North Korea

Back in the day I watched a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and by back in the day I mean… not very long ago… and I would still watch a lot of it if I had a television) somehow when I think of North Korea I think of the country that for a long time in the last decade everyone thought of as the “big bad.” Things have changed a little there, but it’s still a dictatorship, with a huge amount of government control. At least, though, UN inspectors were able to verify the shutdown of nuclear facilities last year—I’m a fan of denuclearisation. I just wish there were more of it. Many human rights organizations assert that North Korea has one of the worst human rights records out there. As well as the extreme curtailment of political and economic freedom, there are large prison and detention camps reported, with concerns over the use of torture. That said—it’s hard to know exactly what’s going on in such a closed country. Despite all this, yes I am marking North Korea’s Independence Day, the anniversary of their formal declaration of independence in 1948. Oh, and please don’t think I’m trying to trivialise anything by starting with Buffy.

So we remember the division of Korea, right? When the Japanese left after World War II the Soviet Union took control of the region north of the 38th parallel while the United States took control of the south? The makings of a classic standoff. When the USSR and the US withdrew their troops, the advent of border skirmishes led to the Korean War. For those fuzzy on the details—I’m guessing a lot of younger readers are, since I know that I grew up hearing a lot more about Vietnam than about Korea—the war officially lasted just over three years—from June 1950 to July 1953. Since the signing of the Korean War Armistice Agreement the Korean Demilitarized Zone, also know as the DMZ, has separated the two Koreas.

These days, yes you may be able to visit North Korea. If you can get a visa, expect to be assigned a permanent guide to ensure you get the right view of the country.

But there are still poets—there are poets everywhere, and poetry seeps out of places, gets itself heard. By the few that are listening for the voices of poetic witness. Today’s poem comes from the anthology Language for a New Century. I know I have praised this anthology before, but I continue to be amazed by the diverse range of poets and nationalities that have been drawn together in this book. This poem is by Hong Yun-Suk.


Ways of Living 4

You have to wait.
At the crossroads’ red traffic light,
you have to stop going along, pause for breath,
look up for once at the forgotten sky,
hoist up and fasten the slipping pack.
A scrap of pink cloud on a remote mountainside,
inky darkness, on the corner you turn,
on the road left ahead cold rain pouring down
we are all being soaked as we pass through this age
for see, this is destiny’s winter
and no one can escape from this rain.
Frozen, we rub one another’s flesh,
we sparingly share and kindle the remaining fire.
In the darkness our roots twine together.

—Hong Yun-Suk
translated from the Korean by Brother Anthony of Taizé
from Language for a New Century