Kim Gu scolded them:
This will not do.
This will not do.
The Independence Movement knows no birthdays.
Na Seok-ju soon after threw a bomb
that scared the Japanese out of their wits.
He sacrificed himself.
He became a man with no birthday forever.
Manguri Cemetery
The war did not spare even public cemeteries.
The public cemetery in Manguri,
was the underworld of Seoul.
On September 30, 1950,
even that site
became a battlefield.
While six thousand graves lay there,
UN soldiers
and communist soldiers
showered bullets
between the graves,
charged at each other,
stabbed one another with bayonets.
Bodies of fallen soldiers
lay scattered here and there
among the graves.
Bodies of black soldiers,
white soldiers,
bodies of communist soldiers,
were scattered all over the unmown grass.
Seventy-five minutes of deadly battle,
seventy-three dead bodies on both sides:
that was all.
Manguri Cemetery went back to being a cemetery.
3 October 1950
Seoul belonged to the enemy for three months
under the rule of the North Korean People’s Republic.
The American air force’s bombing raids
went on day after day.
Seoul was reduced to ruins.
Grass grew
between the broken bricks in the ruins.
South Korean troops
recaptured Seoul.
The Northern flag was lowered
from the flagstaff on the Government Building,
the American flag was raised,
followed by the South Korean flag,
and the two fluttered there.
Seoul was under martial law.
Curfew lasted from seven in the evening
until five the next morning,
the time for mice.
Checkpoints stood here and there
in the ruins.
The police who had come back
set about arresting those who had collaborated during the past three months,
even children under ten
The kid of the noodle bar in Juja-dong in central Seoul,
got to know about this harsh world
from early on.
He got to know all about
the world with its beaters-up
and its beaten,
a world where there were thieves
amidst all that fear,
a world where even robbers
and thieves were arrested and beaten with clubs.
He was envious of robbers, envious of thieves.
North Korean Soldiers
North Korean soldiers
who drove south
of the 38th parallel
in the summer of 1950…
North Korean soldiers who supervised night operations on aerodromes.
North Korean soldiers never smoked a cigarette,
afraid of American airplanes:
‘The glow of a cigarette can be seen 5 kilometres away.’
They were sixteen,
seventeen years old.
They were carrying submachine guns as tall as themselves.
They had just been mobilised from remote villages.
They were naive,
very shy.
Boys like them were dumped out by the basketful
into the exorbitant war.
Choi Ik-hwan
Everyone was leaving
leaving in a hurry
southward, southward, fleeing refugees
on the 4 January Retreat in 1951,
all but one.
He who refused to leave
had the notion of stopping
this immense calamity,
with his two hands
at any cost
stopping
this war,
a war in which fellow-countrymen were killing one another
left and right
South and North.
Disorder
lawlessness
thieves
ransackers of empty houses
those who had an eye on refugees’ bundles
extortionists charged with arresting collaborators
who threatened you with jail
unless you gave up your valuables
absolute confusion
every kind of crime.
After such chaos,
by the end of December 1950
Seoul was utterly empty; everyone had left.
Except one:
Choi Ik-hwan.
Who refused to leave, saying
somehow or other
this brutal game of death must stop.
Choi Ik-hwan.
He remained in his small room
in a shabby house in Seongbuk-dong in Seoul and wouldn’t leave,
intending to meet the approaching Northern army
to bring about an end to the war
and persuade the leaders to stop the fighting.
Far from making for Busan
where all were fleeing,
he didn’t even head back toward his hometown in Hongseong.
Early in his life
he joined Son Byeong-hui’s Donghak,
and opened his eyes to the people.
Then he went to Shanghai
with Euichin, one of the last Korean princes,
and took charge of an Independence Movement group,
one known as Daedongdan.
After Liberation,
he was a member of the Democratic Assembly.
In January 1951 he did meet Northern officials
and risked his life negotiating a ceasefire.
Starving,
shivering with cold,
suffering from pleurisy,
he never left.
O Se-do the Trader
O Se-do, slightly pock-marked,
accumulated a fortune through brokerage,
all by himself, all of five-foot tall,
with no store,
no office.
Just how rich he was no one knew.
He was considered the richest man in Cheolwon,
the richest man in Pocheon,
in Yeoncheon.
But no one knew just how rich he was.
During the three years of war,
he raked in profits,
crossing the battlefields
to sell things in the North
and in the South,
while the central front repeatedly advanced and retreated,
one hill taken and re-taken
ninety-nine times.
Heavens! More fearful than warfare
were O Se-do’s business skills.
At times he dealt in war supplies,
so he had dealings with Yi Sang-jo in the North,
with Jeong Il-gwon in the South.
Sometimes he dealt in military intelligence,
sometimes he dealt with the American Eighth Army.
No one knew who he was.
He had a high-pitched voice,
a sixteen-year-old girl’s uvula.
Having a keen sense of smell
he was able to sniff out bean-sprout soup miles away.
A jeep he was riding
got blown up by a landmine.
He was seriously wounded
and taken to the 858 unit’s field hospital.
His belt was packed tight with $120,000.
Yeong-ho’s Sister
Today is another clear day and in his memory his sister is coming.
Today, too,
in his memory — all he has left –