'Sumjin River' poet Kim Yong-taek speaks in Washington
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Poet Kim Yong-taek speaks at the Korean Cultural Center in Washinton. / Courtesy of Choi Yearn-hong
By Yearn Hong Choi
Kim Yong-taek, one of the famous Korean poets,delivered an impressive speech on his poetry and literature to the American audience at the Korean Cultural Center. It was fascinating to attract the American audience with his unsophisticated country style speech, vocabularies, and manner.
He was born and raised in a small village on the Sumjin River, bordering Cholla Province and Kyungsang Province. His parents were farmers. From a young age, he helped with his parents’ farm work until his mother could no longer do farming due to her old age. During the most prosperous years, his village had 35 families. Now, only thirteen or fourteen families live in the village. Rice paddies and fields are not tilled any more. Simply there are no farmers who want to live in the farming village, working in the rice paddies, fields, and cultivating the low hill area. There are no fishermen on the river.
I found his poetry has been based on his village and farm life along the Sumjin River. Small village life made his life easy: all worked together, ate together, played together. Life was playing. Farming was playing and fishing was also play-time by all villagers. Hard labor was acceptable, because the villagers shared the work together. It was a beautiful life he was accustomed to. It was a truly beautiful community culture. They created different plays in spring, summer, autumn and winter. So life was never boring. Nature offered different work in four seasons. He and the village people waited for different seasons with different work with different play. Nature offered the life, and the villagers accepted nature’s generosity. One supreme thing was Farmers’ Music. Farmers took off their sweated clothes and were dressed in clean musical uniforms for a performance. They wore black and white dresses with colorful hats decorated with feathers. They were masters of different Korean musical instruments ― drums, big and small; gongs, big and small; and flutes.
Farmers learned from nature. What kind of seeding was necessary in the winter, spring, summer, and fall? What kind of harvest in the four seasons was possible? Knowledge was acquired from nature. Cutting wood, grass, removing weeds, working with Jigae-Y-shaped carrier on your back, tilling with hoe and shoveling dirt before seeding in the furrows and rice paddies were all seasonal in nature. Farmers did not learn the seasonal work. They just acquired the farm work from their parents. They did not memorize changing seasons. They acquired seasons by nature. The sun rises in the morning in the East, and sets in the evening. Then, the moon appears in the night sky with stars. Their knowledge was acquired as time is passing by day, week, month and year. They become farmers based on nature.
Fishermen knew what kind of fish was there in the spring river. They knew what kind of fish was caught in the summer, fall and winter. They acquired knowledge from the cyclical change of the seasons. The flowing of time was the same as the flowing of the river, wind, sun, moon, day and night.
He lived in the village. He lived in nature. Cicadas were making noise in the summer morning. His mother interpreted the shrill chirrup of the cicadas in the early morning, “Mem memmemmemmaem …. You now get up and start to work in rice paddies or in the field, whatever you are supposed to do."
The cicadas made different sounds in the day time. “Il chooge, ilchooge, ilchooge,……..” His mother interpreted it, “Choose your work now, choose your work now, choose your work now.” After the sunset, the cicadas made different sounds, “ Dulnam, dulnam, dulnam,…” His mother interpreted the sound, “You now get out of the field work and go home!”
In his village, the village people interpreted the sound of the nightingale, “Mr. Cho of Dukchi-myon, you pay me what you owe in my bar, you drank, but did not pay last three years!” There was a legendary story: Mr. Cho in Dukchi-myon did not pay the barmaid. She died. She became the nightingale and sang, “Dukchi Cho Suhbang, Sulgapnaenoa!” She flew over the sky of Dukchi-myon and sang that way.
In my village, the village people listened to the sound of Sojuksae, the Korean scops owl, “Sol tung, sol tung, sol tang tang” in the bad harvesting year and “Sol kwak solkwak, sol kwakkwak” in the good harvesting year.
All his life, he lived in the farm town and learned their lives. He learned with them of nature. He came to know edible vegetables. He came to know what kind of grass my cow likes to eat. He came to know what kind of grass would be good as fertilizer for farming from neighboring farmers. They learned of nature and considered nature part of their lives. He said, “all my poems are dictated by nature. I also lived beside the children as their school teacher. I was fortunate to teach them. My teaching career was all blessing. They were my great teachers.”
He lived his whole life as a lover of art and literature. Art and literature taught him to observe carefully the world surrounding him and us.
Art and literature touch human lives in all ranks. Touching someone’s heart is feeling and permeating. Touching and permeating are not explainable by science and technology. I would like to quote his words, “ I have never seen an art work more beautiful than the rice planting scene. I have never read a poem more beautiful than my mother’s sesame field. Farmers are philosophers, poets, artists, and the comprehensive body of all—philosophers, poets, artists. Children playing, jumping and running are touching the Earth. While watching them, I have written my poems: what they have been speaking to me. They are the school of poetry to me. I have never been bored with that poetry school, and will never be in the future.”
I have met and listened to many Korean poets and writers, but Kim is certainly one of most powerful speaker on his poetry and literature, that is the Korean poetry and literature to the American audience.
He is known as a poet of the Sumjin River. I just present one in a series of the Sumjin River poems in this limited space. Power of poetry is generated from his innocent outlook of the world from the Korean country.
Sumjin River 3
You must be attached to this.
Watching the sun set,
the glittering ripples rush in continuously
and seep deeply into you and the water’s edge across the river.
Beloved, without your knowing,
you must be attached to the place where the water is deep.
Flowers bloom–they wither in no time;
even flower seeds wither.
Leaning your heart against the plant leaf
on which white snow fell,
you came this far to stand.
When you arrived, the sun set,
thirsting for water, and you stood in front of the water,
feeling sorrowful, joyful, and happy,
and cried, your two shoulders shaking out of love.
You must have planted your longing deep under the water.
Though you didn’t have anybody you waited for,
you returned from the water’s edge and treaded up the night path.
Because your eyes were familiar with
each stone and each blade of grass on this path,
you must have been attached to this land.
The village where the light becomes alive little by little,
longs for the love that it must cultivate.
Your thin back that I watch quietly from afar
without your knowing
must have borne a pretty love.//
Choi Yearn-hong is poet and writer based in the Washington area. He has been a contributor to the KT since 1966.