page_title: Pak Tu-jin
section_title: Work
hierarchical_section_title: Pak Tu-jin / Work
caption_attribution_description: English: The monument to Korean poet Pak Tu-jin (1916-1998) at his birthplace in Anseong. It is outside the municipal library and is inscribed with his poem "Nostalgia".
context_page_description: Pak Tu-jin was a Korean poet. A voluminous writer of nature poetry, he is chiefly notable for the way he made of his subjects symbols of the newly emerging national situation of Korea in the second half of the 20th century.
context_section_description: The Literature Translation Institute of Korea summarizes the contribution made to Korean literature by Pak Tu-jin (who sometimes wrote under the pen name ‘Hyesan’):
  Park Dujin is one of the most prolific and renowned poets in all of modern Korean literature...Through verses that sing of green meadows, twittering birds, frolicking deer, and setting suns, the poet is often understood by critics to be presenting his own creative commentary on social and political issues. According to one theorist, “A Fragrant Hill” (HyangHyeon), one of Park’s first published poems, uses just such imagery to prophecy Korea’s liberation from Japan. The ‘peaceful co-existence of wild animals and plants’ in “HyangHyeon”, for example, can be interpreted as standing for the ‘latent power of the nation,’ with the flame that rises from the ridge symbolizing the ‘creative passion of the people.’ 
  It is because of this particular significance held by the natural symbols in Park’s poetry that the lyrical quality of his poems is set apart from the romantic, pastoral lyricism of many other representative Korean poets. The role of the natural world in Park Dujin’s poetry is that of a catalyst for understanding the world of man, rather than an end in itself. To 'characterize (his) poetic stance as involving a state of exchange between or joining of the self and nature', according to literary critic Cho Yeonhyeon, 'is incorrect from the outset. Park operates from a standpoint that presupposes the impossibility of even distinguishing between the two'.
  With the further publication of his collections ... Park also began to draw a Christian ideal into his poetry and, in so doing, to display a particular poetic direction. Inspired by a powerful consciousness of his people’s situation in the aftermath of the Korean War, Park went on to publish works that demonstrated both rage and criticism in reference to various policies and social realities that he himself saw to be nothing short of absurd. Even through the sixties, with the collections The Spider and the Constellation (Geomi wa Seongjwa, 1962) and A Human Jungle (Ingan millim, 1963), Park continued to seek a creative resolution to the trials of his time, representing history not as a given, but as a process shaped by all its participants.
  The onomatopoeia, figurative expressions, and the poetic statements in prose form used so boldly are perhaps the most notable technical devices in Park's poems from this period. With the onset of the 1970s, when he published such collections as Chronicles of Water and Stone (Suseok yeoljeon, 1973) and Poongmuhan, the nature of his poetry evolved once again; founded now on private self-realization, these poems are often said to reveal Park's attainment of the absolute pinnacle of self-discovery at which ‘infinite time and space are traveled freely.’ As such, Park, known as an artist who elevated poetry to the level of ethics and religion, is today evaluated more as a poet of thematic consciousness than of technical sophistication.
  His poem “Peaches are in bloom” is a good example of the way his rapturous and incantatory verse unites cultural and personal references to make it expressively symbolic of his country.
  Tell them that the peaches are in bloom and the apricots
  
  By the warm home you left abandoned, and now on that hedge once recklessly trampled, cherries and plums ripen.
  
  Bees and butterflies praise the day, and the cuckoo sings by moonlight.
  
  In the five continents and six oceans, O Ch’ôl, beyond the hoofed clouds and winged skies, into which corner shall I look in order to stand face to face with you?
  
  You are deaf to the sad note of my flute in the moonlit garden, and to my songs of dawn on the green peak.
  
  Come, come quickly, on the day when the stars come and go, your scattered brothers return one by one. Suni and your sisters, our friends, Maksoe and Poksuri too return.
  
  Come then, come with tears and blood, come with a blue flag, with pigeons and bouquets.
  
  Come with the blue flag of the valley full of peach and apricot blossoms.
  
  The south winds caress the ba
caption: The monument at Pak Tu-jin's birthplace, inscribed with one of his poems
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