LTI Korea 
DLKL 
SIWF 
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Readings
A Poetry Reading by Poet Shin Dalja "A Bell Ringing"
A Bell Ringing Do you hear the bell ringing inside a sheet of paper?The bell ringing at the very momentwhen you give up the heated cravings of greedin front of a sheet of paperwith nothing visible,nothing audible.Before the sheet of paper that faces us sincerely,having come past noise flapping like rags around the ears,walking through the forest of buildings rising like ragewhere lights glimmer, more eye-stabbing still at sunset,heavy shoulders drooping,When the word 'purity', wrapped in clear plastic and frozen,softens and melts,with the energy of someone hot after rubbing hands togetherapproaching green through those dark underground depths,the bell ringing in my heart.The bell is ringing. translated by Brother Anthony of Taize and Chung Eun-Gwi
By Shin Dalja
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Readings
"Wind Burial 27" by Hwang Tong-gyu
Wind Burial 27 When I leave this world I'll take my two hands, two feet, and my mouth. I'll take my dim eyes, too, carefully covering them with my lids. But I'd rather leave my ears, Ears keen to catch the sound of late night rain As it gives its arm to autumn’s shoulder. Ears that know which autumn tree stands in rain Only by listening Will be left.
By Hwang Tong-gyu
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Readings
"Canzone Napoletana" by Hwang Tong-gyu
Canzone Napoletana Coming out of the lounge for retired professors, Failing to conclude the inconsequential debate on the death of literature (Hey, have I been kicking against empty air all my life?) I started the car and turned on the audio. The Canzone Napoletana sung by the old Tenor Stephano, On the Circular Road, suddenly my eyeballs are brimful with cherry blossoms. Opening the windows and driving slowly to pull up at the sidewalk, I accompany my humming with the songs. Thirty years ago, The azure-blue waves lapping against the Napoli seashore, When the aroma of orange flowers invaded my brain humming like a swarm of bees. Still the waves may cast soul-stirring resonances against the shore. As if mesmerized by the song, a couple of flower petals fly into the car and Touch my face. My body is electrified in spite of myself, Slowly my eyes are closed and black-out, come on, where am I? The spot where you can look upward at the St. Lucia Cathedral? Yet, cobalt-blue waves undulate before your eyes. Indubitably, how can Napoli exist only in Napoli? At Anhung in Taeangun, A Yesongri in Bogildo before the beach resort was opened, Cobalt-blue spring waves undulated sending spasms of electricity all over my body. Petals sit on my head and hands. What if the flame of literature flickering is snuffed out all of a sudden? How on earth can literature exist in literature only? Translated by Hwang Hoonsung The original version of this poem was first published in Munhakdongne The Quarterly, Vol.84.
By Hwang Tong-gyu
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Readings
"Song of Peace" by Hwang Tong-gyu
Song of Peace I’m told we are a puny race. Doors locked even in daytime, bathing our eyes with “Trust Drops,” we read light essays, hugging the stove. Dragging the anguish of no place to hide like a soldier with one or two chevrons on the arm, you travel the country from Kimhae to Hwachon,* winter fatigues hanging on you, a canteen flapping at your side. Wherever you turn, barbed wire, at every wire, a checkpoint. I do not understand this love, this smothering jealous love. I spread my gloved hands, palms up. Snow falling for some time now, a snow colder than snow. *From Kimhae to Hwachon: from the southernmost part to the northernmost part of South Korea.
By Hwang Tong-gyu
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Readings
"Spirit Mountain" by Kim Kwang-Kyu
Spirit Mountain In my childhood village home there was a mysterious mountain. It was called Spirit Mountain. No one had ever climbed it. By day, Spirit Mountain could not be seen. With thick mist shrouding its lower half and clouds that covered what rose above, we could only guess dimly where it lay. By night, too, Spirit Mountain could not be seen clearly. In the moonlight and starlight of bright cloudless nights its dark form might be glimpsed, yet it was impossible to tell its shape or its height. One day recently, seized with a sudden longing to see Spirit Mountain—it had never left my heart—I took an express bus back to my home village. Oddly enough, Spirit Mountain had utterly vanished and the unfamiliar village folk I questioned swore that there was no such mountain there.
By Kim Kwang-Kyu
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Readings
"North South East West" by Kim Kwang-Kyu
North South East West In spring a flood of tender green goes rising, spreading northward, northward. Unhindered by barbed wire or military demarcation line it journeys north. Rising over mountains crossing plains, azaleas and forsythias cross the border north. In summer the cuckoo’s call, the croak of frogs, are just the same in every place. In fall a flood of golden hues comes dropping spreading southward, southward. Unhindered by demilitarized zone or lines forbidding access it journeys south. Crossing rivers passing over valleys cosmos flowers and crimson leaves cross the border south. In winter the taste of ice-cold pickle the taste of spicy morning soup are just the same in every place. North South East West: making no distinction, covering everywhere alike in white, no one can keep back the snowstorm.
By Kim Kwang-Kyu
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Readings
"No One Writes Back" by Jang Eunjin
No One Writes Back is a beautiful gem that works its slow magic on you over the course of 152 numbered paragraphs of which the shortest is only three words, at least in the English translation. The blurb on the back of the book rather undersells it, pitching Jang’s writing as “…this sly update of the picaresque novel.” I had to look up what a picaresque novel was, and still have no idea why it might need a sly update. This novel can in fact easily stand on its own without being put in a particular literary context. And unusually for many Korean novels and short stories that have made it into an English translation, No One Writes Back can speak to a world audience without the need for a Korean primer. There are only two terms, White Day and Chuseok, that might lead a person with limited contact with Korean culture to head for a search engine, but both words and their significance are perfectly well explained on Wikipedia, and maybe these days do not need a footnote anyway. Otherwise, this poignant novel, in which nothing much happens but which talks about human communication and family relationships, speaks to people regardless of language and nationality. It is a fine choice to be included in Dalkey Archive’s first set of translations in their Library of Korean Literature. It deserves to stand well on its own as a novel, not as something to be studied as world literature. The novel is a road trip: a man, Jihun, and his dog, Wajo, travel from motel to motel, the direction determined largely by whichever way the blind dog feels like walking when they set off in the morning. Along the way they meet a woman, an ex-girlfriend, and many strangers. Any time Jihun befriends a stranger he asks them for their address so that he can write to them. And if he is given their address, he gives the stranger a number by which he will refer to them, filing them away in his mind together with details of their lives. Each day in his motel room he writes a letter to one of the people he has met on his three-year journey, setting out his thoughts and experiences of the previous day. We never get to read any of the letters Jihun writes to the strangers, but during the time we share with him we do get to read four letters to his family – his mother, father, brother, and sister – which cast light on his family history and to a certain extent explain why he decided to go on this aimless journey. We also learn more about Jihun as he gradually befriends a novelist – known only as “the woman” or “751” – with whom much of the journey is spent. We long for the two people to form a more permanent connection, and speculate as to whether 751, who is writing a book as she accompanies him, has actually written the book we are reading. The pacing is leisurely, congenial, and pleasant, and as Jihun returns home we get a revelation and a satisfying resolution, which makes you want to read the book all over again and tell everyone else to read it too.
By Korean Literature Now
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Readings
"Trees and Shadows" by Kim Nam Jo
Trees and Shadows Trees and shadows. Trees look down upon shadows. Shadows look up toward trees. Even as night settles, even as rain descends shadows are there. Trees know it.
By Kim Nam Jo
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Readings
Heartache “I am sick,” my heart said, but Silence had not yet matured, so that voice was faint. Later, When my heart said, “I am sick, gravely sick.” Because silence had matured I knew what it had said. My heart said, “I have melted From the pierced pains of the arrow That each became their own scales and tones As if notes in a symphony From a melody of a solemn song But the concert is an abyss That can only be heard in silence.” My heart also said, “Longings, regrets, destitution, pain The everyday life of man These break down into water And until it becomes distilled, In pain, sufferings are Devoted As a gift upon the altar of life And life is truly Of this value.” translated by Sunny Jung
By Kim Nam Jo
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Readings
"The Twentieth Century" by Kim Nam Jo
The Twentieth Century I loved the Twentieth Century. I met my life as my betrothed and through my life-studies (fated to begin most miserably on fields of war and death) I was awakened to pure and passionate yearning and the nobility of life. I loved the Twentieth Century. I loved its shuddering, suffering, and trembling hope. I loved the sublime loneliness of my contemporaries, those talented people, distant as stars and quite as beautiful, with their superabundant civilizations and deeply thoughtful intellectual traditions. I felt greatly honored to be graced by their light. I loved the Twentieth Century. I loved its aesthetics of heart-numbing contrition, its shame and the ache of its wounds and ah, its floods of bitter grief: “Yes, I did wrong, I did wrong.” I ever so much loved the Twentieth Century whose lessons and blood, now transfused into a new millennium, reverberate through the deepest of nerves.
By Kim Nam Jo
