Yi Sang

Kim Haegyŏng (Korean: 김해경; Hanja: 金海卿; September 23, 1910 – April 17, 1937), also known by his art name Yi Sang (이상; 李箱), was a writer and poet who lived in Korea under Japanese rule. Although he was a poet, he did not receive specialized education in Korean language or creative writing, and instead majored in architecture at Gyeongseong Industrial High School (경성고등공업학교; 京城高等工業專門學校), now known as Seoul National University of Science and Technology. After contracting tuberculosis in 1933, Yi Sang quit his job as a public official and ran a café, continuing his literary exchanges with the Guinhoe group (구인회; 九人會; lit. 'League of Nine'). He died in Japan in April 1937. He is well known for his poems and novels, such as Crow's Eye View and The Wings. Among them, Crow's Eye View received strong protests from the people at the time as not being a proper poem. Fellow poet Park Tae-won wrote in his memorial essay that people called Crow's Eye View "the sleep talk of a lunatic." Yi Sang's work contains various scientific symbols and terms, and is structurally very difficult to understand as it contains many experimental attempts. He uses wordplay through homonyms and also uses pictures in his works. He is considered as a pivotal and revolutionary figure of modern Korean literature.