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KIM SUN-WOO the basket opens wide your open gate and all the male beasts of the mountains have caught the scent on this night when they swell with dead babies. I came out of Parao. 1946. And so this is an old story, It was the first day of the new year when I got home. My mother had drawn three bowls of water. She’d placed them on top of a big earthenware jar and she was bowing to them.Weeping, she’d been making offerings to my spirit because it was NewYear’s Day, and so this is a story about a very old today. I’ve never spoken a word about anything that happened to me in Parao. Never in my whole life did I go to the baths with anyone. I was born in the year of the dragon, 1928, in Hikone City, I was, the name was Soon-ae, I lived in Masan the year I turned ten . . . AUTHOR NOTES: – Parao is now called Palau. – Elder Kang Soon-ae was a comfort woman (sex slave), a victim of the Japanese army. In 1993, the year she turned 65, she participated in a Wednesday demonstration, a gathering of former comfort women, and made a clean breast of her sorrow-filled life. She said it felt good, getting these stories off her chest, where they had been her entire life, and out into the open. In 2005, at the age of 78, she passed away. – The gathered findings Forcibly Impressed Army ‘ComfortWomen’ from Chosun, published by the Korean Society for Chongshindae Research, served as a reference. To read more poems online by Kim Sun-woo please go to www.banipal.co.uk/selections Kim Sun-woo was born in 1970. She made her debut in 1996 with “Old Road to Daegwanlyeong” and ten other poems in “Quarterly Changbi “. She has been active in all genres of literature, from poetry to essays and fiction. Her work is a strong, sensual expression of ecofeminism and Eastern philosophy with a sense of vitality, maternity, realistic criticism, and cosmic imagination. Kim’s published works include the poetry collections “If My Tongue Refuse to Stay Locked Inside My Body”, “Asleep Under the Peach Blossoms” and “Who Fell Asleep Opened”. 160 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES
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KIM IN-SOOK Sea and ButterflyTRANSLATEDBYSOHNSUK-JOO It was around 1 p.m. when Chae-geum called to say goodbye before she left for South Korea.When the phone rang, I was lost in thought in the middle of the living room, still holding the little potted plant I had bought earlier that day from the neighbourhood florist. I’d hurried back home to escape the brutal midday sun, only to discover that there didn’t seem to be any place for the plant in the apartment that still felt like a stranger’s despite the passage of time, filled as it was with the former tenant’s belongings. Each time I unlocked the door to let myself in, I couldn’t seem to find any place to sit or stand, as if an invisible hand were pushing me away. It was the same when the phone broke the silence. I found myself holding my breath whenever I picked up the receiver, as if someone might catch me answering another’s call without their permission. I would not speak until I heard a voice on the other end of the line and, most of the time, I just got dead air. On those occasions when I offered a “hello”, silence fell without fail, then the callers would hang up, as if by some prior agreement. The phone in the apartment rang several times a day, but calls for me were so rare that it was a minor miracle when one came along. When Chae-geum called that day, I checked the time. It was one of the strange habits I had formed since moving in, despite the fact that whether it was 1pm or 1am, the calls were hardly ever for me. I set the flowerpot down by my feet and cradled the phone to my ear, determined not to speak first. My breathing grew quiet as a stray cat’s, ever on guard, slipping into an empty house like a burglar in broad daylight. BANIPAL 43 – SPRING 2012 161

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KIM SUN-WOO

the basket opens wide your open gate and all the male beasts of the mountains have caught the scent on this night when they swell with dead babies.

I came out of Parao. 1946. And so this is an old story,

It was the first day of the new year when I got home. My mother had drawn three bowls of water. She’d placed them on top of a big earthenware jar and she was bowing to them.Weeping, she’d been making offerings to my spirit because it was NewYear’s Day,

and so this is a story about a very old today.

I’ve never spoken a word about anything that happened to me in Parao. Never in my whole life did I go to the baths with anyone. I was born in the year of the dragon, 1928, in Hikone City, I was, the name was Soon-ae, I lived in Masan the year I turned ten . . .

AUTHOR NOTES: – Parao is now called Palau. – Elder Kang Soon-ae was a comfort woman (sex slave), a victim of the Japanese army. In 1993, the year she turned 65, she participated in a Wednesday demonstration, a gathering of former comfort women, and made a clean breast of her sorrow-filled life. She said it felt good, getting these stories off her chest, where they had been her entire life, and out into the open. In 2005, at the age of 78, she passed away. – The gathered findings Forcibly Impressed Army ‘ComfortWomen’ from Chosun, published by the Korean Society for Chongshindae Research, served as a reference.

To read more poems online by Kim Sun-woo please go to www.banipal.co.uk/selections

Kim Sun-woo was born in 1970. She made her debut in 1996 with “Old Road to Daegwanlyeong” and ten other poems in “Quarterly Changbi “. She has been active in all genres of literature, from poetry to essays and fiction. Her work is a strong, sensual expression of ecofeminism and Eastern philosophy with a sense of vitality, maternity, realistic criticism, and cosmic imagination. Kim’s published works include the poetry collections “If My Tongue Refuse to Stay Locked Inside My Body”, “Asleep Under the Peach Blossoms” and “Who Fell Asleep Opened”.

160 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES

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