ⓒ Getty Images Bank

Some 20 years ago, Ha-won was a poor college student. When one semester ended, she would sell off all her textbooks to get enough money to buy books for the next semester. This was how she came across Alexei Astachev’s “The Poetics of Violence: Biography of an Unknown Anarchist” in an old used bookstore. That book was what changed her life forever. 

As I listen to them talk, I feel the rising of a faint hope that the world I live in may not be that hellish. I gradually came to know in detail how the articles I print are used and what they wanted out of them. But I stayed away from them and they stayed away from me. 

그들의 얘기를 듣고 있으면 

 나는 사는 일이 그다지 지옥 같지는 않을 수도 있다는 

 엷은 희망이 생겨나기도 했다.

 나는 내가 만들어낸 인쇄물들이 어떤 경로로 어떻게 쓰이고 

 그들이 바라는 효과가 무엇인지 조금씩 구체적으로 알게 되었다.

 그러나 역시 나는 그들에게서 멀리 있었다.

 그들은 내게서 멀리 있었다.

Interview by literary critic Jeon So-yeong

The gray color of the snowman represents the confusing, oppressive and difficult social situations in the 1970s when the military dictatorship’s grip on the nation was at its strongest. Just as children work hard to make a snowman although they know that it will melt pretty soon, Ha-won, Ahn, and their colleagues never give up on resisting the regime, the huge political force that frustrates them. The author gave this story the title “The Gray Snowman” because a gray snowman somehow seems to symbolize desperate passion and fierce beauty better than a white one. 

How vivid is the pain from that time! Pain doesn’t age. 

Should I make a big snowman this winter with the village children? I will put a long branch on the head as an antenna, so the radio signal can reach the star of the woman who left this earth a few days ago. 

All those who disappeared painfully leave a small light like a scar in the heart of everyone who knew them. 

그 시절의 아픔은 어쩌면 이리도 생생할까

아픔은 늙을 줄을 모른다.

이번 겨울에는 동네 아이들을 모아 커다란 눈사람을 만들어볼까.

며칠 전에 지구를 뜬 그녀의 별에 전파가 닿게끔

머리에 긴 가지로 안테나도 꽂고...

아프게 사라진 모든 사람은

그를 알던 이들의 마음에 상처와도 같은 작은 빛을 남긴다 .

---

Choe Yun (Born on Aug. 20, 1953 in Seoul)

: 1988  Debuted with “There A Petal Silently Falls” published on Literature and Society

1992 Won the 23rd Dongin Literary Award with “Gray Snowman”