Park Chong-sŏ 朴鍾緖 was born in 1922. From 1939 to 1942, he studied German language and literature at Sophia University in Tōkyō. In 1946, he became a professor of German language and literature at Korea University in Seoul. For seven years, from 1960 to 1967, he lived in Munich, where he was particularly interested in German theater. Back in Seoul, he initiated the student theater troupe „Freie Bühne“. He also became one of Korea's leading Germanists through his translations of Goethe, Kafka, Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse. Park died in 1983.