Authors: Ko Un
Humanity became a tool of barbarity.
Humanity was a sacrificial offering.
During the Japanese colonial period
talented Lee In-su studied English literature
at the University of London,
then came back. After Liberation
he was the pride of Korea University’s English department.
One English teacher from Mokpo,
eager to meet him,
even made the two days’ train journey up to Seoul.
Lee In-su was the pride of Korea’s English studies,
he looked cool after he’d shaved,
he was laconic at all times.
Lee In-su had a wife and children.
He moved between home and school.
War broke out.
He was not able to leave Seoul.
During the three months under the People’s Republic
Kim Dong-seok, who had previously gone North, came back down.
At his urging
Lee In-su made English broadcasts aimed at the American forces.
Even Byeon Yeong-tae, the future premier who had taught English in China,
could not match his English.
After Seoul was recaptured
Lee was arrested.
Kim Seong-su, the founder of Korea University,
addressed a petition to President Syngman Rhee.
Many people
tried to save his life.
Defence minister Shin Seong-mo had him swiftly executed.
Lee In-su was a brilliant scholar
when he was in England.
Shin Seong-mo had been a ship’s captain amidst wild seas.
He always considered Lee In-su his rival.
From early days,
small Shin Seong-mo
had thought only of getting rid of tall Lee In-su,
by any means.
The meeting started,
the first session of the very long,
very tedious
armistice negotiations.
The UN’s chief delegate was American Vice Admiral C. Turner Joy,
the North’s was General Nam Il.
Outside Panmunjeom, the fighting was still furious.
Joy proposed: ‘Let’s make the armistice line the Kansas Line,
passing through Yeoncheon and Cheolwon in Gyeonggi province,
Geumhwa and Ganseong in Gangwon province.’
Nam Il proposed:
‘Let’s go back to the 38th parallel as before the war.’
Nam Il again:
‘During the seven months of the war,
our northern forces occupied territory south of the 38th parallel for five months,
while you occupied land north of the 38th parallel for only two months.
If you insist on the so-called Kansas Line,
we’ll insist on the Nakdong River way down south as the armistice line.’
Joy:
‘No. We have gained full control of air and sea.
In the war against Japan
we made Japan surrender
without even one American soldier landing on Japanese soil.’
Nam Il:
‘You are forgetting some important facts.
What made Japan surrender
was first the Korean people’s fight for independence,
then the Chinese people’s eight-year battle against Japan,
and the entry of the Soviet Union into the war.
You fought against Japan for five years,
but you won thanks only to the entry of the USSR into the war.’
After that
they spent the next 7 hours 10 minutes in an outstaring game,
lips tightly shut.
Whoever blinked first would lose.
This scene was witnessed
only by the English interpreter,
second lieutenant Kim Hyeong-gi,
a briefing officer for the defence ministry’s information bureau,
and Choi Byeong-u, reporter for the
Joseon Ilbo
newspaper.
All the other reporters depended on Choi.
Later Choi Byeong-u was killed by Chinese gunfire
on the battlefield of Kinmen Island in the Strait of Taiwan.
His wife would become the wife of Professor Wagner
who taught Korean history at Harvard.
Relations in life spread.
Having escaped, I came back alive.
Grandfather, grandmother,
mother were gone.
I was all alone.
For food, I dug up the roots of
alang
grass,
gnawed pine needles,
ate amaranthus raw.
I lapped up a bowl
of stale left-overs.
I came back alive.
I slept under a straw mat in the shed of some house.
I slept in an empty stable.
I came back to bombed-out Seoul
after it was recaptured.
In Anguk-dong old tile-roofed houses remained,
the houses where court ladies used to live.
There was one house still empty.
I collected scraps of wood and
made a fire to heat the floor.
My body thawed out.
My name is Yi Jong-su.
How long had it been?
Lying on the warmest spot in the room
I looked up at a framed photo of the owner of the house,
who had run away.
A handful of rice remained in a jar.
I ate the rice alone, without side dishes.
I wished
for soy sauce,
I wished
for red pepper paste,
I wished
for aged kimchi.
Saying that, I fell asleep.
Dreams were unnecessary.
They say Kim Il-sung has come to Seoul.
They say Syngman Rhee is going to Pyongyang.
Who’s Mao Tse-tung?
They say Mao Tse-tung has come to Seoul.
Or else
Truman is going to Pyongyang.
They say those goddamn Seoulites
have packed their bags to flee any number of times.
They say all the folk on the mainland
are having a really hard time.
In the most remote of the Gyeongnyeol-bi Islands in the Yellow Sea
live nine fishing families,
and in one of them
is Sujin’s Mom,
so gaunt and skinny
she’s called ‘Bamboo chopstick’ or ‘Metal chopstick’,
with her flat chest.
Today too that Chopstick’s been out gathering oysters,
and now she’s mending her husband’s net,
the net with so many holes.
Three or four times a day
planes pass overhead.
Whether they pass
or not
the waves never stop breaking.
Empty boats creak,
tossing in the waves.
No news at all
from Ilmo’s boat,
still not back.
The crimson sun drops down in a flash.
The whole ocean, surprised, grows dark.
If a few planes pass overhead
or not, who cares?
In the yard of an empty house
a leftist was killing a rightist.
He battered his head
with the back of a spade.
He fell,
his hands bound with wire.
Then he struck his exposed breast
with the back of the spade.
Blood spurted out.
He made his last farewell:
Goodbye, bloody reactionary.
A rightist dragged a leftist
to the square before the station,
and the leftist’s wife as well.
You whore,
now watch your husband die.
The first cudgel blow.
A second.
The leftist fell.
A third.
The leftist squirmed.
A fourth.
The leftist lay unmoving.
The leftist’s wife, standing stock still,
shed not a tear.
The previous night
she’d been dragged out
and raped by four men.
She shed not a tear.
Let’s be off!
Let’s be off!
Old Shin, a refugee,
wanted to go back to the home he had left:
216, Sanjeong-ri, Jaseong-myeon, Gujang-gun, North Pyeongan province.
Half senile and
half insane
he wanted to go back to the home he had left.
Let’s be off!
Let’s be off!
His son came back, drunk.
Once again he’d had no luck finding a job.
Let’s be off!
Let’s be off!
His son suddenly shouted:
‘You old fool, there’s nowhere to go. Drop dead!’
The living were ashamed before the dead.
The dead were ashamed before the living.
No trains arrived at the station.
The first summer and fall of the war went by.
Winter went by.
The following spring
Yun Do-jun, having survived it all, became a simpleton.
Escaping
bombing
killing
revenge killing
escaping again.
Yun Do-jun, having survived all that,
could not help but become a simpleton.
When children called out: ‘Mister Do-jun!’
his eyes were blank.
When children teased him with, ‘Hey, Do-jun!’
or with, ‘You, Do-jun!’
his eyes were blank.
One child suddenly lost his temper:
‘Why didn’t this idiot die, why’s he still alive?
Not fair! My uncle, he died.’
His father’s last words:
Your brother’s surely still alive.
I feel so sad I am dying without seeing him again.
When your brother comes back,
tell him that.
Later
His mother’s last words:
Your brother’s coming over the hills;
hurry up and bring him back.
After Liberation, their long-absent son stood before their graves.
He shed a lot of tears after 29 years.
The anarchist Jeong Hwa-am’s homecoming
was a shabby affair.
In socialist society as in capitalist society,
an anarchist must be an object of misunderstanding,
shabbier than a shadow.
In Pagoda Park stands the stone pagoda of Wongak Temple
which looks sometimes like an ice sculpture.
It was noisy around that ice sculpture
after the second recapture of Seoul:
a home for the homeless,
a workplace for those with no work.
From mid-morning on
people would gather one by one around the pagoda.
After five in the afternoon
they left one by one.
There was a man
who made a fervent speech there,
holding an old fan,
when about one hundred
or perhaps only twenty had gathered.
He talked about Dangun, our country’s founder,
General Im Gyeong-eop,
Kim Jong-seo and
and Han Myeong-hui, politicians in days of old, too.
He looked haggard.
His eyes were not clear and he had wrinkles like a mud-flat.
He said,
‘A hundred years from now,
our country will be the centre of the world.
Fifty years from now,
our country will be the top nation of the East.
In future our nation
will receive tribute from 300 countries.’
Kim Dong-bok
never missed a day.
After making a passionate speech for about two hours,
if someone bought him a bowl of noodles
he would gulp down all the broth in a moment,
and then say,
‘In future, Korea
will be the presiding country of
the World Presidents’ Association.
Wait and see.
Wait and see.
Ah, those noodles were tasteless.’
He misspoke. He meant to say ‘tasty’.
He looked around
old panama hats,
felt hats,
helmets,
straw hats,
military caps,
and
bare heads, crew-cuts.
Korea was a battlefield, everywhere.
The battlefront
moved south down the peninsula.
Then the battlefront
shifted north up the peninsula.
The battlefront
left not one place untouched,
rummaged everywhere,
trashed every corner.
Moreover, the battle was not only on the front.
In the rear
between one and another,
there was hatred
deceit,
plunder.
Before, under Japanese rule, foolish people were friends together.
But here on this battlefield
even foolish people turned into one another’s enemies.
Yeom Gi-uk informed on Baek U-jong,
saying that he met the younger brother of Kim Chin-gu
who’d gone north after Liberation.
But Kim Chin-gu had already died in the Bodoyeonmaeng
*
and his younger brother had gone north, so he’d never met him.
Yeom was Baek’s middle-school classmate
but Baek once refused a request Yeom made
so Baek U-jong was denounced.
False or not
if you denounced someone as a spy, you got a reward.
All the guys you disliked were spies.
*
After Liberation in 1945 and before the Korean War the South government tried to convert communist sympathisers; the organisation composed of such people was called the
Bodoyeonmaeng
(the Bodo League) and most of them were killed by the police of the Southern government when the South Korean forces were retreating for the second time on January 4, 1951; that was when Koreans began killing each other indiscriminately.