when MP John Beckham is on duty,
that’s 4.30 in the morning.
At 5.30
they deliver to Pyo Jong-seon in Namdaemun’s Dokkaebi Market.
Watches,
chocolate,
‘Akadama’ cigarettes,
Camels,
blankets,
military boots,
UN jackets,
fountain pens,
woollen underwear,
gum,
electric razors.
Pyo Jong-seon is from Haeju, up in Hwanghae province.
He never haggles over goods.
He pays what they ask.
This makes him popular,
So the thieves
sell to him cheap.
His nickname is Bracken of Mount Suyang.
On Mount Suyang in Haeju
there’s a shrine commemorating
the Chinese brothers Boyi and Shuqi.
When Mount Suyang Bracken
goes home,
he tells his first grand-daughter about Simcheong,
the second one about Princess Nangnang.
He was one of the rich folk of Chungmu-ro street
but one day
American MPs, preceded by Korean MPs,
raided his store and took him away.
Yi Jung-seop
In 1952
people were drinking Nakdong River soju.
In a bar in an alley of Hyangchon-dong in Daegu
Yi Jung-seop vomited.
Colonel Yi Gi-ryeon
jokingly mocked the drunken Yi Jung-seop:
‘Hey! You smell like a proletarian!’
That means
you’re a commie, you’re a red.
The next day Yi Jong-seop, having sobered up,
remembered the words about his proletarian smell.
He remembered them the day after,
and the next day, as well.
His whole body shrank.
He went to see the head of investigations in Daegu police station.
‘I am not a red.
Please certify
that I’m not a red.’
His friend the poet Ku Sang came to take him home.
Everywhere people were suffering from red persecution complexes.
If someone says
you’re a red, you’re done.
If someone reports you as a red, you’re done.
Such was the age. Fearful.
I am not a red.
Two Men
September 29, 1950.
The day before, the three months of communist rule had ended.
The Republic of Korea that had run away
came back.
The city was still empty.
At the Gwanhwamun intersection
one man came limping from Jong-ro 1-ga.
A ragged figure was approaching
along Sinmun-ro.
They met in the middle of the intersection. They were strangers to each other.
For a full thirty minutes
they talked.
They told tales
and listened to tales
about how each had survived,
survived in hiding.
How painful it was to live alone,
how despondent they felt
to have survived alone.
The two men shared a cigarette, then parted, saying: ‘See you again.’
Midday came.
At the intersection,
not so much as a mouse in sight.
Na Jeong-gu of Myeong-dong
Anyone was free to get drunk and collapse in ruined Myeong-dong,
free to piss to his heart’s content
on the eulalia growing as dense as pubic hair
between the pieces of broken brick
and cement walls.
Anyone was free to show off,
bragging how splendid he’d once been
but now he was a beggar.
Anyone was free to become an artist
the moment he stood beside an artist.
Beside the tall painter Kim Hwan-gi
anyone could turn into a modern artist
who painted pictures of Joseon-era white jars.
Beside Kim Hyang-an, the former wife of poet Yi Sang,
now the wife of Kim Hwan-gi,
anyone could turn into a stylish essayist.
While walking along with chain-smoking Yi Myeong-on,
anyone could turn into an essayist and former journalist.
Poet Bak In-hwan died
after writing his boisterous poem ‘The Rocking Horse and the Lady, Virginia Woolf’.
Anyone who shook hands with Kim Su-yeong,
who had joined the volunteer army
and was just out of Geoje Island POW camp,
became a post-war poet.
In ruined Myeong-dong there was the freedom of the True and False as one.
The drunkard Na Jeong-gu,
who pushed his way in wherever people were drinking,
was today a poet,
tomorrow an essayist.
What might he be the day after?
So long as he had a mouth to drink with
he was free to enter the bars Poem or Eunjeong
and join any group he found there.
Ah, in the ruins of Myeong-dong under the Republic of Korea
there was freedom for every kind of extravagance and bluff,
freedom hanging in the air like the spell of a dead age.
Hong Sa-jun
One writer’s dream was glorious, his life short.
Hong Sa-jun,
a fine-featured young man,
was a literary star
during the three months of the communist occupation.
North Korean writers praised him highly.
Young Hong Sa-jun’s novel The Deer
was idolised as a model of proletarian literature.
Writers who came down to Seoul
such as An Hui-nam,
Yi Won-jo,
Yi Gi-yeong,
Bak Tae-won encouraged him, one after another.
On their recommendation
he enjoyed the honor of visiting Pyongyang.
In August 1950
he returned from his visit to Pyongyang.
He turned from being a leftist to a rightist.
Pyongyang had disillusioned him.
I am a rightist.
I saw the reality of Pyongyang.
Tell everyone
that I am a rightist.
I curse what lies beyond the 38th parallel.
After Seoul was recaptured he was arrested as a traitor.
To save him, the writer Kim Dong-ni
visited the police and the prosecutors.
When Hong Sa-jun was imprisoned,
fearful, apprehensive,
he resolved to escape.
While attempting to escape he was killed. He was like a drop of dew.
If he had only held on a little longer,
he would have been released
after investigation.
His writing would have bloomed to the fullest.
After all, the poet No Cheon-myeong, who ran wild under the communists,
she was released.
Gwon Jin-gyu
His Japanese wife died.
Love lost.
Alone he moulded clay
chiseled stone.
The sculptor Gwon Jin-gyu
had a room in Donam-dong, Seoul.
The sculptures were quite at home.
The sculptor
was a guest squatting on the edge of a camp bed in a corner.
One clay figure breathing.
One sculptor gasping.
It seems there are cliffs in art.
Failing to avoid the cliff,
he walked over the edge
and after that, there was nothing.
He ended his life.
Not because he hated the world