Yi Sang-hwa (1901-1943) Born in 1901, when Korea's last dynasty was on its rapid decline finally to allow Japan to seize the country as a colony, and dying in 1943, only two years before the country regained her national sovereignty upon Japan's losing her war against America, Yi Sang-hwa lived in the darkest age of all Korean history. His life was a turbulent and tumultuous one; yet most glorious was it, for, as man and poet, he scaled the whole gamut as a man of action and in the spiritual realm of poesy. Although the number of Yi Sang-hwa's poems that have survived is small, he is one of the most inspiring Korean poets of the modern times. He participated, both in deed and in writing, in the independence cause of his country, for which he was frequently imprisoned and always under police surveillance. His poems may be considered as an expression of his ardent feelings. Few of Korean poets have been as tongue- tied as he. On account of his political ideologies he suffered such tortures from the Japanese police that he never recovered his health again, to end his life in his early forties.
