Kim Kirim (Korean: 김기림; Hanja: 金起林; May 11, 1908 – ?) was a Korean poet and literary critic who represented Korean modernist literature in the 1930s. Kim wrote monumental poems such as “The Weather Chart” (1936), “Wind Speed of the Sun” (1939), and “The Sea and the Butterfly” (1939) during the Japanese colonial period. In pursuing a new spirit of poetry, he criticized sentimental romanticism in the 1920s and the movement of the Korean Artists’ Proletarian Federation (KARF), which based its literary theory and practice on left-wing ideologies. Kim was one of the first intellectualists who introduced modernism to the Korean literary circle and emphasized rationality by means of the compressibility of poetry.“Literary figures in literary textbooks who defected to North Korea: Kim Kirim the poet [문학 교과서에서 만날 수 있는 월북 문인-시인 김기림],” The Official Blog of the Ministry of Unification of the Republic of Korea, accessed 15 July 2022, m.blog.naver.com/PostView.naver?isHttpsRedirect=true&blogId=gounikorea&logNo=221214963551. Being active as a literary critic, he introduced great Korean writers such as Yi Sang, Baek Seok, and Jeong Ji-yong to the literary world through his critique and papers.“Literary figures in literary textbooks who defected to North Korea: Kim Kirim the poet [문학 교과서에서 만날 수 있는 월북 문인-시인 김기림],” The Official Blog of the Ministry of Unification of the Republic of Korea, accessed 15 July 2022, m.blog.naver.com/PostView.naver?isHttpsRedirect=true&blogId=gounikorea&logNo=221214963551. After Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule, Kim took part in the progressive Chosun Writer’s Union along with the writers Jeong Ji-yong and Lee Tae-jun and called for the role of literature in building a new nation by its active engagement in reality. “Kim Kirim,” Digital Library of Korean Literature, accessed 17 July 2022, library.ltikorea.or.kr/writer/200198.
