Shin Kyong-lim, poet of the peasants.

(From The Korea Herald)

By Shin Hae-in His poems suggest sorrow but his smiling face suggests naivety. The contradiction naturally evokes curiosity. Poet Shin Kyong-lim has schoolboyish features with a glint of mischief in his eyes. One is led to doubt, albeit for a fleeting few seconds, how this small man, who is one of Korea's most esteemed literary figures, could have penetrated people's hearts with poems delivering the sorrow of the downcast in the '70s and '80s.

"Are you a good drinker?" Shin asks, after a brief exchange of greetings. Explaining that he needs to chase a hangover with a drink, Shin, who turned 70 in April, orders "soju," a strong Korean liquor. The streets of Insa-dong are still quite empty at 10 a.m. "You can get an early drink in Insa-dong. That's why I suggested meeting here," Shin said with a mischievous grin.

"Someone said, 'Never make an occupation out of something you love.' In my case, I had no choice but to do just that. Even if I were not a poet now, I'd still be writing poems, neglecting my work," he says, after a sip of soju. Shin was born in 1935 in North Chungcheong Province. In 1956, he made a much-noted debut with the poem "The Reed." However, Shin put down his pen for nine years, soon thereafter, and went back to his hometown. "I almost lost my love for poetry then," Shin says. "My mind and body were in such a bad state that I didn't have the energy to listen to my heart. It was so painful that I couldn't go a day without drinking." But with help from fellow poet Kim Guan-sik, he came back to Seoul and published his first collection of poems, "Peasants' Dance," filled with what he felt in his home neighborhood in Chungju. Shin says he wrote "Peasants' Dance" at a stroke. "It was a strong feeling that suddenly came up. I couldn't even sleep. I wrote it in order to let it out of my head and get some sleep." Many of the poems in the collection are spoken in an undefined plural voice, a "we" encompassing the collective identity of the "minjung," the masses, of the '70s and '80s. He made himself their spokesman not based on mere sympathy but as one of them. Shin had shared their poverty, pains and thwarted hopes. "Peasants' Dance" echoes the memories of Korea's tumultuous history: from the chaos following the liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945, the Korean War and the political violence in its wake to the rapid industrialization that ensued, which led to further uprooting of rural populations that had already undergone severe dislocation in the course of the war.

Beginning with the Manhae Prize for Literature in 1974, Shin received seven literary awards for his works.

In April, after nearly half a century of versifying works, a collection of Shin's 900 poems was published. "All kinds of thoughts came to my mind while rummaging through my past works. Some ...