Yong-un Han (1879-1944) is recognized as Korea's finest Buddhist poet of the twentieth century and also one of the country's most influential political activists in the struggle against Japanese imperialism. Yong-un Han's Buddhist insights and political passion combine to give his poetry great spiritual power. He describes the complexities of love as beginning in the desire for total union and leading to an illumination of the void or nothingness.

Delighting in paradox, these are poemsthat tease us into a subtle understanding of the limitations of both self and union, while never denying the importance of political struggle. Now Jaihiun Kim and Ronald B. Hatch have translated his most famous collection - Love's Silence - along with a selection of 16 other poems. Included also is a foreword detailing the life and publications of Yong-un Han.

Yong-Un Han's profile page

Jaihiun Kim's profile page

Yong-un Han (1879-1944), or as he was known by his pen name "Manhae" (Ten Thousand Seas), was among the handful of early pioneer poets of the modern period. He remained detached from the literary groups of the time, and he deliberately refused to write in conventional syllabic counts or in forms characteristic of folk ballads and lyric poems. Han's poetry was written largely in the form of free verse. His writing was deeply religious and meditative, and he found it necessary to work against the older forms to find a new expression for his religious sensibility.

In addition to his work as a poet, Han was one of the foremost patriots of his time. During the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945) he was in the vanguard of resistance. For his participation in the Independence Movement of 1919, he spent three years in ail; in 1938 he was again arrested and jailed by the Japanese police because of his activities in the resistance movement.

His most important collection of poems Love's Silence was completed in 1925 at Paek-dum temple, a remote mountain retreat in Kangwon Province, and the volume was published the next year. The poems, eighty-eight in all, form a eulogy to love in all its varied and complex meanings.