Cho Chi-hun


Cho Chi-hun was a Korean poet, critic, and activist.

Life

Cho was born on December 3, 1920 in Yeongyang, Gyeongsangbuk-do, during the period of Japanese rule. His birthname was Cho Dong-tak. He graduated from Hyehwa College in 1941 with a degree in Liberal Arts. He taught at Odaesan Buddhist College and in 1946, after Korean Liberation, founded the Association of Young Writers. Cho also served as president of the Society of Korean Poets and from 1947 served as a professor at Korea University. Cho was also the first head of the Korea University National Culture Research Institute. He died on May 17, 1968.
Cho's birthplace is preserved in Irwol-myeon in Yeongyang. A memorial to him stands on Namsan in Seoul.

Work

The Korea Literature Translation Institute sums up Cho's work in the following way:

The Nun's Dance

Cho Chi-hun's early love of Korean tradition is expressed in his poem "The Nun's Dance".
The origin of the dance antedates the introduction of Buddhism into Korea
and expresses the traditional Korean philosophy of the harmony of heaven and earth. Popularly, however, it is taken to represent the inner conflict of an apostate nun, or the sorrow of a beautiful woman's renunciation of her erotic past, which the poet references. The dancer Han Yong-Suk used to claim that it was her performance which inspired the poet, after he had watched it many times.

Works in Translation

Criticism
Anthologies
Essays