[2] He retired from the medical field and professorial duties in 2002, and turned his attention entirely to writing poetry.
The major themes in the poems of Mah are his experience as a doctor and his life abroad in Japan and especially America.
The pieces marked by his medical experiences express profound compassion and hope for the ability of love to negate pain.
His works dealing with life in foreign countries tend to be more complex in tone; in them he writes of his recollections of his life in Korea and the various conflicting feelings: intense patriotism, love and anger toward his fellow Koreans, and shames that stem from his reflections on his homeland.
Both themes ultimately inspire the same compassion for humanity, whether for the suffering or for the uprooted, and attain a universality that has become Mah's trademark.