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 that have 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 “flatly” denied by Ko in a statement provided to the Guardian, first 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 poet, instead called him Poet K.

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