Ko Un: An Interview

Interview and translation by Tae Yang Kwak

Ko Un has the unique distinction of being the most prolific poet in Korea. To date he has published over 120 books, including poetry collections, essay collections, single and multi-volume novels, and scholarly studies. He was born in colonial Korea in 1933, and has been in his own words at various times in his life a poet, a monk, an activist, a drunk, a prisoner, and various composites thereof. He has been an active participant in many of the tumultuous events of Korea's modern history, and today he is no less prodigious. I found him very congenial and it was a rare pleasure to meet him. Ko Un is currently a Visiting Research Scholar at the Harvard-Yenching Institute.

Growing up during the colonial period, do you remember how you responded to your third grade teacher when he asked what you wanted to be when you grew up?

Oh! You mean about wanting to become the Emperor of Japan? Well that was a pretty scandalous affair. I was punished severely. The headmaster had me removed from school. It was at the height of World War II, and the other male students offered to become soldiers and generals to "kill the Americans and destroy America" and the female students offered to become nurses and such, but I, I wanted to be the Emperor. My father and classroom teacher had to beg the headmaster for two days to have me re-admitted, and only after six months of performing menial tasks and labors at the school was I allowed to return for study. During the wartime period, the children especially were being indoctrinated in loyalty and allegiance to the Japanese Empire. Korean language was totally proscribed in schools, and even our names had to be changed to Japanese names. There was no Ko Un back then. Our family had changed our name to Takabayasi.

How did things change for you with Liberation and the Korean War?

During the war there was so much death all around me. I was about seventeen or eighteen and everywhere I looked there was death. I worked as a gravedigger in the mountains, and the smell of death drove me mad. Even washing with laundry soap, you couldn't get the smell out of your hands for two weeks or more. I would run away from home, but my father would find me and take me back home. I finally ran so far away that my father couldn't find me. I met a monk who was wandering the countryside. He was versed in Western philosophy, Kant and Hegel, as well as Eastern thought. I followed him in his wandering. I wanted to spend my whole life with him, but he met a woman who was a refugee from the North and sent me on my way. I cried and cried. Afterwards I spent ten years as a Buddhist monk.

How did you come to start the Man'inbo (Ten Thousand Lives) collection?

In 1980 after Chun Doo Hwan seized the government, I was incarcerated in a military prison. There were five of us in the prison including the current president Kim Dae Jung. There were no windows in my cell. It was so dark you couldn't even see the urine bucket in the corner of the cell when the lights were turned out. The darkness was like a dream, and in that darkness and isolation people from my past came to visit me - my parents, grandparents, friends, people I'd met in passing, people I had never met at all, historical figures... I spoke with these faces that came to me. I wanted to record every one of them in a poem. At the time I thought that I was going to die, but I swore if I should live I would write a poem for each of them. It was this mission that gave me the strength to carry on. I had so much time on my hands. I imagine I could have used that time to study French or German. Maybe if I had studied English then I would have an easier time of it now. But I wanted to improve my Korean so I could write my poems - the Man'inbo and epic poems praising liberation fighters during the colonial period like Kim Il Sung or Kim Ku. I asked for a dictionary and I would mark good words with a wetted matchstick. But the guards confiscated it because writing was not allowed in the prison. I protested by fasting. After about ten days, they sent my dictionary to the KCIA for inspection. On the eleventh day they returned my dictionary, but I was only allowed to read it in the presence of a guard.

How did your life change when you were released from prison?

I wanted to start writing right away, but I couldn't remember anything at all. Everything slipped from my grasp because by the time I was released I had been reduced to an imbecile. All I did was drink, day in and day out for two years. I hadn't married until then. I used to be a nihilist, but even after that I believed that an activist or an outlaw shouldn't have a family. After marrying I moved to the countryside where I started a family and started writing. Among some other works, I've published the first fifteen volumes of the Man'inbo and I expect another fifteen which I continue to work on.

If there were one issue facing Korea that you thought was the most important, what would it be?

Freedom and democracy are the most important issues in Korea. The situation is very different now than it was in the 70s and 80s under military dictatorship. Probably unification of and communication between North and South Korea is the greatest challenge we face. Last year I accompanied a delegation to North Korea. I'm writing a book about it. I was able to tour the entire country not just one place. They treated us to the best accommodations. The restaurant we went to was the same one Jimmy Carter was invited to during his visit. At the same time, even the people living in Pyongyang seemed skinny and dark. The people even in Pyongyang are rationed only twenty days worth of food a month. This is barely enough to last twenty days. That means they must go hungry ten days out of the month. I had heard that about two million people had already starved to death, and when I asked about it the reply was that it was only six hundred thousand. I was astonished. This means that at least six hundred thousand people have starved to death and probably more. I'm not an anti-communist, but in many ways I think that North Korea is more class differentiated than the South. Ordinary people can not even freely move about within the country without special domestic passports. There are two basic rights that North Korean people do not have - the right to travel and the right to food. Without these North Korea's future is ominous.

What are some of your plans for the immediate future?

I want to be involved in exposing Korea's artistic and cultural achievements to the rest of the world. That is one of the reasons I am here for a year. I have traveled to some of the major cities in the U.S. - New York, Berkeley, Chicago... In April I plan to visit Canada and in May Mexico. I will do more traveling after then as well.