A newly published 6-volume, 5,000-page annotated translation of the complete works of 15th-century scholar-poet Kim Si-seup (1435–1493) was compiled by emeritus Professor Sim Kyung-ho from Korea University. The ‘New Edition and New Translation of the Collected Works of Maewoldang Kim Si-seup’ corrects earlier translation errors and includes previously confirmed material. The edition gathers Kim’s some 2,000 poems, the classic novella Geumo Sinhwa, and various collections and appendices, with detailed notes and commentary. Sim, who spent more than a decade on the project, describes Kim as “Korea’s Saint Francis,” praising him as a rare intellectual whose ideals and actions aligned: he refused official posts out of disgust for power’s hypocrisy, lived among common people even after ordination, and accepted multiple religious and folk traditions without dogma. Sim highlights Kim’s empathetic sensibility through lines about a mother swallow still carrying mud for her nest despite a bright temple night—showing his attention to ordinary life and nature. Later Confucian scholars admired Kim both as a model of loyalty to a deposed king and as a provocative conscience challenging their own morals. The translator suggests Kim’s self-chosen epitaph “dreamer who died” still resonates today.
