his sister is coming.
Nine-year-old sister Yeong-seon
and five-year-old Yeong-ho,
the two came down to the South alone.
His sister died,
and Yeong-ho became a combat policeman.
He was ordered to go to Jiri Mountain,
and fought.
While fighting,
he suffered a head wound.
He lost his wits.
His only memory
is the coldest, hungriest, hottest instant
of this present time.
In his memory, all other presents
are dimmer.
He ran away from the hospital.
He stole onto a train and later got off unnoticed.
In the deserted plaza in front of Sintan-ri Station
he was looking for someone, gazing around.
He was looking for Yeong-seon, his sister,
his dead sister.
Yi Geuk-no
After the meeting of the Koryo Communist Party
in Irkutsk
he walked
and he walked,
across Mongolian grasslands,
through sandstorms,
as far as Shanghai in China,
he walked on,
starving.
He walked to attend a secret meeting in Shanghai.
The soles of his feet were black and numb.
So very ardent, entirely devoted to his lost nation.
Hyeon Gye-ok in Shanghai
In 1 941 the Shanghai public auditorium looked down on the yellowish river.
An international arts festival was being held:
China,
France,
England,
USSR,
Japan.
Inside the hall
each country’s flag was hanging.
Outside, too,
each country’s flag was fluttering.
Only the Taegeukgi,
the flag of Korea, nationhood lost,
was not there.
A young girl, Hyeon Gye-ok,
accompanied an independence fighter
from the French Concession.
As the art festival was ending,
although it was not in the programme,
she suddenly took to the stage
before the emcee could stop her.
After putting up the Taegeukgi,
she performed a gayageum solo.
Slow, with long breaths,
ardently.
The very rapid jajinmori rhythm was entrancing.
The hall sank under deep water.
Applause burst out.
One Chinese spectator wept as he said:
‘You have told people from the whole world
of your nation’s independence.’
Yi Seung-tae
He was arrested at age seventeen.
He was involved in a plot to blow up a police substation.
Part of the building was destroyed.
He was arrested
as he was making his escape.
After being tortured,
he spent one year in detention before being sent for trial.
His release as a minor was approved.
The detective in charge
ordered him to write in his letter of apology that
when he was released
he would be loyal to the Japanese Empire,
and to seal it with a thumbprint.
‘I am a Korean.
I have no duty to serve Japan.
‘Once I am out,
I shall fight for our people’s liberation
until Japan leaves our land.’
He continued:
‘Because of me, my father has become a cripple.
He was stuck in snow
and tortured
to say where I was.
Stricken by frostbite,
he lost one leg.
‘So how could I ever be loyal to Japan?’
Young Yi Seung-tae
grew up.
Soon after Liberation
he became deputy head of the youth division
of the Committee for the Preparation of National Foundation.
He was a fine young man.
When Yeo Un-hyeong was assassinated,
he fasted in mourning for one week. Then he disappeared.
Love
I have seen a
love that is higher
than parents’ love,
than a father’s love,
than children’s love.
That poem was written by a young man
wandering through northern Manchuria in the autumn of 1930,
fighting for the liberation of his colonised country.
His name, Yi Ik-jae,
aged 27.
He was rather young
to leave such a poem behind.
When he was killed in action,
the South Manchuria independence fighters
buried him at the foot of a hill
and carved that poem
on the wooden gravemarker.
Again
the world went back to parents’ love,
went back to wives’ and children’s love.
And the walls of each house grew higher than the next.
A Single Photo
In August 1950,
as day was dawning,
Shin Jo-jun of Pyeong-san, Hwanghae,
crossed the Imjin River, on the western battle front.
He swam straight across the river
holding in his teeth a single photo
of his mother and father when they were young.
He was in Seoul, capital of the South. It lay in ruins.
Living as a beggar
he became a South Korean.
Then he gave up begging
and ran errands for a grogshop,
then for a shoe-shiner,
bringing him shoes to be polished,
before he became a shoe-shiner himself.
He bought a wooden shack.
Fifteen years after leaving his northern home
he was president of the Actors’ Academy in Chungmu-ro, Seoul.
He had his parents’ photo enlarged
and hung it on his wall.
Somebody asked:
‘What period are those film stars from?’
So-called Student Soldiers
When the Communist army came South,
fourth- and fifth-year middle-school students
were summoned en masse
and forced to enlist.
Fourth and fifth years of middle school!
On 4 January 1951,
when the Northern forces came down again,
first-year high-school students
were summoned at random en masse:
and forced to enlist.
Boys in their later teens,
those early plums,
those early apples,
those early jujubes
died in battle at Pohang,
died on the central front.
The land the South recovered, wherever the battle ended,
was all graves.
VOLUME 17
That Old Woman
She had many stories in her.
Millipedes dropped from the rotten thatched roof of her hut.
Falling raindrops
were part of her family.
Hard times were her strength.
Neither cholera
nor other common diseases visited her.
Even the ghosts
disliked poverty. The daytime moon was one of her family.