Park Hi-jin (1931 – 2015) was a South Korean poet.
1. Life
Park Hi-jin was born in Yeoncheon, Gyeonggi Province. He studied English literature at Korea University. In 1956, his poems "Muje" (무제 Untitled), "Heo" (허 Emptiness), "Gwanseeumsangegero" (관세음상에게로 Towards the Bodhisattva) were recommended to the arts journal Munhak Yesul, thus beginning his formal career as a poet. His love of literature, however, was apparent from a very young age. He recalls that he already knew he wanted to become a writer as a primary school student. Due to the colonial circumstances of the time, he spoke and wrote in Japanese, and because his first encounters with literature were in Japanese, he was greatly interested in Japanese novels and poetry, especially the haiku.
Park worked as a teacher at Tongseong Junior High and High School. He was a member of the literary circle Sahwajip in the 1960s, and also a member of the poetry reading club Gongan.
Park remained single his entire life, often saying that he was married to his poetry. He has boasted that he made real contributions to the literary coterie magazine movement in Korea, and also had great pride as the poet who first truly experimented with the poetry recitation movement.
2. Writing
Park Hi-jin's poetry starkly contrasts heaven and earth and contradictions between light and darkness. Following Korea's liberation from Japan, Park engrossed himself in writing poetry in his mother tongue. At first his Korean was inelegant, but he strove to create his own poetic world, drawing upon artistic trends from both inside and outside Korea. Having majored in English literature at university, Park was heavily influenced by Romantic poets like T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats, as well as the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke and the French poet Paul Valéry. Park also received great inspiration from traditionalist Korean poets, such as his contemporaries, the renowned So Chong-ju and Yu Chi-hwan, as well as Cho Jihoon, Park Mok-wol and Park Dujin, both of whom wrote traditional nature poetry.
Unusually for modern Korean poets, Park Hi-jin also wrote travel poems, primarily as a result of his extensive travels in the United States and Europe.
