Yi Okpong

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Yi Okpong (Korean: 이옥봉; Hanja: 李玉峯; ? – c.1592) was a Korean poet from the mid-Joseon era. She was born in Okcheon County and was the illegitimate daughter of a royal family and a concubine. Her father, Yi Pong, was the governor of Okcheon and a leader in the volunteer army fighting Japan’s invasions of Korea.

Yi showed a talent for writing from a young age and became known for her poetry. As a young adult, she fell in love with Cho Wŏn, a scholar from a prominent family who held a high official position in exams. She asked to become his concubine, but he would agree only if she stopped writing poetry, worried that her fame would lessen his status.

Ten years later, an elderly neighbor begged Yi to write a poem to help free her husband, who had been arrested for cattle theft. The neighbor pulled Yi’s skirt to plead. Yi wrote the poem without telling the husband, using a line that likened her situation to the Weaver Girl and the Cowherd. The poem impressed the head of the Ministry of Justice, and the neighbor’s husband was released.

When Cho Wŏn learned of this, he harshly rebuked Yi and banished her to her parents’ home, where she resumed writing poetry. War came to Korea, and Yi’s exact whereabouts became unknown.

About 40 years later, Cho Wŏn’s son went to China as an envoy and learned that Yi’s body had been found on China’s east coast. She had wrapped herself in hundreds of layers of poems and tied herself with a rope, leaving writings on the paper. Yi had wrapped herself in her own poetry and jumped into the sea because she could not return to her husband.