Cha-rim Kim

Kim Ja-rim (21 August 1926 – 26 September 1994) was a Korean playwright, essayist, and teacher. She was the first professional Korean female playwright.

Her childhood name was Kim Chŏngsuk.

Life Kim was born in Pyongyang during the period that Korea was under Japanese rule. She was the third daughter of nine children. Her father was a professor of pharmacy whose family followed traditional Confucian principles, and her mother was a Christian elementary school graduate. When she was young, Kim's mother was ill, so she was raised in "an enlightened and liberal environment" by her maternal grandmother.

After dropping out of Pyongyang Normal School, she worked as a teacher in Pyongyang before moving to Seoul in 1949. She married the poet in 1952, marrying for love rather than a traditional arranged marriage.

Work Kim was the first professional Korean female playwright, among a group of others who wrote and had their work performed beginning in the 1960s, called the 'first generation of women playwrights' by scholar Lee Mi Won. According to Kim, she chose a career in drama because she believed in the social functions of art to "lead culture, purify emotion, and reveal humanity." This collection includes her 1970 one-act Hwa-don.

As of 1984, she had produced twenty plays, five radio and TV dramas, and one novel.