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Korea Times Correspondent
LONGJING ― ``You can't miss it. There is an arrow sign on the side of the trail,'' said local resident Li Yinghua, telling this writer how to find the tomb.
After some walking on the mountain trail, we arrived at a wooden signpost, as she said. But it was broken, with the arrow pointing to the ground. All of a sudden, I found myself standing in the middle of hundreds of tombs that were watching me in grave silence. The winter sun was preparing to retire. Anxiety began to sink in.
I was on my way to the tomb of poet Yoon Dong-joo (1917 - 1945). Born and raised in northern Manchuria, or Gando, during the Japanese colonial occupation of Korea, Yoon has been regarded as a bard of the utmost purity, youth, and patriotism. His posthumously published collection of poems, under the title ``The Heavens, the Wind, the Stars and Poetry,'' is a timeless favorite of Koreans.
According to a document displayed in the poet's museum, located next to his birth house, Koreans started moving to Longjing in 1860s, forming a village in 1877. In Longjing today, ethnic Koreans account for 66 percent of the population of some 250,000, who pronounce the city the Korean way: Yongjeong.
The city is well known not just as the birthplace of the poet but for serving as the background for novelist Park Kyung-li's multi-million-copy bestseller ``Toji'' (The Land), which depicted the hardship Koreans faced during the turbulent early 20th century. During the Second World War, Yongjeong was also one of the fierce battlefields for Korean independence fighters against the Japanese colonialists.
In 1941, Yoon graduated from what is now Yonsei University, majoring in literature. The following year, he went to Japan and entered the English department of Rikkyo University in Tokyo, before transferring to Doshisha University in Kyoto.
On July 14, 1943, Yoon was arrested as an ``ideological offender'' by the Japanese police and detained. The following year, he was sentenced to two years in prison for being part of the underground resistance movement against the Japanese occupiers. He was subsequently imprisoned in Fukuoka, southwestern Japan, where he died in February 1945 at the age of 28. The following month, his body returned to Yongjeong. According to a 2007 survey, he was selected as Koreans' favorite poets, and his ``Seo-si'' is also often cited as one of Koreans' favorite poems. It reads:
"Let me have no shame
Under the heaven
Till I die.
Even the sound of wind passing the leaves
Pained my heart.
With a heart singing stars.
I will love all dying things.
And I must step the path
That's been given to me.
Tonight also
The wind sweeps past among the stars."
As is often the case among literature giants, Yoon is not without controversy. Firstly, he is widely considered as the so-called a ``resistance poet'' against the Japanese colonial rule. The above poem, Seo-si, is frequently touted as the poet's expression of hope for his nation's freedom and independence and themes that resonated well with the Korean people at that period. Likewise, he has been also praised as a ``minjok siyin,'' or national poet.
However, Yonsei University Professor Ma Kwang-soo, who became the youngest professor there at the age of 28 with his doctoral thesis on the poet, has long argued that Yoon shouldn't be regarded as a resistance poet, but a pure humanist, saying that none of his poems actually reflects the theme of ``resistance'' per se.
Scholars who agree with Ma's view also point out that Yoon adopted a Japanese name in an act of ``compliance'' to the colonialists in order to secure his enrollment at a Japanese university.
The second controversy is about the fidelity of the published poems to his original texts. In the first edition of his posthumous collection of poems in 1948, there were 31 poems. However, in the third edition, published in 1976, the collection expanded to contain a total of 116 poems, adding some previously unpublished poems that were kept by Yoon's family members.
Some scholars who had access to some of Yoon's original poems found discrepancies between Yoon's original poems and the published ones, raising the possibility that some of Yoon's poems were ``doctored'' or modified.
The third controversy is over the cause of his death. Yoon died at the age of 28 while serving his term in a Japanese prison. Some historians, citing the testimonial of Yoon's prison inmate, Song Mong-gyu, raised the possibility that the poet was actually a victim of a medical experiment on humans by the Japanese military.
When Yoon's father and uncle went to the prison to pick up the poet's body, Mong, the poet's cousin, was said to have told them, ``We have been given unknown injections every day, killing Dong-joo. My body is also like this,'' highlighting his fragile body. Japan denies the claim.
Despite the controversy, Yoon has never lost his special place in Korean people's mind, with his meek, introverted, and, according to some, handsome image of a young intellectual who died too early.
Some critics say the poet's life has been mystified, if not beautified. Others even go so far as to say that Koreans ``blindly'' love the poet as they psychologically seek out a ``hero figure'' from a dark period in Korean history. Count me as one of them. Otherwise, I wouldn't have come all the way here to northern Manchuria on a cold winter day to see his tomb.
I paused in the middle of the trail. But I soon decided to move on, remembering Li's word that Yoon's tomb is ``up in the hill.''
As I walked deeper into the mountain, there was more snow, piled as high as my knees. I walked past a yellow cornfield, and, next to it, I discovered another wooden arrow, to my relief. After some more walking, I finally discovered his tomb.
I have to admit that I was disappointed. I was expecting a big, decorated tomb, the same as some of the ones I'd passed by and had initially mistaken as the poet's. His tomb was just as ``normal'' as the other tombs surrounding it and lacked ornamental features.
There I stood in front of the poet ― silently ― until it got so dark that I couldn't make out his name on his tombstone. Dong-joo may not have lived all his life as those who praise him say. The details of his actual history may slightly differ from what we believe. He composed poems with themes he himself may not have articulated. Nonetheless, Koreans later found them resonating deep within their psyche in the turbulent period of the early 20th century.
When I descended from the mountain in the darkness, I saw Liu, my taxi driver, waiting for me anxiously. ``I have been worried about you. You disappeared into the mountain,'' he said in a relieved voice, adding, ``What did you do up there?''
``I saw an old friend,'' I replied.
boston.sunny@yahoo.com
