He was nicknamed "Korea's Mayakovsky" after the writer whose works had had an influence on him and which implied his breaking from the literature of the old society and his commitment to communist values.

[6] Since a remark made by Kim Jong Il on his 2001 visit to Russia, North Korean media has referred to Cho as the "Pushkin of Korea".

For the Soviets, the move was successful, and Cho did not only that but also significantly developed socialist realism as it would become the driving force of North Korean literature and arts.

Paektu (1947), a lyrical epic praising Kim Il Sung's guerrilla activities and promoting him as a suitable leader for the new North Korean state.

Other notable works by Cho include Whistle, a seemingly non-political love poem which was later adapted as a popular song that is known in both North and South Korea.

Cho Ki-chon was born to poor Korean peasants in the village of Ael'tugeu not far from Ussuriysk in the Vladivostok District of the Russian Far East on 6 November 1913.

[3] He particularly drew literary inspiration from Cho Myong-hui [ko], a fellow Korean writer living in the Soviet Union who – in believing in national emancipation by upholding socialist principles – had already written about anti-Japanese guerrillas.

[19] Between 1942 and 1943, Cho served in the Soviet 25th Army's headquarters in Voroshilov-Ussuriysk in desk duty, and in a similar assignment in the Pacific Navy in Khabarovsk between 1943 and 1945 and in the First Far Eastern Front from October 1945.

Biographer Tatiana Gabroussenko thinks it is probable that he also translated the first speech given by Kim Il Sung after the liberation,[20] on 14 October 1945, called "Every Effort for the Building of a New Democratic Korea",[21] into Korean.

Cho diligently followed the Workers' Party's instructions to "immerse [oneself] in the masses" and would visit factories, villages and farms and write poems based on these experiences.

[25] Upon his return, he started writing for Chosŏn Sinmun, the Soviet Red Army's Korean-language paper,[19] working as a correspondent and translator.

[27] In 1951, he was selected the vice-chairman of the unified Korean Federation of Literature and Arts (MR: Chosŏn munhakyesul ch'ongdongmaeng, KFLA) which was chaired by Han Sorya.

[3] Other poems by him include: "Tuman River" (MR: Tumanggang, 1946) about the suffering of Koreans under Japanese rule and "Our Path" (Uri-ŭi kil, 1949) on Soviet-Korean friendship.

[22] Cho wrote lyrics for "Mungyong Pass", a song about Korean People's Army soldiers fighting their way through Kyonggi to Ryongnam.

[36] While all of the poems are thoroughly ideological,[35] some South Korean scholars such as Yi Chang-ju of the North Research Institution[37] have sought to emphasize Cho's lyrical side in order to "domesticate" him to serve rapprochement between the two countries' cultural orientations.

Whistle, "Willow" (Suyang pŏtŭl) and "Swing" are love songs that were inspired by a more relaxed cultural atmosphere following the translation of Russian-language poetry into Korean.

[39] However, according to Gabroussenko, South Korean observers often fail to notice the political and cultural elements borrowed from Isakovsky and Soviet lyrical poetry.

[29][24] Its text inextricably links Kim Il Sung's person with Paektu Mountain, the namesake height of the poem – a connection that has remained central in North Korean propaganda to this day.

[44][24] The creation of the epic was politically motivated, too, as the Soviets, who had dispatched Cho to North Korea, wanted to strengthen Kim Il Sung's grip on power.

[1] As such, it became a "new classic",[48] a model for the cult of personality of Kim Il Sung perpetuated by subsequent works of literature in North Korea.

[29] According to B. R. Myers, the work exemplifies particular traits of an early cult of personality built upon Soviet Marxism–Leninism and bloc conformity, which were soon replaced by Korean ethnic nationalism of writers like Han Sorya.

[51] While Cho's Kim Il Sung is a brilliant strategist who has masculine qualities like strength and intellect, in Han's works he embodies traditional Korean virtues of innocence and naivety having "mastered Marxism–Leninism with his heart, not his brain".

According to him, Cho can be credited with having created a genre of "revolutionary romanticism", which systematized the use of legends and supernatural imagery in Kim and his successors' cult of personality.

For instance, some in the literature circles were unfamiliar with the concept of a lyrical epic and thought of it as an improbable amalgam of genres,[46] criticizing the work for being indistinguishable from ordinary prose.

Younger generation minjung and leftist scholars, however, see guerrillas other than Kim Il Sung – such as Ch'ŏl-ho, Kkot-pun, and Sŏk-jun – and by extension, the people, as the "hero" of the story.

For some of them, like Sin Tong-ho, excluding the role of others than Kim Il Sung is an outright obstruction for creating a national unity in literature.

[50] The original version of the poem invokes Russian Civil War heroes Vasily Chapayev, Nikolay Shchors and Sergey Lazo,[55] while a newer revision omits them and concentrates on indigenous assets: The image of a sad, sighing mother [/A]ppears before his eyes, He reads the book, And acquires new strength, and spies his goal.

["] 수심에 어린 어머니의 모습이 기억의 쪽문을 열고 들어설 때도 그이는 책을 보았다- 그러면 새 힘을 얻고 목적을 보았다.

With the exception of a period in the 1970s when Cho's name was barely mentioned in official publications, his legacy has benefited from continued popularity in North Korea.