The Kwangju uprising and poetry by Ko Chong-hui, a writer of South Cholla

Abstract

In this essay, the author translates and interprets the poetry of Ko Chong-hui, examining especially her treatment of gender, anti-colonial struggles, class, and the democracy movement in Korea. Ko Chong-hui wrote in a style that combined shamanistic narrative, the language of liberation theology, and feminism. She wrote about gender, nation, and class, destabilizing the totalizing effects of these narratives with depictions of individual women and the intersections of these women's lives with the Kwangju uprising of 1980. In her writing, we hear a voice in the process of articulation. Sometimes this voice falls into clichéd rhetoric, but her writing also yields passages of vivid imagery, incisive social criticism, and deep insight.

May 1980. My college classmates and I were preparing for graduation and worrying about work, relationships, and graduate school. I was going to do a summer internship before going to graduate school in the fall. I had no idea that students of my age and ethnicity were dying that month in the South Cholla province of Korea in the struggle that came to be known as the Kwangju uprising of 1980. This study is my belated attempt to understand one writer's narratives of that struggle.

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Notes on contributors

Ann Lee

Mike Shin and Walter Lew read drafts of this paper, gave me references, and helped me get books from Korea.