Remember the coal miners ordered to war in Manchuria,
the land of the Rising Sun’s “East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere”;
remember the factory workers who joined the resistance in Vladivostok,
relocated at gunpoint by Stalin in ’37 to Kazakhstan.
Remember the “Comfort Corps” raped forty times a day,
the woman screaming who could not scream because she was on fire.
In Cholla-namdo we used to break the bones of corpses’ feet
so their souls would’t walk back from the other world, but would you walk back?
Once the guards forced us to watch a comrade being sinned alive.
Later they bludgeoned prisoners to death to save bullets.
What won’t we do to each other?
After liberation I saw a frenzy of reprisals against former collaborators.
An old man—guilty or innocent?—lashed to a grille of barbed wire.
Bodies hung from trees on the sides of the road, swaying.
At night a sickle glinted in the sky, sharp and pure. What did it reap.
Summer wind sang through the corpse-forest.
(Page 23-24)
Notes from a Divided Country is Kim’s first collection of poetry, which confronts the Korean War and the colonialism at that time. Kim input her consideration of the homeland, love, and family to the words which presented heavy scenes after the wars to readers. From the contents, we could experience the hurt due to the apart from the home, the country and even the hope and taste the despair between the living and the death in a war.
The background to the poem is the Korean War which began as a civil war between North and South Korea. However, the conflict soon became international, and brought the Cold War to Asia. After Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, Japan consolidated its growing influence in Korea. In 1910, the beginning of the 20th century, Korea had been a part of the Japanese empire. During the colony, Japan banned people from writing and speaking in Korean. People in Korea suffered from inhumane actions. According to part I chosen from the book, I could feel the sadness of the time.
Kim repeated “remember” three times in the poem, recalled memories from her great-grandparents. In my opinion, the verb “remember” is going to trigger readers' imaginations of the miserable scene which underscored what the great-grandparents went through in the war. Thus, readers could be absorbed in the story told by Kim – emotionally and truly. Furthermore, the memory emphasized that people at that time not only lived under the pressure from being colonized, but also the fear of death because of the war that seemed as if it would never end. Besides, the different location mentioned by Kim, “Manchuria”, “Land of the Rising Sun’s ‘East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere’”, “Vladivostok”, “Kazakhstan” and “Cholla-namdo”, bring the platform to the worldwide perspective: the era with wars was the era full filled by the Depression. “Factory worker” and “comfort corps” presented the common people who made an effort to live better, but were extremely hurt by the decisions of the rulers in different countries. On the other hand, by repeating “remember” three times, one could understood that Kim engraved history in people’s minds, a reminder for them to never forget the humiliation they suffered during the war.
“The woman screaming who could not scream because she was on fire”, How distressed she was, I could hear the greatly loud crying from her heart, from people’s heart. The barbarous action by the Japanese soldiers was presented for my eyes: “raped forty times a day”, “break nones of corpses’feet”, “forced”, “comrade being skinned alive”, and “bludgeoned prisoner to death”. Under the colonizing, life was brutal and hard. People not only suffered from physical pain, but also suffered from spiritual pain, an endless torment of the soul. For example, as the poem states: “ so their soul would’t walk back from the other world, but would you walk back?”, indicating the division between the living and the dead, Kim asks both the reader and herself, would we choose to walk back? To some extent, it shows the fragmentation of the body and the spirit, which corresponds to the fragmentation of the land, and the country itself.
The second stage of the poem is when Kim begins to express her thoughts about dark memories, rather than just plainly stating them. “After liberation I saw a frenzy of reprisals against former collaborators”. Thus, people searched for ways, such as reprisal, to overcome their sadness and tragic loss. Ultimately, they sought revenge for what had been done to others during these perilous times. “What won’t we do to each other?” In a word, actually, the war didn’t stop. At the time, the people needed real liberation, a liberation that could re-capture the innocence of their past. In addition, true liberation meant that those who survived would not be judged or condemned for being inhumane.
The last two couplets of Kim’s poem are haunting. She suggests that death itself is the ultimate liberation from colonization, war, and death. The lines, “An old man—guilty or innocent?—lashed to a grille of barbed wire./Bodies hung from trees on the sides of the road, swaying.” The imagery highlights more vengeance, as the verse paints a picture of violent deaths. It mattered very little to those who felt vindicated by killing the old man whether he was innocent, or guilty of collaborating with the occupiers of the country. Kim’s imagery is gruesome, but it relates the reality of Korea’s occupation and colonization. Most likely, the old man was not given a fair trial, and was probably not so much as asked to defend his innocence or confess to a crime of collaboration with the enemies of Koreans. The imagery is so gruesome that it makes the reader pause and wonder how the poet, Kim, could have remembered such a thing so well. Moreover, the poet remembered the events again, as they must have replayed in her mind, imagery which found its way to the poem, “Resistance: For My Great-Grandparents”. It seems that most people would try to block out, or suppress these horrible memories, memories where corpses hung by the roadside. Kim also seems to use corpses as a metaphor, stating that death became a large part of the Korean landscape. Everyone, including Kim, saw death and murder as very commonplace – as intertwined with nature. Usually, nature is something that people consider beautiful or relaxing, but Kim’s idea of nature is distorted by corpses “swaying in the wind”. Nonetheless, this kind of “nature” is something that the people became accustomed to. For Kim’s great-grandparents, this distortion of nature was a cruel fact of life that the Korean resistance to colonialism brought to the scarred and defeated country.
Finally, at the poem’s closing, Kim asks “What did it reap.” She alludes to the pointlessness of war, suffering, and death. Also, she seems to suggest that the resistance itself was futile, as its only result was carnage for the people of Korea. Thus, for Kim, the resistance was a terrible price to pay for “freedom” from occupation. Of course, the sickle represents the Grim Reaper of Death, but in context of poem, the sickle is an object with its own captivating beauty. As Kim states, “At night a sickle glinted in the sky, sharp and pure.” Thus, an object that symbolizes death and despair is “pure”, from Kim’s point of view. The sickle leaves no question that the dead have parted from the world of the living. Thus, it brings a type of certainty and closure to this work, but the last line, “Summer wind sang through the corpse-forest” suggests a type of cyclical nature to wars and rebellions, that they are a part of the seasonal changes. Kim suggests to the reader that the resistance was followed by a “summer wind”. Often, summer winds are refreshing, and signify a time of enjoyment and relaxation. However, the summer wind blows through Kim’s “corpse-forest”, a grim juxtaposition of terms. Again, Kim suggests that death is a part of nature, and vice versa.
Finally, Kim’s work suggests far more than just the futility and ugliness of the Korean resistance, and war, in general. The poem strongly states that war is as natural as the seasons. For Kim, suffering, war, and tragedy are natural parts of our existence. As Kim and the reader learn throughout the poem’s progression, despair slowly grows into a numbing acceptance of the grim realities of war, a reality that amplifies and extends beyond the hope and despair of colonial Korea, and its resistors, such as Kim’s great-grandparents.
