Korean Haiku/Tanka Poets Shunned By Countrymen

The International Herald Tribune had an article yesterday about Rhee Han Soo and Son Ho Yun, South Koreans who published Japanese poetry:

Although they never met, Son and Rhee shared a passion for more than six decades: They each wrote traditional Japanese poetry in South Korea, where animosities rooted in Japan’s colonial rule still run deep and people of their generation considered such literary pursuits little short of sacrilegious.

“Here, people look up to you if you write poetry in English and publish it in America or England,” said Rhee, an 82-year-old retired dentist. “But if you write Japanese poems, they despise you or dismiss you as a fool.”

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Like other Koreans who grew up under Japanese colonial rule, from 1910 to 1945, Son and Rhee learned Japanese, rather than Korean, at school. When the Japanese withdrew after their defeat in World War II, many of these Koreans found themselves without a true mother tongue – ashamed to speak Japanese but unable to read Korean well.

But unlike others, Rhee and Son maintained their love of Japanese poetry long after the liberation.

For that, they paid a price: a lifetime of disregard or disapproval from fellow Koreans.

Before Son died in 2003 at the age of 80, she had published six volumes of tanka – Japanese poems of 31 syllables – in Japan and was invited to a New Year’s poetry reading at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.

Despite this, in 2005, when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan recited one of her poems during a news conference with the South Korean president, Roh Moo Hyun, a poem in which Son dreamed of peace between the two countries, most Koreans were baffled as to who she was.

“They say art transcends all borders,” Son wrote when some of her poetry was translated into Korean in 2002. “But I was mired in despondency because the path I chose was blocked by a border.

“Almost every day, I have lived with doubt, wondering, should I continue?”

Once, a Korean editor who was invited to speak at one of her book parties humiliated Son by reproaching her for writing Japanese poetry.

For Rhee, Son’s predicament sounds all too familiar. On the sideline of his dental practice in Seoul, Rhee has published thousands of haiku, minimalist 17-syllable poems, in Japan.

“No sooner do Koreans eat sushi or buy Japanese chocolate for their kids than they bad-mouth the Japanese,” Rhee said. “Both Koreans and Japanese are too narrow-minded when it comes to dealing with their neighbors. How are we going to catch up and compete with Japan without studying Japan?”