Joo Yohan (5 December 1900 – 17 November 1979) was a twentieth-century Korean poet, journalist, businessman and politician.
1. Life
Joo Yohan was born in Pyongyang. He was educated in Japan, where his father was dispatched as a missionary to Korean students. During this period Joo was exposed to European poetry and became the editor of Changjo, the first literary magazine in Korea. He made his literary debut in February 1919, publishing “Fireworks” (불놀이 Bullori) in Changjo. When the March 1st independence movement staged by Joo and other Korean students in Tokyo failed in 1919, he fled to Shanghai in May 1919.
In association with Yi Kwang-su, he worked as a reporter for the provisional government newspaper Dongnip Sinmun, and was a follower of Ahn Changho, the leader of the Korean government in exile. In Shanghai, he entered Hujiang University to study chemistry, graduating in 1925.
Upon his return to Korea in 1925, he joined the Dong-A Ilbo as a reporter. He was promoted to editorial writer and then editor-in-chief. Later, he moved to a rival newspaper, the Chosun Ilbo. He maintained a close relationship with Ahn Changho as a member of the Young Korean Academy.
At the end of the Japanese occupation of Korea, Joo was tortured until he cooperated with the Japanese colonial government in enforcing its conscription and dispatching Korean soldiers to the Pacific battle fields. The Japanese colonial government forced him to change his name into Matsumura Kōichi.
After Korea was liberated from Japanese rule in 1945, Joo worked as a businessman to establish and run Youngpoong Company. In the late 1950s, he successfully ran for the National Assembly twice. After the April Revolution in 1960, he was appointed as the Minister of Commerce and Industry. Following the May 16 coup of 1961, he retired from politics and returned to business to run a newspaper, the Daehan Ilbo, and a shipping company.
2. Writing
Joo Yohan is considered a representative poet of the 1920 and 30's and his work can be roughly divided into those poems composed before his exile in Shanghai and those written afterward. His earlier poems such as "Bullori," written during his years in Japan, reflect the influence of modern Western and Japanese poetry.
Further on in his career, Joo's work as a whole reflects a gradual turning away from styles and forms influenced by Western poetry toward traditional Korean poetry. Like Kim Ŏk, he was a major figure in Korean literature who pioneered the move away from Western imitation to establishing his own literary roots. He articulates the reasons for this shift of inspiration in his critical piece, "Noraereul jieusillyeoneun iege" (노래를 지으시려는 이에게 To the One Who Would Write a Song), in which he places the highest value on the creation of beauty and vitality in the Korean language, and moves on to develop a complete theory of poetry.
After 1930, Joo concentrated on writing sijo, a traditional Korean poetic form, but continued to produce other verse and edited, with others, the poetry anthology Samin sigajip (3인시가집 Poetry of Three People) and an anthology of sijo, Bongsa kkot (봉사꽃 Garden Balsam Flower).
