Yu Chi-hwan (1908–1967), also known by his pen name Cheongma, was a leading twentieth-century Korean poet.
1. Life
Yu Chi-hwan was born in South Gyeongsang Province. Yu attended Toyoyama Middle School in Japan for four years, then returned to Korea to graduate from Dongrae High School. He entered the humanities division of Yonhi College (now Yonsei) in 1927 but withdrew after a year.
He began his career in poetry with the publication of "Jeongjeok" (정적 Tranquillity) in Munye Wolgan in December 1931. In 1937 he managed the coterie journal Saengni. In April 1940 he moved to Manchuria. He returned to Korea in June 1946, at which time he established the Tongyeong Cultural Association and joined several other groups as well and. In 1952 he joined the Poetry and Poetics group in Daegu, and in 1955 he oversaw the publication of Cheongmaek, a journal produced by a circle of Gyeongsangnam-do writers. In 1957, he founded the Society of Korean Poets.
Throughout his life, Yu published at least ten volumes of poetry. His awards include the Seoul Culture Award, Korean Academy of the Arts Distinguished Service Award, and Busan Culture Award. He died on February 13, 1967.
2. Writing
Yu Chi-hwan published his first poem, "Jeongjeok," in 1931. The publication of his first poetry collection, Cheongmasicho (청마시초 Poems of Yu Chi-hwan), in 1939 was followed by some ten further volumes of poetry, including Saengmyeong-ui seo (생명의 서 The Chapter of Life), Ulleungdo (울릉도 The Isle of Ulung), Cheongnyeong ilgi (청령일기 Journey of a Dragonfly), as well as a book based on his experiences in the army during the Korean War, Bobyeonggwa deobureo (보병과 더불어 Together with the Infantry). Saranghaesseumeuro haengbokhayeonnera (사랑했으므로 행복하였네라 How Happy to Have Loved), published posthumously, is a selection of two hundred love letters that he wrote to the sijo poet Lee Yeongdo.
The poet’s works are colored by a will to overcome death and nothingness, the fundamental fate of human existence. This will is linked with the poet's own spiritual pilgrimage and thus has a variety of connotations in his poetry. On one hand, within the historical dimension represented by the extreme circumstances of the late years of Japanese imperialism, there appears a masochistic rage and a savage will, while on the other we find, within the death predestined for humanity, a compassion and pathos for existence. These parallel portraits of the life-force and pathos are aptly illustrated in one of his best-known poems, "Gitbal" (깃발 Flag). The flag is the sentimental mind that, by simultaneously encountering compassion for humanity and a longing for a utopia, symbolized by the image of a blue sea, cannot in the end arrive at this utopia. Because of his endeavor, based on this violent love of the life-force, to overcome by strong force of will the essence of nothingness, Yu is known as a poet of the "life-force" or "life" schools; and because of his poems' smooth recitation of sublime poetic themes, critics see in his works a masculine poetic world rarely viewed in modern Korean poetry.
