Yun Son-Do

Yun Son-Do

 

(pen name, Kosan). Born 1587 in Seoul; died there 1671. Korean poet and state figure.

Yun Son-do held high governmental posts. His legacy consists of a six-volume poetry collection in Korean and hanmun (a koreanized form of wenyen, the Chinese literary language). This posthumous work, entitled Kosan yugo, includes several cycles of sijo (three-line poems). In his choice of themes, Yun Son-do did not go beyond landscape lyrics (“poetry of rivers and lakes”). However, his works constitute a turning point in the history of the sijo genre and of Korean poetry as a whole. Yun Son-do employed the traditional forms of folk song, and in a number of instances he replaced Chinese words with Korean equivalents. Yun Son-do created vivid images of Korea in his sijo.

WORKS

Kosansiga. Phak Song-Ui chusok. Seoul, 1957.
In Russian translation:
In Koreiskaia klassicheskaia poeziia. Moscow, 1958.

REFERENCE

Ch’oe Si-hak. “Kosan Yun Son-Do wa kasa munhak.” In the collection Kojon chakkaron, vol. 2. Pyongyang, 1959.