Ko Un - Maninbo - Peace & War

in 1940, in the midst of the Sino-Japanese War

and just before the Pacific War,

colonised Korea

was proud of its camellia-like woman writer,

Ji Ha-ryeon.

She was Masan’s drunken spirit,

the desire of the night sea in Masan Bay.

Lovely Ji Ha-ryeon fell in love with handsome Im Hwa’s tuberculosis.

She made a secret conversion.

Poet Im Hwa’s original name was Yi Hyeon-uk.

They had the happiest times after Liberation.

Her husband,

putting on light linen clothes,

invited Kim Sun-nam

and Ham Se-deok to dinner,

a meal which his wife in her apron prepared to perfection.

They joined the underground,

went North.

Just after the war, the poet was executed,

the poet’s wife

was thrown into an asylum.

She spent days of despair, raving and fainting,

then died like trash.

Ideology, that was their dream.

Ideology, that was their death.

Ji Ha-ryeon.

Literature, revolution, love

beneath skies that spout blue blood.

Lieutenant Bak Baek,

adjutant of the search company, 2nd battalion, 16th regiment, 8th division.

He advanced as far as Chosan

on the banks of the Yalu River. He was very much moved, impassioned.

It was early winter, 1950.

He gazed across the river

at Manchuria, Chinese land.

They encountered the Communist Chinese army.

His body turned into a hedgehog.

On a hill

between Huicheon and Gujang

he was taken prisoner by the Chinese army.

The company commander was killed in action,

two soldiers were killed, three injured,

and the remaining thirty taken prisoner.

The POW camp at Gwansan in Hwapung

held five hundred South Korean soldiers

and three hundred American soldiers.

In the bitter winter prisoners kept dying.

In the camp

each room held twenty men, no space to lie down.

If one died,

the rest had a little more space.

Keeping prisoners’ corpses

for two or three days in the room,

leaning them against the wall

at roll-call,

the rest shared the rations of the dead.

They were given one handful of corn twice a day.

In one day fifty or so died.

One cupful of lice came crawling

from every corpse.

Some died gnawing icicles.

Numb from frostbite,

they felt no pain when a finger was cut off.

Lieutenant Bak Baek did not die. He came back in an exchange of prisoners.

Goods from the PX on the American base at Yongsan are loaded onto a truck.

Kim Cheol-su, a Korean,

and Harry, a black American,

are expert thieves.

They pass the checkpoint at the back gate

when MP John Beckham is on duty,

that’s 4.30 in the morning.

At 5.30

they deliver to Pyo Jong-seon in Namdaemun’s Dokkaebi Market.

Watches,

chocolate,

‘Akadama’ cigarettes,

Camels,

blankets,

military boots,

UN jackets,

fountain pens,

woollen underwear,

gum,

electric razors.

Pyo Jong-seon is from Haeju, up in Hwanghae province.

He never haggles over goods.

He pays what they ask.

This makes him popular,

So the thieves

sell to him cheap.

His nickname is Bracken of Mount Suyang.

On Mount Suyang in Haeju

there’s a shrine commemorating

the Chinese brothers Boyi and Shuqi.

When Mount Suyang Bracken

goes home,

he tells his first grand-daughter about Simcheong,

the second one about Princess Nangnang.

He was one of the rich folk of Chungmu-ro street

but one day

American MPs, preceded by Korean MPs,

raided his store and took him away.

In 1952

people were drinking Nakdong River soju .

In a bar in an alley of Hyangchon-dong in Daegu

Yi Jung-seop vomited.

Colonel Yi Gi-ryeon

jokingly mocked the drunken Yi Jung-seop:

‘Hey! You smell like a proletarian!’

That means

you’re a commie, you’re a red.

The next day Yi Jong-seop, having sobered up,

remembered the words about his proletarian smell.

He remembered them the day after,

and the next day, as well.

His whole body shrank.

He went to see the head of investigations in Daegu police station.

‘I am not a red.

Please certify

that I’m not a red.’

His friend the poet Ku Sang came to take him home.

Everywhere people were suffering from red persecution complexes.

If someone says

you’re a red, you’re done.

If someone reports you as a red, you’re done.

Such was the age. Fearful.

I am not a red.

September 29, 1950.

The day before, the three months of communist rule had ended.

The Republic of Korea that had run away

came back.

The city was still empty.

At the Gwanhwamun intersection

one man came limping from Jong-ro 1-ga.

A ragged figure was approaching

along Sinmun-ro.

They met in the middle of the intersection. They were strangers to each other.

For a full thirty minutes

they talked.

They told tales

and listened to tales

about how each had survived,

survived in hiding.

How painful it was to live alone,

how despondent they felt

to have survived alone.

The two men shared a cigarette, then parted, saying: ‘See you again.’

Midday came.

At the intersection,

not so much as a mouse in sight.

Anyone was free to get drunk and collapse in ruined Myeong-dong,

free to piss to his heart’s content

on the eulalia growing as dense as pubic hair

between the pieces of broken brick

and cement walls.

Anyone was free to show off,

bragging how splendid he’d once been

but now he was a beggar.

Anyone was free to become an artist

the moment he stood beside an artist.

Beside the tall painter Kim Hwan-gi

anyone could turn into a modern artist

who painted pictures of Joseon-era white jars.

Beside Kim Hyang-an, the former wife of poet Yi Sang,

now the wife of Kim Hwan-gi,

anyone could turn into a stylish essayist.

While walking along with chain-smoking Yi Myeong-on,

anyone could turn into an essayist and former journalist.

Poet Bak In-hwan died

after writing his boisterous poem ‘The Rocking Horse and the Lady, Virginia Woolf’.

Anyone who shook hands with Kim Su-yeong,

who had joined the volunteer army

and was just out of Geoje Island POW camp,

became a post-war poet.

In ruined Myeong-dong there was the freedom of the True and False as one.

The drunkard Na Jeong-gu,

who pushed his way in wherever people were drinking,

was today a poet,

tomorrow an essayist.

What might he be the day after?

So long as he had a mouth to drink with

he was free to enter the bars Poem or Eunjeong

and join any group he found there.

Ah, in the ruins of Myeong-dong under the Republic of Korea

there was freedom for every kind of extravagance and bluff,

freedom hanging in the air like the spell of a dead age.

One writer’s dream was glorious, his life short.

Hong Sa-jun,

a fine-featured young man,

was a literary star

during the three months of the communist occupation.

North Korean writers praised him highly.