If you keep searching, you meet; if you long, you reach each other

A rare book brought a collector face to face with the son of one of Korea's best-known poets. In 1994, Yoon Gil-su found an unusual edition of Kim So-wol's 1925 collection “Azaleas,” whose title used the old spelling “ᄭᅩᆺ” rather than the familiar modern form. The book had no flower illustration on its cover and appeared to be a unique surviving copy.

The price was 3 million won at the time, more than 30 million won in today's value, Yoon says. He canceled his savings account the next day and bought it. About a year later, a bookseller invited him to a Chinese restaurant near Dongdaemun, where he met Kim Jeong-ho, said to be So-wol's third son.

Kim told Yoon that he had no belongings left from his father and wanted to see the collection after hearing about it. He was three when his father died. After the Korean War, Kim lived in the South, worked selling newspapers on trains and later sold records. He also worked for a time as a guard at the National Assembly after seeking help from poet Seo Jeong-ju. He told Yoon that a publisher had once paid him a token sum instead of royalties and that the composer of “Mother and Sister” had visited him.

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I had nothing left of my father, so I always felt empty. I heard about your poetry collection and wanted to see it, so I came despite my embarrassment.

The article turns from that encounter to Yoon's wider collecting life. A 2024 survey conducted for the National Museum of Korean Literature counted surviving modern-literature materials in public, university and private collections. The National Library of Korea held 789 volumes, while Yoon's collection held 399, placing him second among the private collectors listed.

In 2014, Yoon found a 1928 student anthology from Anseong Public Ordinary School. It included a Japanese-language congratulatory piece by Park Du-jin for the Japanese emperor's accession and a Korean children's poem, “Night,” by Oh Jang-hwan. Yoon described the discovery as a moment when he twice had to calm his racing heart: the two future poets had been fifth-grade classmates, and Oh's poem had survived among missing pages. The article ends with the idea that objects in the world each have their own owner, and that patient searching can bring people and memories together.

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I was collecting old books when I sometimes felt a shiver. They were fifth-grade classmates, and Oh Jang-hwan's pages were still hanging on instead of falling away.