문학과 지성사

Inspired by her alma mater’s motto, the Christian ideologies of freedom, love, and justice, poet Ko Junghee was active in the students’ movement of her time. She also left nonnegligible legacies in South Korea’s early feminist movement by playing a crucial role in “Another Culture,” a feminist society that sought an alternative society where men and women, young and old, could coexist as equals and independent beings. That said, had her poetry remained only in the realm of “engagement,” her poems would have already become obsolete in the last century. Penetrating the era, her voice in engagement poetry as well as feminist poetry passes through her interiority before facing the outside. Ko Junghee’s self-reflective poetry allows the Cains of our time, who have internalized violence in versatile forms, to reflect on their not being an “Abel” and realize the pain of others. The poems then advise the readers to become a “permanent” Abel of our time.

Ko Junghee’s poems are also a testament to the poet’s invincible tenacity and boundless love for life in the face of hardships. It would be fair to call the strong will to live and love of life the two pillars of Ko Junghee’s poetic universe. The speaker of her poems is enraged by despicable humans and corrupt reality, discouraged by life’s futility, and at times lonely due to her own humanness. These negative feelings come from the fundamental evil of civilization that devastates humanity, or a particular political or social situation. Nevertheless, the poet never despairs—because she is conscientious and unafraid of looking up at the sky, even as an abandoned, oppressed, marginalized, or wounded soul.