Choe Nam-seon (April 26, 1890 – October 10, 1957), also known by the Japanese pronunciation of his name Sai Nanzen, was a Korean historian, political activist, poet, and publisher who was best remembered as a leading member of the Korean independence movement. He was born into a jungin (class between aristocrats and commoners) family in Seoul, Korea, under the late Joseon Dynasty, and educated in Seoul. In 1904 he went to study in Japan, and was greatly impressed by the Meiji Restoration reforms. Upon his return to Korea, Choe became active in the Patriotic Enlightenment Movement, which sought to modernize Korea. Choe published Korea's first successful modern magazine, Youth (소년, Sonyeon), through which he sought to bring modern knowledge about the world to Korea's youth. He coined the term hangul for the Korean alphabet and promoted it as a literary medium through his magazines. The author of the first “new-style” poem, “From the Ocean to the Youth” (해(海)에게서 소년에게, 1908), he is widely credited with pioneering modern Korean poetry. Choe sought to create a new style of literary Korean that would be more accessible to ordinary people. But at the same time, he was proud of classical Korean literature and he founded the Association of Korea's Glorious Literature in 1910 that sought to encourage ordinary people to read the classics of Korean literature that until then had been mostly read by the elites. Through the work of the Chinese nationalist writer Liang Qichao, Choe learned of the Western theories of Social Darwinism and the idea that history was nothing more than an endless struggle between various people to dominate each other with only the fittest surviving. Choe believed that this competition would only end with Korea ruling the world. In a 1906 essay he wrote: "How long will it take us to accomplish the goal of flying our sacred national flag above the world and having people of the five continents kneeling down before it? Exert yourselves, our youth!" Choe's magazine Sonyeon was intended to popularize Western ideas about science and technology though a more readable Korean that would modernize the Korean nation for Social Darwinist competition for world domination. Japan's annexation of Korea in 1910 accelerated the independence movement. Influenced by Social Darwinist theories, Choe urged in numerous articles that the Koreans would have to modernize in order to be strong to survive. In a 1917 article in Hwangsǒng