Maninbo Read Free

glimpses of events. We are very grateful to the American poet Hillel Schwartz for reading our translations and making insightful suggestions for poetic improvement. We have avoided overloading the poems with explanatory notes and assume that readers will consult a map of Korea if they wish to identify the many places named in the poems. The history of Korea, like its geography, is not well-known in the world at large. We hope that this collection will help many discover the tragic yet intensely human lives that so many Koreans have led, simply, nobly, often with immense dignity amidst a painful reality.
    Â 
    BROTHER ANTHONY OF TAIZÉ
& LEE SANG-WHA

A Brief Summary of Korean History
    These poems contain so many references to Korean history, ancient and modern, that the reader will soon be looking for help. Explanations are best done in a separate general summary, rather than by multiple notes to individual poems.
Ancient Korea: Goguryeo, Baekje, Silla, and Goryeo
    Korea is today divided into South and North Korea, officially designated as the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, respectively. Together, they occupy the entire Korean Peninsula. This division is recent, the fruit of the Korean War. Historically, we find the peninsula divided into a number of distinct kingdoms at the start of the present era, but for many centuries the whole peninsula was a single nation. In the northern-most part, originally centred in and reaching far into what was later known as Manchuria, was Goguryeo. That kingdom, recorded as having been established in 37 BC , lasted as an independent entity until 669.
    The southern border of Goguryeo slowly moved southward down the peninsula until it reached the region now occupied by Seoul. The western portion of southern Korea was governed by the kingdom known as Baekje, founded in 18 BC and independent until 660. Further south, the south-east portion of the peninsula was occupied by Silla, with its capital in the city now known as Gyeongju, where the dynasty was founded in 57 BC and continued as a kingdom until 918, starting as a local kingdom, then becoming an enlarged ‘Unified Silla’ integrating the Gaya kingdom in 532, Baekje in 660, and then Goguryeo in 668 with the military support of Tang China.
    After a long period of dynastic decline, the royal dynasty of Silla was toppled and a new dynasty arose, known as Goryeo, established in 918 and lasting until 1392, with its main capital much further to the north, for much of the time in Gaeseong, to the north of what is now Seoul. Buddhism had entered all parts of Korea well before the Silla unification. It formed a very strong feature in the culture of Goryeo, when temples became rich and powerful while individual monks exercised great influence at court.
Joseon
    Finally, just as Ming China was emerging after the end of the Mongol domination, Korean court politics led to the overturn of the reigning dynasty of Goryeo and a new dynasty was proclaimed in 1392, with the name Joseon. The new royal family bore the family name Yi. The kingdom of Joseon, or the Joseon era, lasted until 1897, during which time it remained in a tribute-relationship with the Chinese emperor. The capital city was relocated to the town of Hanyang, which was renamed ‘Seoul’ (meaning ‘Capital city’). The Joseon era was marked by a strong reaction against Buddhism and an equally strong emphasis on a rigid form of Confucianism. Many hundreds of temples were destroyed, monks were not allowed to enter Seoul, and those temples that survived were mostly located in remote rural areas.
    Near the start of the Joseon era, under the reign of King Sejong, the Korean alphabet (‘hangeul’) was invented to allow easy writing of the multiple syllables of Korean grammar, as well as those Korean words which did not correspond to any Chinese character. The written language of education and administration was Classical Chinese and the high-class scholars