Ponderings & Contemplations: Luminaries from Mokpo

By Park Nahm-Sheik

When thinking of famous Koreans who were from the city of Mokpo, first to come to mind for most is the late President Kim Daejung, who I discussed in my previous piece [Gwangju News, October 2025, pp. 12–13]. However, he is not the only luminary from this southwestern port city of Jeollanam-do.

I should like to begin this piece by discussing Lee Nan-young of “Tears of Mokpo” fame. The celebrated pop diva is remembered to this day for that wistful melody and for another magnum opus titled “Hometown (My Beloved Hometown).” She was the reigning Korean pop queen of her era, from the late 1930s through the 1940s, 1950s, and into the 1960s. She was far and away the most prolific pop diva of her generation, with approximately one hundred songs to her credit, most of them wistful tear-jerkers steeped in nostalgia. Lee Nan-young is also well known as the mother of the Kim Sisters, a fabulous mid- 20th-century girl group.

The Sisters scored many successes on U.S. stages and eventually headlined popular American TV shows such as The Ed Sullivan Show. They were just as popular, productive, and prolific stateside as their mother had been back home in Korea. They were clearly blessed with distinctive musical genes – like mother, like daughters. Truth to tell, one of the four members was not Lee’s biological daughter; she was the daughter of one of Lee’s elder brothers. Mokpo also produced quite a few other luminaries.

One of them was the late Seo Jeong-su an alumnus of Mokpo High School (Class of 1952). He made his name as a leading Korean grammarian of his day. He began his college education in the highly acclaimed undergraduate physics program at Seoul National University (SNU). After earning his BS degree from SNU, however, he changed course and decided to focus on the learning and teaching of Korean as a foreign language. To pursue this new goal, he enrolled in the Korean language bachelor’s program at Yonsei University. This shift was a byproduct of his deep-rooted allegiance to his motherland and to anything that shed light on it.

The combination of humanities and natural sciences in his background endowed him with penetrating insights into subjects near and dear to his heart. It also shed light on his incessant attention to all things Korean, including his mother tongue. Before long, Seo landed an instructorship at the Korean Language Institute of Yonsei University. For him, it was truly a dream come true. Soon after, he was invited to spearhead a project to produce a compendium of Korean grammar.

The project started with a bang, thanks largely to a solid funding commitment from the late Han Chang-gi, the legendary CEO of Encyclopedia Britannica Korea. A distinguished alumnus of Gwangju High School and the Seoul National University Law School, he was an enlightened aficionado of the Korean language. He thus showcased a top-flight partnership between scholastic expertise and business acumen. The compilation project under discussion was fueled by an ambitious collaboration between these two inventive sons of Jeollanam-do.

Seo Jeong-su was one of my neighbors in Seattle in the mid-to-late 1990s, which is how I came to know him well. In hindsight, I was fortunate. He was not only an outstanding researcher, scholar, and educator; he was also a kind, grounded person and a devoted family man. As a fellow Catholic, I attended Sunday Mass with him throughout our time in Seattle.

Seo is among the most gifted graduates of Mokpo High School. Among his best-known classmates was Kim Eun-guk (aka Richard E. Kim), the novelist who made his name on the international novel, literary scene with The Martyred, his debut written and published in English in the United States. This extraordinary work of fiction created quite a stir both in Korea and abroad. Another well-known figure from Mokpo is Kim Seong-hun, a former minister of Agriculture in the Korean government during the presidency of Kim Daejung. Incidentally, he received an assistantship in agricultural economics at Chonnam National University on the same day I was appointed an English-language teaching assistant at the same institution, my alma mater as well.

Lee Nan-young, the Kim Sisters, Seo Jeong-su, Richard Kim, Kim Seong-hun, and of course, Kim Daejung – quite an array of celebrity from Mokpo, small in size but large in stature.

Cover Photo: The Kim Sisters (1960).