Kim Shi-Jong was born in 1929 in Busan and grew up in Jeju. After he participated in the 4.3 Uprising, Kim stowed away to Japan and has been treading the paths of national movement and poetry as a Zainichi Korean. In 1998, Kim revisited Jeju after nearly 50 years as part of the special measures taken by Kim Dae Jung's government and acquired Korean citizenship, with Jeju as his legal domicile. In 2018, Kim’s first collection of poems Jipyeongseon was published in Korean, and the Kim Shi-jong Collection (total of 12 volumes) has been published at Fujiwara Bookstore, a famous Japanese publishing house, since January 2018. Kim can be described as a Zainichi poet of 4.3 and is a living witness of history.