Today’s episode is on the beloved Korean poet, Yun Dong-Ju.

His poetry collection title: “하늘과 바람과 별과 시”. In English: “Sky, Wind, and Stars” (시 means poems)

Yun Dong-ju (December 30, 1917 - February 16, 1945) was a Korean poet active during the period of Japanese rule (1932–1945). Known for his writing of lyric poetry as well as resistance poetry, he was born in what is now “Yanbian,” an autonomous prefecture in Jilin province with a large Korean resident population, in the northeastern part of China. The area was then the base of the Korean movement for independence from Japan. Yun Dong-ju began writing poetry as a boy, and argued with his father, who wanted him to study medicine instead of literature. While studying at Yeonhui Technical School (now Yonsei University) in Seoul, he prepared a collection of nineteen poems, but his professor advised him to delay its publication because of Japanese censorship. In 1942, Yun went to Japan to study English literature. In 1943, as he was traveling home for the summer holidays, he was arrested as a “thought criminal” by the Japanese police and sentenced to two years of prison on the charge of having participated in the independence movement. He died in prison on February 16, 1945.

His collected works, published by his family posthumously in 1948 as “Sky, wind, stars, and poems,” has become a perennial best-seller in Korea, and he is currently the national poet of the Republic of Korea. His poetry is characterized by contrast between qualities of defiance and humility, depth and simplicity, and passion and self-discipline.

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Yun_Tong-ju

서시(序詩):

죽는 날까지 하늘을 우러러

한 점 부끄럼이 없기를

잎새에 이는 바람에도

나는 괴로워했다

별을 노래하는 마음으로

모든 죽어가는 것을 사랑해야지

그리고 나한테 주어진 길을

걸어가야겠다

오늘 밤에도 별이 바람에 스치운다

"Foreword":

Wishing not to have

so much as a speck of shame

toward heaven until the day I die,

I suffered, even when the wind stirred the leaves.

With my heart singing to the stars,

I shall love all things that are dying.

And I must walk the road

that has been given to me.

Tonight, again, the stars are

brushed by the wind.

—Translated by

Kyungnyun K. Richards &

Steffen F. Richards

Background Music:

Soaring by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4386-soaring

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/