On the grass of Walker Hill Hotel looking over Han River, Seoul, a wedding ceremony for Andrew Chung, an international lawyer who is active in Tokyo and New York, was held. Toward the end of the ceremony, Poet Sunshine Lee, the mother of Chung, grabbed a microphone.
“The groom’s grandmother who wrote poems all her life, turned the beautiful moment of meeting her grandson born in front of the ocean-of-a-lake that is Lake Ontario into a poem 30 years ago. Until the moment she passed away she kept her first grandson Andrew in her heart” The guests were handed a Love Letter, collection of Tanka written by the groom’s grandmother,with a subtitle “one line love poems engraved in heart” Tanka is poetry with a fixed form of 31 syllables that Koreans introduced to Japan.
The grandmother of the groom is Hoyun Son who has written over 2,000 Tanka poems with Korean spirit and is called a “Master of Tanka” in Japan. Son started writing Tanka since she was studying in Tokyo and published 7 collections of poem until 2003 when she passed away. Her Tanka is received with high praise as “a bridge of Tanka connecting the Korean strait” “a song of Mugunghwa that brought the Japanese Islands to tears” It was appraised as poetry of love and peace beyond boundaries and Son received Culture Awards from Korea and Japan.
At the Korea-Japan summit in 2005 held in the blue house, Japan’s prime minister Junichiro Koizumi recited Son’s Tanka, “There is one dire yearning / That I hold dear / One country and another without any conflict” in his address, and talked about the peaceful spirit of the poet. Son was invited as ‘listener’ to Utakai Hajime (Imperial New Year’s Poetry Reading) presided by the Japanese Emperor in 1998, and listened to Tanka composed by the royal couple of Japan in Korean traditional clothes.
Another book was also handed out: Son Hoyun Poems & Pictures. It was a “three generation poetry collection” with Japanese Tanka by Son translated into Korean by the daughter, Sunshine Lee and into English by the grandson Chung, and edited by Lee. Pictures painted by well known painters from around the world and Son’s short poems in 3 languages make hearts ache.
절실한 소원이 나에게 하나있지 다툼없는 나라와 나라가 되어라 切実な望みが一つ吾れにあり諍いのなき國と國なれ There is one dire yearning That I hold dear One country and another without any conflict | 
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Son’s ゆく水に人生學び獨り佇つ過ぎ來たる日を水に流して was translated into ‘흐르는 강물에 인생을 배우고 서있네, 지나온 날들 물에 흘려 버리며’ by the daughter, and Chung translated it as ‘Standing at a river pondering, I float my past days away on the water’
“I could feel mother's heart who hoped for love and peace close, as I was translating my mother’s poems into Korean and publishing the book” Lee said. “It took three and a half years to translate my mom’s poems, engraving her poems in my heart and I signed all the copies of Love Letter, published yesterday with a praying heart all night.
Chung went to Phillips Academy Andover, a highly selective private school, and went through a stormy age of adolescence. Yet he majored in psychology at Boston College and went to Georgetown Law, and realized his dream of becoming an international lawyer.
“While I was wandering, I gained energy to stand up again by reading letters and postcards my grandmother sent me from Seoul to Boston,” he said. “I thought about what I was. And my grandmother would always send me a letter saying ‘You are the best’ ” The grandmother who loved her first grandchild dearly, called his name “Andrew” till the moment she passed away.
Chung said, “When I was very young, my grandmother was ‘just grandmother’ who would give me snacks and pocket money. Now translating her Tanka into English, I could approach her inner side.”
One line poems of Tanka were linking the hearts of the 3 generations that way.
Reporter Shin Sooyon syshin@chosun.com |
