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.
Others’ Eyes
That war
took away the greetings we used to exchange even with strangers.
It took away customs of speaking slowly,
gently.
Words became faster
and sharp.
That war took away the clarity in the eyes
of people in autumn’s cool wind.
Gradually,
not only the eyes of people
but of cows and horses in the stony fields
grew bloodshot and fierce.
In front of Daejeon Station
a gum-selling kid
was clearly beating another kid to death.
Not one spectator
intervened. The wind stirred up the dust.
Not one
had the friendly face of villagers back home.
Two Rivers
Of a sudden
shortly before the Armistice
the fierce fighting on the western front
stopped.
No sound of gunfire,
anywhere.
Was that an illusion?
Once again the sound of gunfire
filled the space between enemies.
Rain began to pour down.
Illusion?
That night
Byeon Ju-seop, a youth from Pyeongsan, Hwanghae province,
crossed the Yeseong River in the rain.
Bare-footed,
he kept on, heading over mountain ridges.
Finally, more than exhausted, he crossed the Imjin River
oblivious of the pain of his bleeding feet, their cracked soles.
When the boy reached the southern bank of the Imjin River,
his constant dream for several days,
he called out repeatedly, Mother! Mother!
his whole body shivering,
upper and lower jaws
trembling each on their own.
The rain kept on.
Mother was in the North now, son in the South.
His voice changed.
His face was full of freckles.
Now he was alone.
He would be alone when he begged,
when he filched.
He would be alone when he delivered restaurant food.
Alone, oblivious of a future in which he would father eleven children.
He had a triangular face.
He cried wildly, calling, Mother! Mother!
The division of North from South
divided one from one, one from another, individuals.
After that day the youth no longer wept.
His brows were bushy.
He did not weep even when, much later,
in a printing shop, his finger was severed by the cutter.
Old Sim Yu-seop
War widows need their smokes.
When you miss someone, you have to have a smoke.
When the person you miss has disappeared,
you have to have a smoke.
Widows, and widowers must develop a taste
for tobacco.
Friends separated forever from friends
must develop a taste for tobacco.
One nation was divided into two.
The moment of division,
the two became enemies.
Naturally,
inevitably,
absurdly,
war broke out.
For a few months the front line moved ever farther south.
It engulfed even the west of South Gyeongsang province.
The American fighter planes changed abruptly:
one moment, Second World War propeller-driven Grumman Hellcats;
the next, jet-propelled Sabers.
Then the front line shot up northward.
More and more North Korean troops retreated.
At first, the North’s advance had been unhindered,
now the advance by the South was unhindered.
The whole country was turned into scorched earth
from carpet bombing by the US Air Force.
Who among us had wanted scorched earth?
Was it ruins
we so ardently desired?
While the fighting moved up
and down,
the rice was ripening
in the fields round Jochiwon, South Chungcheong province.
Sixty-five year-old Sim Yu-Seop,
having given his paddy fields a triple summer weeding,
was waiting wordlessly
for the autumn harvest
His heart was entirely given over to his two sons.
While the country changed names,
from the Republic of Korea
to the People’s Republic,
and then from the People’s Republic
back to the Republic of Korea,
his elder son was a soldier for the South,
while the younger had gone off to volunteer for the North.
Even when the dog wagged its tail,
Old Sim’s lips wouldn’t open.
Soon he’d be marking the third anniversary of his wife’s death.
He felt lonely, he whose old nickname was ‘thin-as-a-post’.
More than himself,
his shadow was ‘thin-as-a-post’.
In all his sixty years
he had only ever told three or four lies.
He, too, needed to chain-smoke:
cigarettes rolled from dried tobacco leaves.
The Lake
I grew up in the Bujeon Highlands, South Hamgyeong province.
If I climbed over the mountain, panting,
I could gaze down at Bujeon Lake.
I wanted to stand there
forever
like the trees, like the dead trees there by the lake.
And I wanted my dead friend Jin-man
to come stand with me for a really long time.
The lake was a place the spirits of the departed visited.
At the time of the January 4 Retreat
when tens of thousands were swarming southward,
I was lucky to manage to embark on an American navy LST,
a 100-to-1 chance, 150-to-1.
Tens of thousands who failed to get away were without hope.
Surrounded by anxiety and fear, I rode all the way down to Busan.
I became a night worker on number 3 dock in Busan,
then a deliveryman for a Chinese restaurant,
a carrier of relief goods at Gukje Market,
a gangster,
a jailbird doing time for violence,
a gangster again.
Once only did pure passion erupt from deep in my heart:
I fell in love with Miss Kim who worked in a tea-room
and gave her a gold ring for her birthday.
After I went to jail
she disappeared somewhere,
Seoul, perhaps,
or Dongducheon.
Throughout those hectic days,
steadfast was my own Bujeon Lake,
which lay behind me,
beckoning me to come,
come back, quickly.
I lost my left arm in a gang fight in Nampo-dong, Busan.
I am called Left-armed Yeong-nam.
Despair
On October 5, 1950, when Seoul was recaptured