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In Korea, a woman must first obey her father, then her husband when she becomes an ajuma, and finally obey her son as a halmoni. Any woman who violates or lives outside of these roles is called a ch'angyŏ (prostitute).

Kim Hyesoon

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Kim Hyesoon
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: January 1
Poet
Writer
Finally
Lives
Son
Father
Husband
Firsts
Outside
First
Roles
Violates
Must
Becomes
Prostitute
Called
Korea
Obey
Woman

More quotes by Kim Hyesoon

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As a university student, I tried hard to write poems in Korean. It was at that time that I foresaw my death and the world's death. I think my poems started at that time.
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If you propose there is a feminism problem in Korea, somebody would point out that you are bringing up antiquated issues. No one acknowledges that discrimination against women is still widespread.
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Our mothers who have gone are buried in our bodies. It can be said that we were born with dead mothers in our body.
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Women in Korean myths disappear after giving birth. The reason they were born is to produce sons.
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The grotesque in my poems is the motion I use to put myself and the grotesque world together. So the miserable images I use in my poems are the same as the letters I send into the miserable world.
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When anger and sorrow overflow, sometimes it becomes poetry.
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The language of poetry is not stuck in place. Nothing can own language. I think, however, the genre of poetry itself is very feminine and motherly.
Kim Hyesoon
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Poems are ways of saying you clearly remember the day of your death and your tomb. When I am writing poetry, I relive my days when a woman inside me dies many times.
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Speaking as an outsider is the most authentic voice for a poet. Poets who have one hundred thousand or one million readers [as many South Korean poets do] might not be a real, authentic poet.
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Living in South Korea as a girl meant living under a lot of discrimination and limitation. It was the same in my university and in the Korean literary world I am involved in.
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If someone asks, Is anyone alive? Break, your, head, open, and, show, your, ten, ta, cle.
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The body of poetry is nothing but energy, waves, rhythm.
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As a sick kid, I always looked out the window. The objects of my observation were the sun, the seasons, the wind, crazy people, and my grandfather's death. During my long period of observation, I felt that something like poems were filling up my body.
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I am a tomb robber who is robbing my own tomb. Things from my tomb are exhibited under the radiant sun. Every time it happens I feel crude.
Kim Hyesoon
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We carve on our body what society teaches us and continue this task, not knowing the identity they force us to have. This identity is carved on our faces and our skins. Not knowing our bodies have become the paper made of human meat, we stuff our bodies and make them a theater where cultural symbols or suppressed symbols play.
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There is a specific kind of day when I feel like writing poems. My senses become really sharp. This day is when I feel as if I am drowning into the abandonment of death.
Kim Hyesoon
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Since the boundary of the world of poetry is fluid, the language in it is also fluid. Hence, the language that is outside of the poetry world, namely the language that is not the language of poetry, cannot go into the poetry world.
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Women are foils to men. It is hard for women to take a lead role even in NGOs for political resistance.
Kim Hyesoon
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Mother does not exist, like water that has given life to a flower and then disappeared. Mothers live somewhere after giving birth to us.
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Mother is a synonym for abandonment and death. Comparing this synonym to water, it is like poured-out water. I call it mother, the identity that I cannot identify.
Kim Hyesoon