If a family that has been generous with food loses someone,
the gang should help carry the bier.
That was called Righteousness.
Gangs should not covet each other’s territory.
That was called Trust.
If the kkokji died
the gang should observe three years of mourning.
That was called Decorum.
The last was called Sense of Shame:
feeling shame at the sun setting in the west
when they stop being beggars and close their eyes.
In the late Joseon period,
the very last, rotten years of Joseon,
it was a poignant task
to rule the world as the beggars did.
So, was putrefying Joseon
destroyed by the Japanese?
Ninety percent of the work was done before they arrived.
Twin Prison Guards
That prison’s white wall was so high
that no matter how good you were at flying leaps
or running leaps
or jumping
with a wet blanket
spread wide,
it was absolutely absurd to hope to vault over it.
Twin guards,
Yi Gi-yeol and Yi Gi-sun,
Gi-sun with a birthmark,
spent long years inside that wall
working three shifts,
sometimes only two.
Inside that wall from their 20s through to their late 40s,
surely they were lifers too.
All those years, the older twin, Gi-yeol, beat convicts,
while the younger, Gi-sun,
snatched noodles the convicts had bought.
On each anniversary of their father’s early death,
one twin would be on night duty,
the rites attended by his wife and kids alone.
Apart from that anniversary,
Gi-sun stayed in prison most of the time,
but somehow he had three daughters and
two sons, one already lost
in a traffic accident.
Idlers
Outside Yongin town, in Yongin county, Gyeonggi province,
runs a powerful range of mountains
and there, in the valley below the tomb of Jeong Mong-ju,
spring had never a thought of coming.
In Seoul,
and along the banks of the Hantan River above Seoul
the forsythia was already in full bloom
Yongin, however, often known as ‘Posthumous Yongin’,
was always ‘Late Yongin’.
The cold spring winds
had an icy edge.
The loudspeakers of the New Village Movement
pestered the village of Mansuteo
from early morning,
while just two people,
Jin Su-mun and his wife Gang Hye-ja,
exhausted
after making love that morning,
slept on,
shhh
shhh,
stretched out with bare stomachs,
though the sun was high in the sky.
Then Jin Su-Mun was bitten by a centipede.
Damn it!
It bit me in the privates.
Damn it!
Damn it!
Notorious as a couple of idlers,
they had never received a New Village loan,
yet they were carefree and could always be heard shouting,
Damn it!
Walking Sticks
On the grounds of Buseok-sa temple in Yeongju, Sobaek Mountain,
there is a tree that grew
from a walking stick
planted by the great monk Uisang.
In Songgwang-sa temple in Suncheon, South Jeolla,
there is a tree that grew
from a walking stick
planted by the deeply revered monk Bojo, of the Goryeo dynasty.
The trees have lived long lives,
two thousand years,
one thousand years.
Nearer us, there’s a maple tree on Jungdae peak of Odae-san
that grew from a stick the Venerable Hanam
rested on
then planted.
the leaves turning red in autumn.
One poet during the Yushin period in the 1970s,
sat beneath such walking stick trees
on Odae-san’s Jungdae
and in Jogye Mountain’s Songgwang-sa temple
while confined there by the intelligence agency.
Before him sat the elderly police detective, his keeper,
who said: ‘Well, thanks to you
I’m enjoying life as a mountain hermit,
the cicadas singing by day,
the Scops owl by night.’
Replied the poet:
‘Hey, since you walk about
with a stick,
you should plant it when you leave.
Who knows?’
The Yu Brothers, Grave Robbers
The world is so full of robbers
that there is no rest
even for graves.
Come to think of it,
surely a poet is a robber of birdsong,
robber of the sound of streams,
of the colour of flowers, of willow leaves.
A robber who dug up graves
was known in days past as a ‘grave-digging thief’,
writ using difficult Chinese characters
by those sporting a nobleman’s hat and gown.
The graves of rich families’ ancestors
were laid out ceremoniously, following ancient rules,
so when they were dug up,
those graves of great-great-grand parents,
of great-grandparents,
of grandfather,
of grandmother –
even if they held no treasures –
when told that a skull or bones had been dug up,
the family had to produce a wad of money,
as much as the robbers asked,
to get back the sacred remains.
Those descended from the nobility, from the yangban class,
understood well how yangban worshipped their ancestors.
They were themselves the robbers
of the grave sites.
The robber brothers, Yu Seung-ok and Yu Guk-hyeon,
were direct descendants from yangban
who had been expert at digging up graves.
By day they had looked most fine,
their way of clearing their throats had great dignity.
When a ripe watermelon is cut open
it is red and dignified.
The French robbers who in times past
dug up the grave of Prince Namyeon,
they must have looked fine too.
A Police Spy
The Writers’ Council for the Practice of Freedom
had no office,
so if the chairman was walking along a street,
that street was the office,
the bar where the secretary was sitting was the office.
It was the second dissident group
that the Park Jung-hee government decided to eliminate.
When they got together in a bar
outwardly it might have looked as if they were enjoying a drink,
but secretly
they were discussing a rally or a declaration on the situation
they planned to issue a few days later.
Eom Ok-nam
was sure to appear at every such gathering,
saying he admired writers with such upright minds.
At times he would pay for a third round of drinks,
contribute some bulgogi,
even buy the chairman a new suit.
That tall Eom Ok-nam with large whites to his eyes
was a police agent who reported every detail
to the CIA headquarters on Mount Namsan.
He only pretended to be a fan of the writers.
Later it was learned
he was separated from his wife,
had been kicked out
after extorting money from his wife’s family.
When he went to the bath house
he would come out four hours later,
saying:
‘Ah, I feel better now.’
Little Ham Seok-heon’s Teacher
When Ham Seok-heon was a child
at a village school in Yongdangpo, North Pyeongan province,
the teacher of the calligraphy class
took great care of the students,
stooping over them
as they wrote one character after another.
His students also had to learn
to grind the ink steadily
and hold the brush firmly.
He would snatch the brush from an awkward student’s hand.
Grabbing the boy’s hand from behind, he would say:
‘You little brat,
how will you make your writing strong
if you hold your brush as weakly as that?
‘Japanese writing may be pretty,
but our writing must above all be strong.’
Jeong Jeom’s Grandmother
Something like a mass of red-bean gruel
hangs dangling,
off almost the whole left side of her face.
It looks as if gruel boiled up
for some time
before stopping where it did.
Seen one way, it is gruel,
another, a human face.
Luckily or unluckily,
the eye and eyebrow on the right side are attractive.
Notwithstanding,
during her lifetime
she had a husband,
gave birth to sons and daughters,
and now her grandchildren run away from her.
Jeong Jeom’s grandmother with her red-bean gruel
wears double-decker gold rings,
two, in case one might seem insufficient,
on her quite swollen finger.
Not only her face: her finger too is weighed down.
Two Singers
They never made a hit.
But though they would never be famous
they were people who just loved singing,
regardless of the season, spring or autumn
Among those singers,
was a sensible girl.
who lived near the bank of Wansan stream on Omokdae Hill in Jeonju.
Having heard of her
somehow or other,
a middle-aged singer came to visit
from Geumgu in Gimje at the foot of Moak Mountain
His traditional jade-green coat and white rubber slippers were gorgeous.
Bowing politely, he said:
‘I have come to hear your unusual voice.’
The young girl greeted him just as politely.
Then the girl and the man
spread a rush mat on Omokdae Hill,
brought out drum and fan,
tested the drum. They worried
the drum’s leather had grown slack because of the weather
or its strength been sapped for lack of use.
‘I have neither natural talent nor good discipline,’
said the man,
‘so please listen with a generous heart.
First I will sing a danga
inviting you to sing.’
The man sang a danga:
‘Flowers are blooming on this hill and that…’
Once his sometimes sonorous,
sometimes delicate singing ended,
he bowed politely
and took back the drumstick.
Now the girl rose softly to her feet,
lifted her scarlet skirts slightly,
opened the fan,
began the first passage from the Song of Chunhyang.
Her dazzling voice,
flowing over and pouring out,
joined with the stream below.
The man rose, saying:
‘I have heard most precious singing.’
The girl stood there, replying:
‘Oh no, not at all.
I am humbled and grateful that you have listened.
May you have a safe journey home.’
An Elderly Comfort Woman
A passage in Kakou Senda’s
Military Comfort Woman says:
An old Korean woman of sixty
living in Japan
was never able to return to her own country.
In the colonial period
she was a sex slave for Japanese soldiers.
Some days she serviced 300 or 320.
Don’t be surprised.
If each man took a minimum of three minutes,
that means she lay there for seventeen hours with legs spread.
In spite of that, she did not die.
This happened in the South Pacific, in remote Rabaul.
It might have been better
had she been bitten by a cobra and died.
Because of the soldiers’ inflamed desire,
having never seen a woman for months and months,
the women never had a day off.
That comfort woman,
that old Korean Japanese woman
died beside a small brazier in an old tatami room.
Skin covered her bones,
clothes covered her skin,
so she was no longer a comfort woman.
I will not mention her name here.
A Child
One very cold day in January, 1978, thirteen or fourteen below zero,
there were some 130,000 shacks on the outskirts of Seoul,
housing one and a half million people
who leased with key money deposits,
or rented some of the smallest, just 5 pyeong in size
or 12.
All told, one-fifth of Seoul’s seven and a half million
lived in shacks
on the banks of streams,
on hillsides,
on scraps of suburban land.
Shacks covered with planks and roofing,
in Sadang-dong,
Bongcheon-dong,
Sillim-dong,
Siheung-dong,
Changsin-dong,
on the banks of Cheonggye Stream, Jungnang Stream.
One latrine for twenty households:
fierce fights at the latrines from early morning on.
An abandoned child
in a steep alley between the shacks
in Sadang 4-dong
was fourteen years old
but looked thirty.
What’s your name?
Ju Man-seok.
The naked child stood with his penis bluish in the cold,
his drooping penis looked forty.
And yet,
and yet,
a smile remained,
a flower-like smile,
or rather,
that of a child with chronic intestinal problems,
a dried-up smile.
A Day without Beggars
When John Foster Dulles came a-visiting
in the time when the Liberal Party ruled,
and after that
when Henry Kissinger came,
and in 1979 when Jimmy Carter came,
the Korean Ministry of Home Affairs
rounded up every last beggar
on the streets of Seoul
and locked them up in a camp in Nokbeon-dong.
No beggars here.
Beggars with only one leg,
beggars with only one arm,
beggars pretending to be deaf and dumb,
beggars so sick
there was no telling when they would die,
and beggars unable to get fifty won in a day,
or the
opposite,
beggars who threateningly thrust out a wide open hand
glaring as fiercely
as did wounded veterans in the streets in the 50s,
all such beggars were swept away.
No beggars here.
Human nature comes in two varieties,
that of a thief or that of a beggar.
A day without beggars is a day for thieves.
Carter,
I hope you and your mysterious, beguiling smile
scamper back to Washington quickly.
VOLUME 16
Seung-ryeol’s Tomb
If the Soviet guards catch you, you’re done!
That evening
it was raining steadily.
A few families, escaping southward,
inched across the mountains, holding their breath.
At last they reached the 38th parallel.
If the Soviet guards catch them, they’re done for!
As they crossed the line
a baby started to cry.
Its mother muffled the sound
swaddling the baby in a blanket.
Finally they were safe.
The guide, once paid, vanished.
On the sodden ridge, scratched by the brushwood,
they all sighed with relief in the rain.