Ko Un
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- This is a Korean name; the family name is Ko.
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Ko Un (born on 8 January 1933) is a Korean poet.
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[edit] Life
Ko was born in Kunsan (North Cholla Province,) what is now Gunsan, South Korea in 1933 .
The Korean war emotionally and physically traumatized Ko and caused the death of many of his relatives and friends. Ko's hearing suffered from acid that he poured into his ears during an acute crisis in this time and it was further harmed by a police beating in 1979. In 1952, before the war had ended, Ko became a Buddhist monk. After a decade of monastic life, he chose to return to the active, secular world in 1962 to become a devoted poet. From 1963 to 1966 he lived on Jejudo, where he set up a charity school, and then moved back to Seoul. His life was not calm in the outer world, and he wound up attempting suicide (a second time) in 1970.
Around the time the South Korean government attempted to curb democracy by putting forward the Yusin Constitution in late 1972, Ko became very active in the democracy movement and led efforts to improve the political situation in South Korea, while still writing prolifically and being sent to prison four times (1974, 1979, 1980 and 1989). In May 1980, during the coup d'etat led by Chun Doo-Hwan, Ko was accused of treason and sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment. He was released in August 1982 as part of a general pardon.
After his release, his life became calmer; however, he startled his large following by revising many of his previously published poems. Ko married Sang-Wha Lee on May 5, 1983, and moved to Anseong, Gyeonggi-do, where he still lives. He resumed writing and began to travel, his many visits providing fabric for the tapestry of his poems.
[edit] Style
He has written poems in almost every conceivable form on virtually every topic. His early poems were mostly short lyrics marked by an extraordinarily sensuous display of verbal intensity. Very often, his poems are suggested by scenery glimpsed, by a person, or by a passing memory. Such poems can be quite long or very brief, he has written a collection of Zen poems, as well as other collections of brief epigrams. He has also written a 7-volume epic, Baektusan, about the Korean struggle for independence from Japan. His most extraordinary poetic undertaking is the Maninbo, (Ten Thousand Lives) series currently (mid-2006) up to volume 23, in which he evokes every person he has ever met personally or encountered in the course of his reading during his life. Contrary to a popular misconception, politics and struggle have never been pervasive in his published work, although he read poems of protest at every major pro-democracy demonstration during the 1970s and 1980s. His poems are intensely spontaneous, characterized by vernacular language rather than literary finesse.
[edit] Publications
Ko Un has published approximately 135 volumes, including many volumes of poetry, several works of fiction (especially Buddhist fiction), autobiography, drama, essays, translations from classical Chinese, travel books, etc. Portions of his work have been translated into English (The Sound of My Waves (Selected Poems 1960-1990, Cornell EAS, 1991); Beyond Self (Parallax Press, 1996, now out of print, to be republished by Parallax in 2007 as What?); Little Pilgrim (Parallax Press, 2005, a novel); Ten Thousand Lives with an introduction by Robert Hass (Green Integer, 2005); The Three Way Tavern (Selected Poems, UC Press, 2006)); Flowers of a Moment, 185 brief poems (BOA Editions, 2006); Abiding Places, Korea North & South(Tupelo, 2006); Songs for Tomorrow: A Collection of Poems 1961-2001 (Green Integer, early 2007); as well as into Spanish (4-5 volumes) Italian, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Czech, Bulgarian, Swedish and Danish. The complete list is available on Ko Un's personal homepage.
[edit] Literary Awards
- Korean Literature Prize (1974, 1987)
- Manhae Literary Prize (1989)
- Daesan Literary Prize (1994)
- Cikada Prize (Swedish literary prize for East Asian poets) (2006)
- Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award (2008)
[edit] External links
All of the following links lead to English language pages.
- Gimm-Young Publishers' extensive Ko Un website (requires Flash)
- [1] [2] Numerous links woven by his English-language co-translator Brother Anthony ]
- The iconic news photograph (Ko Un is in between Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il) at unification summit)
- Ko Un's place in modern Korean poetry by Choi Won-shik
- Short overview of Ko and his style
- Writers from the Other Asia by John Feffer, from The Nation
- Brief introduction from a publisher
- Pointing Beyond Words, a biographical survey, by Gary Gach, from BuddhaDharma
- Microreview of Ten Thousand Lives (Maninbo) by Katie Peterson, from Boston Review
- Several poems from Ten Thousand Lives on Sogang University website
- Three more poems from Ten Thousand Lives plus a short bio, at Words Without Borders
