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After the Democratic Youth Association incident

  he did not turn toward groups of intellectuals.

  He turned to the poor

  and took as wife

  one of his comrades

  who lived among them.

  His face was invisible among the dissidents of the 70s.

  His address was a slum,

  unlit,

  in the darkness after the moon has set.

  With that dignity and manly seriousness

  a mother admires in a son-in-law,

  the more he tried to be modest,

  the more he was like a kimchi jar buried in the ground.

  ‘Try to live with contradictions.’

  If you lived in the face of such contradictions, you would know:

  it’s hard just being one of the common folk.

  Yun Han-bong

  He was fastidious through and through.

  He was extreme to a fault.

  That is why, even in prison,

  after carefully folding up his bedding

  he would wipe the cell floor

  with a rag, several times.

  What purity the word ‘enemy’ had

  when it sprang to his lips

  with no hint of eloquence.

  He was fastidious even with his comrades.

  He remained fastidious

  when later he disappeared

  in the midst of the Gwangju massacre.

  and crossed the Pacific hidden in the bottom of a boat

  in the darkness,

  in the darkness,

  and became Political Exile Number One.

  Seo Gyeong-seok

  His wife, Shin Hye-su, did not want him to become a pastor.

  His mother wanted her son to be a pastor.

  He himself so far had no thought of becoming a pastor.

  He was simply the son of an admiral,

  a graduate in engineering.

  He was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment

  for the Democratic Youth Association incident,

  but he refused to appeal and became a convict.

  That was his starting-point.

  He hurled himself into the YH sit-in incident in 1979

  that paved the way for the collapse of President Park’s Yushin regime.

  Few could compete with him as an organiser.

  Wherever he went

  he found something to do

  which never failed

  to lead to yet greater things.

  He had a tragic tenacity,

  like the sticky sap emerging from the stump

  after a large tree is felled.

  A tragic tenacity…

  even in his glad smile on meeting you after a long absence.

  YH’s Kim Gyeong-suk

  In 1970, the young labourer Jeon Tae-il died.

  In 1979, the working girl Kim Gyeong-suk of YH Trading plunged to her death

  from a rally on the 4th floor of the New Democratic Party building in Mapo.

  By dying, one opened an age;

  by dying, one closed the age.

  Behind the grave of Kim Gyeong-suk stands the grave of Park Chung-hee.

  Go and see.

  VOLUME 13

  Police Inspector Im Byeong-Hyu

  From the information service at Yeongdeungpo police station

  he was transferred to Gangseo police station as soon as it opened,

  to the No. 2 intelligence section there,

  and throughout the Seventies

  his job was to accompany one poet everywhere.

  The pomade he used

  to slick down

  his thick hair

  smelt disgusting at first

  but his companion got used to it.

  Whenever that poet went to preside at a wedding

  he went along too.

  When the poet went to a bar

  he’d sit over on the far side

  with a glass.

  Then,

  if the poet went to the bathhouse

  after a night’s drinking,

  he’d go along too,

  get into the hot tub naked with him,

  and learned to switch between hot and cold tubs.

  When the poet went to lecture in Busan, Gwangju, Daegu,

  he went along.

  When orders came from above,

  he’d deploy a combat police unit to keep the poet from leaving home.

  A bright-eyed, trustworthy man,

  he often wore a blue shirt.

  He was reliable but had problems with his wife,

  who had no luck with horoscopes and was always quarrelling.

  Then, when that poet went to prison,

  he deposited the poet’s meagre royalties in the bank.

  First Love

  The full moon rose

  over a hillside slum in Bongcheon-dong, southern Seoul.

  A young man was climbing the steep path

  around 11.30 p.m.

  after working overtime.

  His name was Yun Sang-gon, he had grown up well,

  though knowing nothing of father or mother.

  At the top of the steep path

  someone was waiting for him in an alleyway, freezing cold.

  Her name was Kim Sun-ja.

  The full moon was high in the sky.

  In a world abounding with the sound of moonlight,

  how could poverty be all there was?

  Twenty-year-old Sang-gon’s tough hand

  seized seventeen-year-old Sun-ja’s coarsened hand.

  Sun-ja had no smell of face-powder.

  There was nothing like, ‘I love you’.

  The young man trembled as he spoke:

  ‘Let’s not change.’

  Choking, the girl nodded.

  She bit her lips in confusion and blood gathered in her mouth.

  Won Byeong-o’s DMZ

  The 38th parallel cut the Korean peninsula in two

  from the summer of 1945.

  Once again

  after the summer of 1950

  the DMZ divided the Korean peninsula

  with guns aimed across at each other since 1953.

  One hundred and sixty miles of barbed wire.

  Father in the North,

  and son in the South were both experts on birds.

  The son in the south tied his name

  to a bird’s leg and set it loose.

  A few years later

  the father in the north

  set loose a bird carrying his name.

  No message.

  Had there been a message

  it would have been a crime against national security

  under the South’s anti-communist laws,

  and a crime under the North’s criminal laws.

  Each merely attached his name to a bird,

  set it free,

  sent it back.

  That southern son was Won Byeong-o, a professor at Kyunghee University.

  The father was an ornithologist in North Korea.

  The beauty of blood ties in this time of division

  was also the sorrow of the son’s

  already bald head.

  A Fake Blind Beggar

  On a corner of Hyoje-dong opposite Jongno 5ga in Seoul

  all day long

  a blind beggar lay hunched over

  wearing dark glasses.

  He was murmuring something,

  no telling what,

  murmuring, murmuring.

  Placing before him a ragged cap

  he collected 10 won coins, 100 won coins.

  Considering the patient hard work of not moving all day long,

  the beggar’s wage was far too low.

  Apart from occasional crackdowns,

  our country offers the freedom and right to be a beggar.

  But this beggar, once night fell,

  rose to his feet, holding a slender cane,

  and quietly headed for the alley of bars
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br />   on the slopes of Ehwa-dong.

  There he removed his dark glasses and opened blind eyes.

  He ordered a drink at his regular bar,

  ‘Hey, give me soju and that.’

  ‘That’ usually meant a side-dish of spicy fried brawn.

  Five years later, that fake blind beggar moved

  to the station square down in Jochiwon, South Chungcheong province.

  A little thief is better

  than a thief,

  than a big thief.

  A beggar is better

  than a little thief.

  Why, wasn’t Sakymuni a chief of beggars?

  The Seven-year-old King

  In Goguryeo, the nation founded by Go Ju-mong at age fifteen

  the royal palace was a thatched cottage.

  The waters of the Yalu rose far off.

  Day by day the nation prospered.

  The cottage turned into an imposing palace.

  The sixth king, Taejo,

  ascended the throne aged seven.

  The king played with his top.

  His mother looked after the child-king.

  King Jinheung of Silla, too,

  became king at seven,

  while his aunt exercised royal power.

  Isn’t regency more than playing the king?

  Cheong-dam the Monk

  His height when sitting was that of an ordinary person standing unnoticed.

  While studying at the Jinju Agricultural High School,

  and after graduating, too,

  he could not for an instant live without Buddhism.

  Already married, and one daughter.

  First he crossed the sea,

  staying at a number of temples in Japan,

  then returned to become a monk at Okcheon-sa temple in Goseong,

  the Venerable Bak Han-yeong his master.

  After studying his fill

  he went to deliver a sermon

  at Hoguk-sa temple in Jinju, his home.

  In the evening following the sermon

  his mother came into his room

  and produced a kitchen knife from her sleeve.

  If you don’t come back home with me tonight,

  I’ll stab myself in the belly until I’m dead.

  What I want is a grandson.

  He had no choice but to follow his mother

  and return to his wife for just that one night.

  After that, blaming himself for his apostasy,

  he went everywhere barefoot.

  And still he nourished great dreams.

  So, during the Japanese occupation

  he started the National Student Monks’ Assembly.

  then in 1954 he organised the National Conference of Monks,

  establishing the Jogye Order after a sit-in fast

  with a hundred monks and a hundred fifty nuns.

  He held several posts, such as first General Manager,

  Chairman of the Order Committee,

  and Supreme Patriarch.

  His preaching was not consistent with logic.

  He just went on talking endlessly

  no way of telling

  beginning end

  middle

  talking all night long until the day shone bright

  skipping even the morning chanting.

  He died in November of Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-One, at the age of sixty-nine.

  Neung-un the Monk

  After the Japanese army swept up north in 1592

  and the walls of Hanyang, the capital, had fallen,

  Neung-un, a monk of Docheon-sa temple, rose up,

  gathering seven hundred slow-speaking common folk

  in the lower Naepo region of western Chungcheong,

  He had always been a stately monk.

  Now he tore up his crimson gown, wrapped it round his neck.

  With his shaven hair growing long,

  his face became that of an angry lion.

  He hated the king and his officials

  for allowing the invasion,

  hated them more than he hated the invading Japanese.

  His intention was to attack Hanyang

  where the Japanese were stationed,

  with Yi Mong-hak and others,

  and establish a new world.

  When Neung-un was executed, heavy rain poured down.

  At Evening

  On the estuary at Onsuri, Ganghwa Island,

  only a couple of boats bobbing,

  the hostess of a bar

  gazes out

  across the mist-shrouded sea.

  Her pencilled brows

  are lovely.

  ‘It’s time they were here…’

  She is waiting

  for anglers

  to arrive on the last boat

  crossing from Incheon.

  Today she has not had one customer.

  On the window of the bar

  there is a sheet of yellowing paper:

  TURN YOURSELF IN, RETURN TO THE LIGHT.

  REPORT ANYONE SUSPICIOUS.

  Hyeyung

  In the days of the Liberal Party in the 1950s

  at Mirae-sa temple in Mireuk Island,

  in Tongyeong, South Gyeongsang province,

  the disciples of the Great Master Hyobong gathered:

  Gusan, Ilgak, Ilcho, Ilgwan and Beopjeong.

  Beopcheol and Beopdal were there, too.

  And Hwalyeon.

  Spring-water-like Hyeyung was also there.

  His chanting

  sounded like a magpie’s squawk.

  One day he left abruptly

  and without any preparation went up the southern slopes of Jiri Mountain.

  There, in a small rock cave,

  he lived like a wild animal

  on roots of trees, wild fruits, other such.

  All he had was his koan,

  the character Mu (, Nothingness) of Master Zhaozhou.

  Later he would get rid of that, too.

  The hair on his head growing long,

  his beard growing long, he became a wild animal.

  He gave up living as a human being,

  and died alone.

  It was in the late 1970s

  that the animal returned to a human state,

  when his bones were reverently gathered up.

  They should have been left where they were.

  Shameful!

  Ho In-su

  Maybe it’s near that perilous sea at Indangsu

  where filial Sim Cheong was sacrificed to the Dragon King

  after she sold herself for three hundred sacks of rice

  in hope of restoring sight to her blind father –

  Baengnyeong Island in the West Sea!

  It stretches deep under the sea,

  with Jangsangot in North Korea nearby.

  There lies freedom for seagulls.

  There the young priest Ho In-su spends his days.

  He has a bed of lovely little cockscombs in his heart.

  He quarrels with no one,

  never quarrelled with anyone even in childhood.

  When one lyric poem emerges

  his joy is such that the time for Mass is a bit delayed.

  In Incheon across the sea,

  a heated sit-in strike is in progress

  at the Catholic Centre in Dap-dong,

  but here among the sea breezes of Baengnyeong Island

  Ho’s clothes are flapping wildly.

  Three Family Names

  King Hyoseong of Silla had a daughter, the princess Yu-hwang.

  The king chose Won Il-sin,

  renowned for his filial piety, as son-in-law.

  The couple had four sons –

  Sam-seok, Sam-myeong, Sam-jae, Deuk-yun.

  The two sons Sam-seok and Sam-myeong took their father’s family name,

  Sam-jae adopted his mother’s Yu as his surname,

  and Deuk-yun, his mother’s Hwang.

  Later, not t
hose with the family name Won,

  but the Yu of Changwon

  and the Hwang of Changwon begot descendants.

  They were originally a single bloodline,

  then diverged into three streams,

  flowing on,

  flowing on

  At times they were indifferent to one another,

  like dogs and hens,

  at times they desired one another, as hawks hunger for magpies,

  and at times they were like a cluster of boils

  all breaking out together.

  Traveller reaching a village of barking dogs,

  a village clouded with evening smoke –

  from which family do you trace your descent?

  The Cleaner at Okcheon Station

  The seats in the slow trains to Busan are hard.

  While the trains stop for a while

  at Okcheon station

  we see a bent-backed old cleaner.

  The station is clean,

  marigolds bloom in tidy rows,

  and cockscombs too.

  He pays no heed

  to the passing trains,

  just keeps on sweeping over and over.

  At home, there’s no photo of his dead wife.