[2] It was then that the 15-year-old Cheon began writing poems in the language of his ancestry.
[4] In 1967 he was implicated in the East Berlin Spy Incident [ko] and jailed for six months during which he was tortured.
Found unconscious on the street Cheon was institutionalized and his friends, believing him to be dead, published a posthumous book of his poetry.
Cheon's poetry was written in a condensed style, and explored themes of existentialism.
His most famous poem "Return to Heaven" (Gwicheon), speaks of a man's encounter with the afterlife and his journey from life to death, as a passing from one world to another: "I am returning to heaven, the day on which my sojourn to this beautiful world ends.