After Liberation in 1945

The restoration of Independence in 1945 should have been a wonderful moment but it was deeply overshadowed by the coming Cold War; Russia was to oversee the withdrawal of Japan from the Northern half of the Peninsula, America from the Southern half, in preparation for full self-governing independence. That division of responsibilities became an ideological division that led directly to the death of three million Koreans in the three years 1950-3 and there is still no solution in view to the Korean Problem.

As a result, the forces dominating Korean poetry today are very similar to those found in the 1920s and 1930s. Should poetry be pure music, lyrical language for the language's own sake, aesthetic, or should it incite a love of the nation in idealistic terms, nationalistic, or must the poet speak out against oppressive and alientating forces within society, idealistic? These quarrels divide poets and writers among themselves, and pit some against the government when they venture too far along paths that seem to advocate what the regime in North Korea represents. There can be no Korean who does not suffer intensely, though silently and often unconsciously, from the present situation. That pain provokes multiple kinds of reaction, from denial through anger to despair and flight, as well as giving birth to a poetry longing for Unification.