Abstract
The final case study of this book focuses on the Korean poet Ko Un.2 I pursue similar themes to those in previous chapters, from the poetic resistance to authoritarianism to the search for a critical historical voice, but I do so in a different cultural context and by highlighting an additional underlying factor: the role that poetry plays in articulating questions of identity and community.
Peace is waves.
Waves breaking, alive
and beneath those waves
swim fish of every kind, alive.
Ko Un, ‘Song of Peace from Jeju Island’1
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Notes
Ko Un, ‘Song of Peace from Jeju Island’, in Keun-Min Woo (ed.), Building Peace and Prosperity in Northeast Asia (Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 2002), p. 11.
This chapter builds an ongoing conversation — and collaboratively conducted research — with my colleague David Hundt. I am particularly grateful to David’s remarkable linguistic competence, which has allowed me to draw on Korean sources which would otherwise have remained largely inaccessible to me. See David Hundt and Roland Bleiker, ‘Reconciling Colonial Memories in Korea and Japan’, Asian Perspective, Vol. 31, No. 1, 2007, pp. 61–91;
as well as David Hundt, ‘Poetry in Motion: Ko Un and Korean Democratisation’, in Gloria Davies, J. V. D’Cruz and Nathan Hollier (eds), Profiles in Courage: Political Actors and Ideas in Contemporary Asia (North Melbourne, Victoria: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2008), pp. 43–54.
Marlene Mayo, ‘Attitudes Toward Asia and the Beginnings of Japanese Empire’, in J. Livingston, J. Moor and F. Oldfather (eds), Imperial Japan, 1800–1945 (New York: Random House, 1973), pp. 214–15;
Mikiso Hane, Modern Japan: a Historical Survey (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986), pp. 157–62.
Ko Un, ‘Arirang’, trans. David R. McCann, in Alternatives: Social Transformation and Humane Governance, Vol. 25, No. 3, 2000, p. 409.
Ko Un, ‘An Interview with Ko Un’, conducted and translated by Don Mee Choi, Acta Koreana, Vol. 6, No. 2, July 2003, p. 149.
Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: a Contemporary History (London: Warner Books, 1998), pp. 6–7.
Ch’oe Yong-ho et al. (eds), Sources of Korean Tradition. Vol. II: From the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Centuries (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), p. 369.
Park Chung Hee, ‘Three Basic Principles for Peaceful Unification’, in Towards Peaceful Unification: Selected Speeches and Interviews by Park Chung Hee (Seoul: Kwongmyong Publishing Company, 1976), p. 110.
Dennis Hart, ‘Creating the National Other: Opposing Images of Nationalism in South and North Korean Education’, Korean Studies, Vol. 23, 1999, p. 81.
Edward W. Wagner, ‘Preface to the Translation’, in Lee Ki-baik, A New History of Korea (Seoul: Ilchokak Publishers, 1984).
Bruce Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun: a Modern History (New York: W. W. Norton), p. 238. For his detailed treatment of the subject see Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War: Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981); and Origins of the Korean War: the Roaring of the Cataract (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).
See also Henry H. Em, ‘Overcoming Korea’s Division: Narrative Strategies in Recent South Korean Historiography’, Positions, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1993, pp. 450–85.
Ko Un, ‘Ko Un: an Interview’, interviewed and translated by Tae Yang Kwak, KI Newsletter, June 1999, http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~korea/newsletter/KINL5199/east.html (accessed June 2007).
Kim Gwang-il, ‘Ko Un: Sijeok Buluni Pilyohan Nadaeji wi-ui Goa’ (Ko Un: the Orphan atop the Soil Needed for Poetic Misfortune), Siin-ui Segye, Vol. 8, 2004, pp. 205–6.
Ko Un, cited in John Feffer, ‘Writers from the Other Asia’, The Nation, Vol. 283, No. 8, 2006, p. 33.
Robert Hass, ‘Poet of Wonders’, New York Review of Books, 3 November 2005, p. 60.
For context see Kusan Sunim, The Way of Korean Zen (New York: Watherhill, 1985);
Keel Hee-Sung, Chinul: the Founder of the Korean Son Tradition (Seoul: Po Chin Chai, 1984).
Ko Un, ‘You and I’, in Traveler Maps, trans. David R. McCann (Cambridge, MA: Tamal Vista Publications, 2004).
Ko Un, ‘Self Portrait’, Poems from Ko Un’s An Epitaph, trans. Clare You and Richard Silberg, Korean Culture, Vol. 20, No. 1, spring 1999, p. 15.
George E. Ogle, South Korea: Dissent within the Economic Miracle (Washington, DC: Zed Books, 1990), pp. 72–5.
Ko Un, ‘Indangsu’, http://www.othervoicespoetry.org/vol11/un/indangsu.html (accessed December 2008). For a comment see Choi Won-shik, ‘Ko Un’s Place in Modern Korean Poetry’, paperpresented to ‘The Poetic World of Ko Un’, Stockholm University, Sweden, 8 May 2003.
Ko Un, ‘The Night Tavern’, trans. Clare You, Korean Culture, Vol. 20, No. 1, spring 1999, pp. 18–25.
Robert Hass, ‘On Korean Poetry and Ko Un’, Korean Culture, Vol. 22, No. 1, spring 1999, p. 12.
Choi, ‘An Interview with Ko Un’, pp. 141–3;Ko Un, Munhak-gwa minjok: uri sidae salm-ui choejeonbang-eseo jeongaehan minjok-gwa minjok munwha-ui nolli (Literature and Nation: the Logic of Nation and National Culture that Develops from the Front Line of Life in Our Times) (Seoul: Hangilsa, 1986), pp. 370–3.
See Ilpyong J. Kim and Young Whan Kihl (eds), Political Change in South Korea (New York: Paragon House, 1988)
And Hagen Koo (ed.), State and Society in Contemporary Korea (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993).
For a detailed discussion of this argument see William E. Connolly, Pluralism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005); The Ethos of Pluralization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995).
Sungmoon Kim, ‘Civil Society and Political Action in Democratized Korea: Revamping Democratic Consolidation from a Participatory Perspective’, New Political Science, Vol. 28, No. 4, 2006, p. 528.
Paik Nak-chung, ‘Zen Poetry and Realism: Reflections on Ko Un’s Verse’, Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2000, p. 568.
Ko Un, ‘Grandmother’, in Ten Thousand Lives, trans. Brother Anthony of Taizé, Young-moo Kim and Gary Gach (Kobenhavn and Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2005), p. 63.
See, for instance, in an interview in the Hankyoreh Sinmun: Park Chang-su and Chang-gwang Kang, ‘Ko Un Siin Seomyeon Interview’ (A Written Interview with the Poet Ko Un), Hankyoreh Sinmun, 24 January 2007 (www.hani.co.kr/arti/politics/politics_general/186173.html) (accessed 25 January 2007).
Ko Un, ‘Indangsu’. For further illustration of how the poetic can critically engage questions of identity and citizenship see Alberto Manguel’s The City of Words (Toronto: Anasi Press, 2007).
Oh Kongdan and Ralph C. Hassig, North Korea through the Looking Glass (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2000), pp. 30, 142–3.
See Kil Soong Hoom and Moon Chung-in, ‘Introduction’ to Kil Soong Hoom and Moon Chung-in (eds), Understanding Korean Politics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), p. 2.
Shin Gi-Wook, ‘Nation, History and Politics: South Korea’, in Hyung Il Pai and Timothy R. Tangherlini (eds), Nationalism and the Construction of Korean Identity (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1998), p. 152.
Kim Dae-jung, ‘Presidential Inaugural Address, February 1998’, in Yong-ho Ch’oe et al. (eds), Sources of Korean Tradition, Vol. II;Moon Chung-in, ‘The Kim Dae Jung Government’s Peace Policy towards North Korea’, Asian Perspective, Vol. 25, No. 2, 2001.
Hoo Nam Seelmann, ‘Auf der Suche nach der verloren Unschuld: Ein grosses gemeinsames Wörterbuch soll Nord- und Südkorea sprachlich annähern’, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 19 November 2008, p. 45.
Leon V. Sigal, Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 19.
See also Roy Richard Grinker, Korea and Its Futures: Unification and the Unfinished War (London: Macmillan, 1998);
Park Han S., ‘North Korean Perceptions of Self and Others: Implications for Policy Choices’, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 4, winter 2000;and Park Gi-sun and Ryeong Jeon-ri, Hankuk sinmun-e banyeongdoen Bukhan ‘image’ (North Korea’s ‘Image’ Reflected in South Korean Newspapers) (Seoul: Hanlim Science Institute Report No. 25).
Moon Chung-in and Judy E. Chung, ‘Reconstructing New Identity and Peace in East Asia’, in Kim Dalchoong and Moon Chung-in (eds), History, Cognition, and Peace in East Asia (Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 1997), p. 265.
See also Chun Chae-sung, ‘The Cold War and its Transitions for Koreans: Their Meanings from a Constructivist Viewpoint’, in Moon, Ending the Cold War in Korea, pp. 115–45 and Shin Wookhee, ‘The Political Economy of Security: South Korea in the Cold War System’, Korea Journal, Vol. 38, No. 4, winter 1998, pp. 147–68.
For more general works on links between identity and foreign policy see Michael J. Shapiro, Violent Cartographies: Mapping Cultures of War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997)
And David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998).
Moon Chung-in, Arms Control on the Korean Peninsula (Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 1996), p. 250.
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© 2009 Roland Bleiker
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Bleiker, R. (2009). The Poetic Search for Identity and Community. In: Aesthetics and World Politics. Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230244375_10
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