by Ko Un
For him, the inside of the station
is more like home.
He staggers for a moment
in the wind from the new Saemaul express trains.
Seol Dae-ui
His American name was David John Seel.
Quite a guy,
quite a guy.
Sometimes a transplanted tree casts a vast shadow.
Arriving in Korea
he spent ten years,
twenty years,
thirty-six years in all.
When he was head of the Jesus Hospital
at the foot of Mount Daga in Jeonju,
once, when a TB patient coughed up black blood and collapsed,
he saved his life by mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
He sucked in that black blood,
sucked in that dying man’s breath.
The first and most sacred task in this world
is saving another’s life.
An Unfilial Son is Weeping
Eom Ju-pal, the eldest son of Mr Eom of Hwagokpon-dong,
turned up late for his father’s wake.
Late at night,
dead drunk,
he sang an old popular song,
‘An Unfilial Son is Weeping’.
Under the awnings people whispered.
His brothers tried to stop him.
Tried,
but they were grabbed by the collars, knocked down
by Eom Ju-pal’s powerful fist.
For long ages, men have performed so-called filial and unfilial acts.
Animals are really pure.
Winged animals
and land animals are pure.
Mother and
father
give birth to their young then rear them, and that’s all.
They do not live at the expense of their children,
depending on their filial devotion.
Bearing and raising them,
that’s the end of it.
What pure disinterestedness.
In general,
exalting filial love quickly leads to exalting loyalty,
and when loyalty is exalted
comes, often enough, dictatorship.
VOLUME 14
Mr Foul-Mouth
On the southern slopes of Namsan
was a spot that just after Liberation
came to be known as Liberation Village.
It was on a steep alley
that twisted so
that once you were inside
there was no way out.
The roofs were head-high.
Mr Foul-Mouth from Pyeongan province in North Korea,
his stiff white hair in a crew cut,
would go up and down,
swearing in a loud voice every day.
‘Bloody goddamn…
Bloody goddam…
That f..cking bastard…’
On March 1, 1978, the Independence Movement holiday,
there was no peep from Mr Foul-Mouth,
him with the stiff white hair in a crew cut.
That morning he died, as if to celebrate
the Anniversary of the Independence Movement.
His Own Sword
King Sinmun of later Silla,
came to the throne with the help of Jang Bo-go
who controlled Cheonghaejin, the West Sea.
Therefore
the king’s son, when he became the next king,
intended to take the second daughter of Jang, his father’s benefactor, as his queen.
How could Your Majesty take an islander’s daughter as your queen?
Objections came thick and fast.
Hearing of this, Jang Bo-go grew furious
and decided to destroy Seorabeol, the Silla capital:
Outrageous!
Outrageous!
Then the Silla general Yeom Jang
claimed it was he who had complained to the king,
and hastened out to meet Jang Bo-go.
The two of them drank their fill together
and that night, once they were drunk,
Yeom Jang
pulled Jang Bo-go’s sword from its sheath
and drove it into his breast.
A great hero who could not be killed by others’ swords
had to die by his own.
After that came a time when Korea lost control of the sea,
the sea by which they could cross not only to Okinawa
but to distant Annam.
An Inkstone from Dangye
Chusa Wandang Kim Jeong-hui,
created a new pen-name for himself
every time he produced a piece of calligraphy,
every time he painted.
He ended up having hundreds of pen-names.
His inkstone from Dangye
accompanied him when he was exiled
to Daejeonghyeon on Jeju Island.
It spent its whole life with him,
until at last he wore a hole in it
with so much grinding,
repeated grinding of ink,
and could no longer function as an inkstone.
Its master, Kim Jeong-hui,
got more than a little drunk,
wept,
buried the inkstone
and performed memorial rites before its grave
the following year.
‘You left this world ahead of me.’
Countess Yi Ok-gyeong
In the Joseon Era, women had no names.
One girl from the Hong family
was adopted as Emperor Gojong’s niece.
Her lips were red as well-ripened boxthorn berries.
The girl grew up
and became the wife of Yi Ji-yong
who was leaving for Japan as Special Envoy;
She accompanied him using the name Gyeong.
She adopted her husband’s family name Yi
so she was known as Yi Gyeong.
Her flesh was like white jade,
her teeth like snowy jade
so she was called Yi Ok-gyeong.
Ok means ‘jade’.
Once in Japan, on receiving a bribe of ten thousand yen
her husband signed the Korea-Japan Protocol,
then concluded the Offensive-Defensive Alliance for the Russo-Japanese War,
allowing the Japanese to use Korea as a military base.
In reality, the whole of Yongsan in Seoul,
some 940 acres,
had served as a base for foreign forces
ever since Japanese forces captured it
during the Imjin invasion of the 1590s.
Finally Korea fell to Japan.
Even a gisaeng such as Sanhong refused
to become a concubine of one of the five ministers
who betrayed the nation,
saying that although she was a gisaeng
she could never live as the concubine of such a man.
Yi Ok-gyeong, however,
not content with her husband,
had relations with the officials of the Japanese legation:
Hakihara
Kuniwake
Hasegawa.
Her domestic servants used to take her photo
and thrust at the crotch with a stick,
saying, This is a hole for Japs.
A hole for Japs.
Reading the Maecheon Yarok*
I lingered a moment at this part.
* Maecheon was Hwang Hyeon’s pen-name, Yarok means ‘an unofficial history’. Hwang Hyeon later committed suicide when Joseon fell to Japan.
Together with Pastor Jeong Jin-dong
A young woman like very fresh young greens,
like young greens
newly washed three times in a flowing stream,
one such young woman,
having dropped out of middle school,
came and sat down in the chilly office
of the Cheongju Urban Industrial Mission.
The room grew even quieter.
Her job was to help a pastor
as bland as long-stored buckwheat jelly
or cold bean curd.
No end in sight once over the edge of the cliff.
Endless days of service.
On her face clean like young greens
appeared a freckle then another and another
like birds singing early in the morning
keeping each other company.
Writing petitions,
writing letters of complaint,
copying out manifestos,
drawing up agreements,
she also had to make visits here and there,
taking long-distance buses over bumpy, dusty roads.
With her face, which never knew make-up,
she devoted all her youth to service
and her laugh was always as it had been
a thousand years before.
No need to know her name.
Kim of Geumho-dong
He has no shoulders.
Shoulderless, he sits
on a rocky ridge in Geumho-dong.
He gazes across the river
at the newly erected apartments in Apgujeong-dong.
Talking nonsense is his job.
Once evening comes,
the lights in the apartments across the river shine bright.
He gazes across at those lights.
He tries to rise,
but his legs have grown stiff, so he has to sit down again
on rocks that have neither blood
nor tears.
An out-of-season mosquito whines
but it has no strength to bite
and he has no blood to suck.
The two of them are in the same state,
Kim of Geumho-dong and the mosquito.
However,
Kim’s son
has the best shoulders in Geumho-dong,
a young tough who gives petty thieves a hard time.
Nothing like his father. Nothing.
King Jicheollo
He was first to be given a posthumous name, Jijeung.
He was first to be given the title Wang (King)
instead of Maripgan.
Jicheollo, the 22nd king of Silla,
had Kim as his family name;
his given name was Jidaero or Jidoro.
This king’s prick was said to be well over one foot long.
Unmarried,
he sent agents all over the country
to find him a wife.
At the foot of an old tree in Muryangbu
two dogs
were fighting and biting each other
over a gigantic turd the size of a big drum.
The agents wanted to know whose it was.
They discovered that one village girl
had produced it in the woods
while doing the washing.
As might be expected, that girl was over seven feet high.
She became the wife
of the bachelor king,
a heaven-sent spouse.
The candle was never put out
night after night.
They had two sons
and son Beopheung inherited the throne.
King Beopheung
and his queen both became monks.
Weol-san the Seon Master
A broad-minded fellow
travelling through Manchuria during Japanese rule,
one day he heard the Diamond Sutra being chanted
and became a monk.
Forming an association with other monks,
such as Cheongdam, Seongcheol, Hyanggok,
he sat in the full lotus position
in Bongam-sa temple in Mungyeong,
not lying down to sleep.
With his tall stature he played a major role
in founding the Jogye Order,
then he withdrew into the mountains.
No brilliant poems,
no dazzling sermons.
He simply sat unspeaking, keeping his mind focused,
inside the sound of the wind among Mount Toham’s pines,
yesterday,
today,
tomorrow.
Sat upright,
back sheerer than a cliff,
stunning.
King Gyeongmyeong of late Silla
Everything was in decline.
All the lights were going out,
no way things could be put right.
So King Gyeongmyeong in the last stages of Silla
had nothing to do but sit and drink.
Earlier, a dog in a wall painting in the Temple of the Four Heavenly Kings barked.
Monks recited sutras
but again it barked.
Then the bow-strings of the five guardians in the temple snapped.
The dog jumped out of the wall painting, barked,
jumped back into the painting.
The seven years of King Gyeongmyeong,
the three years of King Gyeongae
were years of collapse and nothing else.
King Gyeongmyeong asked, Am I a king or a scarecrow?
Drunk,
he took off his heavy crown
and gaped at Mount Namsan in the distance,
which came into sight then disappeared
At night his only care was for one lady of the court, a newcomer.
VOLUME 15
Six Generations of Widows
Among the eighteen sons of King Sejong the Great of the Joseon era,
the fifth, Prince Gwangpyeong,
like his father
mastered the Chinese classics by fifteen,
music and mathematics, too,
but died at the age of twenty.
The son he had fathered likewise died young.
Yi Won-hu, the sixth generation descendant of Prince Gwangpyeong,
married at fifteen,
and in addition to his wife,
so also his mother-in-law,
his grandmother-in-law,
great-grandmother-in-law were all widowed young.
Those widows worshipped spirits:
the spirit of the ground outside in the backyard,
the home’s guardian spirit inside the house,
Old Granny the kitchen spirit,
the spirit of the outdoor privy,
the Jade Emperor of Heaven and the King of the Underworld in the men’s quarters.
Spirits everywhere:
The Jade Emperor of Heaven,
The Granny spirit of childbirth,
The Mountain Spirit,
The Farming Spirit,
Wonsa spirits of Wishes,
Joseong Daegam spirits of buildings,
Jeseok spirits of Indra,
Songaksi spirits bringing disaster,
Mimyeong spirits of clothing,
spirits everywhere…
Blind as a Bat
King Sejo of the Joseon era left behind six dead ministers,
and six living ministers.
Kim Si-seup,
one of the living,
became a mendicant monk
wandering the countryside.
Yi Maeng-jeon,
another of the living ministers,
went back home to Seosan, South Chungcheong,
and pretended to be blind,
spending the rest of his life like that,
thirty years,
with a blind man’s staff.
Then there was Cheong Rong who pretended to be deaf.
Gwon Jeol too,
after Sejo’s bloody coup,
pretended to be deaf.
He even used signs to communicate with his family.
Nam Hyo-on
and his son Nam Chung-seo
pretended to be insane.
If the weather was bad, they laughed: hee hee hee.
Even before the weather grew bad they would smack their lips: hee hee hee.
<
br /> When swallows perched on the washing-line,
laughing hee hee hee, they sipped wine.
Ten Eyes
The man with ten eyes,
with twelve eyes –
when the moon rises
he looks up at the moon,
at the stars…
He looks up at this star
and that,
even the darkness between the stars.
He can never focus on any one thing,
O Gil-hwan
with his yellowish eyes.
If someone asks:
Hey, Gil-hwan, what did you see last night?
Ummm, I saw everything,
saw everything,
so I don’t know what I saw.
A Kkokji Beggar’s Values
Gangs of homeless beggars always had a leader, a kkokji.
Kkokji had five values to maintain.
Above all,
the gang should not beg from
widows,
widowers,
homes that had lost parents early.
That was called Benevolence.