SDF

A poet and novelist, CHOI Young-me was a key figure, along with prosecutor Seo Ji-hyun, in sparking the #MeToo movement in South Korea. Choi’s poem “Monster,” a satire on a celebrated senior Korean poet and his little-known history of repeated sexual misconduct, laid the foundation for the rise of the #MeToo movement in Korea’s arts and culture community.

In 1981, while attending university, Choi was put on indefinite suspension for participating in pro-democracy demonstrations organized by her fellow students. Years later, witnessing the fall of the Soviet Union and communism, she grew skeptical of metanarrative and ideology, and began her career as a writer to give literary expression to the significant changes taking place within and around her.

Written in language both delicate and assured, Choi’s first collection of poems, At Thirty, The Party Is Over, offered a stark view of life in contemporary Korea, its fresh realism causing a sensation not only in Korean literary circles but among the general public. Building on the success of this first work, which sold more than 500,000 copies, she went on to publish four more poetry collections, in addition to novels, including Scars and Patterns and Bronze Garden, and essays on art and football.

Choi’s poem “To the Pigs” earned her the Yisu Literary Award in 2006. Professor Yoo Jong-ho, one of the judges for the award, described Choi’s poetry as “posing an incisive critique of the hypocrisies, fallacies, and complacencies in Korean society and once again demonstrating the raison d'être of poets as the conscience of our times.”