Ch'on Sang-pyong
When Ch'on Sang Pyong left this world on April 28, 1993, it was a long-rehearsed
departure. He had already left the world a first time in 1967, when the
agents of the National Security Agency (KCIA) whisked him away to the dreaded
cellars of their building in central Seoul. There he was subjected to torture
by water, and also by electric-shock applied to his genitals. His name
had been found in the address-book of a friend from university days, a
friend who was now accused of being a communist spy. After six months in
detention, he was finally freed, having nothing to confess except the fact
that he had friends. As a result of the electrical torture, the poet would
never be able to have children.
Born in early 1930 in Japan, he returned to Korea with his family in 1945
and resumed his interrupted schooling at Masan. The first of his poems
to be published was the poem 'River waters' that appeared in the monthly
review Munye in 1949, when the poet was still at school. By 1952
he was established as a poet, with recognition from already reputed writers.
By this time he was studying at Seoul National University. After finishing
his studies there, he worked for a while in Pusan. In addition to writing
poems, he had also already begun to compose literary essays that were published
in various periodicals. They constitute the other important aspect of his
life's work as a writer.
Not very long after being tortured, Ch'on Sang Pyong 'died' a second time.
Deeply traumatized by the violence he had undergone, he began to roam about,
drinking wildly until at last, in 1971, he disappeared. Months passed,
his friends and relatives searched for him everywhere to no avail. They
could only conclude that he had died and been buried somewhere anonymously,
unknown. In sorrow, they collected the poems they could find, and published
a posthumous memorial volume.
Ch'on Sang Pyong's career may have been marked by a series of deaths, it
is also a story of multiple resurrections. Suddenly news came that he was
alive after all, interned in the Seoul municipal asylum where he had been
taken after he had collapsed in the street. The only things he could recall
at that time were his name, and the fact that he was a poet. Perhaps the
second memory was the thread that kept him alive.
Deeply withdrawn though he was, Ch'on Sang Pyong showed a clear improvement
after being visited by Mok Sun Ok, the younger sister of one of his university
friends. The doctor told her that she could help him by her visits and
that if all went well he might be ready to return to life in the outside
world after a couple of months. So Mok Sun Ok came to visit her brother's
friend every day, until he was as ready as he ever would be to come back
to life in society. Only it was clear that he would hardly be able to fend
for himself on his own. He had the heart of a child, and a child's fragility.
Ch'on Sang Pyong and Mok Sun Ok were married in 1972, a marriage that endured
through twenty years of sometimes terrible hardship and struggle.
The poet's love of company, his simple trust, and his enjoyment of a drink
and a smoke, did not answer the question of how the newly-weds were to
feed and house themselves. Friends helped Mok Sun Ok open a cafe‚ in a
small room in the Insadong neighborhood of Seoul, much frequented by artists,
writers, journalists and intellectuals. The name given to the cafe‚ was
Kwi-ch'on 'Back to heaven," the title of one of Ch'on's early
lyrics. The couple lived in tiny rooms in an old house on the outskirts
of Uijongbu, to the north of Seoul.
By 1988, years of drinking had eroded the poet's liver until at last a
doctor told Mok Sun Ok that her husband had reached the end of the trail,
that he would never recover and she must prepare for the inevitable end.
Another doctor, a friend of theirs, with a small clinic in the town of
Ch'unch'n, twenty or thirty miles outside of Seoul, decided to try to help.
Ch'on Sang Pyong was admitted there and for the following months Mok Sun
Ok took the bus every evening to be with him. She has written how, returning
to Seoul from her daily visits, she used to pray silently in the bus: 'God!
Not yet. Give him another five years, please. Five more years.'
Amazingly, strength returned and the poet was able to leave the clinic
to resume a measure of normal living. For another five years. In the space
of this reprieve he saw the publication of new volumes of poetry and of
essays. Until at last he made his final journey Back to Heaven on April
28, 1993. People opening the door of the Insadong cafe‚ no longer hear
the poet's raucous voice call from his customary seat in a corner: 'Come
on in, there's room, there's room!' Even when, with fifteen customers,
the room was completely full.
Ch'on Sang Pyong enjoyed the rare privilege of surviving to see his poems
published posthumously; more than that, his first, 'posthumous' volume
of poems was followed by several other volumes published in his lifetime.
In 1993 a second, this time truly posthumous, volume of poems appeared.