Kou Voravong
Kou Voravong grew up in Savannakhet and pursued a primary education there. He obtained the « certificat d'études primaires complémentaire indochinois » - Certificate of Indochinese Additional Primary Studies - (CEPCI) in 1930, went afterward to Vientiane and began his first-secondary-school year at the Collège Auguste Pavie. But because of a conflict which opposed him to French Colonial administration, his adopted father was sentenced to prison that same year. As reaction to this situation, Kou Voravong left school and returned to Savannakhet. As an out-of-school teenager, he practiced sports, especially soccer.
Ku Sang
Ku Sang was raised in Wonsan, in South Hamgyeong Province which is now situated in North Korea. His parents were Catholic and his older brother was a priest, but after studying in Japan he had a crisis of faith and only returned to Catholicism later in life. Ku returned to the area of his up-bringing, working as a journalist and writer. His efforts to publish his poetry just after the end of the Second World War were met with resistance from the Communist authorities and he fled to the south. Ku served as assistant director of the writers' group that was deployed to cover the activities of the South Korean military during the Korean War. He also served as editor-in-chief of The Yeongnam Ilbo, editorial writer for the Kyunghyang Shinmun, and as a lecturer on poetry at Chung-Ang University. He was a member of the Korean Academy of Arts. Ku Sang died on May 11, 2005.