Pak Mok-wol (, 6 January 1916 – 24 March 1978) was an influential Korean poet and academic. Personal life He was born Pak Yeongjong on January 6, 1916, in Moryang Village, Seo-myeon, Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, in present-day South Korea, to parents Pak Jun-pil () and Pak In-jae (). He had a younger brother and two younger sisters. He graduated from Keisung Middle School (today Keisung High School) in Daegu in 1935. He lived in Tokyo from April 1937 until late 1939, during which period he devoted his time to writing. From September 1939 to September 1940, he had several of his poems published in the magazine . Afterwards, due to increasing wartime censorship by the Japanese colonial government, he continued writing privately but did not publish any further poetry until after the liberation of Korea. He was married to Yu Ik-sun (), with whom he had four sons and a daughter. Pak taught at various schools including Keisung Middle School and Ewha Girls' High School beginning in 1946, before joining the faculty of Hongik University as an assistant professor in 1953. In 1961 he took up a position as associate professor at Hanyang University (at which a statue was erected in his honor), and in 1963 he became a full professor there. He was later named the dean of the university's College of Humanities. In 1966 he was elected to the (Yesurwon). He was a board member of the Society of Korean Poets from its founding in 1957, and was chosen as the society's chairman in 1968. He died on March 24, 1978, at his home in Wonhyoro-dong, Yongsan District, Seoul. Work Pak Mok-wol began his career as a member of Cheongrok-pa (the Blue Deer school), a group of three poets who also included Cho Chi-hun and Pak Tu-jin, all named after the 1946 anthology in which they appeared. Although they differed in style, their work largely had its basis in natural description and human aspiration. The body of Pak Mok-wol's work at this time established a new trend in Korean poetry, one that attempted to express childlike innocence and wonder at life through folk songs and dialectal poetic language. Among such poems, "The Wayfarer" (나그네) is notable and was set by the musician Isang Yun as the last in his early song book Dalmuri (A Halo, 1950). After his experiences during the Korean War, Pak's work shifted in