Hwang Hyeon

Hwang Hyeon (1855–1910) was a scholar and man of letters of the late Joseon period, a patriotic intellectual who keenly chronicled the turbulent reality of Korea's modernizing era. He is best known for the Maecheon Yarok, a historical record that vividly documented the politics and society of his time. When Korea's sovereignty passed to Japan through the annexation of 1910, he left behind death poems (jeolmyeongsi) and took his own life as a martyr for his country.