Detailed Biography of Park Nohae 1957 At his birth in Hampyeong, Jeollanam-do, in south-western South Korea, Park Nohae was given the name Park Gi-pyeong 1984 Park published his first collection of poems, Dawn of Labor, that he wrote at the age of twenty-seven while working as a laborer in various places. Nearly a million copies of this collection were sold, in spite of the Korean government’s ban, and it shook Korean society and the literary world with its shocking emotional power. Park became the voice representing the forgotten class of one million workers who were stripped of all rights. It spread as a voice of conscience that encouraged college students to go into the laboring world, and thus became a vivid example of ‘the power of poetry.’ He decided to take a pen name to be used for the rest of his life, “Park Nohae,” meaning “liberation of the laborers,” in order to avoid the dictatorial government’s surveillance on him. From that time, he was called the ‘faceless poet’ and became a symbolic figure in the period of Korean democratization.   1989 He helped form the “South Korean Socialist Workers’ Alliance” that made socialism a public issue for the first time in South Korea, where it had been an absolute taboo topic since the Korean War. While continuing to publish Labor Liberation literature, he actively engaged in the forefront of labor and pro-democracy movements, always hiding, on the run, defying the police and national security agencies for years.   1991 He was finally arrested after seven years, and thus finally revealed his ‘face’.  After twenty-four days of investigation, coupled with cruel, illegal torture, the prosecution demanded the death penalty for the ‘leader of an anti-state organizations’, and he was finally sentenced to life imprisonment.   1993 He published his second collection of poems, titled True Beginning. With the collapse of socialism, he continued his work of radical reflection and research, and caused a great social ripple in Korean society, when he said, “Socialism as an ideal should be maintained, but the implemented socialist system is flawed. Let’s start a new ideology and a new movement that can reflect the changing times.”   1997 He published a collection of essays while he was still in prison, titled People are the Only Hope. In the ongoing trend toward market-centered globalization and the domination of old progressive ideologies, this book sold hundreds of thousands of copies, showing that although his body could be imprisoned, his ideas and poems could not be restrained.   1998 On August 15th, he was freed by President Kim Daejung’s special pardon after seven years and six months in prison. Thereafter, he was reinstated as a contributor to the democratization movement, but he refused any state compensation.   2000 Park decided to observe a self-imposed silence on social issues, saying, “I will not live today’s life by selling myself as I was the past”, and embarked on new ideas and practices aiming towards the realization of human liberation. In consideration of human beings in the age of globalization of the power of capitalism, confronting the four major crises: the global ‘ecological crisis’, the ‘crisis of war’, the ‘crisis of bipolarization’, and the ‘crisis of spirit’, he established a social organization, called NANUMMUNHWA (Culture of Sharing: http://www.nanum.com/site/intro_english) that would have “Life, Peace, and Sharing” as its core values.   2003 Right after the United States’ invasion of Iraq, he flew to the field of war to engage in anti-war peace activities. By going with other Korean anti-war peace activists into the field of war, he marked a turning point for the Korean social movement’s vision, extending it toward the issue of peace for the whole of humanity.   2006 He conducted global peace activities in war-ridden Lebanon, establishing a school and a library in a refugee village. After he came back home, he held an urgent press conference opposing the dispatch of Korean combat troops to the Middle East. Since then, he has continued to conduct activities aimed at establishing global peace in places of poverty and conflict. Even during this intense work of peace activism, he has always carryied an old fountain pen to write poems in one hand, and an old black-and-white film camera in the other.   2010 He held his first photo exhibition, titled “Ra Wilderness” in January 2010. Each of the photographs of the “Ten Years Report on the Sites of Middle East” that he took with a trembling heart opened eyes with new insights into Islam in the Middle East and left viewers with a great deal of reflection and consonance. In October 2010, he held his second exhibition “Like them, I am there” at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, Seoul, Korea (one of the most significant culture and arts spaces in Seoul), where he showed one hundred and seven photos as a selection among more than one hundred thirty thousand photos he had taken in such places as Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Central and South America over the past twelve years. They were “poems of respect written with light”, dedicated to the harsh lives of those suffering at the grass-roots level in the global village. In October, he published a new collection of poems after twelve years, titled So You Must Not Disappear, containing three hundred and four poems that he wrote in the field, at home and abroad.     2012- Since 2012 the Ra Cafe Gallery, the cultural space for alternative lives that NANUMMUNHWA runs, has been holding permanent exhibitions of Park Nohae’s activities designed to share global peace: Photo Exhibition on Pakistan, “A Village Where Clouds Dwell” (April 16 - July 31, 2012), Exhibition on Burma, “Singing Lake” (August 3 - October 31, 2012), Exhibition on Tibet, “Bloom and Fall with Nothing Left” (November 2, 2012 - February 27, 2013), Exhibition on Q’ero in the Andes, “Q’erotica” (March 1 - July 10, 2013), and “On the Shores of the Nile” (July 12 - November 13, 2013), Exhibition on the Middle East "Ra wilderness" (November 15, 2013 - March 1, 2014), Exhibition on Ethiopia "Blooming footsteps" (March 3 - July 23, 2014), Exhibition on Latin America "Titicaca" (July 25 - November 19, 2014), and "Gracias a la vida" (November 21, 2014 - March 18, 2015).   2014 Park Nohae held a photo exhibition on Asia, titled “Another Way”, and at the same time published his collection of photo essays with the same title, Another Way. Today, he is embracing the sufferings and sorrows of human beings beyond borders, setting up “Nanum Farmer’s Villages”, that is, communities of people aiming at lives of self-sufficiency and self-reliance, and walking the way of new ideas and alternative revolution.   2015 In the Ra Cafe Gallery, held an Exhibition on Aljazeera, titled “Like them beneath the Sun” (March 20, 2015-July 15, 2015), Exhibition on India ‘Dire Dire’ (July 17, 2015-January 13, 2016) 2016 Starting on October 29, 2016, he participated in the "Candlelight Revolution" and together with young youths and citizens, protected democracy in crisis due to Park Geun-hye's government and corrupt power. The Ra Cafe Gallery hosted a photo exhibition on Kashmir, “Kashmir's Spring” (January 15-June 29, 2016) and an Exhibition on Indonesia, 'The Caldera's Wind' (July 1, 2016,- December 28.). 2017 Publication of a book, “Candlelight Revolution,” the history of the candlelight revolution that lasted 183 days and involved 17 million Korean citizens. In the Ra Café Gallery, he held an exhibition "Kurdistan" (December 30, 2016, -June 28, 2017) and an exhibition on Laos "Morning of Laos" (June 30, 2017-February 28, 2018). 2018 At the 70th Frankfurt Book Fair, the Korean publishers’ stand ‘Slow Walk’ presented the poet’s publications including the photo albums “Like them, I am there,” “Another Way,” “Ra Wilderness,” the poetry collections “Dawn of Labor” and “So You Must Not Disappear” together with the essay collections “Only a Person is Hope” and “Another way” to publishers, writers and readers from countries such as Germany, UK, Switzerland, France, Italy, Ireland, Taiwan, Singapore, Ecuador, and South Africa. These received sincere praise and proposals for publication in various languages. Ra Cafe Gallery held an Exhibition on Palestine, “Dream of the Olive Tree” (March 2, 2018-October 31) and another exhibition 'Goodbye, and' (November 2, 2018-February 10, 2019). Park Nohae continues to devote himself to writing and research, publishing books on alternative life and philosophy to counter the fundamental contradictions of human civilization in crisis.