He was born in the home of his mother’s Nagano family,
in Daegu, North Gyeongsang,
on January 6 1927, the second year of Showa,
but the birth date shown in the family register
was January 6 1926, the fifteenth year of Taisho.
His father was Kanai Keibung,
his mother Nagano Ongko.
At the end of the Joseon dynasty, his father,
born into the noble Yi clan,
was adopted into the Japanese Kanai family.
He served as a soldier, then was discharged.
Since he disliked the world
he eventually became a Zen monk.
While residing at Bongseon temple
on the outskirts of Andong,
he used to come down from the temple once a week.
After his father died
he moved into Andong town.
He attended the Japanese primary school for a time
before transferring to Andong ordinary school for Korean children.
When his mother
remarried into the Japanese Nomura family of Kobe,
he was entrusted to a maternal uncle,
Nagano Tesso, a medical doctor.
He went to Japan
and lived in his aunt’s house in Yokosuka.
There was Yonemoto Miseyo,
a girl one year below him in Yokosuka middle school,
who was to be his future wife.
He stabbed a student
four years older than himself.
His admission to the school was cancelled.
He transferred to Yokosuka Commercial School.
He attained third grade in kendo.
He stayed in Fukuoka at the invitation of his uncle Nagano,
who had moved to the medical school of Kyushu Imperial University.
In the 18th year of Showa, after four years’ preparation for the entrance exam
he entered the preparatory course at Keijo Imperial University, in Seoul.
Then he went back to Japan.
Thus far all pure lies.
Entered law school, Waseda University.
Mobilised into the labour force during the war.
Married.
Was registered in the register of his wife’s Yonemoto Family.
Had a son and daughter.
Became a writer.
Received the Naoki award.
Wrote many novels,
many short stories.
A man desperately devoted to Japan, the exploiting nation.
A man so infatuated with medieval Japan
that he transformed himself into a medieval Japanese.
A man of fiction calling himself a descendant of nobility,
half noble by blood.
For him Korea did not exist.
At fifty-four he died of oesophageal cancer.
A rare fellow…indeed!
Sang-gwon, Only Son
Venus assaulted the moon.
The People’s Army came down.
The South Korean army moved up.
The Chinese forces came down.
The People’s Army came down.
The South Korean army moved up.
The UN forces moved up.
The armistice line was drawn following the 38th parallel.
One village in Maseok, Gyeonggi province, was almost completely deserted.
All that remained were some maize stalks
and an elderly couple.
They had no news of their son Sang-gwon
who had gone off as a volunteer soldier.
He was good at painting playing cards.
When he painted a portrait of President Syngman Rhee
in third year of middle school
he received a commendation from the provincial education office.
When the communists arrived,
during the summer when he was in the fourth year,
his portrait of Kim Il-sung was hung on the wall
of the local office of the People’s Committee.
Sang-gwon didn’t come back.
Even if he had,
since he had painted the portrait of Kim Il-sung,
he could not live.
There was no news,
no news at all,
of their only son.
Ten Days on the Continent
In 1921, the Pan-Pacific Conference was held in Washington DC, USA.
In response, Lenin held the Conference of the Oppressed of the East in Moscow, USSR.
The Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai was stagnant, split into factions.
To escape this gridlock,
some took the Trans-Siberian at Harbin.
But Yeo Un-hyeong, Kim Gyu-sik and others
left from Zhangjiakou, Beijing,
by way of Kulun in Mongolia,
arriving at Kyakhta on the Soviet border.
After twenty thousand anti-revolutionary White Russian Tsarist troops
led by Baron Ungern-Sternberg had been completely destroyed in Outer Mongolia,
the whole of Outer Mongolia, from which the Chinese were banished,
fell under the control of packs of mounted bandits.
The Korean exiles prepared fur clothing, leather clothing,
boots lined with camel fur,
hats made of sheepskin,
overcoats of animal skins,
celluloid glasses
with frames of furred leather,
sleeping-bags made of old sheepskins,
and supplies of dried mutton,
rifles and pistols.
For ten days they traversed the Mongolian desert.
Minus twenty Celsius.
They arrived at their destination after camping out often in the open desert.
Along the way they caught a sheep
and boiled it in an empty oil barrel.
Even without salt it made a feast.
By way of towns in Mongolia
by way of Sapsk and Udinsk,
eating frozen black bread cut with an axe,
and by way of Irkutzk,
they finally reached Moscow on January 7, 1922.
China, Mongolia, and post-revolution Soviet Union too, all were in utter poverty.
They listened to Zinovyev’s speech at the Third International.
They met Lenin,
Trotsky.
Yeo Un-Hyeong emphasised that
the Korean revolution should be carried out
by supporting, encouraging, and correcting the Provisional Government,
and that, since Korea was an agrarian land with no knowledge of communism,
nationalism should be stressed
and the first objective should be reaching the farmers.
Lenin expressed deep interest in liberation from colonial rule.
Somehow it all seemed so simple.
Yi Jang-don’s Wife
On January 10, 1951,
amidst the chaos of flight,
on January 25, 1951,
amidst the final chaos of flight
markets were still open.
So long as anyone was alive
markets opened.
In Seoul, once again in the hands of the People’s Army,
so long as anyone at all was around,
markets were still open.
Here and there in the ruins
rice-cakes,
noodles,
makgeolli were for sale.
And bundles of firewood.
And old clothes taken from empty houses.
Even though the bodies of those killed by strafing
lay sprawled in the snow fields,
a market opened nearby. Chickens for sale.
Three-storey houses,
two-storey houses were bombed,
while low single-storey houses survived.
The People’s Committee of Seoul City
began work
in City Hall.
Yi Seung-yeop,
swarthy and with a broad laugh,
came back and presided.
Rallies were held