User:Tamar1973/Kim Ja Ya

Kim Ja Ya
Kim Ja Ya (Born 1916, died 1999) was the last surviving classically trained kisaeng.

Kim Ja-ya was born in 1916 to a yangban aristocratic family, shortly after the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910. After her father's death, her family went bankrupt and she trained as a kisaeng, one of the few recorded kisaeng of yangban origins.

Kim granted one of her last interviews to author Scott Burgeson, who published the interview in its entirety in his book "Korea Bug" (Eunhaeng Namu, 2005).

Journalist Tony MacGregor said of Burgeson's biography of Kim Ja-ya, "Through Burgeson, Kim paints a vivid picture of her training, the living conditions of the gisaeng and life under the Japanese occupation as well the great romance of her life with (North) Korean poet Baek Sok."