Poet Kim Su-young’s Early Work “For It” Discovered

One of the early works of a Korean poet born 90 years ago has recently been uncovered. He wrote poems with fervor over the course of his short life, which lasted less than 50 years. His poems are considered a prelude to modern Korean poetry.

Lying down, with lamplight behind my back, I wonder what I have to think yet again...
Couldn’t meet people whom I should have met, couldn’t go where I should go...
When the day breaks, I wander around cold places in search of cold places...

The poem ‘For It’ was published in 1953 when the poet was released from a prison camp in Geoje Island right after the Korean War. The poet’s name was Kim Su-young, who expressed his deep anguish over the troubled times through literature. What did this distressed poet have in mind while wandering cold places? What was ‘It’ after all?


Starts with Modernism

Born in Seoul on November 27, 1921, Kim Su-young graduated from Sunrin Commercial High School and entered the Tokyo College of Commerce in 1941. But he returned to Korea to evade the forceful conscription of students and later moved to Manchuria. He came back home in 1945 when Korea was liberated from Japanese colonial rule and started writing poems.

Kim published the poem, ‘Confucius’ Difficulty in Daily Life,’ in the magazine for modern literature [A New City and Citizens’ Chorus] in 1949. Starting with the verse, “When flowers blossom on top of fruit you are playing jump rope,” the esoteric poem demonstrates the essence of modernism and shows how the poet perceived people living in the modern age.


Life Stricken by Isolation and Grief

The poet had to endure extremely hard times in 1950. Amid the violent whirlpool of the fratricidal Korean War, he was forcibly mobilized by North Korea’s People’s Army and ended up in a prison camp in Geoje Island. His pain and desperation is well expressed in the phrase, “My work, my life was overcome with isolation and grief” in his 1953 poem ‘Fun on the Moon.’

But the suffering was just the beginning. He had nothing left. He even lost a house during the war, and had to engage in translation work every night, instead of writing poems, to earn his livelihood.

As a modernist poet, Kim wrote extremely difficult, complex poems in the 1950s to describe his sorrow and despair as a man who barely made ends meet as well as his dream about freedom and lofty ideals. He soon realized that poetry was not far removed from ordinary life but was something to be created in the middle of it.

From then on, he began to write about the stark reality he experienced with everyday language. In 1960, at the turning point in his life, he was reborn as a poet advocating social reform.


Poet of Participation, Resistance

On April 19, 1960, Kim joined the democratic movement led by students and citizens to cry out against the injustice of the authoritarian Syngman Rhee government and call for democracy. He wrote a number of poems only in the next few months to express his excitement and joy. But the May 16 military coup in 1961 threw him into despair.

Through his poems, he criticized and resisted the frustrating reality more intensely than any other poet, only to realize that he was a mere critical intellectual who was helpless against political oppression.

Less than 15 days before his death in a car accident on June 16, 1968, he published a poem [Grass], which manifests full vitality of the grass roots.

Grass lies down
It lies earlier than the wind
It cries earlier than the wind
It rises earlier than the wind

Weak citizens may fall easily and feel frustrated but the general public, taking firm root in the ground, will never give up and can rise against the “wind” and smile again.

2011 marks the 90th year of the birth of the celebrated poet who inspired many poets in the country with his belief in the revolutionary power of ordinary people. Kim’s literature, represented by his poem [Grass], is sometimes likened to a huge tree, under which many poets today gather to enjoy its pleasant shade, appreciating his works. They will almost certainly continue to do so.