[4] In 2008, the last year of the joint fellowship program for Korean writers, by the Daesan Foundation and the Center for Korean Studies at UC Berkeley, Kwak held a poetry reading as well as discussing future plans for the program; he read a few poems from his first poetry collection Indio yeoin (인디오 여인 The Indio Woman).
Kwak's poetry collections Jidoe eomneun jip (지도에 없는 집 The House Not Found on a Map; 2010), Seulpeumui ppyeodae (슬픔의 뼈대 The Frame of Sorrow; 2014) were created to reflect his experiences.
[3] To Kwak, the concept was not simply geographical regions, as seen in “Baikal saramdeul” (바이칼 사람들 The People of Baykal), the north he described was a warm and hospitable place where human life has been kept in it is original form, before it became has become fragmented and desolate through the modern civilization.
Even if you were isolated, oppressed by the powerful, there you could face each other and live in harmony.” When asked why he repeatedly used the imagery of the northern regions, he replied, “Our life is in disharmony, as we wish to return to that peaceful place but are unable to.
I wanted to express that.”[10] Kwak’s fourth poetry collection Neoneun (너는 You Are), published in 2018, was described as adding socio-historical imagination to the issue of the formation of relationship between the self and others, which he had previously explored.
In the foreword, it explains: “you” is “the other but also us.” It is “the beginning and the end” and “the unreachable other inside me.” In Neoneun, “you” is expressed in different ways—“you” is Kwak’s father, who left for a port city to look for a job and whom young Kwak waited for endlessly (“Madangeul geonneoda” (마당을 건너다 Crossing the Yard)) or a Koryo-saram youth, who has been wandering through Hamgyeong Province, Primorsky Krai, Moscow, and Seoul to make a living (“Naneun Koryo-saramida” (나는 고려 사람이다 I Am Koryo-saram)).