Ko Jeong-hee (1948–1991) is regarded as the poet who first broadly explored women's issues within the history of Korean poetry, earning her recognition as a pioneering feminist poet. At the same time, she was a poet of the people, one who scathingly critiqued reality and bore solemn witness to history with a sweeping scale and vigorous historical consciousness, and also a lyric poet whose Christian faith and moral purity toward life produced a sorrowful lyricism. Three distinct literary faces coexisted within a single person.
Her birthplace still stands in Songjeong Village, Samsan-myeon, the place where she was born and raised, and it now displays her personal belongings, handwritten manuscripts, and photographs from her lifetime. Every year in early June, the Ko Jeong-hee Cultural Festival is held across the birthplace and her gravesite, the Haenam Cultural Center, and the grounds of Mihwangsa Temple, described earlier in this series, to commemorate her literary legacy. More than three decades after her death in 1991, the language of this feminist poet, produced by a single region called Haenam, continues to be summoned anew every year.