The words of a poet envious
Of the freedom of a skylark
Overbearing the blue sky
Should be revised.
One who has taken a flight
For freedom,
knows
About what
A skylark
Sings,
How freedom
Smells blood,
Why a revolution
Is lonely -
Why a revolution
Ought to be lonely.
Note on the Poet
Kim Su-yeong was born into the rich family of a landowner in Seoul in 1921. He was educated in Seonlin Commercial Highschool and a preparatory school in Tokyo. To avoid conscription during the Second World War, he escaped to Manchulia in 1943 and there took an active role in drama. After Korean liberation from Japanese rule, he returned to Seoul and enrolled Yonsei University in 1946 as an English major student. But he left the university without a degree. He made his literary debut through the Yesulburak in 1947. During the Korean Civil War, he was taken to North Korea and put into a labour camp. After his escape from the North, he was captured as a prisoner-of-war by South Koreans. Eventually, he was released from Geoje Island where he was confined. Since then, he devoted himself to poetry, and published his first volume of poems titled "Mischief on the Moon Country" in 1959. With this volume, he became the first awardee of the Korean Poets' Association Award. He had published two more volumes of poems before his sudden death by the traffic accident in 1968. He was forty-seven.
The poet has been known as a representative of commitment poets in the 1960s. Thus some of his best poems express strong antagonism against the authoritarian government as well as military dictatorship, while advocating freedom as a supreme ideal.
