Although Kim Sujang is one of the truly great shijo poets, very little is known about him. He was born in 1690; his family home was in Chonju; he served for an unspecified period of time as a minor official in the military ministry, a position not held by a yangban. Apart from these few documented facts, we know that he edited Haedong kayo (Songs of the Eastern Sea), the second great shijo anthology, and that he built a villa, Nogajae, in Hwagaedong in Seoul, where he spent an idyllic old age, savoring the pleasures of nature and art in the company of his friends.
• My straw-roofed hermitage is quite remote (shijo)
• On steamy summer dog days (shijo)
• This old sick heart (shijo)