Yu Yongjoo was born in 1959 in Jangsu, North Jeolla Province, Korea. His debut poems were published in the Autumn Issue of The Quarterly Changbi in 1991. Celebrated as a poet of literary sincerity and exceptional lyricism, Yu has introduced a new model of labor literature. He is the author of the poetry collections The Lightest Load, Massive Silence, Stealthily, Why Is It So Cold in Seoul?, and Mother Must’ve Cried Like That; the anthology of selected poems Fallen Leaves; the essay collections But I Will Survive, Let’s Have Soju, Beautiful Faces, Brief Memories of the Forest and Thank You for Coming All the Way Here; and the novels In Search of Marin, and An Investigation Report on a Petty Criminal. Yu has received the Shin Dong-yup Prize for Literature and the Geojang Peace and Human Rights Literature Award.
