Life before 14
Park Jaehong who was born in Beolgyo, Jeonnam of 1968, became a severely-disabled person because of polio when he was an eight-month-old baby. Even though he had to crawl about on all four until 14, he didn’t regard it as misfortune. 
When he entered the society of school while depending on crutches, he felt like becoming an all-alone scarecrow swaying in the wide field, which he should cope with. The biggest comfort to him was poetry. 

Literature Movement 

Poet Park said, ‘Because the disability was inconvenient, he got the muscle to correctly see the world’. In the epilogue, he declared, ‘He aimed not to lose his attention to the lowest people, and not to be contaminated by the rapidly-changing situation of the times’.
After participating in literature movement, he naturally moved to disability movement. Through the academic credit bank system, he majored in social welfare. Currently, he is in the second year of Combined Master’s & Doctoral Program in Korean Language & Literature, Hannam University. 

Study again 

Passing the age of 50, he needed to organize his life due to the unquenched thirst. The next order brought by deficiency and urgency was fun. However, even now in 2023, the wasteland of mobility right is school. He has never had lots of money since he was born. But when learning about something and ruminating on lectures by professors about the same age, there are moments of joy just like gleaning in an autumn day. 
The professors visit a room to see students, which is a great change. As the school is not equipped with amenities for the disabled, a lecture room he could access was designated, and both students and professors are willing to move themselves to consider him. The school seems to have no intention to be changed. 
Just like the moment of learning how to use crutches step by step in the life of enduring each day, he divides his time. 

The answer is literature. 

His elder brother died before his mother passed away in 2016. Two years later, his father also passed away. His elder sister and her family emigrated to Hawaii. At that time, he was all alone after divorce. What grabbed him tight was literature again. He wrote poems just like a mad man. The poems he wrote at that time are gradually coming out into the world as poetical works. 

Park Jaehong 
Member of Korean Writers Association / Director of Chungnam Poets Association 
A collection of poems & many others