Ko Un - Maninbo - Peace & War

to suppress the students protesting

in front of the Presidential Mansion

during the April Revolution in 1960.

Police sergeant Yi Yohan.

Soldiers,

gum sellers,

horse-carts,

ox-carts,

piles of droppings in the wake of the carts,

paper-boys,

combs, fine-toothed bamboo combs, glass beads, cheap necklaces,

urchin beggars,

Japanese-era trucks,

American army trucks.

One old beggar lay prostrate all day long.

No sign of human pity anywhere.

The hungry grew hungrier.

The cold grew colder.

In Suwon’s South Gate Street,

Myeong-gu

had no shit inside him today as the day before. None.

He could get no food

anywhere round the city gate.

For three soju bottles, he could get a few crumbs of bread.

But here there was nothing like that in sight.

Only, only

the world.

Myeong-gu’s only thought was for a bowl of rice.

Hey, monks in mountains, what use are those koans you’re contemplating?

The clothes they were wearing were American-made,

trousers from relief supplies,

and dyed American military jackets –

but

in the university’s French department

students dreamed of themselves as Sartre,

Camus,

André Malraux.

America outside,

France inside.

Perhaps for that reason,

the long Cheonggye Stream

flowing through Seoul between Jong-no and Ulji-ro

was not Korea’s Hudson River

but Korea’s Seine.

There was the Café Seine in Myeong-dong, too.

The Seine was a place for washing clothes,

the Seine was a sewer

with melon-sized balls of shit floating down.

The Seine was a rubbish dump.

A little farther down the Seine

on the bank toward Gwansu-dong

was Division Four of Cheonggye Stream

where the shanty town began

and battles for survival were intense.

Girls working in clothing factories along Cheonggye Stream

lived in rented rooms in shanties.

The owners were kind-hearted by night,

full of abuse by day.

It was one month since Jo Ok-ja had come to Seoul

as a factory girl.

Every one of her fingers ached.

She worked all day at a sewing machine,

with nothing to eat but five small pieces of bread.

During overtime one night

she felt dizzy, collapsed.

She liked nights.

Sometimes, in her dreams,

she saw her mother.

One dim bulb dangled from the ceiling

of the comic books reading-room.

The shoe store stank of leather.

Flies tended bar, no customers.

In the barbershop, honey soap.

Cheap bread stands.

In the mending shop, an old worn-out sewing machine.

All the way along, nothing but wooden shacks,

steep alleys barely wide enough for one

all the way along

There was a single water tap down below.

People lined up with empty water-cans

and a 10- hwan coin; once the cans were filled,

they carried them panting up the alley.

While people were living like this,

on the battlefront people died

and at the rear, people were born.

One woman gave birth two days ago,

and here she was out carrying water.

Her breasts hung

dangling from beneath her blouse.

She gave the child the name

of its father’s North Korean home.

Yu Seon-cheon.

Seon-cheon! Seon-cheon!

Our darling Seon-cheon!

A sliver moon rose early

to shine over this slum-village on a hill.

At 5 a.m. the night train from Busan arrived,

an hour after the end of curfew.

He had to be ready at the exit.

Soon the passengers debarked.

The haggling over porterage was brief.

One large suitcase,

one sack of grain,

one small case,

all loaded onto the A-frame,

while the owner followed behind.

He carried the load as far as the bus stop

across the road,

then demanded five hundred hwan ,

saying the bag was far too heavy.

He refused to put the bag down, demanding payment.

Fingers wagged as they quarreled.

Finally the porter won

after reducing the charge

to four hundred hwan.

No need to be polite, no saying

Thanks or

Good bye.

The porter, Im Ho-sun,

had lost a son the day before.

Today he had come out

and made 400 hwan on his first load.

Once work was over at nightfall

he would down a shot of soju .

Only then would sorrow for his dead son

come welling up.

Until then

Seoul station spurned sorrow;

at the most extreme moments of life,

sorrow too is superfluous.

Even in the wilds of Manchuria, their place of exile,

the people from Korea

built schools in their villages.

Teaching their children

was the core of the Koreans’ life.

They built houses with floors of clay,

planted maize,

and barley.

After erecting four corner pillars of logs

they covered the roofs with stones packed close like moss

to keep them warm.

The buckwheat harvest was better than the barley.

Even scattered wildly

as if by a mad girl on a seesaw,

it’s tough, grows well.

They raised hens, too,

feeding them corn.

In winter, the people had only buckwheat noodles.

At night

a pine root was used to light the lamps.

Tomorrow they would exchange

a handful of corn for a handful of salt.

Their kimchi, unsalted, was tasteless.

At school

they sang the school song.

Instructor Kim Chang-hwan of the Sinheung Military Academy

shouted commands in a voice so resonant

it echoed off the surrounding hills.

They studied Korean language,

Korean history,

Korean geography,

calligraphy,

composition,

singing,

arithmetic, multiplication tables.

All such villages were burned to the ground.

Everyone was killed.

Everything ransacked.

Nobody was left to grind their teeth.

As the southern forces marched northward,

at Suritjae village on the banks of the Hantan River

one hundred humble thatched houses were set on fire.

All but one man died, leaving a deathly silence.

The one who survived, Cha Il-man, was sick and old.

He took one look at the dead village.

Crawling outside,

he drank lye beneath the wooden step.

His legs soon stiffened.

Nobody remained.

He himself was a word that nobody

could understand.

His nickname was Inchworm.

On weeding days

he said not a word all day.

Some people working alone

mutter and

mutter,

saying things no one can understand.

But Inchworm Hong Jin-su said never a word.

Herons would fly in close, then fly away again.

In February 1951,

shortly before the second draft for the national militia,

the village youths

all drank castor oil to induce diarrhoea.

They had to lose weight.

Under 45 kilograms, they would be disqualified.

Later, however, whether 40 kg or 30,

they all passed the medical exam, second class.

Inchworm cut off the top of his right index finger

with an adze.

He buried the severed fingertip on the hill behind his house.