Ok In Lim

Ok In Lim (1915–1995), also cataloged as Im Ok-in (임옥인), was a South Korean novelist, educator, and hymn writer. Literature Translation Institute of Korea identifies her as a modern Korean writer who began publishing fiction in 1940. Her literary work often portrayed people facing hardship without surrendering hope, and she became part of the generation of Korean women writers whose careers developed through war, occupation, national division, and rapid social change.

United Methodist hymnological research adds important details about Lim’s academic and public career. It reports that she studied at a teachers’ college in Japan during the colonial period and later became a professor of literature and dean of economics at Konkuk University. She authored nine books and received both an Asian Freedom award and a Korean Women’s Literature award. These achievements place her hymn writing within a wider literary and educational vocation rather than as an isolated church activity.

Her best-known contribution to English-language hymnals is the Korean harvest text written for the 1967 Korean Hymnal and later known in English as “Mountains Are All Aglow.” The hymn draws on distinctly Korean autumn and agricultural imagery while expressing Christian thanksgiving for creation, seasonal provision, human labor, and the sowing of God’s word. Through later translation and versification, Lim’s text became one of the comparatively small number of Korean hymns included in major North American denominational hymnals.