Pilgrimage to remember poet Yun Dong-ju (2024)

Choi Yearn-hong poses in front of poet Yun Dong-ju's gravestone in Jilin Province, China.

By Choi Yearn-hong

Poet Yun Dong-ju / Korea Times file

Yun Dong-ju is one of the most revered Korean poets in modern history, as many opinion polls have indicated. He was born on Dec. 30, 1917, and died in a f*ckuoka prison during his study at Doshisha University. In commemoration of Yun's centennial year, the Korean Writers' Association organized a trip to trace Yun Dong-ju's life, from his birth at Myungdong Village in North Kando, Manchuria, to his college life at Rikkyo University in Tokyo and Doshisha University in Kyoto and to his time at a f*ckuoka prison, where he died on February 1945, before the Liberation of Korea in August 1945. After the 10-day trip, the group visited Yonsei University, where he completed his undergraduate education.

He produced his 10 most memorable poems at Yonsei University and wrote five more poems in Tokyo. His poems from Kyoto are not available, as the Japanese police confiscated his intellectual properties. Since my middle school days, I have read his poems and learned more about him at Yonsei University, when I took a couple of courses under the late professor Chang Duk-soon at the Korean literature department and the late professor Yun Young-choon at the Divinity School. Chang grew up together with Yun Young-choon in Yong-jung, and Yun Young-choon was Yun's uncle. Yun's poem, "Star-counting Night," was my favorite poem in my youth. I was lonely in my middle school in Seoul, and I missed my mother often. This poem comforted me then and now.

I translated Yun's major poems into English, including four poems in this essay.

‘Star-counting Night'

The sky witnessing the change of seasons is filled with autumn.

Therefore, I can count all the stars in autumn without any worry.

Yet the reasons I cannot count all the stars engraved in my heart is that

The morning arrives too early,

Tomorrow night is waiting for me,

And I still have my youth left.

One star for my memory

One star for my love

One star for my loneliness

One star for my longing

One star for my pain

One star for my poems

One star for my mother, my mother.

Mother, I call out one beautiful word per star.

Like the names of my elementary school classmates who shared a desk.

The names of foreign girls such as Pae, Kyung, Ok.

The names of girls who must have become mothers.

The names of my poor neighbors, pigeon, puppy, rabbit, mule.

And the names of poets like Frances Jammes and Rainer Maria Rilke.

They are all very far away from me.

Just like the stars are very far away.

Mother,

You are far away from me in Bukkando.

Yearning for something I write my name on the hill where much star-light shines.

And then I cover it with dirt.

The reason why crickets are crying every night is that

They are distressed over their shameful name.

Yet when winter has gone and spring returns even to my star

Like pride, plants will grow luxuriously over the hill where my name lies buried

Just like green grass grows back on the grave.

Our 26-person pilgrimage started on Sept. 1 from Incheon to Yanji (Yongil), China, a flight of just more than two hours. It could be shorter when the airplane could fly North Korean sky. Our plane flew over China's sky.

The Korean Writers' Association scheduled one day for the trip at the Yun Dong-ju Symposium on the poet's life and literature at Yanbian University. However, it turned down a co-sponsorship opportunity for the event owing to the tense Chinese-Korean political situation. So we stayed at a hotel in Yanji. At the symposium, I delivered the keynote speech on his life and poetry based on his Christian family background and later the influences of the German poet Rilke and French Jammes, who wrote many of religious poems dedicated to prayers. But the freedom within the university did not guarantee freedom in the nation ruled by the Communist Party. I did not know whether the Communist Party could distinguish between a political symposium and a literary symposium. I wished and hoped that the university would be free under any political regime. Even Adolf Hitler respected freedom of the University of Berlin during his Nazi regime.

The following day, our group visited the house in which Yun Dong-juwas born. At the house, we held a brief memorial service under candle light and took a look at his Yonsei University graduation photo. Then, we visited his grave and held another short memorial service, bowing twice in front of his grave. Once it was in wilderness. In early 1980s, famous Korean-American physician Hyun Bong-hak raised funds to recover the gravesite and erected a tomb stone. I joined Hyun's fund-raising campaign because of my affection and admiration for both Yun and Hyun. In this pilgrimage, I was told the gravesite has been cared for by his younger sister, Hae-won. Yun was rediscovered by Korean people inside and outside Korea in the 1990s.

We returned to Yongjung where he spent his middle school and where his statue stood in front of the Yongjung Museum. He was a shining star, according to the text inscribed in Chinese characters on the monument. He lived a sad, short life under the Japanese colonial rule, but he remains alive in monuments and in our hearts.

Our pilgrimage group had a chance to visit the mysterious Mount Paikdu, a UNESCO's natural wonder where Dangunhad founded Korea; Chonji Lake at the top of the mountain; Domun, a city bordering China and North Korea; and finally, Ilsongjung, a hilltop overseeing the Haeran River and Youngjung City. At Ilsongjung, I asked Park Jang-sik, a singer and poet in our group, to sing the Pioneer at the. He attracted the Korean and Chinese crowd as he sang the Korean song of Yongjung. His performance was unforgettable to many people.

After our homage to Yun at his hometown, we flew to Tokyo via Inchon.

Japan was very technology advanced, to provide an internet service in the hotel. I was free to communicate with my friends in Korea and the U.S. from Tokyo, Kyoto and f*ckuoka. At Rikkyo University, I could not find anything visible Yun Dong-ju left. I could only breathe the air of the campus and walked where Yun Dong-ju must have walked with poetry in his mind and heart. The old campus with red brick buildings reminded me of my Yonsei University Mr. Underwood designed before the 20th century. While walking and looking inside the classroom, I recited a poem of Yun that he had written easily. This poem was one of the five poems he had written during his one semester at Rikkyo. It is not easily written poem at all.

‘A poem easily written'

Night rain outside the window is whispering,

The 6-piece tatami room is a foreign country.

The poets have sad destinies,

Should I write my lines of poem?

I have received money for my school

Which contained my parents' sweat and love.

I went to the classroom to listen

To an old professor's lecture

With a notebook.

I lost my childhood friends one by one.

What am I doing in a foreign country?

I am sinking into a deep sea alone.

Life is not supposed to be easy,

So it is a shame to write poem easily.

6-piece tatami room is a foreign country.

Night rain outside the window is whispering.

I have lighted an oil lamp,

And pushed out the darkness a little bit.

I am the last one who is waiting for morning

Which will come as a new age.

I shake my own hands

With tears and consolation

For the first time.

From the poem, I still can detect his loneliness in the metropolitan city of Tokyo in 1941, when Japan was entering the Pacific War. He had written this last known poem of his on June 6, 1942, in a small boarding house room in Tokyo. This poem was like an entry from his diary. He knew the poet's destiny, but he wrote the poem like a diary entry. The poet is a prophet, longing for a new morning and new age in the night, listening to the raindrops.

Our group moved to Kyoto via the Shinkansen, passing by Nagoya, where I once visited as a water resources researcher. In Kyoto, we first visited Doshisha University while it was raining and held a silent moment in front of Yun's poetry monument next to a small chapel. The university was beautiful as before. However, it was strange to see another poetry monument next to Yun's, that of Korean poet Chung Ji-yong, a prominent Doshisha University graduate who was one generation older to Yun. I did not see two poetry monuments in the same spot. I read again another one of Yun's poems, "Prelude," in Korean and Japanese. I gave my thanksto the university once again for designing Yun's poetry monument. I also present my translation of "Prelude" in this. We also visited Yun's boarding house in the 1940s, whereanother monument, erected by those who love Yun,stood, inscribed with "Prelude" in Japanese and a short biography of the poet. I could not see it in my previous trip to Kyoto. The monument touched my heart.

‘Prelude'

Until last day of my life, I pray I should not be ashamed to face Heaven.

The rustling sound of leaves reminds me of this fact very painfully.

I must love all the dying things with the heart of praising stars.

And I will walk along the path destined for me.

Even tonight, the stars are touched by the wind.

After Kyoto, we moved to f*ckuoka, the final destination of our pilgrimage, also via the Shinkansen, passing by Hiroshima, which was once destroyed completely by an atomic bomb. All the Japanese daily newspapers reported about North Korean nuclear threats during my four days in Japan. We were quiet when we arrived at the f*ckuoka detention center, where Yun was imprisoned after he was arrested at Doshisha University and where he was killed. The Japanese court sentenced him to two years in prison, which is a terrible shame! How could the court sentence a young innocent college student to two years in prison simply for writing beautiful poems in the Korean language, expressing his hope of his homeland's independence from Japanese rule.

The prison is now a detention center housed in a modern building on the same spot. Nevertheless, I heard his agony in the prison cell, where he served his sentence of almost two years and the Japanese performed chemical-biological tests on him like he was a little mouse in science lab. No one in those prison conditions could celebrate his last two birthdays. All his family back in Manchuria must have prayed for his safe release on his birthdays. Now, the Korean flag flies at the Korean General Consulate Office building compound in f*ckuoka. And 30 minutes' walk from the prison, on the beautiful seaside, is the SoftBank baseball stadium owned by a Korean-Japanese business tycoon Son Jung-eui.

Yun is our most beloved poet in Korea, and the pilgrimage was our homage to him. Our pilgrimage was very meaningful, as we traced Yun's footsteps in Manchuria and Japan over 10 days. On the sky way to Korea, I read Yun's poem, "Self-portrait."

‘Self-portrait'

By walking around the foot of the hill,

I visit an isolated well by the rice paddy all alone.

Then I look down the well quietly.

There, I find: the shining moon, the drifting clouds,

the unfolding sky, the blowing blue wind and an autumn.

Besides, there is a man.

Disliking him somehow makes me turn back.

Then again on the way home, I feel sorry for him.

I come back to look down and find him there once more.

Disliking him once again, I head back home.

I find myself missing him on the way.

In the well there are the shining moon, the drifting clouds, the unfolding sky,

the blowing blue wind, the advancing fall and the man himself like memories.

I, with other Korean poets and writers, made a journey to sacred places of modern Korean poetry and literature in Manchuria and Japan. I paid my respects to the late Yun. Back in Seoul, I happened to visit Starfield, Intercontinental Hotel Mall, where all the books about Yun were assembled in a corner. I was happy to find such as corner dedicated to Yun in a busy Seoul shopping center in his centennial year.

Dr. Choi is a poet and writer based in Virginia.