to begin to live with freedom and creativity.
The Korean people themselves
should create their own happiness.
On 2 September 1945
General Order No. 1 was issued from the headquarters of America’s MacArthur:
All Korean people must immediately obey all orders
issued under my authority.
All acts of resistance to the occupying forces
and disturbances of public peace
will be severely punished.
Taegeukgis that had been hidden since March 1919 were fluttering everywhere.
Taegeukgis that had been buried until August 1945 were fluttering again.
However, the Americans were not a liberation army
but an occupying army.
Paper Taegeukgis were fluttering for them.
Chin Mu-gil of Yongdun village, Miryong-ri, Mi-myeon, Okku-gun, North Jeolla
was good at painting Taegeukgis on paper.
He drew fifty a day.
He even took some over the hill to Okjeong-ri.
He sent some to Mijei village, too.
On 6 October 1945
an American jeep appeared in Yongdun village.
The villagers welcomed the big-nosed soldiers
carrying Taegeukgis in their hands.
Who knew that the soldiers would start hunting women?
All the village’s pigtailed young women
hid in fireholes,
crept under the floors,
hid in bamboo groves,
but they were dragged from their hiding places
up the hill behind the village.
In Hamgyeong province in northern Korea, too,
it’s said that Soviet troops robbed people of their watches
and hunted for women.
Jin Mu-gil’s cousin in Okjeong-ri, a tall girl,
locked herself in her room
and huddled all night in the closet, a cripple, a hunchback.
Exoduses
In January 1911
having lost their nation,
the people left, fleeing from the Japanese:
the first exodus.
In 1912
more people left, fleeing from the Japanese:
the second exodus.
In the summer of 1913
more people left, fleeing from the Japanese:
the third exodus.
And a fourth exodus, fifth, sixth…
during the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931,
even during the Pacific War in 1942.
They left
with one pot,
one blanket,
and a sick child on their backs.
Farmers who for centuries had never once thought of leaving
left.
Tomorrow, when they hope to regain their country,
and today, with its starvation, embraced one other,
and they were hopeless on the long mountain ridges
while the sun set.
Amidst such processions
a boy was growing up
who would later throw a bomb
at the Japanese emperor.
Revering Yi Bong-chang
who was executed after throwing a bomb at the Japanese emperor,
he changed his name from Nam Ji-su to Nam Bong-chang,
made a bomb, and was caught in the act.
A Scene
A little boat was floating on the sea off Byeonsan.
During the war
sun-bronzed Gang Dong-su
put out to sea
to draw his father’s spirit out of water.
Bailing out the boat,
Father
Father
Father, come on out.
In the summer of 1950
Gang Byeon-hwan, a guard at the office of the People’s Committee
in Buan, North Jeolla province,
was thrown into the sea with all the other red collaborators
as the communists retreated northward.
Father, father, don’t be afraid, come on out quickly.
That Child
By the sea in Asan,
South Chungcheong province,
rose a hill that looked about to collapse,
a hill
that had thawed after freezing.
Ah, that child,
Kim Tae-seop,
left all alone and
always crying.
A boy in his early teens
with his head completely shaved
passed by some clumps of goosefoot.
Following him
was one hollow-bellied goat.
Not a boat was in sight on the evening sea.
Not a tree on the hills.
His parents, reds, had been arrested and had died.
Their only child
was sent to his maternal uncle’s house.
He grew up working in the paddies
and in the fields.
Today
he has walked a long way
and is gazing at the sea.
Of father,
of mother,
no sign.
Chi-sun
The Soejeongji field,
the Bawipaegi field,
the Galmoe field,
the Jaechongji field,
then over the hill, the Bangattal field,
the Bangjuk field.
Work was unending throughout the year.
First daughter, Chi-sun was adept at housekeeping,
a good worker.
Drawing water at daybreak,
cooking,
pounding the mortar,
boiling cattle feed,
carrying food to the field-workers,
sweeping the yard,
removing the ashes,
catching insects in the kitchen garden,
doing laundry,
weaving straw sacks on rainy days,
patching old clothes by lamplight
in the evenings.
She had no time to catch a cold,
no darkness in which to look up at stars.
She wasn’t born to be a person,
she was born just to be a labourer.
One wish
lay in her heart:
never to marry
into a household with a lot of work.
Then, thanks to a matchmaker, she married
a son of the miller, of all people.
From early morning,
together with one errand-girl,
she measured out the weight of rice
in the dust-filled mill
and in the evenings
kept watch over the watermelon and melon patches.
She wasn’t married as a person
but as a labourer.
Her husband was an invalid,
a consumptive.
She had to prepare drinking tables
for her father-in-law
three or four times a day.
Worn out after such a life, she watched
her husband, his health improving,
take a concubine, a new labourer.
Yi Jong-nak
Intent on restoring Korea’s independence by all means,
he went into exile in Shanghai.
One day at dawn, Yi Jong-nak
woke from a dream where families back home
dressed in white were waving their hands.
After that he fell sick.
He went to a German hospital,
to a Japanese hospital.
He did not want to die
in a Japanese hospital,
so he moved to one in the French concession.
One day,
An Chang-ho visited him in hospital.
He told him to believe in Christianity.
Sick, Yi Jong-nak replied
that he could not believe in order to live;
once he got well he would believe with a sound mind.
One day
he said quietly to his comrade Jeong Hwa-am,
‘Hwa-am, I’m dying. Go on fighting for me as well.’