Shin Seok-jeong is known to hold an important place in the Korean history of poetry as a pastoral poet in the 1930s. The 1930s is an important era in the light of the Korean Contemporary History of Poetry Literature. It was an era under the Japanese oppression when several willing poets raised the banners of pure poetry under the influence of foreign poetry.
Under such circumstances, Shin Seok-jeong wrote pure poems as one of the poets belonging to poetry literature school. In the light of the poetry history, the trend of poetry study has tended to treat Shin as a pastoral poet. “Designating him as a natural poet or pastoral poet has perhaps originated from the fact that his poems were written centering around nature.”
The above critique suggests that Kim Ki-rim acknowledged Shin's unique appearance in his early stage, Yim Hwa acknowledged Shin's lack of poetic thought from the negative viewpoint, Kim Eok recognized Shin's precious being in the poetic circle from the affirmative viewpoint, and Jeong Rae-dong listed Shin's poetic words' easiness and the beauty of Shin's world of poetry, from the viewpoint of simple ordinary readers.
After the Korean Liberation from the Japanese colonial rule in 1945, when the poetry in Korea became divergent, Seo Jeong-ju, the boss in the Korean poetry circle, stressed the excellence and thought trend of the early poetry, Jeong Tae-yong pointed out Shin's poetic spirit and expression technique running through his entire poems, and Park Du-jin stressed Shin's awareness of reality appearing in his collection of poems after the Liberation.
In summing up Shin's poetic history, no noticeable study was available while he was alive, but various works have been actively carried out since mid-70s regarding reorganizing Shin's poems. Especially Choi Seung-cheol's A Study of Seok-jeong's Poems is worthy of close attention.
So far the study of Shin's poems was largely focused on his early poems which were nature-friendly and in pursuit of pastoral inclination. This study is focused on the collection of poems, Bing-ha(Glacier), dealing with the confusion and disorder after the Liberation and with the national tragedy which generate his awareness of reality. This study intends to clarify that Shin wrote poems not only as a pastoral poet but also as a poet steeped in the awareness of reality, creating superb poems of reality awareness.
A new era has come upon Shin with the Liberation of his fatherland. This advent of new era means a new world of poetic spirit. This is the historical awareness that stresses the importance of the awareness of reality. Shin's poems make a great transformation after the Liberation. It can be easily seen in his third collection Bing-ha. A passage in praise of what the world of poems in Bing-ha attained can be clearly seen in the epilogue to Bing-ha, written by Baek Yang-chon. The time was when the people were dually suffering from after-Liberation confusion and disorder and the tragedy of national division before and after the Korean War(1950-53).
Even during the heightened awareness of reality, Shin Seok-jeong did not forget another nature. It was in close contact with reality. Thus, Shin wrote poems of accusation in the midst of poverty and the irrationality of reality.
Based on the poetic world built early after the Liberation, Shin expanded his poetic world adding historical awareness in the midst of reality space.
In view of these facts, Shin Seok-jeong can be concluded to be the poet who occupies and important place in the Korean Contemporary Poetry History by building a unique world of poetry in the history of the Korean Contemporary Poetry Literature.