Ko Un - Maninbo - Peace & War

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.

If the Soviet guards catch you, you’re 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, they’re done for!

As they crossed the line

a baby started to cry.

Its mother muffled the sound

swaddling the baby in a blanket.

Finally they were safe.

The guide, once paid, vanished.

On the sodden ridge, scratched by the brushwood,

they all sighed with relief in the rain.

We’re alive, they gasped.

We’ve made it,

The blanket muffling the baby was unwound.

The one-year-old

was dead, suffocated.

The mother shook her dead baby.

She shook it

and wailed.

‘Seung-ryeol, Seung-ryeol, Seung-ryeol… Seung-ryeol.’

The father, having no spade, dug a hole in the earth with his bare hands.

He snatched the baby’s body from her arms and buried it.

Seung-ryeol,

Seung-ryeol,

Seung-ryeol…

She was born in early spring 1940

near a fresh green barley-field, skylarks soaring.

Her mother lacked milk so went round the village with her infant,

and she survived thanks to the milk other mothers gave grudgingly.

So her life began as a baby beggar.

From the age of six

she started doing night work, keeping her mother company.

So she set out on a wearisome life as a child labourer.

After the war

she was sixteen, quite beautiful.

When she smiled the slightest smile

dimples appeared on both her cheeks.

Desolate times though they were,

some bright angel seemed to have alit upon her eyes.

In the summer of 1956

on her way home from evening classes

she was raped

by two US soldiers in a jeep.

She wanted to die.

She wanted to die.

Even heaven no longer existed.

And her hometown was no refuge;

it was a place of pointing fingers.

Weeping

she left home and,

as fate would have it,

became a whore outside a US base in Songtan, Geonggi province.

Sunja turned

into Elena.

In a drunken fit she killed a US private

who was hitting her, refusing to pay.

Sentenced to life,

Elena

turned back into Sunja.

She was sent to Suwon prison,

then to Gongju prison,

then to Suncheon prison.

Never once did her lips speak the word ‘love’.

When everyone around the world was talking

about Eisenhower being elected president,

she remained silent for a whole day.

Mute. And in her heart, a clot of ash.

That war

took away the greetings we used to exchange even with strangers.

It took away customs of speaking slowly,

gently.

Words became faster

and sharp.

That war took away the clarity in the eyes

of people in autumn’s cool wind.

Gradually,

not only the eyes of people

but of cows and horses in the stony fields

grew bloodshot and fierce.

In front of Daejeon Station

a gum-selling kid

was clearly beating another kid to death.

Not one spectator

intervened. The wind stirred up the dust.

Not one

had the friendly face of villagers back home.

Of a sudden

shortly before the Armistice

the fierce fighting on the western front

stopped.

No sound of gunfire,

anywhere.

Was that an illusion?

Once again the sound of gunfire

filled the space between enemies.

Rain began to pour down.

Illusion?

That night

Byeon Ju-seop, a youth from Pyeongsan, Hwanghae province,

crossed the Yeseong River in the rain.

Bare-footed,

he kept on, heading over mountain ridges.

Finally, more than exhausted, he crossed the Imjin River

oblivious of the pain of his bleeding feet, their cracked soles.

When the boy reached the southern bank of the Imjin River,

his constant dream for several days,

he called out repeatedly, Mother! Mother!

his whole body shivering,

upper and lower jaws

trembling each on their own.

The rain kept on.

Mother was in the North now, son in the South.

His voice changed.

His face was full of freckles.

Now he was alone.

He would be alone when he begged,

when he filched.

He would be alone when he delivered restaurant food.

Alone, oblivious of a future in which he would father eleven children.

He had a triangular face.

He cried wildly, calling, Mother! Mother!

The division of North from South

divided one from one, one from another, individuals.

After that day the youth no longer wept.

His brows were bushy.

He did not weep even when, much later,

in a printing shop, his finger was severed by the cutter.

War widows need their smokes.

When you miss someone, you have to have a smoke.

When the person you miss has disappeared,

you have to have a smoke.

Widows, and widowers must develop a taste

for tobacco.

Friends separated forever from friends

must develop a taste for tobacco.

One nation was divided into two.

The moment of division,

the two became enemies.

Naturally,

inevitably,

absurdly,

war broke out.

For a few months the front line moved ever farther south.

It engulfed even the west of South Gyeongsang province.

The American fighter planes changed abruptly:

one moment, Second World War propeller-driven Grumman Hellcats;

the next, jet-propelled Sabers.

Then the front line shot up northward.

More and more North Korean troops retreated.

At first, the North’s advance had been unhindered,

now the advance by the South was unhindered.

The whole country was turned into scorched earth

from carpet bombing by the US Air Force.

Who among us had wanted scorched earth?

Was it ruins

we so ardently desired?

While the fighting moved up

and down,

the rice was ripening

in the fields round Jochiwon, South Chungcheong province.

Sixty-five year-old Sim Yu-Seop,

having given his paddy fields a triple summer weeding,

was waiting wordlessly

for the autumn harvest

His heart was entirely given over to his two sons.