Recipient of the 2026 Arts Council Korea Literature Fellowship
"The poet Lim Suhyeon's gentle verses are always there for children who are 'sometimes sad or lonely.' They tell children longing for the world of their dreams to go 'play for the day,' 'Where fish can fly/and birds swim in the water/Where people fly like birds/and birds laugh like people/Where everyone's your mom and dad/and anyone can become your friend' ("The Land of Shadows," p.12). Such a country might not exist in real life, but it may live on in various forms in the hearts of children." —Putting a Hat on the Rhinoceros (Changbi Publishers, Inc., 2023)
Based on a fantastic sensibility, Lim Suhyeon writes children's poems portraying the loneliness and sadness of children's daily lives with sensitivity.
1. Life
Lim Suhyeon was born in 1972 in Yecheon, North Gyeongsang Province. She studied creative writing at university. Her literature was informed by a childhood growing up with her blind grandmother. In her writing, the visible and invisible mix together. Lim made her literary debut in 2016 winning second place at the Changbi Prize for New Figures in Children’s Literature. She writes poems across various genres, and hosts the children's poetry podcast Dongsirak and the children's poetry mailing service Sanbidulgi (turtle dove).
2. Writing
Lim Suhyeon capably takes on the psyche of a lonely child with precision and sensitivity. Her poems with animal protagonists are also noteworthy for their metaphoric commentary on the human world. While some of the works skew on the serious and slightly darker side, on the whole they remain faithful to the carefreeness of children. One cannot help being impressed by the poet's eye for detail and empathy. —Judge's commentary for the Changbi Prize for New Figures in Children’s Literature (Kim Jegon, Won Jongchan, Bae Yuan, Lee Bandi)
In Lim's collection of children's poems, Putting a Hat on the Rhinoceros, loneliness is an emotion even children are not free from, but must experience in order to move forward. For loneliness is an opportunity to meet with one's hidden self or another self; to remember what we might have overlooked before, to venture out in search of meaningful times and spaces.
The children in these poems meet with various beings who experience loneliness. They conclude that "I bet the dokkaebi/must be lonely/Or why would it sing all night?" ("The Strange and Beautiful Land of the Dokkaebi," p.24), and that the rabbit who plays by itself in the mountains insists that it's not bored, but is waiting for someone to ask, "Why are you crying?" so it can reply, "Because I was watching the sunset too long."
Grandmothers share various scenes with children, owing to their mutual position slightly apart from the busy lives of young and middle-aged adults, and that both are limited to a relatively narrow sphere of life. Putting a Hat on the Rhinoceros features certain poems showing that while childhood and old age may look far apart, they are actually closely connected.
The time and space that the children occupy range from nighttime when "the moonlight is coming out" to the lake where the winter trees are "frozen over," "an airport with its runway wide open waiting for planes, dozing off as its lights blaze on in the dark night," and "the beach full of sunlight where you can go with just an apple in your bag." In the poet's hands, these easily overlooked spaces become deeply personal places brimming with fantastical stories. —Oh Seran, children's and YA literary critic
Reference
The Outcast King 외톨이왕 (Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. 문학동네, 2019)
The Child Who Collected Nightmares 악몽을 수집하는 아이 (Changbi Edu 창비교육, 2021)
Night Will Fall as Many Times as the Number of Words I Know 아는 낱말의 수만큼 밤이 오겠지 (Geodneunsaram 걷는사람, 2021)
Weave Me a Yellow Smile Today 오늘은 노란 웃음을 짜 주세요 (Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. 문학동네, 2023)
Putting a Hat on the Rhinoceros 코뿔소 모자 씌우기 (Changbi Publishers, Inc. 창비, 2023)
Putting Sunscreen on a Hedgehog 고슴도치 선크림 바르기 (Jaeum & Moeum Publishing 자음과 모음, 2025)
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