[3] Her family moved back to Fukuoka, Japan when World War II broke out.
Her essay "Two Languages, Two Souls" is about her complex emotions regarding leaving Korea, including her attempts to erase her Korean past and her acknowledgement of her former position as a colonizer.
[3] In 1956 she began working at the Fukuoka NHK, where she wrote essays and scripts for radio dramas.
In 1957 she moved to a mining town in Chikuhō with Gan Tanigawa and Eishin Ueno [ja] and founded a journal called Sakuru Mura (サークル村).
[7] Throughout her career she wrote more than fifty books and earned many awards, such as the Yutaka Maruyama Prize for poetry.