-modern Korean poet and novelist.

Park Chong-hwa was born October 29, 1901, in Seoul, Korean Empire. Park wrote under the name Woltan and attended the Huimun Uisuk Academy. He worked as a member of the literary club Swan (1922) and was the vice-chairman of the Choson Writers' Association in 1946. He also served as the Chairman of the Seoul Committee for Arts (1947) and the Writers' Association of Korea (1949). Park was named the President of the Korea Arts Council (1955) and Chairman of the Board of the Korean Writers' Association (1964). He died on January 13, 1981.

Park first entered the literary world as a poet, publishing “Anguished Youth” (Onoeui cheongchun 오뇌의 청춘) and “Milk-colored Streets” (Uyubit geori 우유빛거리) in the inaugural issue of the journal Rose Village (Jangmichon) in 1921, and “Returning to the Secret Room” (Milsillo doragada 밀실로 돌아가다) and “Elegy” (Manga) in the 1922 inaugural issue of White Tide (Baekjo). With his first poetry collection, Private Melodies of the Black Room (Heukbang Bigok, 1924), Park established his reputation as a romantic poet. During the Japanese occupation, censorship, prison, or even death followed overt literary resistance and the predominant emotion among Korean writers in the 1920s was near-despair. Poets like Pak Chong-hwa and Yi Sang-hwa therefore turned to dark imitations of the European decadent movement. However, in a poem like "Koryo Celadon" Pak uses an aesthetic theme as an indirect statement of national pride, which was later to be taken up in his novels. • Illustration — 12th century celadon ware During the Goryeo period of a thousand years before, the unique grey-green celadon ware (ceong-ja) had been the main type of ceramics produced on the Korean peninsula but under Japanese rule, artware pottery had all but disappeared from the country. In the past it had been particularly associated with Buddhist ceremonies, hence the bodhisattva reference in the first stanza. The poem then turns to later successors of ceong-ja, the so-called white celadon (baek-ja) and cobalt-blue kingfisher shade mentioned in the second stanza, and in the third to the types of use to which the pottery was put.

Learning this approach through his poetry, Park Jonghwa devoted the rest of his life to writing historical novels that espouse Korean nationalism. The Literature Translation Institute of Korea summarizes this part of his career: A last major work was King Sejong the Great serialised in Chosun Ilbo from 1969 to 1977 running to 2456 episodes, and later the basis for the TV series, Tears of the Dragon.

• King Sejong: a novel (translated by Ahn Junghyo, New York 1980)

Novels • Blood on the Royal Sleeve serialised in 1936 in the Maeil Sinbo • Ode to Spring • Friendly Buddha • My People • The Japanese Invasion • Resting Cloud