(Kunsan, 1933) grew up while Korea was occupied by the Japanese. He was only eight years of age when he started studying classic Chinese texts which were way beyond even much older children. When the Japanese headmaster asked him what his ambitions were, he replied `To become emperor of Japan.' The answer earned him a heavy punishment.

In 1952, at the end of the Korean war in which he had been conscripted, he entered a Zen-buddhist monastery, spent ten years meditating and traveling the country living of alms. In 1957 he and a colleague monk founded the Buddhist Newspaper and as its first editorŠin-chief he contributed his first poems and essays. His first collection Other World Sensitivity got published in 1960, while he held the post of senior priest at the Temple of Chondung. He left his monastery in 1962.

Since then he published about a hundred books: collections of poems, essays and reviews as well as novels. He is the country's most prolific author and received its most prestigeous literary awards. He became professor in Korean literature, but under Chun Du-Hwan's regime in the early Ō80s he got prosecuted and tortured for his political views.

In his later poems, specifically in the cycle of poems titled Pekdu-san (Pekdu mountain), he deals with Korean selfconsciousness and expresses his engagement in the future unification of his country. However, Ko Un not only writes political-prophetic poems but also lyrical and sometimes even romantic ones, partially in the shape of haiku's. The universal harmony, the yin and yang principle, is a recurring theme in his poetry.

The Korean literary critic Sung Min-Yob wrote: `It seems to me as if Ko Un writes poetry with his breath instead of his brain. The process of reading any of his poems mysteriously harmonizes with my breathing. Perhaps he breathes his poems before putting them to paper. I can imagine that his poems spring forth from his enchanting breath rather than from his pen.'