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.
Seung-ryeolâs Tomb
If the Soviet guards catch you, youâre 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, theyâre done for!
As they crossed the line
a
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.
Seung-ryeolâs Tomb
If the Soviet guards catch you, youâre 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, theyâre done for!
As they crossed the line
a
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