Choi Jongcheon

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Choi Jongcheon (1954 – 18 July 2025) was a South Korean poet known as one of the country’s leading labor poets. His work links the hard lives of workers with big questions about society and capitalism, arguing that true art grows from labor and that the dignity of workers should be central to culture.

Born in 1954 in Jangseong, Jeollanam-do, he moved to Seoul after middle school and began welding in the early 1970s. He started writing poetry not through formal study but from doodles in his notebooks. A college-educated boss saw his notebooks and encouraged him to write. He read literary magazines he found on stairs at the Hyundae Sihak offices and preferred philosophy and biology to poetry journals. After seeing a notice at the Renaissance cafe, he joined an amateur writing group and began composing. He published in Segyeui munhak in 1986 and 1988, marking his debut as a poet.

Choi’s poetry explores labor, its hardships, and its potential to liberate people. He argued that labor can be true art, while white-collar work often treats life as a collection of empty symbols. Notable works include Tears are Blue (2002), My Rice-bowl Shines (2007), Cat’s Magic (2011), The Poem of Welding (2013), and Life is Brief, Machines are Forever (2018). He won the Shin Dongyup Writing Prize in 2002 and the Oh Janghwan Literature Prize in 2012. He died of a cerebral infarction on 18 July 2025 at the age of 71.