Authors: Ko Un
The world is so full of robbers
that there is no rest
even for graves.
Come to think of it,
surely a poet is a robber of birdsong,
robber of the sound of streams,
of the colour of flowers, of willow leaves.
A robber who dug up graves
was known in days past as a ‘grave-digging thief’,
writ using difficult Chinese characters
by those sporting a nobleman’s hat and gown.
The graves of rich families’ ancestors
were laid out ceremoniously, following ancient rules,
so when they were dug up,
those graves of great-great-grand parents,
of great-grandparents,
of grandfather,
of grandmother –
even if they held no treasures –
when told that a skull or bones had been dug up,
the family had to produce a wad of money,
as much as the robbers asked,
to get back the sacred remains.
Those descended from the nobility, from the
yangban
class,
understood well how
yangban
worshipped their ancestors.
They were themselves the robbers
of the grave sites.
The robber brothers, Yu Seung-ok and Yu Guk-hyeon,
were direct descendants from
yangban
who had been expert at digging up graves.
By day they had looked most fine,
their way of clearing their throats had great dignity.
When a ripe watermelon is cut open
it is red and dignified.
The French robbers who in times past
dug up the grave of Prince Namyeon,
they must have looked fine too.
The Writers’ Council for the Practice of Freedom
had no office,
so if the chairman was walking along a street,
that street was the office,
the bar where the secretary was sitting was the office.
It was the second dissident group
that the Park Jung-hee government decided to eliminate.
When they got together in a bar
outwardly it might have looked as if they were enjoying a drink,
but secretly
they were discussing a rally or a declaration on the situation
they planned to issue a few days later.
Eom Ok-nam
was sure to appear at every such gathering,
saying he admired writers with such upright minds.
At times he would pay for a third round of drinks,
contribute some
bulgogi
,
even buy the chairman a new suit.
That tall Eom Ok-nam with large whites to his eyes
was a police agent who reported every detail
to the CIA headquarters on Mount Namsan.
He only pretended to be a fan of the writers.
Later it was learned
he was separated from his wife,
had been kicked out
after extorting money from his wife’s family.
When he went to the bath house
he would come out four hours later,
saying:
‘Ah, I feel better now.’
When Ham Seok-heon was a child
at a village school in Yongdangpo, North Pyeongan province,
the teacher of the calligraphy class
took great care of the students,
stooping over them
as they wrote one character after another.
His students also had to learn
to grind the ink steadily
and hold the brush firmly.
He would snatch the brush from an awkward student's hand.
Grabbing the boy's hand from behind, he would say:
âYou little brat,
how will you make your writing strong
if you hold your brush as weakly as that?
âJapanese writing may be pretty,
but our writing must above all be strong.'
Something like a mass of red-bean gruel
hangs dangling,
off almost the whole left side of her face.
It looks as if gruel boiled up
for some time
before stopping where it did.
Seen one way, it is gruel,
another, a human face.
Luckily or unluckily,
the eye and eyebrow on the right side are attractive.
Notwithstanding,
during her lifetime
she had a husband,
gave birth to sons and daughters,
and now her grandchildren run away from her.
Jeong Jeom's grandmother with her red-bean gruel
wears double-decker gold rings,
two, in case one might seem insufficient,
on her quite swollen finger.
Not only her face: her finger too is weighed down.
They never made a hit.
But though they would never be famous
they were people who just loved singing,
regardless of the season, spring or autumn
Among those singers,
was a sensible girl.
who lived near the bank of Wansan stream on Omokdae Hill in Jeonju.
Having heard of her
somehow or other,
a middle-aged singer came to visit
from Geumgu in Gimje at the foot of Moak Mountain
His traditional jade-green coat and white rubber slippers were gorgeous.
Bowing politely, he said:
‘I have come to hear your unusual voice.’
The young girl greeted him just as politely.
Then the girl and the man
spread a rush mat on Omokdae Hill,
brought out drum and fan,
tested the drum. They worried
the drum’s leather had grown slack because of the weather
or its strength been sapped for lack of use.
‘I have neither natural talent nor good discipline,’
said the man,
‘so please listen with a generous heart.
First I will sing a
danga
inviting you to sing.’
The man sang a
danga
:
‘Flowers are blooming on this hill and that…’
Once his sometimes sonorous,
sometimes delicate singing ended,
he bowed politely
and took back the drumstick.
Now the girl rose softly to her feet,
lifted her scarlet skirts slightly,
opened the fan,
began the first passage from the
Song of Chunhyang.
Her dazzling voice,
flowing over and pouring out,
joined with the stream below.
The man rose, saying:
‘I have heard most precious singing.’
The girl stood there, replying:
‘Oh no, not at all.
I am humbled and grateful that you have listened.
May you have a safe journey home.’
A passage in Kakou Senda’s
Military Comfort Woman says
:
An old Korean woman of sixty
living in Japan
was never able to return to her own country.
In the colonial period
she was a sex slave for Japanese soldiers.
Some days she serviced 300 or 320.
Don’t be surprised.
If each man took a minimum of three minutes,
that means she lay there for seventeen hours with legs spread.
In spite of that, she did not die.
This happened in the South Pacific, in remote Rabaul.
It might have been better
had she been bitten by a cobra and died.
Because of the soldiers’ inflamed desire,
having never seen a woman for months and months,
the women never had a day off.
That comfort woman,
that old Korean Japanese woman
died beside a small brazier in an old tatami room.
Skin covered her bones,
clothes covered her skin,
so she was no longer a comfort woman.
I will not mention her name here.
One very cold day in January, 1978, thirteen or fourteen below zero,
there were some 130,000 shacks on the outskirts of Seoul,
housing one and a half million people
who leased with key money deposits,
or rented some of the smallest, just 5
pyeong
in size
or 12.
All told, one-fifth of Seoul’s seven and a half million
lived in shacks
on the banks of streams,
on hillsides,
on scraps of suburban land.
Shacks covered with planks and roofing,
in Sadang-dong,
Bongcheon-dong,
Sillim-dong,
Siheung-dong,
Changsin-dong,
on the banks of Cheonggye Stream, Jungnang Stream.
One latrine for twenty households:
fierce fights at the latrines from early morning on.
An abandoned child
in a steep alley between the shacks
in Sadang 4-dong
was fourteen years old
but looked thirty.
What’s your name?
Ju Man-seok.
The naked child stood with his penis bluish in the cold,
his drooping penis looked forty.
And yet,
and yet,
a smile remained,
a flower-like smile,
or rather,
that of a child with chronic intestinal problems,
a dried-up smile.
When John Foster Dulles came a-visiting
in the time when the Liberal Party ruled,
and after that
when Henry Kissinger came,
and in 1979 when Jimmy Carter came,
the Korean Ministry of Home Affairs
rounded up every last beggar
on the streets of Seoul
and locked them up in a camp in Nokbeon-dong.
No beggars here.
Beggars with only one leg,
beggars with only one arm,
beggars pretending to be deaf and dumb,
beggars so sick
there was no telling when they would die,
and beggars unable to get fifty won in a day,
or the opposite,
beggars who threateningly thrust out a wide open hand
glaring as fiercely
as did wounded veterans in the streets in the 50s,
all such beggars were swept away.
No beggars here.
Human nature comes in two varieties,
that of a thief or that of a beggar.
A day without beggars is a day for thieves.
Carter,
I hope you and your mysterious, beguiling smile
scamper back to Washington quickly.
If the Soviet guards catch you, you're done!
That evening
it was raining steadily.
A few families, escaping southward,
inched across the mountains, holding their breath.
At last they reached the 38th parallel.
If the Soviet guards catch them, they're done for!
As they crossed the line
a baby started to cry.
Its mother muffled the sound
swaddling the baby in a blanket.
Finally they were safe.
The guide, once paid, vanished.
On the sodden ridge, scratched by the brushwood,
they all sighed with relief in the rain.
We're alive, they gasped.
We've made it,.
The blanket muffling the baby was unwound.
The one-year-old
was dead, suffocated.
The mother shook her dead baby.
She shook it
and wailed.
âSeung-ryeol, Seung-ryeol, Seung-ryeol⦠Seung-ryeol.'
The father, having no spade, dug a hole in the earth with his bare hands.
He snatched the baby's body from her arms and buried it.
Seung-ryeol,
Seung-ryeol,
Seung-ryeolâ¦
She was born in early spring 1940
near a fresh green barley-field, skylarks soaring.
Her mother lacked milk so went round the village with her infant,
and she survived thanks to the milk other mothers gave grudgingly.
So her life began as a baby beggar.
From the age of six
she started doing night work, keeping her mother company.
So she set out on a wearisome life as a child labourer.
After the war
she was sixteen, quite beautiful.
When she smiled the slightest smile
dimples appeared on both her cheeks.
Desolate times though they were,
some bright angel seemed to have alit upon her eyes.
In the summer of 1956
on her way home from evening classes
she was raped
by two US soldiers in a jeep.
She wanted to die.
She wanted to die.
Even heaven no longer existed.
And her hometown was no refuge;
it was a place of pointing fingers.
Weeping
she left home and,
as fate would have it,
became a whore outside a US base in Songtan, Geonggi province.
Sunja turned
into Elena.
In a drunken fit she killed a US private
who was hitting her, refusing to pay.
Sentenced to life,
Elena
turned back into Sunja.
She was sent to Suwon prison,
then to Gongju prison,
then to Suncheon prison.
Never once did her lips speak the word ‘love’.
When everyone around the world was talking
about Eisenhower being elected president,
she remained silent for a whole day.
Mute. And in her heart, a clot of ash.