Ko Un has long been a living legend in Korea, both as a poet and as a person. Allen Ginsberg once wrote, 'Ko Un is a magnificent poet, combination of Buddhist cognoscente, passionate political libertarian, and naturalist historian.' Maninbo (Ten Thousand Lives) is the title of a remarkable...

In 1997, Korean poet Ko Un spent forty days of rough travelling through Tibet, despite the fact that, years before, the poet had learned that an undiagnosed attack of tuberculosis in his youth had...