Park Nohae height - How tall is Park Nohae?

Park left hometown and moved to Seoul, the capital city of Korea. He worked during daytime and attended the night classes at Seollin Commercial High School. He began to build up a labor activist’s career while working in the fields of construction, textiles, chemicals, metals, and logistics. At that time, Korea was going through a dark period under the military dictatorship; night curfews were in place; freedom of the press, presidential elections, and labor’s primary rights were severely violated.

When the citizens of Korea began to hold candlelight demonstrations in protest at the corruption of the Korean government under Park Geun-hae, he and the members of “Culture of Sharing” participated actively, then in 2017 published a large album book Candlelight Revolution for first anniversary of the Candlelight Revolution. He continues to be active and to write, while efforts are now underway to make his work and writings available internationally in translation.

(Hangul: 다른 길) (Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, Seoul, Korea, 2014) - Photo exhibition on Asia (Pakistan, Laos, Burma, Indonesia, Tibet, India)

(Hangul: 라 광야) (Gallery M, Seoul, Korea, 2010) - His first photo exhibition

(Hangul: 나 거기에 그들처럼) (Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, Seoul, Korea, 2010)

In 2003, at the United States’ invasion of Iraq, he went to protect helpless civilians and promote peace. At that time, he undertook peace activities in Bagdad and in other Middle Eastern countries for 75 days. In 2006 he was in Lebanon on a similar peace-making mission and publicly opposed the dispatch of Korean combat troops to the Middle East. From the start he combined poetry-writing and photography, as he went to many countries that were suffering from wars and poverty, such as Palestine, Kurdistan, Pakistan, Aceh (Indonesia), Burma, India, Ethiopia, Sudan, Peru and Bolivia. In 2010 he held his first exhibition of photos “Ra Wilderness,” and since then he has continued to hold exhibitions to draw public attention to global issues of poverty, human values, and warfare. In 2010 he finally published a large new collection of poems, So You Must Not Disappear, on themes such as resistance, spirituality, education, living, revolution and love. Since then, living in a remote rural community far from Seoul, he continues, with the members of “Culture of Sharing,” to hold photo exhibitions in a dedicated gallery, the Ra Cafe and Gallery, in Seoul, also occasionally publishing photo albums, such as “Like Them, I am There,” and “Another Way.”

For many years he was active underground, helping establish the Socialist Labour League of South Korea in 1989. After spending seven years of his life hiding from the police, he was finally arrested in 1991. After twenty-four days of investigation, coupled with cruel, illegal torture, at his trial the state prosecutors even demanded the death sentence for him as an enemy of the state. He was finally sentenced to life imprisonment. While he was in prison, a second poetry collection was published, True Beginning(1993) as well as a collection of essays, Only a Person is Hope(1997). He was finally freed in 1998 after being amnestied by President Kim Dae-Jung. Withdrawing from his previous role, he helped establish a nonprofit social organization “Nanum Munhwa”(Culture of Sharing) with Koreans concerned with the great challenges confronting global humanity.

The 1980s, when the labor movement was at its most active in South Korea, was also the most active period for the creation of labor poetry. The poetry of this time, represented mainly by Park Nohae and Baek Mu-san. He then took the pseudonym Park Nohae(‘No’ means ‘labor,’ ‘Hae’ means ‘liberation’) and published his first collection of poems, Dawn of Labor, in 1984, under that name. Korea was at that time under the military dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan, with strict censorship. Despite official bans, this collection sold nearly a million copies and created intense interest. The unknown poet became an intensely symbolic figure of resistance. The government authorities tried in vain to identify and arrest him.

Park Nohae (Korean: 박노해 ; born 1957) is South Korean poet, photographer and activist. His original name was Park Gi-pyeong (Korean: 박기평 ).

Park Nohae was born in 1957 in Hampyeong, South Jeolla Province, a southern province of South Korea, and grew up in a farming town, Beolgyo, Goheung. Both his father, a ‘Pansori’ singer, who had participated in Korea’s independence and progressive movements, and his mother who was a devout Catholic, greatly influenced him from his childhood. Later, his brother became a priest and headed The Catholic Priests’ Association for Justice that took a leading role in the democratization of Korea, and his younger sister became a nun. At the age of seven when his father suddenly passed away, his fate began to get on a wild journey, as his family became poor, and the family members had to be separated from each other. Such misfortune and solitude at his early age made him get immersed in reading and writing.