Paek Kwanghun was born into a minor yangban family. He took a number of civil service examinations but abandoned an official career, perhaps because he felt he had not the family connections to rise to any great height in the bureaucracy. He retired to the country to a life of poetry and poverty. He is one of the three so-called Tang poets of the later Choson period, the other two being Yi Tal and Ch’oe Kyongch’ang.
• To Yang Ch’onyu (hanshi)