The purposes of this study were to examine Lee Yong-ak’s poetry in connection to that of his contemporary fellow poets from Hamgyeong Province and understand his early poems and activities in the poetical circles in relation to the locality of the Gwanbuk region. The study reached the new following conclusions：
Accepting the opinions from previous studies that raised a question as to whether one could see Lee Seong-ak, who published Before the Spirit of Deceased Father in the “Beginning” coterie magazine as one of its members and GalnimㅅGil in the “Romance” magazine, as Lee Yong-ak, the study demonstrated the possibility that the two were the same person. In the process, the investigator demonstrated that the two works of Lee Seong-ak contained the style characteristics of Lee Yong-ak and also similarities to his works in terms of poetic words and topics. In addition, the study added the fact that Shin Dong-cheol worked in the “Reality of Poetry” coterie along with Lee Su-hyeong and published works in Manseonilbo with him based on the possibility that “Oiwooshingun” in the subtitle of GalnimㅅGil could be Shin Dong-cheol, Lee Yong-ak’s hometown friend and poet, thus raising the possibility that Lee Seong-ak and Lee Yong-ak were the same person. It was also demonstrated that there were many similarities in terms of poetic situations between Before the Spirit of Deceased Father and Lee Yong-ak’s life and Full of the Sound of Grasshoppers. It was also mentioned that the hometown of Ban Sang-gyu, one of the “Beginning” coterie members, was Hamheung relatively close to that of Lee Yong-ak and that Ban’s poems had affinity with those of Lee Yong-ak in some poetic characteristics including the depiction of wandering people.
According to the “Roundtable Talk about ‘Folk Culture’ of Authors from Gwanbuk and Manchuria” examined in the study, there was a perception that the culture and language of the Gwanbuk region were generally rough, tough, crude, and masculine due to the influence of its conditions. It seems that Lee Yong-ak sought after linguistic universalism rather than creating with a folk dialect, but the northern geographical environment, history, and resulting sentiment were working in the ethnic colors and sentiments in his works. He opened his eyes to the reality of wandering people early and developed a perception and awakening of the reality of colonized Joseon, which was a common feature among the poets from Gwanbuk. It is thus needed to conduct more researches on his poetry in relation to the locality of Gwanbuk. Previous studies that discussed his poetry as a northern poet did not pay attention to differences between Gwanseo and Gwanbuk. Researchers will be able to investigate the nature of his early poetry in the middle and late 1930s more clearly by carrying out full-blown inquiries into the locality of Gwanbuk distinguished from that of Seobuk under the influence of Dosan Ahn Chang-ho.