KOREA FOCUS

Poet Ko Un, 76, brought a bottle of vodka and glasses himself. "This has just arrived from Kazakhstan. Let's just have one glass each, as I'm a little shy,” he said, offering me a daytime drink. There were three dogs in the yard of his country house at Gongdo-eup, Anseong City, Gyeonggi Province. Books were piled up so high in his study that it seemed like a haunted house. He has recently completed writing "Maninbo" (Genealogies of Ten Thousand Persons). Over 23 years beginning in 1986, he has written poems about the lives of 3,800 persons. 

 

Q. What did you seek by writing poems about so many people?

 

A. History books tell only about the haves but numerous nameless people also lived with their own identities. A man`s life is just as fleeting as a breath of wind passing by or a cricket chirping but disappearing in cold wind. But we humans have language so we can keep abbreviated records about our tracks so that we can reproduce them. If a certain person should have lived longer, we can let him do so by leaving behind a record about the missing portion of his life.

 

 

A. Literature in our era is swayed by market, but I am not constrained. Only 30 copies of “The Afternoon of a Faun,” a poetry collection by Mallarme (a 19th-century French symbolist poet), were printed during the poet`s lifetime. But it still left an indelible mark on the history of literature. I`m not interested in the market yardsticks, counting how many copies have been sold and read.

 

Q. Whether it`s a poetry collection or other literary works, they must be sold and royalties paid. Otherwise, how can the authors make a living?

 

A. As far as it comes to poetry, I want to write for free. That`s how poetry has existed. I`ve seldom linked literature with my livelihood. As you happen to run into a drink while walking on the street, you will run into a meal, too.

 

 

A. Of course, I belong to the bygone era, and writers today can`t afford to live like that. A poet named Ham Min-bok wrote, “If a piece of poem is 30,000 won, / isn`t it too stingy? I wonder. / Yet, thinking it`s worth two bags of rice…” So he titled the piece “Positive Rice.” This is a thoroughly self-reflective poem. Conversely speaking, it is evidence that poets can`t live solely from writing today. I don`t mean I am not worried about the pain and alienation experienced by poets of our times. I`m just talking about myself. I`ve lived like a blank sheet. I wasn`t prepared at all to cope with the world when I quit being a monk. I`ve been drifting about with empty hands.

 

Q. You were empty-handed back then, but you are leading a comfortable life like this now. Don`t you want to keep all this?

 

A. What should I try to keep?

 

 

A. Huh...

 

Q. I understand you first began planning to write “Maninbo” while serving your term at the Army prison at Namhan Mountain Fortress on charges of implication with the “conspiracy for insurrection led by Kim Dae-jung” in 1980.

 

A. My cell had no window but a single light bulb was hung. When that bulb was turned off, it was just like a photographer`s darkroom. It felt as if I was lying in a huge coffin tightly enclosed. Chances for my survival seemed unclear. Remembering people I had met before was the only consolation I could find. I made up my mind that, if I could remain alive, I would write the stories of people buried in history.

 

Q. Then, “Maninbo” is related with former president Kim Dae-jung, who recently passed away.

 

A. That`s right. Former president Kim was in the cell where General Chung Sung-hwa (then the Army chief of staff arrested in the coup d`etat of December 12, 1979) had been detained, and I was sharing a cell with Kim Jae-kyu (head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency who shot then President Park Chung-hee to death).

 

Q. Former president Kim Dae-jung appears in “Maninbo.”

 

A. My poem portrays Kim of the 1970s. I described him as “a man who always gets himself prepared.” Later, when he became president, the catchword was “Prepared President.”