Ko Un - Maninbo - Peace & War

who threatened you with jail

unless you gave up your valuables

absolute confusion

every kind of crime.

After such chaos,

by the end of December 1950

Seoul was utterly empty; everyone had left.

Except one:

Choi Ik-hwan.

Who refused to leave, saying

somehow or other

this brutal game of death must stop.

Choi Ik-hwan.

He remained in his small room

in a shabby house in Seongbuk-dong in Seoul and wouldn’t leave,

intending to meet the approaching Northern army

to bring about an end to the war

and persuade the leaders to stop the fighting.

Far from making for Busan

where all were fleeing,

he didn’t even head back toward his hometown in Hongseong.

Early in his life

he joined Son Byeong-hui’s Donghak ,

and opened his eyes to the people.

Then he went to Shanghai

with Euichin, one of the last Korean princes,

and took charge of an Independence Movement group,

one known as Daedongdan .

After Liberation,

he was a member of the Democratic Assembly.

In January 1951 he did meet Northern officials

and risked his life negotiating a ceasefire.

Starving,

shivering with cold,

suffering from pleurisy,

he never left.

O Se-do, slightly pock-marked,

accumulated a fortune through brokerage,

all by himself, all of five-foot tall,

with no store,

no office.

Just how rich he was no one knew.

He was considered the richest man in Cheolwon,

the richest man in Pocheon,

in Yeoncheon.

But no one knew just how rich he was.

During the three years of war,

he raked in profits,

crossing the battlefields

to sell things in the North

and in the South,

while the central front repeatedly advanced and retreated,

one hill taken and re-taken

ninety-nine times.

Heavens! More fearful than warfare

were O Se-do’s business skills.

At times he dealt in war supplies,

so he had dealings with Yi Sang-jo in the North,

with Jeong Il-gwon in the South.

Sometimes he dealt in military intelligence,

sometimes he dealt with the American Eighth Army.

No one knew who he was.

He had a high-pitched voice,

a sixteen-year-old girl’s uvula.

Having a keen sense of smell

he was able to sniff out bean-sprout soup miles away.

A jeep he was riding

got blown up by a landmine.

He was seriously wounded

and taken to the 858 unit’s field hospital.

His belt was packed tight with $120,000.

Today is another clear day and in his memory his sister is coming.

Today, too,

in his memory — all he has left –

his sister is coming.

Nine-year-old sister Yeong-seon

and five-year-old Yeong-ho,

the two came down to the South alone.

His sister died,

and Yeong-ho became a combat policeman.

He was ordered to go to Jiri Mountain,

and fought.

While fighting,

he suffered a head wound.

He lost his wits.

His only memory

is the coldest, hungriest, hottest instant

of this present time.

In his memory, all other presents

are dimmer.

He ran away from the hospital.

He stole onto a train and later got off unnoticed.

In the deserted plaza in front of Sintan-ri Station

he was looking for someone, gazing around.

He was looking for Yeong-seon, his sister,

his dead sister.

After the meeting of the Koryo Communist Party

in Irkutsk

he walked

and he walked,

across Mongolian grasslands,

through sandstorms,

as far as Shanghai in China,

he walked on,

starving.

He walked to attend a secret meeting in Shanghai.

The soles of his feet were black and numb.

So very ardent, entirely devoted to his lost nation.

In 1 941 the Shanghai public auditorium looked down on the yellowish river.

An international arts festival was being held:

China,

France,

England,

USSR,

Japan.

Inside the hall

each country’s flag was hanging.

Outside, too,

each country’s flag was fluttering.

Only the Taegeukgi ,

the flag of Korea, nationhood lost,

was not there.

A young girl, Hyeon Gye-ok,

accompanied an independence fighter

from the French Concession.

As the art festival was ending,

although it was not in the programme,

she suddenly took to the stage

before the emcee could stop her.

After putting up the Taegeukgi ,

she performed a gayageum solo.

Slow, with long breaths,

ardently.

The very rapid jajinmori rhythm was entrancing.

The hall sank under deep water.

Applause burst out.

One Chinese spectator wept as he said:

‘You have told people from the whole world

of your nation’s independence.’

He was arrested at age seventeen.

He was involved in a plot to blow up a police substation.

Part of the building was destroyed.

He was arrested

as he was making his escape.

After being tortured,

he spent one year in detention before being sent for trial.

His release as a minor was approved.

The detective in charge

ordered him to write in his letter of apology that

when he was released

he would be loyal to the Japanese Empire,

and to seal it with a thumbprint.

‘I am a Korean.

I have no duty to serve Japan.

‘Once I am out,

I shall fight for our people’s liberation

until Japan leaves our land.’

He continued:

‘Because of me, my father has become a cripple.

He was stuck in snow

and tortured

to say where I was.

Stricken by frostbite,

he lost one leg.

‘So how could I ever be loyal to Japan?’

Young Yi Seung-tae

grew up.

Soon after Liberation

he became deputy head of the youth division

of the Committee for the Preparation of National Foundation.

He was a fine young man.

When Yeo Un-hyeong was assassinated,

he fasted in mourning for one week. Then he disappeared.

I have seen a

love that is higher

than parents’ love,

than a father’s love,

than children’s love.

That poem was written by a young man

wandering through northern Manchuria in the autumn of 1930,

fighting for the liberation of his colonised country.

His name, Yi Ik-jae,

aged 27.

He was rather young

to leave such a poem behind.

When he was killed in action,

the South Manchuria independence fighters

buried him at the foot of a hill

and carved that poem

on the wooden gravemarker.

Again

the world went back to parents’ love,

went back to wives’ and children’s love.

And the walls of each house grew higher than the next.

In August 1950,

as day was dawning,

Shin Jo-jun of Pyeong-san, Hwanghae,

crossed the Imjin River, on the western battle front.

He swam straight across the river

holding in his teeth a single photo

of his mother and father when they were young.

He was in Seoul, capital of the South. It lay in ruins.

Living as a beggar

he became a South Korean.