Featured Writer Hwang Tong-gyu
Blossoms I cannot think that trees bloom full-blown to stand idly and wait for fruits to come. When bees are buzzing in every direction blossoms one by one will open their doors to greet the bees come hurrying from afar. The embrace! Each blossom grasps the bee that just digs into her, a tight squeeze!
Wind Burial Hwang Tong-gyu Translated by Grace Loving Gibson and Hwang Tong-gyu St. Andrews Press, 1990, 67 pp. ISBN 0932662889
Far up in the sky above the blooming pear and cherry trees birds see the bright clouds rising from the ground and forget, for a moment, heaven and earth.
New York Diary 3 Someone wept at night in New York. Who is it? When I lifted the phone receiver the voice just sobbed in a low tone. I asked, who is it? repeatedly in English and Korean with clear articulation, but it did not answer. Only the sob slowly became fainter and fainter, then the phone went dead with a click. It was a snow-thawing night after a long cold spell.
Visit www.list.or.kr to listen to readings of the poems published in this volume.
22 _list : Books from Korea
Selected Poems
Song of Peace I’m told we are a puny race. Doors locked even in daytime, bathing our eyes with “Trust Drops,” we read light essays, hugging the stove. Dragging the anguish of no place to hide like a soldier with one or two chevrons on the arm, you travel the country from Kimhae to Hwachon,* winter fatigues hanging on you, a canteen flapping at your side. Wherever you turn, barbed wire, at every wire, a checkpoint. I do not understand this love, this smothering jealous love. I spread my gloved hands, palms up. Snow falling for some time now, a snow colder than snow.
*From Kimhae to Hwachon: from the southernmost part to the northernmost part of South Korea.
Visit www.list.or.kr to watch a reading of this work by the author (with English subtitles).
Vol.29 Autumn 2015 23
Featured Writer Hwang Tong-gyu
A Small Love Song Received your letter enclosing our yesterdays. The ways which had followed you all the time suddenly disappeared. Many other things also disappeared. The stones we played with when we were young are embedded now, hiding their faces. I love you, love you, and in the cold evening sky shattering cracks begin to show. Light snow blows on the wind. A few flakes, no place, no way to land upon the earth, awakened, trembling, float endlessly in the air.
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Selected Poems
Listening to “A Survivor from Warsaw” by Schoenberg Strong Winds at Mishi Pass Hwang Tong-gyu Translated by Kim Seong-Kon and Dennis Maloney White Pine Press, 2001, 118 pp. ISBN 9781893996106
Those not destroyed in the face of death are beautiful. Even in movies about war, There’s beauty in refusing to collapse, choosing death. Almost collapsing, still flowing, it never overflows, This elaborate twelve-tone piece! When we walk inside music We become bright lights.
Wind Burial 27 When I leave this world I'll take my two hands, two feet, and my mouth. I'll take my dim eyes, too, carefully covering them with my lids. But I'd rather leave my ears, Ears keen to catch the sound of late night rain As it gives its arm to autumn’s shoulder. Ears that know which autumn tree stands in rain Only by listening Will be left. Visit www.list.or.kr to watch a reading of this work by the author (with English subtitles).
Vol.29 Autumn 2015 25
Featured Writer Hwang Tong-gyu
Winter, 5 Minutes Past Midnight
Songs of Thorns and Flowers Vol. 3: Winter, 5 Minutes Past Midnight Hwang Tong-gyu Edited with Introduction, Translation and Commentary by Chan E. Park Foreign Language Publications: The Ohio State University, 2012, 101 pp. ISBN 9780874153781
Visit www.list.or.kr to listen to readings of the poems published in this volume.
26 _list : Books from Korea
I walked gazing up at the stars. Exiting the shuttle bus at the back entrance of the apartment complex, I was about to cross the road, but decided to keep walking. As if to hide the chill in, the stores lowered their shutters. The snow that briefly fell late into the evening is still flying a white fragment or two in the wind. ‘The dust must’ve settled for a bit.’ How long has it been? Adjusting my coat collar to compose my thoughts somewhat, gazing up at the stars, I walked another bus stop to the end of the line. On one side of the miniature triangle-shaped shuttle bus turnaround, a hardware store, which until recently ornamented its windows with a baroque of scissors, was demolished, to reopen as a farm produce center: “Let’s Go To The Field.” The light in the building is out, and the outside lamp reads the sign. Across the way, ‘The Silla Bakery’ is closing. At the corner of the remaining side, a woman steals glances at her cell phone, as if awaiting her daughter or husband on the last shuttle, tall and slightly bent from the waist, she’s mumbling something barely audible. Standing next to her as if we’ve been acquainted, I look up at the sky, rubbing my two hands. In the sky where a light frost stopped falling, that’s the Big Dipper, and that—Cassiopeia, and ah, Orion, all of you have survived without being ripped apart as lonely stars!
Selected Poems
The woman speaks hardly audibly but determinedly, ‘Now I’ll just up and die.’ The street lamp stealthily illuminates her pale face, no murderous look on it, I’m somewhat relieved. I echo her, to myself, ‘Come on then, see what I do!’ A star, brightening, asks. ‘What are you all waiting for? One who may not come? A world with no darkness? A world where the dust has settled? The life of a comet that freezes and melts its dusty body, spewing light into the dark, should also be worthwhile.’ Did I hear anyone clear his throat? If no one were around, I'd have stated loud and clear: ‘You Do Not speak of darkness or light, when you’re around someone waiting desperately for something!’ The stars, as if seen through scuba goggles, glimmered then were still. The last bus will arrive soon.
Vol.29 Autumn 2015 27
Featured Writer Hwang Tong-gyu
Taste of Life A change of seasons, and this cold clogging up all my channels! For a full half month I was inhaling and exhaling ashen grey air, at about 38.5 degrees I lost my appetite, for several days in a row I was waking up in the night hacking, nose running, silently pouring out tears as though my lachrymal glands were wrung out, then this morning suddenly, seeping into the inner chambers of my alveoli is the dazzling sign of spring. I no longer have in me the exuberance to stir things up here and there, nor even as much hair as baby’s breath over the sparseness of a bouquet, still on this walk taken after a long interval, the forsythias form yellow fences, from a distance it may be the voice of the spicebush, on the ground, violets and gerberas are blooming quite noticeably. The fragrance of the late blooming apricot is so enticing that I miss a step. Where the fever’s gone, an instant ignition of hunger, the splendor of being alive! Would I find flowers in spring? Rather, I would be covered in spring amidst flowers bloomed ad nauseam. I walk in wide strides. A few steps ahead of me, a hopping magpie also hops in wide stride. In departing this world, is the choicest taste of life which must be brought along, not of perfect health, but of recovery? Though by chance the Honorable illness you can recover from without suffering may be tarrying somewhere in the world.
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Selected Poems
As If Walking Without Feet
Joy of Living Hwang Tong-gyu Moonji Publishing, 2013, 157 pp.
Plantar fasciitis restrains each step, Rippling spasms of pain on the heel of the right foot; The pain does not wane despite nine shots of acupuncture. This time of the year, When Adonises are past their prime and Forsythias are in full bloom, I was forced to quit strolling these two months and Be absent from the drinking spree, declining my friends’ beckoning call last weekend. While rummaging through a book of paintings, I was struck by the memory of a male figure, who sold picture albums limping, At Ephesus in Turkey four years ago, Crying aloud, “one dollar, one dollar.” He walked away with a severe limp, Though his limping had been barely noticeable before us. His face was far from gloomy. A few hours ago, people were skipping along the street And their lives looked in fuller sail than mine, This world was far more resilient than I thought. At Bandi and Luni’s, the basement bookstore near Sadang Station, I struggled to climb down. Instead of peeking at my poetry collection newly born five days before, I climbed up the stairway hanging on to the handrail with a thick volume of album paintings in another hand.
Visit www.list.or.kr to listen a reading of the poem published in this volume.
I stopped at the doorway. A young couple was talking with their fingers. The boy was moving briskly his hand sometimes with two hands above the chin high, And the girl was casting an earnest eye at it with folded hands. On moving my footsteps, I noticed, “Ah! the flame shrouded in her eyes!” Her eyes were in tears. The face full of ecstatic bliss was crying, As if talking in sign language without hands. I passed them by forgetting my own lameness. Translated by Hwang Hoonsung
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Featured Writer Hwang Tong-gyu
Canzone Napoletana Coming out of the lounge for retired professors, Failing to conclude the inconsequential debate on the death of literature (Hey, have I been kicking against empty air all my life?) I started the car and turned on the audio. The Canzone Napoletana sung by the old Tenor Stephano, On the Circular Road, suddenly my eyeballs are brimful with cherry blossoms. Opening the windows and driving slowly to pull up at the sidewalk, I accompany my humming with the songs. Thirty years ago, The azure-blue waves lapping against the Napoli seashore, When the aroma of orange flowers invaded my brain humming like a swarm of bees. Still the waves may cast soul-stirring resonances against the shore. As if mesmerized by the song, a couple of flower petals fly into the car and Touch my face. My body is electrified in spite of myself, Slowly my eyes are closed and black-out, come on, where am I? The spot where you can look upward at the St. Lucia Cathedral? Yet, cobalt-blue waves undulate before your eyes. Indubitably, how can Napoli exist only in Napoli? At Anhung in Taeangun, A Yesongri in Bogildo before the beach resort was opened, Cobalt-blue spring waves undulated sending spasms of electricity all over my body. Petals sit on my head and hands. What if the flame of literature flickering is snuffed out all of a sudden? How on earth can literature exist in literature only?
Translated by Hwang Hoonsung
The original version of this poem was first published in Munhakdongne The Quarterly, Vol.84.
Visit www.list.or.kr to watch a reading of this work by the author (with English subtitles).
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Translated Works
Translated Works
Français Les racines d’amour Hwang Tong-gyu Translated by Hyunka Kim-Schmidt and Thierry Gillibœuf Circé/Poésie, 2000, 107 pp. ISBN 9782842421052
Español Posada de Nubes y Otros Poemas Hwang Tong-gyu Translated by Lee Seung-Jae and Francisco Carranza Romero Fondo Editorial, 1998, 130 pp. ISBN 9789972421297
English Songs of Thorns and Flowers Vol. 3: Winter, 5 Minutes Past Midnight
Deutsch Windbestattung Hwang Tong-gyu Translated by Kim Mi-Hye and Sylvia Bräsel Peperkorn, 1996, 120 pp. ISBN 9783929181098
Deutsch Stille der Blüten Hwang Tong-gyu Translated by Kim Kyung-Hee and Theodor Ickler Ostasien Verlag, 2015, 170 pp. ISBN 9783940527837
Hwang Tong-gyu Edited with Introduction, Translation and Commentary by Chan E. Park Foreign Language Publications: The Ohio State University, 2012, 101 pp. ISBN 9780874153781
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Special Section Eco-Literature in Korea
EcoLiterature in Korea Overview Issues and Trends in Korean Eco-Literature
Part One: Fiction 36
The Dawn of Ecological Consciousness in Korean Literature Excerpt: “The Fault Lies with God as Well”
38 40
Exploring the Depths of Eco-Lit: With a Focus on Choi Sung Kak, Kim Jongseong, and Yi Si-baek Excerpt: “Rivers Must Flow, Mudflats Must Be Bountiful”
42
Part Two: Poetry 44
Restoring Eastern Thought: With a Focus on the Eco-Poetry of Kim Ji-ha and Choi Seung-Ho Four Poems
46 50
Songs of Coexistence and the Future of Life
52
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Four Poems
Overview
Editor's Note
Eco-literature caught on in Korea in the nineties, replacing the literatures of division and labor. It denounces potential hazards, including nuclear proliferation, ozone layer depletion, climate change, and pollution, that pose a threat both to the environment and to the human race, while displaying nostalgia for life within the embrace of undisturbed nature. The following article sums up discussions about eco-literature in Korea within the broad framework of Green, Life, and Environment Literatures.
Issues and Trends in Korean Eco-Literature K
orean Eco-criticism took off with the publication of “Toward a Literary Ecology,” an article by Kim Seong-Kon in the winter issue of Foreign Literature in 1990. Subsequently, the discussion about ecoliterature in Korea branched into Green Literature, Life Literature, and Environmental Literature. Academics have written several in-depth papers on eco-literature and have compiled the results of their research as books, notable among which are Lee Nam-ho’s Green Literature (Minumsa, 1998), Kim Wook Dong’s Toward a Literary Ecology: Green Theory and Literature (Minumsa, 1998), Kim Yong-min’s Ecological Literature: Toward an Alternative Society (Book World, 2003), Kim U-chang’s A Heartfelt Study of Ecology: Moving Beyond Anthropocentricism (Gimm-Young Publishers, 2014); and compilations like Path to a Green Life (Poetry and People, 1997) and Path to a Green Life II (Poetry and People, 2001), both edited by Shin Duk-Ryong. Researchers of eco-literature founded the “Association for the Study of Literature & Environment” in 2001, and have continuously published articles in its journal, Literature and Environment, ever since. Their writings
were compiled and published as the first volume of a scholarly series, The Environmental Crisis and Literature (Hakgobang, 2015). As I look at the discussions carried out in ecowriting in Korea, let us first look at Green Literature. Lee Nam-ho defines Green Literature as “literature that pursues, realizes, and promotes in its own way the values and aesthetics of Green Ideology” (Green Literature, Minumsa, 1998). Here, Green Ideology refers to literature that can “surmount the destruction wreaked by humans on nature and help us to live in harmony with nature through a political, economic, social, and cultural revolution,” and “aim for a life that respects and follows the values, order, and aesthetics inherent in nature.” Lee says that “humans and nature are one, and literature is inherently green because at the root of all writing is a respect for nature’s innate value and hidden order.” In Toward a Literary Ecology: Green Theory and Green Literature (Minumsa, 1998), Kim Wook Dong defines Green Literature as literature that contributes to overcoming the ecological crisis by awakening our ecological consciousness. Kim considers
Vol.29 Autumn 2015 33
Special Section Eco-Literature in Korea
both Green Literature and Ecological Literature to be the same and uses the terms Ecological Literature and Literary Ecology interchangeably. He says, “If Deep Ecology is the application of ecological theory to philosophy, and Social Ecology is its application to sociology, then Literary Ecology is the application of ecological theory to literature,” and that Literary Ecology is an “acceptance of the basic spirit of ecological studies and giving it shape in literature.” Next, let us examine the discourse on Life Literature. Life Literature grew out of the perception that we need to face these dehumanizing times where the culture of killing rules supreme and human life is marred by the destruction of the natural ecology. It developed chiefly from the ideas and literature of Kim Ji-ha. In “Toward Life Poetics” from Path to a Green Life (Ed. Shin Duk-Ryong, 1997), Nam Song-woo urges us to formulate a life poetics that is oriented toward “seeking the essence and meaning of life and its value through the song of life” and “overcome elements that pose a threat to life or are anti-life.” He categorizes Life Poetry into “poetry that deals with life,” “poetry that talks about awareness of life through green imagery,” and “poetry that enhances our awareness of life through the dream of new birth.” Nam’s ideas about overcoming the culture of dehumanization and destruction through an awareness of life are in sync with ecological perspectives. In “The Character of Life Poetry and Poetic Imagination” from Path to a Green Life II (2001), Shin Duk-Ryong says that we need “a new world view that sees all life forms, including humans, and all inanimate objects as part of a whole” and counts the awareness of life as fundamental to life itself. He says that “the definition of life needs
34 _list : Books from Korea
to be expanded into a concept that covers all organic and inorganic matter in our universe.” Based on this insight, Shin defines Life Poetry as “poetry that seeks the essence and value of life by singing of life itself, and at the same time studies, in relation to other beings, the value and status of life and the conditions that enrich it and sheds light on their importance through poetic imagination.” Shin’s idea of Life Poetry has much in common with Ecological Poetry in that it is based on “an ecological worldview that is oriented toward an organic relationship between humans and nature.” Now, let’s move on to Environmental Literature. If we define Environmental Literature as literature that deals directly or indirectly with the destruction of the environment, leaving aside the fundamental perception underlying the text, then it differs from Ecological Literature, which has an ecological perspective at its core. In “The Current Status and Tasks of Environmental Poetry” in Path to a Green Life (Ed. Shin Duk-Ryong, 1997), Nam Song-woo places the environment above ecology, saying, “rather than clubbing them together as Ecological and Environmental Poetry, it is better to place Ecological Poetry within a general concept of Environmental Poetry.” However, in later writings, Nam uses the term Life Poetry instead of Environmental Poetry. Kim Yong-min writes in Ecological Literature: Toward an Alternative Society (Book World, 2003) that differentiating between Environmental Literature and Ecological Literature is pointless and the two should be combined to form a broader concept. Kim understands Ecological Literature as a blanket term that includes Environmental Literature, and uses the ecological
Overview
“ Humans and nature are one, and literature is inherently green because at the root of all writing is a respect for nature’s innate value and hidden order.”
issue as a concept that covers major problems from environmental pollution and the destruction of nature to materialism, industrial society, patriarchy, and human desire. Finally, we come to discussions regarding ecological and environmental writing that include the categories of Green Literature, Life Literature, and Environmental Literature. In Ecological Literature: Toward an Alternative Society (Book World, 2003), Kim Yong-min uses Ecological Literature as a concept that covers Green Literature, Life Literature, and Environmental Literature. Kim says that “Ecological Literature means a literature that observes and criticizes the ecological problem with an ecological perspective and dreams of a new ecological society,” and proposes that “without fixating on the presence or absence of an ecological perspective, any literature that deals with the ecological issue or awakens an ecological consciousness in us should be considered as Ecological Literature, even if that perspective is rudimentary or insufficient.” The merit in Kim’s argument is that by establishing Ecological Literature as a wide-ranging concept that covers Green Literature, Life Literature, and Environmental Literature, we can study writings that deal with various ecological issues from different angles and perspectives through the common genre of Ecological Literature. On the other hand, in A Heartfelt Study of Ecology: Moving beyond Anthropocentricism (2014), Kim U-chang augments aesthetic ideas about reason with a heartfelt study of ecology on the basis of comprehensive knowledge, including the humanities, sociology, and the natural sciences. Kim uses ecological reasoning to explore the effects of the creation and progress of reason and attempts to overcome the
limitations of anthropocentrism. Kim does not discuss ecological and environmental literature directly, but lays a philosophical groundwork for ecological and environmental writing by using ecological reasoning to reestablish our relationship with nature by moving beyond anthropocentrism, which is responsible for maintaining the status quo of Western ideas and thinking. I have attempted here to present the reader with an overview of Korea’s ecological and environmental writing, including Green Literature, Life Literature and Environmental Literature, and have based this article on the poetry of Kim Ji-ha, Chong Hyon-jong, Lee Geon Cheong, Choi Seungho, Ko Hyeong-ryeol, Lee Moon-jae, Kim Ki-taek, Ra Heeduk, and the fiction of Kim Won il, Han seung-won, Cho Se-Hui, Hong Sungwon, Lee Mun Ku, Kim Jongseong, Choi Sung Kak, and Lee Nam-Hui. by Oh Hyung-yup Professor of Korean Language and Literature Korea University
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Special Section Eco-Literature in Korea
The Dawn of Ecological Consciousness in Korean Literature K
orea’s industrialization kicked off in the early 1960s, pursuing the accumulation of capital based on a government-led monopolistic system that resulted in the magnification of harmful factors. In particular, the policy of setting up industrial complexes and concentrating industries regionally without any consideration for primary industries like agriculture, forestry, and fishing gave rise to serious environmental problems. In response, Korean writers began reflecting on the Park Chung-hee administration’s dehumanizing and destructive development-first economic policy through their novels that dealt with environmental issues. Hong Sung-won’s novella Despot (1969) explores our awareness about the natural ecosystem through the symbol of a tiger, using allegory to criticize the military dictatorship that wielded absolute authority, while at the same time revealing an ecological consciousness. In “The Sun Sets in the Western Hills” (1972), published as part of his serialized novel Gwanchon Essays, Lee Mun Ku realistically portrays the environmental and ecological destruction in farming communities brought about by industrial modernization through the fate of a giant pine tree that withers away because of air pollution. Through the perspective of a police officer dispatched to a guard post at an industrial complex where he witnesses the sea being choked by discharged wastewater, Kim Yong Seong’s Above the Dead Sea (1976) shows that life cannot survive in a polluted ecosystem. The trend of novels dealing with environmental
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issues that first appeared toward the end of the 1960s became even more pronounced by the second half of the 1970s, with the appearance of works by Cho SeHui, Kim Won il, and Han Seung-won. In The Dwarf (1978), Cho locates the root cause of environmental problems in the economic structure of capitalism and systematic social inequality. The monopolistic enterprises at the Eungang Industrial Complex cut back on expenses by releasing untreated pollutants directly into the river and the air. The ones who have to bear the damage resulting from the actions of the factory management are the “dwarfs.” Cho dissects the structure of Korean society in the 1970s through the conflict between the ruling class and the underprivileged class, whom he symbolizes as the dwarfs, in order to show that environmental pollution and ecological destruction are closely connected with inequality. In doing so, Cho’s The Dwarf touches upon the realistic problems of Korea in the 1970s such as labor conflict and the rich-poor divide. Using fantastical techniques like allegory, symbolism, genre mixing, and overlapping scenes, on portrays the conflict and strife between the haves and the have-nots as though part of a fairy tale or an illogical world. At the same time, he also reveals the underlying reality of it all by subverting and liberating the Other. The only possibility the dwarfs have of overcoming their deplorable conditions is through fantasy. Only the death and resurrection of Yŏng-su, a dwarf’s son, and the fantasy represented by his brother Yŏngho’s dream can restore the dwarfs’ dying lands and
Part One: Fiction
rivers into a world of glowing fireflies and blooming pansies. The apparition of a wrecking ball that cuts across the sky in a straight line above Yŏng-hŭi’s head alludes to the dwarfs’ tragic dream. The fantastical element of the book shines through in the scene where the dwarf launches the wrecking ball, even as he is bleeding. Yŏng-ho’s remark that the dwarfs are at the bottommost level of the ecological pyramid, with as many as three levels above that want to consume them, is a reminder that the pain and anguish suffered by the dwarfs does not stop with their generation but passes on to their children as well. Kim Won il’s Meditations on a Snipe (1979) deals with water pollution in industrial complexes. Major Yun’s comment, “There might be no actual warfare going on, but we’re still at war,” sheds light on the flipside of industrialization where everything is sacrificed at the altar of development. It alludes to the fact that the lives of migratory birds that are dying off due to environmental pollution and the lives of Byeong-guk and his father are not that different. Byeong-guk’s father is a displaced person who was forced to leave behind his family and fiancé in North Korea during the Korean War. If national division destroyed his father’s life then Byeong-guk’s life is destroyed by the regime. In Warm Stone (1981), Kim deals with occupational disease in the form of chemical poisoning caused by sulfuric, nitric, and dichromic acids. The final passage when Young-hui, a new mother who thinks she is carrying a stone in her belly, discovers a life-like baby doll that can sing and gesticulate, evokes a new environmental consciousness. Through the tragic lives of the victims’ families, Kim’s Hiroshima’s Flames (2000) sends the message that the future of humanity is bleak so long as the atom bomb exists on Earth as a symbol of terrifying power. He is inspired by a Christian worldview that believes that the lives of the imprisoned, the ill, and the starving are all meant to glorify the Lord or, to put it differently, by a sense of stewardship toward all creation. Yet we cannot approach the issue of the victims of the atom bomb without first properly appreciating the nuclear problem. Through Hiroshima’s
Korean writers began reflecting on the Park Chunghee administration’s dehumanizing and destructive development-first economic policy through their novels that dealt with environmental issues.
Flames, Kim opens our eyes to the nuclear issue that can not only destroy the environment but can also trigger a catastrophe on a global scale by causing the extinction of all life on Earth. Han Seung-won’s novella Wolf and Sister (1980), which portrays the destruction of the sister’s body by pesticides in a folksy, pastoral manner, is a cautionary tale about the devastation of rural society and the destruction of rural lives brought on by industrial modernization. In A Sea of Lotuses (1997), a novel permeated by a Buddhist ecological consciousness critical of our anthropocentric worldview, Han deals with the loss of amenity with nature and the environmental issues incidental to the tourism and resort industry in a metaphysical manner. By putting forth a chickadee and a white poplar as narrators, he emphasizes the fact that a world in which humans lack remorse about being consumed by excessive desires is a bestial hell, and that the driving forces in creating this hell are the leaders of society. Finally, in Bullfrog (1997), Han makes us face the fact that our “otherized” desire is the root cause of the ecological crisis. by Kim Jongseong Writer and Professor of General Education and Teaching College of Humanities, Korea University
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Special Section Eco-Literature in Korea
Short Story
“The Fault Lies with God as Well”
The Dwarf Cho Se-Hui Translated by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton University of Hawaii Press, 2006, 224 pp. ISBN 9780824831011
Visit www.list.or.kr to listen to a reading of the excerpt.
38 _list : Books from Korea
But at Ŭngang I couldn’t just “do my job.” My brother, sister, and I worked ourselves to the bone in the factories, but after we paid our room rent and ate our food, nothing was left—as always, all the money we sweated to earn went for subsistence expenses. And we weren’t the only ones. All the workers of Ŭngang lived the same way. We ate poor food, wore poor clothing, and lived in poor health in a dirty home in a dirty neighborhood in a polluted environment. The neighborhood children dressed in dirty clothes and played in dirty alleys. They were abandoned children. I thought about the symptoms of disease that would appear in the children living near the factories as they grew up. When the Ŭngang industrial zone came under a trough of low pressure, the toxic gases spewed out by the various factories hung over the ground, polluting the air. After arriving in Ŭngang, Mother had constant headaches. She also had frequent breathing difficulties, coughing, and nausea. Yŏng-hŭi had hearing problems. The noise in the Weaving Section and the worksite was torture for her. At the time, I was working as an assistant mechanic in the Maintenance Department. The moment I first saw Yŏng-hŭi on the night shift I wanted to die. She couldn’t keep her eyes open. Eyes shut, she was walking backward among the weaving machines. The temperature inside the workplace at night was a hundred and two. The Ŭngang Textile machines never stopped. Yŏng-hŭi’s blue work smock was soaked through with sweat. While Yŏng-hŭi was dozing several looms came to a complete stop. The foreman came up to Yŏng-hŭi and jabbed her in the arm. She snapped to and revived the looms. A spot of crimson blood appeared on the arm of her smock. It was three in the morning. The hardest time was from two until five in the morning, Yŏng-hŭi had said, averting her round, teary eyes. At the far end of her field of vision her oldest brother was working as an assistant mechanic. I oiled the machines that the mechanics serviced and I kept track of the tools. My work uniform was stained with sweat and oil. I had a desire to effect a revolution—starting in the minds of the people who worked in Ŭngang. I wanted them to long for the same joys, the peace, the justice,
Excerpt Part One: Fiction
Eco-Literature in Korea the happiness that other people enjoyed. I wanted them to understand that they were not the ones who ought to feel intimidated. Yŏng-hŭi spent many hours observing me. Every day I stood before the office bulletin board. Posted there was the list of those who had retired or been fired or suspended. I would stand in front of the bulletin board feeling smaller than Father. “Look at the midget,” people had said. When Father crossed the street, cars would honk. People laughed at the sight of Father. Yŏng-ho had said he would make a land mine and bury it in the path of those people. “Eldest Brother,” Yŏng-hŭi had said, “I want you to kill those devils who call Father a midget.” Her lips quivered with the vast hatred that lay inside her. In my dreams I used to hear the explosions of mines Yŏngho had buried. The cars of those people were swept up in flames. Inside the burning cars they screamed. At Ŭngang I heard the same screaming I had heard in my dreams. This was when the tempering tank at the aluminum electrode factory blew up. The tank was connected with the blast furnace of the casting factory, and the instant it blew up, pillars of deep-red flame shot far into the sky. Quenching water, metal chunks, bricks, fragments of slate collected and then dropped from the sky. The nearby factories sustained damage, too, their roofs flying off or their walls collapsing. We ran over to find the body parts of workers flung every which way in the vicinity of the factory. It was a small factory, but for one instant it produced the loudest noise in Ŭngang. The workers who had managed to survive slumped onto the shoulders of their coworkers and screamed. I attended the memorial service for the victims at the workers’ church in the northern part of the factory zone. Yŏng-hŭi was packed among the laborers, praying. The minister, severely nearsighted, saw these young people through fish-eye lenses. The minister removed his glasses and closed his eyes. I saw the minister and the young people praying. Saw the tears streaming from their closed eyes. And from Mother’s eyes as well. Mother lifted the hem of her soiled skirt and wiped her tears. A young man who worked at the aluminum electrode factory was living with his young bride in rooms rented from our neighbors. When the
tempering tank exploded, his young body flew off without a trace. He worked for thirteen hundred wŏn a day. The young bereaved bride hanged herself. She was pregnant, Mother said. Curled up in her stomach was yet one more life, one that made Mother cry. I suffered because of the love I had inherited from Father. We lived in a loveless world. Educated people made us suffer. They sat at their desks thinking only of ways to make machines operate at low cost. These people would mix sand with our food if they needed to. These were people who drilled holes in the bottom of the wastewater holding tank and let the sludge run into the ocean instead of passing through the filtration plant. Yŏng-hŭi said the company people had dragged the steward of her union local off somewhere. On one really bleak day they fired upwards of thirty people en masse. They acted as if they were in a completely different boat from ours. They made more than ten times as much money as we did. In the evening they returned to their happy families in their clean homes far from the industrial area. They lived in warm houses. They didn’t know. Management didn’t know that the young workers, though they didn’t demonstrate when they were anxious to have something, were sprouting into something utterly new. None of the management people tried to see, so none of them knew of this change. If pressed to explain, I would call it a kind of power—a power that is completely skeptical of authority. pp. 145-147 *This is a revised version of the excerpt.
Vol.29 Autumn 2015 39
Special Section Eco-Literature in Korea
Exploring the Depths of Eco-Lit: Choi Sung Kak, Kim Jongseong, and Yi Si-baek E
co-literature, or “eco-lit,” refers to literature that is critical of the latent dangers threatening the existence of humanity or of civilizations that harm the environment. It gained prominence in Korea in the nineties, succeeding the participatory literature wave of the eighties that included division literature and labor literature. Despite the appearance of several novels dealing with the environment, Korean eco-lit has proven unable to get involved in real-life issues. While the so-called Deep Ecology movement was absorbed in criticizing rationalism and anthropocentricism, differences of race, gender, and class were muffled by normative voices. Eco-lit allows us to listen to these previously precluded voices of difference. Neither a blanket denial of civilization nor a unilateral obsession with nature can be a viable alternative to eco-lit, and this gives rise to the pressing need to explore the environmental issue from a real-world perspective. Not many writers in Korea have consistently studied the ecological issue with a critical mind. Choi Sung Kak is unrivaled in Korean eco-lit for tackling the environmental issue head-on by experimenting with genre. The wearying, winding journey of the ecological movement in Korea is stamped upon his novels like a fossil imprinted with an extinct life form. For Choi, “literature is our first line of defense” against “environmental disasters that wittingly or unwittingly pose an overwhelming threat to our lives.” He presents us with a beautiful form of literature that “never gives up the vain hope that the world will get better,” even
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as it is at the “frontline of environmental calamity” where “humans have lost the crisis awareness essential to being human” and where they “have no interest in flora and fauna.” According to Choi, the environmental problem is a problem of “humans’ inner avarice, corruption, and apathy,” and of the “irresponsibility, impudence, and greed of a few men who gratify their selfish desires with specious false logic.”1 This is the point where Choi’s fiction meets the lives of the socially disadvantaged who are victims of unbridled capitalism. This is why Flower World, the environmental group in his novel Himalayan Woman in Solitary Confinement, intervenes to protect the human rights of migrant workers. The underlying cause of environmental problems is “materialism, which turns nature, women, and the socially deprived into the Other and regards them as tools to be used.” Kim Jongseong is another writer who has continuously studied the ecological issue. He believes “the chief culprit behind environmental destruction is human selfishness,” and explores Korea’s complex situation where “pre-modern, modern, and postmodern” modes of life coexist. His exploration of Korea’s severe ecological degradation and the effects of environmental pollution on the gritty lives of the lowest classes is incessant and tenacious. With A
“River Donggang Flows through the Stork Rapids,” The Chased Bird (Silcheonmunhak, 2013)
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Part One: Fiction
View with Hugging Trees (2005), Kim, who has been writing eco-lit since the eighties, “drew the attention of Korean society and the literary world by dealing with the environmental issue with a depth never before attempted in the history of Korean literature.” In Village (2009), Kim effectively captures the “human ecology of peripheral humans living not in cities or villages but in the border zone.” In this work, the environmental issue does not appear on the surface but permeates scenes of everyday life. Kim relies on Murray Bookchin’s exploration of environmental problems in the “structural problems of human society” to provide the reader with a lively portrayal of different characters in a village. The lives of these characters naturally kindle an awareness of the environmental in the reader. Kim casts doubt on the normative voice of Deep Ecology that emphasizes a “return to nature and life,” and depicts everyday scenes of ecology teeming with the voices of difference in race, gender, and wealth distribution. He paints detailed scenes of conflict within the village’s human ecology, not only in the palpable tension between the natives and the village residents, but also among characters sandwiched between the two, as well as internal conflicts within each group. The differences of creation/destruction, urban/rural, and law/ethics in the village show no sign of being easily resolved. In the “monster city” where so-called monster plants dance, the writer does not give up his ecological dream of a better life. In this coldhearted society where capitalism rules, the “sound of a bell” rings out, signaling the hope of purifying the “monster city” that is crawling with turbid desires by using the “embers” ignited by the injured bodies and minds of hurting souls. Kim has deepened and expanded Korea’s eco-literature by moving beyond accusation to introspection. Finally, the novels of Yi Si-baek, who studied the environmental issue by linking it to the collapse of rural communities, cannot be overlooked. In works like Who Killed the Horse? (2008) and Hooker Bean (2010), the village is no longer a site for “growing crops to feed the family.” It is simply land to be invested in and to be “developed as sites for houses, factories,
Neither a blanket denial of civilization nor a unilateral obsession with nature can be a viable alternative to ecolit, and this gives rise to the pressing need to explore the environmental issue from a real-world perspective.
golf courses, and apartment blocks.” Rural life has been commodified under the label of “recreation and relaxation.” A materially prosperous society suffers a relative paucity of natural resources like air, water, and food. To remedy this shortfall, modern humans leave for ecological parks, museums, or weekend farms. Even as they reject nature, of which mediated life and labor is part, they are also attracted to the image of an idealized and ideated Nature. Yi vividly captures how the village is reimagined as a pastoral space for rest and relaxation after it has been ravaged by modernization. He uses popular language mixed with satire and humor to give an honest portrayal of the struggle to survive in the collapsing countryside. His novels allude to a new type of civilization that can supplement the defects of modern life by forcing us to reflect on the important values we excluded and rejected in the process of modernization that became entangled in the contradiction between an industrial society and the vestiges of an agrarian one. By reminding us that the crisis faced by rural communities is a crisis of ecology as well as of human civilization, Yi puts into practice the objective of eco-literature to “recover nature through the reorganization of civilization.” by Ko Inhwan Professor of Contemporary Literary Criticism and Head, Pan-African Cultural Studies Center Kyunghee University
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Special Section Eco-Literature in Korea
Short Story
“Rivers Must Flow, Mudflats Must Be Bountiful”
The Chased Bird Choi Sung Kak Silcheonmunhak, 2013, 568 pp.
Visit www.list.or.kr to listen to a reading of the excerpt.
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That’s your development. “What’s with this talk of ocean cities?” “I know, right? This is a form of expansionism too. The new powers that be are driveling on about us becoming a key country in Northeast Asia... It’s just the fantasy of a self-styled celebrated architect.” “How does building an ocean city help in saving mudflats? They’ve no idea what they’re talking about. If they want to save mudflats they’ve no choice but to open the seawall. Isn’t saving life the only way to prevent the destruction of life?” I didn’t find anything strange or awkward in hearing him speak of “life.” What would it be like if such words were to come out of my mouth? Would they smell of grilled saury or pork belly? Behind their plan to plod around drawing a handcart this time was the intention to play out with their bodies the fiction of the ocean city theory that popped up as an alternative to the Saemangeum Seawall with the backing of certain men of repute. “I can’t forget this story about Native Americans. One day, white people visited a Native American village. They told the natives they’d construct buildings in their village, lay tracks, and change the course of the river. The natives asked them, ‘What for?’ The whites answered, ‘To spread the gospel to you heathens and to help you experience a developed way of life.’ The natives asked them again, ‘What’s this thing you call development? That’s your development. Development for us is salmon teeming and jumping in the river, and water birds playing in peace. Go back to where you came from.’ When I read this story, my hairs stood on end. It touched me deeply.” “ … Ye a h ! R i v e r s t e e m i n g w i t h s a l m o n i s development all right. By the way, tell me, is ‘develop’ an intransitive or transitive verb?” “I don’t know.” “It was an intransitive verb originally. But after Truman’s 1949 speech, people started using it as a transitive verb. Truman announced that America would help develop the uncivilized nations. Terms like “developing countries” and “undeveloped countries” were also coined around then.”
Excerpt Part One: Fiction
Eco-Literature in Korea The natives asked them again, ‘What’s this thing you call development? That’s your development. Development for us is salmon teeming and jumping in the river, and water birds playing in peace. Go back to where you came from.’
“I see.” A chilly wind raged across the winter fields on the rim of Asan Bay. I could see the Seohaedaegyo Bridge in the distance; the grey sea was frozen over. “I just thought of something else. There was this lady in India who was opposing the construction of a dam. I can’t remember her name.” “It’s probably either Arundhati Roy or Vandana Shiva.” “The people who wanted to build the dam asked her, ‘Why’re you against the dam? People will have much better lives once it is built.’ To that the woman answered, ‘Rivers must flow.’ I don’t know any words more touching than what the Native Americans and this lady said. It’s the same with the Saemangeum mudflats. Who asked them to destroy mudflats to create farmlands or build ocean cities?” The young man who was walking with us spoke. “Then what should we do about the Saemangeum Seawall?” “Leave it alone, what else? It’ll crumble and collapse in time. All we’re asking is that they stop building the wall at once, and stop destroying what’s left of the mudflats. That’s it.” “The seawall could become an educational site to remind us never to do something weird like this again. Visitors could pound away at it with hammers and move the pieces on handcarts to Haechangsan every day. No matter if it takes a decade, or even two. Even mountains can be moved, one stone at a time. I’m sure we’ll learn something in the end,” I said.
The “Hammer Theory” I proposed at the talks at Wonju later on also first came up that evening. “Where’re you sleeping tonight?” “The foreman of the village over there has agreed to let me use the village hall.” Shin Hyung-rok pointed to the village beside the highway. A bunch of nobodies trudged for nearly 250 kilometers, hand in hand with young kids, just to say, “The only way to save the mudflats is to leave what’s left of it alone right away,” but the seawall kept growing, heedless of the moans and shrieks of their bodies. When the current president of the new “participatory government” was the Minister of Oceans and Fisheries, he said “I’m emotionally against building the Saemangeum Seawall.” The Minister of Environment who allowed the destruction of Haechangsan Mountain has today transformed into the Minister of Construction and Transportation. Is there any hope left in this country? Is it okay if we keep talking about hope like a habit? In the deep of night, I’d ask myself such questions. Translated by Agnel Joseph
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Special Section Eco-Literature in Korea
Restoring Eastern Thought: The Eco-Poetry of Kim Ji-ha and Choi Seung-Ho T
raditionally, no dichotomy existed between humans and nature in East Asia. Even in literature from the Sinosphere, humans were understood to be part of nature within the general order and harmony of the cosmos. Naturally, this literary sensiblity considered society’s manmade regulations and the resultant desires as impure and sought to distance itself from them. This literary background and tradition led to the establishment of the unique custom popularly known as ganghogado in Korea. Korean literature has a long history of interest in ecology and nature. This attitude is retained in modern literature as well, especially in poetry, with pastoral and idyllic poems being created regularly to the enjoyment and affection of the public. The formation of the cheongnokpa school of writers can also be understood as an extension of this tradition. The traditional outlook of Korean literature, which perceived nature as a friend and strived to live in sync with it, started facing serious challenges in the seventies and eighties, a period when Korean society underwent rapid change. The damage caused by rapid industrialization became a burning issue in society. With the realization that environmental destruction could no longer be ignored, finding an advisable direction for social consciousness became a major new concern in Korean literature. The opportune introduction of Western ecological ideas and literary theories accelerated such efforts. Along with the realization that ecology needed to be explored anew in Korean literature, the awareness
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that this exploration should be from an independent perspective distinct from the West gained ground. Poetry being no exception, Korean poets made efforts after their own fashion to present sound perspectives and solutions to the ecological issue. Kim Ji-ha and Choi Seung-Ho are especially interesting in that they diagnose the internal crisis facing Korean society today from an ecological perspective, and point to the restoration of an Eastern way of thought as the solution to overcoming this crisis. As is well known, Kim Ji-ha was the epitome of resistance in the Korean literary world in the seventies and eighties. His spirit of resistance, represented by works such as Five Thieves, Canard, and Burning Thirst, created a stir in Korean society, which was groaning under the weight of the Yushin autocracy and the military regime at the time. Kim was imprisoned several times; the experiences he had in prison served to open his eyes to a world different than the one he knew. One day, he discovered a dandelion sprouting from beneath his prison’s dusty windowsill and was astounded by its tenacious resilience. He eventually gained the conviction that everything in life and nature should start from an infinite affirmation and affection for life itself. Kim started materializing this belief in his ideology and literature. Aerin (1986) is widely believed to be the first work in which this new change became evident, but it is more pronounced in his works starting with Hwagae (2002). Kim stresses that our perception of the
Part Two: Poetry
They diagnose the internal crisis facing Korean society today from an ecological perspective, and point to the restoration of an Eastern way of thought as the solution to overcoming this crisis.
world needs to be humble, and argues that everything in the universe is closely connected. In other words, he emphasizes a relational perspective in which life/ death, beginning/end, filling/emptying are not simply antagonisms but also rely upon and are connected with each other. Through such explanations, he asks us to leave behind our subject-oriented reasoning and look at the world from a perceptual framework within a macroscopic and fundamental context. Kim has tried to present his thoughts, based on Eastern philosophy, in a systematic manner. From an aesthetic viewpoint, one of his greatest achievements is the aesthetics of “white shade.” Here, white shade extends beyond the dichotomy of brightness/darkness and light/shadow, instead implying that they rely upon each other, and lay the foundation of coexistence through changes based on such mutual dependency. Through his poetry, Kim emphasizes that the essence of the life process can be explained only through such duality, that is, through the interdependent relationship and the changes that it undergoes. Choi Seung-Ho’s poetr y presents an astute diagnosis of modern society’s structural ills and contradictions. He draws attention to the selfcontradictory results confronting our civilization as it put forth the recovery of humaneness and the emancipation of humanity as superlative ideals. His poetic reasoning began in earnest with Riding the Muddy Cow (1987) and Pleasures of the Secular City (1990). Choi estimates that the worldview that places humans and nature in a standardized dichotomy
emphasizing competition and efficiency has finally revealed its limits. Choi looks for alternatives in Taoist philosopher Laozi’s concept of wu wei (literally non-action or nondoing). Nature has the power to restore and heal itself, but the damage being committed on it today is too excessive. Choi is of the opinion that this is the outcome of unbridled human desire. In order to address this situation fundamentally, we need to rid ourselves of the artificial and contrived control of capital and civilization, and return to a state of spontaneous and effortless oneness with nature as stipulated by wu wei. Everything in this world has a reason to exist that is contingent upon its use, even things that may seem to be empty. In the image of modern humans struggling as prisoners of their own desires, Choi finds the crux of human folly and the tragedy facing our civilization. We must know how to empty ourselves and be willing to do so. Images of “holes” and “empty lots” that often appear in his poems reflect this thinking. The place where even seemingly useless things turn out to be valuable and where everything is created equal is not far away. Choi’s pet theory is that “the way” can be attained naturally when everything returns to its original station and finds harmony in the order of its natural progression. by Kim You-Joong Literary Critic and Professor of Korean Literature Seoul National University
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Special Section Eco-Literature in Korea
ă…–Poems
Beloved Kim Ji-ha
When a dry leaf blows into the edge of the floor, say that my beloved comes. When an ant crawls into the edge of the floor, say that my beloved comes. The big world, the huge universe, people, animals, grass, insects, soil, water, air, wind, the sun, the moon, and stars have all worked together to prepare this steamed rice. So, before this bowl of rice, please say day and night that all my beloved have come to me. When a guest comes, please spread wide a figured brocade in your mind from the floor to the doorway.
Visit www.list.or.kr to listen to readings of the poems.
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Part Two: Poetry
Eco-Literature in Korea
The Direction Wind Blows Kim Ji-ha
I always stand in the direction the wind blows. Not the same direction as the wind, but the way against the current to face the wind directly. There rises a whirlwind, a chilly bleak wind, and a west, west wind. My clothes flutter my hair blows, and my body, my dear body cries. I have always been a man of revolt. My life would have never been possible without the wind. Being alive, not merely existing or being, would have never been possible. If you are alive, friend, head straight into the wind. Ah, in the sound of the wind is alive the song of my body The cry of life is deeply embedded in my body, and its spirit is alive in that sound. Translated by Kim Won-Chung
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Special Section Eco-Literature in Korea
ă…–Poems
An Empty Lot Choi Seung-Ho
Flowers in the Toilet Bowl Choi Seung-Ho Translated by Kim Won-Chung and James Han Homa & Sekey Books, 2004, 73 pp. ISBN 9781931907118
Visit www.list.or.kr to listen to readings of the poems published in this volume.
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Invincible stillness is most likely the king who rules the empty lot. The empty lot may look as if it held nothing but it is always filled with something. A wind that sleeps, a wind that busies about, sometimes a wind that hurls flower seeds wrapped within dandelion stars and makes flowers bloom in the empty lot. The empty lot maintains silence whether the flowers bloom or wither, simply providing the earth to grow and watching absent-mindedly their cycle. If a passing lizard or a flitting bird should leave its marks on the empty lot they will not last long. The empty lot will rub out their prints when raindrops fall from the sky and move the dirt about. Invincible stillness that leaves no trace is most likely the king who rules the empty lot.
Part Two: Poetry
Eco-Literature in Korea
A Butterfly Choi Seung-Ho
I have never seen a butterfly bear a load on his back or haul freight with a rope as a helicopter does. All he has is his light body, and this body is all he possesses. Nothing can ever bind him. With the lightness of nonpossession, he flies freely. Flowers are his watering holes, and leaves, his shelter from the rain. His life amounts to a fluttering dance, and only death can stop his rhythm. In his old age, dying away, he wants for nothing. Because he desires nothing, even when dying, he is free.
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Special Section Eco-Literature in Korea
Songs of Coexistence and the Future of Life T
he escalation, not only in Korea but globally, of capitalism-backed development and the pursuit of materialism has exacerbated environmental pollution and the degradation of the ecosystem, thereby posing a serious threat to life and humanity. “Life” is something that directly concerns all life forms on our planet. Realizing the threat to life engendered by the ecological crisis and taking steps to check it are the sine qua non for preserving the sanctity of all life on Earth. Since the nineties, Korean poets have started paying attention to the dehumanizing effects of consumer capitalism and the ecological crisis triggered by development. Ko Hyeong-ryeol, Lee Moon-jae, Ra Heeduk, and Kim Ki-taek display in their poems a reflective introspection about the global mechanism of capitalism and desire. These poets strive to redirect our lives so that we can coexist with nature by reinvigorating our awareness of the environment.1 Capitalist desire and alienation of life These poets claim that the progress of modern capitalism, which develops and exploits nature, and the resultant excess of desires are the root causes of the destruction of the ecosystem and an environment
The books referenced in this article include Ko Hyeongryeol’s A Mirror When No One Comes Looking For (2015), Lee Moon-jae’s Now, Here Is the Very Front (2014), Ra Heeduk’s Time When Words Return (2014), and Kim Ki-taek’s Split (2012).
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that is anti-life. Lee Moon-jae says, “Something exists between the hand and the world./ That something betrays the hand and the world./ It keeps them ignorant of each other” (“The Capitalism I Know”). He is critical of capitalism’s power that does not move the world in the autonomous and harmonious manner wished for by humans. He emphasizes that capitalism should be rejected by summoning the lost “past, and this whole body” to reality. With the conditions of our life and bodies enslaved to our appetite for development, we are now continually “under construction.” Kim Ki-taek likens this reality to excavators and backhoes invading even our bodies. He describes the noise of construction that swallows up the quivering screams of vegetation, crying out, “My body, which takes in that noise fretfully and infuses it as is in my heart, lungs, nervous system, neurons, and bodily waste, is also under construction” (“Under Construction”). Urban life is reproduced as “a parched, hideous Earth brimming with desires and products of steel, glass, and cement” in Ko Hyeong-ryeol’s “Giant Ulcer.” Ko wants to remember 21st-century capitalism’s glittering city as “a lump of darkness.” Such critical observations of the poets allude to a new awareness of “Earth-nature” that, after modernization and capitalism, refuses to be reduced to a tool to be used. After being recognized as an object of conquest for progress and development, nature, once regarded as an organic life form, has lost its value as “life” because humans, even as they share the phenomenon of life, have split off from nature, in
Part Two: Poetry
which they once circulated, and have become alienated from life’s value. If we do not pay attention to Earth and nature’s ongoing barrenness, we might end up facing a bleak future where the earth is bereft of all life like an “Earth with bare eyes, legs, and chest” (Ko Hyeongryeol, “Death of a Blue Fish”). As we rush hastily to the future brimming with overconfidence, our fetishistic desires do not stop even in the face of death as Kim Ki-taek wrote in “Highway 4.” Despite witnessing the suffering of Earth, a planet that is one of a kind, we are unable to stop overburdening it with our desires or put into practice “truly slow slowness” (Lee Moonjae, “A Really Slow Slowness”). We do not realize that Earth’s suffering is our suffering and Earth’s end is our end. Lee counsels, “No matter what, you don’t get the feeling you’re wrong?/ The thought doesn’t strike you that the earth is your own body?/ Dig into the other side of your body then./ Dig within your heart then.” (“Yes, Thinking Is Energy”). In other words, this means that we need to realize that exploiting Earth and nature is the same as damaging our lives and our bodies. Recognizing equality of life is the premise to sanctioning anti-life political, institutional, and cultural plans pushed by ideologies of pragmatism and development. Recovery of nature and the ethics of coexistence Poets remember the past based upon reflections on the present and suggest possibilities for the future. “Nature” is the spot that suffers the violence of an anti-life culture and the most vital point where the possibilities of life can be read. In “To Draw a Road,” Ra Heeduk says that to clear the path to becoming a truly human civilization, we need to keep in mind that the leaves and shadows of nature-trees are the pillars of peace. At the foundation of this recognition lies the thinking that nature is the source and starting point of all life and humanity, rather than simply being a target for development and exploitation. Humans have been shaped from mud (Ra Heeduk, “Person of Mud”), so Earth is the birthplace of humans and the wellspring of energy. In “Grass,” Kim Ki-taek says the reason “that the concrete floors crack” in the city and “and the hard
After being recognized as an object of conquest for progress and development, nature, once regarded as an organic life form, has lost its value as “life”.
carapaces split loudly.” is the vigor of the grasses whose “numerous heads continually butt it from below.” The reason Ko Hyeong-ryeol can sing of the tenacity of roots by saying “trees that reach/ the deep well do not sway” (“Deep Well, Deep Root”) is that humans can lay down sturdy roots only when they are one with nature. Traditionally, the East tried to find life’s truth and morals in nature. In this sense, the resilience and energ y of nature helps us dream of being elevated into higher beings. Ra Heeduk speaks of the magnanimity of the “nerve fibers of grasses that often get entangled/ but never devour each other/ bending and twisting, seemingly aware that the other’s body is one’s body too” in “The Nervous System of Grasses,” which shows us symbolically how to coexist with the Other. Enthralled, we keep watch as “love grows little by little in the young stalk sprouting in the backyard” (Ko Hyeong-ryeol, “Raising the Cucumber Again”), wait for lightning, and happily imagine “male and female clouds, all hot and bothered, growling, and the earth and darkness heaving, almost crushing each other in their embrace” (Kim Ki-taek, “Waiting for Lightning”). In this sense, the task of recognizing the crisis of the environment and restoring our damaged nature goes hand in hand with the task of enriching our lives today by recognizing anew the age-old values of human life. by Kim Jinhee Literary Critic and Associate Professor Ewha Institute for the Humanities Ewha Womans University
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Special Section Eco-Literature in Korea
ㅖPoems
A Really Slow Slowness Lee Moon-jae
Outside the window, a magnolia was pushing forth white buds. I thought that the young flowers looked like toothpaste that spring has squeezed out. Ah, I overslept. Without time to brush my teeth, I rushed out. Then, I realized that all roots were grabbing the earth with all their might. No flower was hiding itself under the sun. All stood agape, spreading themselves wide. It was an undeniable act of touting. One spring morning when ten thousand flowers were luxuriantly open, the flowers turned up their volume to the maximum. But I couldn’t take part in the act of life. I had to be hurriedly sucked into the city. When I entered into Jayuro,* the car got stuck in traffic. It moved slower than the flowing river. Slow things should be slow. But while I tell myself I need to slow down, slowing down is not at all possible. As there is no free freedom,** no slow slowness is to be found. I have relied on myself too much.
*Literally it means “A Free Road.” **Phrase borrowed from Yun Hobyeong’s The Language of Icon (2001).
Visit www.list.or.kr to listen to readings of the poems.
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Part Two: Poetry
Eco-Literature in Korea
Grass Kim Ki-taek
It is because numerous heads continually butt it from below that the concrete floors crack and the hard carapaces split loudly. It is because there were natives who had been living there before the concrete floor covered and pressed them down. It is because new streams of water rush and butt again, when the many streams that were crushed under the concrete awaken in the spring to push themselves out but die with broken necks. It is because the hard concrete can hardly bear the itch caused by the butting power of the soft water heads. It is because the time of water drops drilling rock soars upwards, and the concrete floor moves up and down. From every crack in the concrete, green streams of water leak. Though the streams jet like fountains and draw parabolic arcs, they do not drop into the ground drip by drip. Though they sway continually, they do not fall. Along the parabolic arc the sloshing green water erects sharp edges. It lies at the weak wind and rises at the strong wind. The arc grows long and wide. As the grass stem thickens, the concrete crack widens. When thin, soft grass roots get stuck in concrete like straw, huge rocks get sucked in like cola.
Translated by Kim Won-Chung
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Special Section Eco-Literature in Korea
Poems
Deep Well, Deep Root Ko Hyeong-ryeol
Trees that reach the deep well do not sway. They are not blinded by resistance or justice. They only restrain the overflowing water and drink it exclusively; they act like a hermit on the earth and shoot forth many leaves as a model hermit. I dip my root into the well, little by little, like their roots that cross over into death. But it is they who receive autumn first every year; their green leaves are the first to change colors and fall. They know how to spread nothingness first and then smear it inside. Their dark roots in the deep well grow thick and strong. Looking up at the different skies, the roots and the well connect in secret. Roots that experience the taste of the deep well never go out. There, they keep their alliance. They stand there and spread out a feast of words. The trees with huge roots cross by not crossing and do not cross by crossing. On the windy earth unimaginable from this faraway place, the short roots and fibrous roots that only dream sway in the wind.
Visit www.list.or.kr to listen to readings of the poems.
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Part Two: Poetry
Eco-Literature in Korea
To Draw a Road Ra Heeduk
Though it is not certain whether he drew the tree to draw the road or drew the road to draw the tree, or if he drew the road to draw the shadow of the tree, the road and the tree have become the wall and the floor to one another. The green shadow was hurled onto the road, the road could have a fine pattern of leaves, and the tree stands absent-mindedly as if unloaded of its burden. Who can cut off this peace? But sometimes the axe of time cuts down trees on the road; I cannot write down the shivering of the leaves and all their cries. Some of the roads he drew bear scars from logging, which makes me stay longer and follow the winding, disappearing road to the end. To draw a road, you have to first think of the horizon of the mind and look at the end of the landscape, all the way to that desolate vanishing point. I plan to get there, one step at a time.
Translated by Kim Won-Chung
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