I define “Sobaeksan Daegwanrok” as a Korean lyric that mainly focuses on the experience of a day of touring the Sobaeksan area. This paper is the result of a study of the work limited to the introduction and the first five paragraphs of close-up of the journey to Mt. Sobaek. Those five paragraphs are a detailed and meticulous list of the rocks, trees, flowers, wild vegetables, and birds of Mt. Sobaek, a reflection of the author's love for the place.
In the introduction to the work, before embarking on a full-scale hike, the author focuses on Mt. Sobaek among the maps and mountain ranges of East Asia and the Korean Peninsula, and covers the process leading up to the hike. The figure of the poetic speaker perceived here is close to that of a male scholar-official living near Mt. Sobaek. The poet and his two or three friends, who work during the day and study at night, are out on a rare hike, wearing scholarly travel hats. They also frequently borrow phrases from Tang poetry to express their excitement at embarking on a journey, fitting the atmosphere their attire evokes.
However, in the five paragraphs that reflect the situation in which a full-scale mountain hike unfolds, namely the list of rocks, trees, flowers, wild plants, and birds, it is difficult to find gender characteristics like those in the introduction. Instead of using Chinese characters or quoting Chinese poetry, he or she used a variety of unique Korean phonetic symbols to create a strikingly beautiful depiction of the vibrant landscape of the rocks, trees, flowers, wild vegetables, and birds of Mt. Sobaek. This list, filled with the poet's exchanges with the landscape, is more than enough to constitute an independent poem.
Meanwhile, the list of wild vegetables among the five paragraphs can be said to be a poetic plant guide created by combining the experience and knowledge of a person who has been collecting wild vegetables in Mt. Sobaek for a long time with vivid and beautiful native Korean expressions. Accordingly, there is room to view the author as an elderly woman with the ability to express herself in native Korean and experiential knowledge of wild vegetables.