Poetry. Asian Studies. Translated by Won-Chung Kim and Christopher Merrill. Born in 1952, during the Korean War, Ji-woo Hwang's poems describe a life governed by the inescapable reality that all hell can break loose at any time, a reality that now permeates our own culture. In the early 1970s, Hwang was arrested and tortured for his anti-government activities, but by the 1980s, he was leading the new wave of deconstructionist poetry which was part of the new "rhetoric of resistance" in Korean literature. His poems continue to find readers in his newly democratic land, for they mix lyrical intensity with an acute political sensibility. Hwang has also received many of Korea's most prestigious literary awards.