Faithful
readers of the Korea Times will perhaps not have noticed that the
Korean-language press has for the last few weeks been giving prominent space to
opinion articles denouncing the well-known dissident poet Ko Un for having
dared to criticize his “Master” the senior poet So Chong-Ju who died at the end
of December last year. The thought of major national newspapers in the United
States or Britain giving considerable space to quarrels about poetry is almost
laughable, so it may be good to spend a moment reflecting on why such a thing
happens in Korea. What is all this fuss about?
First,
the poets: So Chong-Ju was born in Kochang, North Cholla Province, in 1915 and
began to publish poems in the later 1930s. His first collection of poems was
published early in 1941, during the Japanese era, and made a considerable
impression by their dramatic, sensuous images and powerful language. He soon
became one of the most celebrated poets of Korea and was, late in life, several
times nominated for the Nobel Prize by the Korean literary establishment. Ko Un
was born in Kunsan, also in North Cholla Province, in 1933. He began to write
poetry in the late 1950s, when he was a Buddhist monk; after leaving the order
in 1960 he spent a nihilistic decade before becoming the leading literary
spokesman for the opposition to the increasingly absolute dictatorship of
President Park Chung-hee in the early 1970s. His role as a “dissident” earned
him numerous arrests, and police beatings that left one ear permanently deaf.
He was imprisoned in May 1980 during the coup led by Chun Doo-Hwan and was
subject to ongoing harassment until the gradual triumph of something closer to
democracy finally led to him being invited to be part of the South Korean
delegation that accompanied President Kim Dae-Jung to Pyongyang last year.
There he was summoned to read a poem as part of the celebration of the Joint
Declaration.
The
cause of the row? Ko Un has just published a 22-page article about So Chong-Ju
in the current issue of the literary review “Changjakkwa Pipyong,” in which he
lays out the case for a radical re-evaluation of the place of So Chong-Ju in
the history of modern Korean poetry, and of the value of his poetic
achievement. The article is extremely subtle, wide-ranging and thoughtful, I
would say. It is in fact surprisingly lucid, compared with certain other texts
by Ko Un, but that does not make it an easy read. The main reason for hostile
reactions at an initial level seems to be a case of “De mortuis nihil nisi
bonum” – the convention that we should only say good things about the recently
dead. In the article, Ko Un does not only say good things, although it would be
hard to say that he attacks the memory of the dead. He certainly exposes at
considerable length some problematic aspects in the critical evaluation of So
Chong-Ju’s poetry, but probably the main cause of the ruffled feathers is the
fact that he evokes in detail the ways in which the deceased systematically
allied himself with all the powers-that-be, Japanese or Korean, culminating in
the notorious moment when he wrote that Chun Doo-Hwan’s smile could only be
compared with that of Tangun (the mythical founder of the Korean Nation). Worse
still, he never admitted that he had done anything wrong.
Anyone
familiar with the history of modern Korean literature knows that writers have
long been divided between the advocates of “pure literature” and the advocates
of “engaged literature.” The first stress universal, humanistic themes and
aesthetic style; the latter insist that literary works must be directly related
to the social and political realities of the age and that writers have a direct
responsibility in those realities. There is perhaps not really any real
difference between them in terms of ideals, but what this has led to in fact
has been a distinction between those writers who were approved of by the
Japanese, and by the following dictators (beginning with Syngman Rhee) and
those who were not approved of. Financial rewards went to one set, harassment
to the other. The options were to shut up and be safe, or speak out and take
the consequences. From the beginning, this polarization was linked with a wider
social question; Korean society has long been marked by a great divide between
the privileged elite and the suffering masses. It is not only the writers, but
also all the intellectuals of Korea who have today to confront the question of
what they said and did not say, wrote and did not write during the decades of
dictatorship. To be reconciled with past pain, truth is a prior requisite.
Amnesia is still a more popular choice in Korea.
The
attacks recently made on Ko Un in the press cannot be understood without that
background. His major crime is to have raised unwelcome specters. Korea is
still most unwilling to discuss and re-evaluate its past in individual detail.
He is also accused of having sinned against traditional decorum by daring to be
critical of his “ssusung” (Master) whereas he should, as “cheja” (disciple)
always speak respectfully of him. This is ironical because in his article he
pinpoints that very tradition as one of the Great Diseases of Korean
literature. The American critic Harold Bloom has created the term “Anxiety of
Influence” for the complex feelings of inferiority and hostility each young
writer is bound to feel for the great models who went before. In order to
create, the young writer has to get free from oppressive veneration of masters.
Otherwise, nothing new is born. Which may explain the sterility of so much
Korean writing, of course.
The
moralistic indignation expressed in the press about Ko Un’s “betrayal” is
misplaced. There is no way in which So Chong-Ju can really be termed Ko Un’s “Master”
and Ko Un is careful in his article to explain how he first came to be
recognized as a poet, the point at which Koreans usually identify the role of
their “Master.” It might rather be suggested that it was So Chong-Ju who
cultivated the idea that Ko Un was his “Cheja” in order to bask in the reflected
glory. It was, in any case, always a fraught relationship, while Ko Un almost
certainly knew So Chong-Ju better than anyone precisely because he never felt
obliged to pretend or hide his independent thoughts.
The
other point that Ko Un makes, which is also ironic, is that he would not have
had to write as he did if he had not been part of the same history. People in
the West sometimes now declare that there is no relationship between a writer
and the works. An outsider, not Korean, can perhaps more quickly move beyond
the historical past to seek the lasting poetical quality. Ko Un cannot because
he knows that much of the positive evaluation So Chong-Ju has received, his
inclusion in school text-books, his rise to high positions in literary circles,
was all a direct result of his skill in currying favor and in making pleasing
sounds. Ko Un does not denounce him for this; rather he offers a deeper
explanation in terms of So Chong-Ju’s essential personality. What he is now
trying to initiate is an open debate about the true quality of So Chong-Ju’s
work, in which the criteria are finally defined without denying his personal
weaknesses and historical failings.
What
this ruckus has revealed most strongly is how ready people are to attack famous
senior writers, once a chance is given. About ten or more years ago this
happened to So Chong-Ju, when young writers first made an issue of his failure
to stand up to the Japanese, and the suspicion that he gladly collaborated with
them. Now Ko Un is attacked for not simply uttering conventional platitudes
about a dead poet. It is a lonely thing to be an independent thinker. But
behind the noise of superficial protest, it may be possible to hear a rather
more positive sound. Many readers are heartily grateful for Ko Un’s insistence
that So Chong-Ju deserves a deeper evaluation, one that includes a full
recognition of what he was and did in history, and that comes to his poetry
without a prior need to say only positive things. Unconditional adulation is no
praise; for a great writer it is rather the greater insult. So Chong-Ju’s
poetry has strengths and weaknesses; like every poet, he wrote quite a lot of
uninteresting poems but there is no doubt that some of what he wrote was of
great value. Once a poet has died, the poems are all that are left. They should
not be embalmed as “great poetry” but allowed to live so that posterity can
sift through them and say, “Look, here is dross but here is treasure.”
Brother
Anthony has published translations of works by So Chong-Ju and Ko Un