〈관련 영문 기사〉

'Conversation With Ko Un' author Jahanbegloo says Ko is 'universal'

“Ko Un belongs to all humanity and not only to the Korean culture” because Ko is “a universal poet like W.H. Auden, Baudelaire, Dylan Thomas or Pablo Neruda,” said Ramin Jahanbegloo, author of “Conversation With Ko Un," in a written interview with The Korea Herald last week. The book was published in English by Orient BlackSwan, a publisher based in India, in 2021.

The Korean-language edition of the book, released on Dec. 15 last year, has been met with backlash from some of the Korean public who are upset by his "stealthy" return to the literary scene.

While South Korean poet Ko remained virtually silent in Korea’s literary scene after sexual harassment allegations were made against him in 2017 and 2018, he has still been actively participating in international book fairs and festivals.

In February 2019, Ko was invited to the Raza Biennale of Indian Poetry held in New Delhi, where Jahanbegloo, an Iranian-born political philosopher at O. P. Jindal Global University in India, proposed to Ko a literary conversation project.

Jahanbegloo explained he first met Ko at the Krakow Poetry Festival in Poland in November 2009.

“Each culture might have a different view of him, as was the case with the German philosopher Heidegger, who was a Nazi, or the French poet Louis Aragon, who was a Stalinist, or the poet Ezra Pound who was a fascist,” Jahanbegloo explained in his email.

On the question of whether he was aware of the sexual allegations against Ko, Jahanbegloo said, “I do not read Korean and do not follow the Korean mass culture and social problems.”

In 2021, Ko was invited to the 14th Kritya International Poetry Festival in India, as a guest of honor and read poems at the inauguration session. The festival was held online from July 4-13 that year.

“Our selection is based on poetry and advice by some other international poet,” said Kritya Literary Trust, the organizing committee of the festival, in an email response to The Korea Herald. “I read his book, which shows that he is a monk. I don't know anything about him.”

Ko is one of the advisers to the Kritya International Poetry Festival.

Ko also participated in a virtual reading for the “Worldwide Reading for the Dead of the Pandemic,” organized by the Berlin Literature Festival, on Sept. 5, 2021.

The Berlin Literature Festival and Raza Biennale of Indian Poetry, where Ko and Jahanbegloo met, did not respond to requests for comment via email on Jan. 13.

Poet Choi Young-mi published a poem titled “The Beast” in 2017, in which she alluded to Ko’s habitual sexual misconduct. Her poem sparked multiple other allegations against Ko, leading his poems to be removed from textbooks here.

In July 2018, Ko filed a compensation lawsuit against Choi and the reporters of the newspaper that published Choi's allegations against Ko, but he lost the case. He lost an appeal in November 2019 and did not take the case to the Supreme Court.

The local publisher, Silcheon Muhak, released Ko’s latest collection of poems, “Song of Nothingness,” on Dec. 20, ahead of the 65th anniversary of the poet’s debut in 1958. It was Ko’s first publication here in five years.

By Hwang Dong-hee (hwangdh@heraldcorp.com)