Ko Un (born 1933) is a South Korean poet known for his role in the campaign for Korean democracy.
1. Life
Ko Un was born Ko Untae in 1933 to a peasant family living in Gunsan, North Jeolla Province. When he was 12, he discovered the poems of Han Ha-un, a nomadic Korean poet with leprosy, and was so impressed that he began writing himself.
A teenager when the Korean War broke out in 1950, Ko was forced to work as a grave digger. He became so traumatized that he poured acid into his ear to shut out the war’s noise, leaving him deaf in one ear. In 1952 Ko decided to become a Buddhist monk. After a decade of this life, during which he published his first collection of poems in 1960, Piangamseong (피안감성 Otherworld Sensibility), and his first novel in 1961, Pianaeng (피안앵 Cherry Tree in Another World), he returned to lay life. Dependent on alcohol and not at peace, he attempted to poison himself in 1970.
By chance, however, Ko read about Jeon Tae-il, a young textile worker who set himself alight during a demonstration in support of workers' rights. Inspired, Ko turned to social activism. After the South Korean government adopted the Yusin Constitution in 1972, he became very active in the democracy movement and was imprisoned three times. In May 1980, during the coup d'état led by Chun Doo-hwan, Ko was accused of treason and sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment, although he was released in August 1982 as part of a general pardon.
Ko devoted his energies to a prolific writing career but remained as active an organizer as ever. In 2000 he visited North Korea as one of the special delegates for the Inter-Korean summit which inspired his volume of poems Namgwa buk (남과 북 South and North). In the years since then he has made many other visits to North Korea. From 2008 to 2018, he served as an endowed chair at Dankook University.
2. Writing
Ko began publishing in 1958. He has authored some 155 volumes, including many volumes of poetry, several works of fiction, autobiography, drama, essays, travel books, and translations from classical Chinese. As well as many of his works in English translation, he has also been translated into some dozen other languages.
Poetry
Ko’s poems range from quiet imagistic reflections to the epigrammatic pieces in Sunganui kkot (순간의 꽃 Flowers of a Moment) with their haiku-like juxtapositions.
Other works, however, are huge, like the seven-volume epic of the Korean independence movement under Japanese rule, Paektusan (백두산 Paektu Mountain). There is also the monumental 30-volume Maninbo (만인보 Ten Thousand Lives). This was written over the years 1983-2010 to fulfill a vow made by Ko Un during his final imprisonment, when he was expecting to be executed. If he lived, he swore that every person he had ever met would be remembered with a poem. Speaking of his feelings at surviving the Korean War, when so many he knew had not, he has stated that “I'm inhabited by a lament for the dead. I have this calling to bring back to life all those who have died….I bear the dead within me still, and they write through me.” [1] The style is documentary but often leads to a thoughtful ending.
Novels
Many of Ko Un’s novels relate to Seon (Korean Zen) Buddhism and the spiritual life. They include Hwaeomgyeong (화엄경 Little Pilgrim), based on the Avatamsaka Sutra, which concerns a boy’s training under a succession of Buddhist Masters. Seon (선 Seon) uses saga form to tell the history of the school’s Masters in China and Korean. Sumisan (수미산 Sumi Mountain) deals with the persecution of Buddhism during the 18th century under the Confucian Joseon Dynasty, as well as the karmic links created between individuals in their former lives.
Reference
[1] Quoted in The Guardian, 8 November, 2012
