Oh Jang-Hwan began his literary career when his poem "Bathtub" was published in the "Joseon Literature" in November 1933. He studied at Meiji University in Japan between April 1934 and March 1938. His stay at Japan would have significant impacts on the poet's literary view, thoughts, and world views, as well as his works. Based on these presumptions, this study is to explore modernity of Oh Jang-Hwan's poems. To that end, this study will review how elements of the contemporary Korean literatures distin guished into conditions of modernity are portrayed in Oh's poetry, examine their connections with the historical backgrounds, and scrutinize social-historical and aesthetic modernity of his poems by analyzing some of his works. Here, the criteria of modernity can be classified into denotations and connotations of poems. Poetic modernity of Oh's poems revealed in poems like "a castle wall" and "a genealogy" vary ranging from the dissolution to the dissent from traditional values. It is noteworthy, however, that the dissent does not necessarily mean the denial of the tradition. Instead, it is better understood as the states of conflict and coexistence between the past and the present, and between renunciation and unrest. In addition, in his other poems like "twilight", "The Last Train" and "the route to the north", the poetic speakers ostensibly criticizes the modern civilization, but simultaneously struggle with their inability to influence the reality, and psychiatric conflicts stemm ed from frustration and isolation from society. This does not differ from social-historical modernity. Meanwhile, in poems such as "transformation", "a whale", "a bull", "a camera room" and "a war", Oh adopts objective descri ptive methods by which he maintains poetic distance in works, and frequ ently employs poetic words, punctuation marks, and signs, thereby his experimental spirits of applying the methods of western modernism to his various poems are highlighted. This is namely aesthetic modernity. These features derive from the facts that Oh Jang-Hwan's poems reflect the social, cultural, and ideological aspects of the contemporary society, and that his works cannot be separated from the poet's own experiences and understand ing. Thus, it is safe to say that Oh's poems are somewhat in line with the modernistic descriptions and ideas seen in Lee Sang's poetry. Oh lived a tragic period where he was forced to abandon his mother tongue and learn the Japanese under the Japanese colonial rule. Nonetheless, he devoted himself to conserving and improving his native language as a literary man and never gave up composing poems even in the face of the hopeless reality and aggravation of own illness. Through his great interest in modernism and strong attachment to poetic literature, however, he pioneered the genre of modernism, a trend of western literary, and paved the way for its blooming in Korean literature. Moreover, through his consistent experimental writing, he exemplifies his unique literary world by engaging in insatiable creative activity over this turbulent time. On balance, it is Oh Jang-Hwan's poetry that has achieved a significant landmark in Korean literature.