Authors: Ko Un
Soldiers,
gum sellers,
horse-carts,
ox-carts,
piles of droppings in the wake of the carts,
paper-boys,
combs, fine-toothed bamboo combs, glass beads, cheap necklaces,
urchin beggars,
Japanese-era trucks,
American army trucks.
One old beggar lay prostrate all day long.
No sign of human pity anywhere.
The hungry grew hungrier.
The cold grew colder.
In Suwon’s South Gate Street,
Myeong-gu
had no shit inside him today as the day before. None.
He could get no food
anywhere round the city gate.
For three
soju
bottles, he could get a few crumbs of bread.
But here there was nothing like that in sight.
Only, only
the world.
Myeong-gu’s only thought was for a bowl of rice.
Hey, monks in mountains, what use are those koans you’re contemplating?
The clothes they were wearing were American-made,
trousers from relief supplies,
and dyed American military jackets –
but
in the university’s French department
students dreamed of themselves as Sartre,
Camus,
André Malraux.
America outside,
France inside.
Perhaps for that reason,
the long Cheonggye Stream
flowing through Seoul between Jong-no and Ulji-ro
was not Korea’s Hudson River
but Korea’s Seine.
There was the Café Seine in Myeong-dong, too.
The Seine was a place for washing clothes,
the Seine was a sewer
with melon-sized balls of shit floating down.
The Seine was a rubbish dump.
A little farther down the Seine
on the bank toward Gwansu-dong
was Division Four of Cheonggye Stream
where the shanty town began
and battles for survival were intense.
Girls working in clothing factories along Cheonggye Stream
lived in rented rooms in shanties.
The owners were kind-hearted by night,
full of abuse by day.
It was one month since Jo Ok-ja had come to Seoul
as a factory girl.
Every one of her fingers ached.
She worked all day at a sewing machine,
with nothing to eat but five small pieces of bread.
During overtime one night
she felt dizzy, collapsed.
She liked nights.
Sometimes, in her dreams,
she saw her mother.
One dim bulb dangled from the ceiling
of the comic books reading-room.
The shoe store stank of leather.
Flies tended bar, no customers.
In the barbershop, honey soap.
Cheap bread stands.
In the mending shop, an old worn-out sewing machine.
All the way along, nothing but wooden shacks,
steep alleys barely wide enough for one
all the way along
There was a single water tap down below.
People lined up with empty water-cans
and a 10-
hwan
coin; once the cans were filled,
they carried them panting up the alley.
While people were living like this,
on the battlefront people died
and at the rear, people were born.
One woman gave birth two days ago,
and here she was out carrying water.
Her breasts hung
dangling from beneath her blouse.
She gave the child the name
of its father’s North Korean home.
Yu Seon-cheon.
Seon-cheon! Seon-cheon!
Our darling Seon-cheon!
A sliver moon rose early
to shine over this slum-village on a hill.
At 5 a.m. the night train from Busan arrived,
an hour after the end of curfew.
He had to be ready at the exit.
Soon the passengers debarked.
The haggling over porterage was brief.
One large suitcase,
one sack of grain,
one small case,
all loaded onto the A-frame,
while the owner followed behind.
He carried the load as far as the bus stop
across the road,
then demanded five hundred
hwan
,
saying the bag was far too heavy.
He refused to put the bag down, demanding payment.
Fingers wagged as they quarreled.
Finally the porter won
after reducing the charge
to four hundred hwan.
No need to be polite, no saying
Thanks or
Good bye.
The porter, Im Ho-sun,
had lost a son the day before.
Today he had come out
and made 400
hwan
on his first load.
Once work was over at nightfall
he would down a shot of
soju
.
Only then would sorrow for his dead son
come welling up.
Until then
Seoul station spurned sorrow;
at the most extreme moments of life,
sorrow too is superfluous.
Even in the wilds of Manchuria, their place of exile,
the people from Korea
built schools in their villages.
Teaching their children
was the core of the Koreans’ life.
They built houses with floors of clay,
planted maize,
and barley.
After erecting four corner pillars of logs
they covered the roofs with stones packed close like moss
to keep them warm.
The buckwheat harvest was better than the barley.
Even scattered wildly
as if by a mad girl on a seesaw,
it’s tough, grows well.
They raised hens, too,
feeding them corn.
In winter, the people had only buckwheat noodles.
At night
a pine root was used to light the lamps.
Tomorrow they would exchange
a handful of corn for a handful of salt.
Their kimchi, unsalted, was tasteless.
At school
they sang the school song.
Instructor Kim Chang-hwan of the Sinheung Military Academy
shouted commands in a voice so resonant
it echoed off the surrounding hills.
They studied Korean language,
Korean history,
Korean geography,
calligraphy,
composition,
singing,
arithmetic, multiplication tables.
All such villages were burned to the ground.
Everyone was killed.
Everything ransacked.
Nobody was left to grind their teeth.
As the southern forces marched northward,
at Suritjae village on the banks of the Hantan River
one hundred humble thatched houses were set on fire.
All but one man died, leaving a deathly silence.
The one who survived, Cha Il-man, was sick and old.
He took one look at the dead village.
Crawling outside,
he drank lye beneath the wooden step.
His legs soon stiffened.
Nobody remained.
He himself was a word that nobody
could understand.
His nickname was Inchworm.
On weeding days
he said not a word all day.
Some people working alone
mutter and
mutter,
saying things no one can understand.
But Inchworm Hong Jin-su said never a word.
Herons would fly in close, then fly away again.
In February 1951,
shortly before the second draft for the national militia,
the village youths
all drank castor oil to induce diarrhoea.
They had to lose weight.
Under 45 kilograms, they would be disqualified.
Later, however, whether 40 kg or 30,
they all passed the medical exam, second class.
Inchworm cut off the top of his right index finger
with an adze.
He buried the severed fingertip on the hill behind his house.
Within twelve days the finger healed.
Meanwhile he failed the medical, classed third grade.
Relieved, he set about selling tofu.
Putting the tofu trays on his shoulder
he left home early, before breakfast time.
Buy my tofu.
Buy my tofu.
He did evening rounds, too.
Buy my tofu.
Buy my tofu.
After his parents quit the world
he provided his four younger siblings with food,
fed them as well the tofu that was left unsold.
Putilovka village in far-away Hassan,
where three borders meet:
Korea, Manchuria, Russia.
In secret, Korean farmers
would cross into that region,
as yet free of bandits.
They built hovels to keep out wind and rain
and survived by grazing cattle and goats
every day on the grass of three countries.
There they lived, snaring birds
on the banks of the Tumen,
catching wild deer,
sowing grain and hunting.
While washing clothes by a stream,
hunter Jang Gil-seong's daughter Ong-nye
met a man on a horse.
His eyes were hollow
with hunger.
He couldn't even dismount by himself
Ong-nye wiped her wet hands and helped him down.
She went back home for some cold rice
and returned to feed him.
A Korean independence fighter,
he had crossed the river
on his dead commander's horse,
pursued by the Japanese.
Actually, he'd rowed across,
the horse swam.
He hadn't eaten for three days.
Ong-nye brought him home.
When her father returned from hunting, she begged:
Let this man become my husband.
Allow your daughter
to become this man's wife,
Father!
Her father Jang Gil-seong
tossed his catch â two cock-pheasants â
at the stranger's feet.
He goes about with a dog’s bone stuck in his belt.
He gobbles up earthworms
and frogs, too, all deftly caught
Heuh heuh,
heuh heuh heuh,
he laughs, looking at the sky,
the sky where hawks hover.
Neighbourhood kids
tease him,
throwing stones.
Heuh heuh,
he laughs.
At the sound of a plane he falls flat on his back.
Asleep
under the bridge beyond the village,
his face becomes utterly holy,
utterly peaceful.
When the curs bark at him
he bows his head obsequiously, twisting his hands, saying:
‘I did wrong.
I did wrong.’
Tae-sun’s grandmother explains:
‘He’s a fellow from Uitteum in Sangchon-ri
who went mad after losing two sons.’
One was conscripted in the Pacific War and never came back.
One was drafted in the Korean War and never came back.
Soldiers of the People’s Army
were despatched to every hamlet in the occupied areas.
One soldier arrived in Bongdong-myeon, Wanju, North Jeolla province.
A greenhorn soldier, always laughing,
he drank the liquor
that the villagers offered with a village girl,
then went into the bean-field with her.
This became known.
His comrades hastily shot him: no trial, nothing.
After that, not one but three soldiers
were stationed in Bongdong-myeon.
A little later, two left.
The third stayed for the last two months
of occupation, then left.
He never accepted a single leaf of tobacco,
let alone a free drink.
This greenhorn soldier left
firing blanks from his submachine gun.
At the foot
of the village’s clay walls and crumbling reed fences
balsam prospered, flowering
no matter who went or didn’t.
War
affects cows, too,
dogs, too.
The war
made not just the eyes of humans
but the eyes of animals bloodshot.
During spring plowing,
one cow would not obey.
Urged on:
This way!
This way!
it just flopped down on the ground.
Shin O-man of Gangneung put up with that.
As Shin O-man’s son
was pouring out the boiled cattle feed
he was gored
and one horn pierced his thigh.
Shin O-man couldn’t put up with that.
With his wooden club.
he gave the cow a blow on the back
War
drives humans mad,
cows too!
He considered selling it,
then, calming down,
decided to wait
a little longer.
Seeing as how the long-drawn-out negotiations for an armistice
are almost over, surely the war is heading away
from our cow, all that we have
and part of the family.