Choe Nam-Son

(pen name, Yuktan). Born 1890 in Seoul; died there October 1957. Korean literary figure and historian. One of the founders of modern Korean literature.

From 1904 to 1906, Choe Nam-son studied at Waseda University in Japan. He first published his works in 1906. In 1908 he began publishing Son yon, Korea’s first literary monthly of enlightened thought; in this journal he printed his own verses and narrative poems, which firmly established free verse in Korean poetry, and he wrote articles on politics, culture, and literature as well.

After drafting the Declaration of Independence, which was signed by the bourgeois nationalists on the eve of the March 1919 uprising in Korea, Choe Nam-son was arrested. In 1925 he switched allegiance and worked for the Japanese colonial powers. After the liberation of the country in 1945 he lived in South Korea, having lost his public influence. He opposed the Korean Federation of Proletarian Art.

Choe Nam-son, a prominent bourgeois historian, wrote works on Korean history and published many old Korean historical documents and literary works.