Poet Ko Un erased from Korean textbooks after sexual harassment claims
The 84-year-old Nobel favourite ‘flatly denies charges of habitual misconduct’, writing in a statement that he had ‘done nothing which might bring shame on my wife or myself’
Korea’s most famous literary export Ko Un, a former Buddhist monk who is often named a frontrunner for the Nobel prize in literature, is at the centre of sexual harassment accusations. It has led to his poems being removed from textbooks and the shuttering of a library established by Seoul local government in his name.
The allegations, which have been denied by Ko in a statement provided to the Guardian, surfaced in the form of a poem by the poet Choi Young-mi. In The Beast, published in December, Choi did not name the major poet she accused of sexual harassment in the poem, instead calling him En.
