Ko Un

South Korea's rebellious poet who transformed trauma into literary masterpieces advocating democracy.

Ko Un (b. 1933) survived the Korean War's horrors, becoming a Buddhist monk before emerging as a voice of dissent against Park Chung-hee's dictatorship. His Maninbo (Ten Thousand Lives) series—30 volumes memorializing every person he'd met—redefined epic poetry's scope.

Imprisoned four times for pro-democracy activism, Ko Un's 1980s works like This Side of Time became underground manifestos. Nobel Committee member Per Wästberg called him 'a poet of the people, not academia.'

His later environmental poetry, like Flower of Time, blends Zen philosophy with ecological urgency. Despite Nobel Prize nominations, Ko Un remains controversial for unflinching critiques of both Korean division and globalization.