By Jeongnam Kim
(Former Senior Presidential Secretary for Education·Culture·Society, World Korean News advisor)
Looking to the skies unti the last day of my life/ I hope not to be ashamed of myself,
Even the wind moving the leaves/ It made me agonized.
My heart singing the stars/It loves all that perishes,
But I'll walk the way/ destined for me.
Even tonight, the stars are touched by wind.
Often called "A Prelude," this poem appeared as a preface to Yun Dong-su's collection of poem "The Skies, Wind, Stars, and Poems." Yun made by hand three books of his 19 poems in 1941. He gave one of the books to one of his juniors in his school, Jeong Byeong-uk, and the other one to Yi Yang-ha. a liberal arts professor for the then Yonhee College, discussing with him the possibility of have this book published. But this idea did not materialize. He kept the last copy with him when he went to Japan in 1942 for a study abroad.
Jeong Byeong-uk of Gwangyang, Jeolla Province, entered the liberal arts department of Yonhee College at the age of 18 and met Yun Dong-ju, two years senior to him, in 1940, who came from Yongjeong, North Gando. They shared a boarding room, and later they lived together at a boarding house. They often engaged in the discussions of literature and arts, and Jeong became a Christian following the steps of his senior Yun, and they shared anger of intellectuals of a colonial country.
While in Japan, Yun Dong-ju was arrested by the Japanese police at Toshisha College in Kyoto in February, 1943, along with his cousin Song Mong-gyu. And at long last he passed away in a Fukuoka prison in February 1945, succumbing to injuries suffered from torture.
Jeong Byeong-uk was transferred to the Korean language and literature department of the Kyeongseong College, now Seoul National University, and continued his studies after the nation's Liberation from the Japanese colonial rule. Presently he learned of Yun Dong-ju's death from his families. rushed to his hometown, and before he went about anything he looked for the hand-written copy of Yun's poems. His mother kept it carefully in a silk wrapper. "This book is dedicated to my brother Jeong Byeong-uk." This was an autograph written by Yun Dong-ju.
Back to Seoul, Jeong showed the gifted hand-made copy book of Yun's poems to the poet's families. With the collected poems of this copy, together with other poems newly collected, a collection of poems titled "The Skies, Wind, Stars and Poems" was published to the world by the Jeongeum-sa publishing house in January 1948, three years prior to his third memorial anniversary.
Poet Jeong Ji-yong wrote a comment in this book: "I am sure that the young Yun Dong-ju must have had strong bones. That's why he could have kept his bones, even though his skins were thrown to the Japanese bandits, He have died in a dreadful loneliness! His poems were not published to the world until he was 27 years old! Didn't he leave behind him sad and so beautiful poems, for he was not ashamed of himself? Originally, this is the way for poems and poets." The book of poems. "The Skies, Wind, the Stars, and Poems" came out into this world this way. It contained such a beautiful story about Yun Dong-ju and Jeong Byeong-uk.
