Kim Kirim is a Korean poet and literary critic. His real name is Kim Inson, and his childhood name was Kim Inson, but with different Chinese characters.. He used Pyeon-seok-chon as a childhood nickname.
Life
Kim was born in Haksung, North Hamgyong Province. After graduating from Posung high school, he graduated from Tohoku University, following Nihon University in Japan. He returned to Korea and started his literary career, publishing "Away to the New Life" in The Chosun Ilbo while working as a reporter in a department of art and science of the same newspaper. He also published "Problems on Poetic Techniques, Cognition, Reality, Etc" in the newspaper and started his career as a literary critic. In 1933, he formed the Circle of Nine with Yi Sang, Lee Hyo-seok, Jo Yongman, Park Taewon, and so on. Kim began to write in earnest then, and published his first collection of poems, The Weather Chart, in 1936. He retired to the countryside and taught English at Gyeongsung middle school near hometown until he taught Mathematics, when English was no longer taught by school. A poet Kim Gyudong was one of his students. Kim took part in Chosun Writer's Union after the liberation in 1945. The next year, he fled to the South from Soviet Union occupied North Korea. Then, he withdrew from the union around the time Republic of Korea was established in 1948. He became an assistant professor at Seoul National University, after working as a lecturer at Chung-Ang University and Yonsei University. He also founded New Culture Research Institute around the same time. He died in North Korea, where he was kidnapped to during Korean War, but the year is unknown. On June 9 of 1990, his fellow poets including Kim Gwang-gyun and Ku Sang erected a monument that pays a tribute to Kim at Posung high school, where Kim attended.
Literary Style
Influenced by T.S. Eliot, Kim mainly wrote intellectualist and imagist poetry. He criticized technicalism of contemporary Korean modernist poetry and advocated "total poetry," which content and form are in balance. Because Kim was too dedicated to his theory, his earlier works were criticized for being a scatter of shattered images, but he gradually overcame it. For literary criticism, he is praised for changing Korean literary world by adopting imagism and intellectualism of Britain and the United States.
Literature
<바다와 나비>
아무도 그에게 수심을 일러준 일이 없기에 흰 나비는 도무지 바다가 무섭지 않다 청무우밭인가 해서 내려갔다가는 어린 날개에 물결에 절어서 공주처럼 지쳐서 돌아온다 삼월달 바다가 꽃이 피지 않아서 서글픈 나비 허리에 새파란 초생달이 시리다
