"Resistance Poet" Kim Chi-ha, Who Fought the Military Dictatorship, Dies at 81

[경향신문]

The poet Kim Chi-ha sits for an interview with the Kyunghyang Shinmun in May 2009 when he published the collection of essays, Messed-up Poems, and the collection of essays, Bangkok Network. Kim Mun-seok

The poet Kim Chi-ha (Kim Yeong-il), who wrote poetry of resistance including “With a Burning Thirst” and “Five Bandits” in the 1970s, died at the age of 81 on May 8. The late poet had been struggling for his health for the past year and died in his home in Wonju-si, Gangwon this afternoon, according to a representative of the Toji Cultural Foundation. Reportedly, his family who lived with the poet were by his side when he died.

Kim was a typical “resistance poet” who stood up to the military dictatorship with his poems, sharp satires of the social reality in the 1970s, and by joining the pro-democracy movements. However, after the 1990s he came under attack for betraying his beliefs.

Kim Chi-ha was born in Mokpo, Jeollanam-do in 1941. He entered the Department of Aesthetics at Seoul National University in 1959. The following year, he joined the April 19 Revolution and fled from law after taking part in student demonstrations as the student representative for the southern region of the National Student Federation for Unification.

In June 1964, he was arrested while writing the elegy for the “Funeral for Minjok (national) Democracy,” organized by the Liberal Arts and Science College of Seoul National University as an attempt by the Seoul National University Student Council to protest the humiliating June 3 talks between South Korea and Japan. Kim was in prison for four months. He graduated from university after about seven years in August 1966.

After graduation, the late poet started his journey as a resistance poet by publishing five poems including “Yellow Earth Road” and “Rain” in the poetry magazine, Poet (Si-in) in 1969. Chi-ha was his pen name, meaning that he was an active figure “underground (jiha).” The year after his debut, Kim became famous with the publication of “Five Bandits” in the literary magazine, World of Ideas (Sasanggye). The poem was a satirical ballade depicting the corruption among those in power using pansori melodies. The five bandits that appear in this poem referred to the chaebol, lawmakers, senior public officials, generals and ministers and vice ministers. The political poem criticized people in these positions, who accumulated wealth in corrupt ways at a time when they dominated development, by comparing them to the five traitors who signed a treaty allowing Japanese occupation of Korea in 1905, the year of Eulsa. Because of this poem, the publisher and editor of World of Ideas were arrested, and the publication of the magazine was suspended. When the poem was published, the editor of The Democratic Front (Minju Jeonseon), a paper published by the New Democratic Party, which was the opposition at the time, was also arrested. The Park Chung-hee government claimed that this poem supported the propaganda by North Korea and arrested Kim for violating the Anti-Communism Act, but released him after about a month due to active movements to free the poet from inside and outside the country.

In December 1970, Kim Chi-ha published his first collection of poetry, Yellow Earth (Hwangto). He continued to concentrate on pro-democracy movements and to publish poems of resistance. “With a Burning Thirst,” which he released in 1975, is cited as a monumental resistance poem of the 1970s that portrayed the blazing desire for democracy in protest of the dictatorship.

Kim was constantly on the run from the police due to his involvement in pro-democracy movements, and in 1974 was arrested for his part in the National Student Federation for Democracy incident. He was sentenced to death in a court-martial, but his sentence was later reduced to life in prison. When he received the death penalty, world renowned scholars including Jean-Paul Sartre and Noam Chomsky actively joined efforts to release Kim, signing a petition for his release. Kim was released about ten months later due to a stay of execution of his sentence in February 1975, but he wrote a column exposing that the People’s Revolutionary Part incident was fabricated and was arrested again. Eventually, he served for seven years and was released on a stay of execution of his sentence in December 1980. While he spent nearly seven years in prison, he received a special Lotus Prize, regarded as the Nobel Prize of the Third World, by the Afro-Asian Writers’ Association. After he was pardoned and reinstated in 1984, the ban on Kim’s works was also lifted, and his works from the 1970s were published again.

The late Kim, who had released poetry of resistance while battling the dictatorship in the 1970s, dived into ideas on life in the 1980s, and his world of poetry reflected the change. In 1986, he released Aerin, a collection of poetry that combined life philosophy and the national lyricism, and in 1988, he released the long poem, “A Rain Cloud on These Days of Drought,” which portrayed the life and death of Suwun Choi Je-u. The collections of poetry he released after 1990, such as The Agony of the Center (1994) and Hwagae (2002), along with his memoir, The Way of the White Shade (2003), revealed a change in his artworld.

Kim Chi-ha wrote contributions for the Chosun Ilbo in the early 1990s, stirring controversy that he had betrayed his beliefs. When a number of college students set fire to themselves and died in the struggle for democracy after the death of Kang Gyeongdae, a Myongji University student in 1991, Kim wrote a contribution titled, “Get Rid of the Shamanic Rituals of Death” and came under fierce attack. His name was removed from the National Literature Writers Association (currently the Writers Association of Korea), which had formed to free the late poet when he was imprisoned. A decade later, he apologized for the column in a talk published in the summer edition of the literary magazine, Silcheon Munhak, but he continued to display inconsistency, criticizing and denouncing figures in the literary circle who had joined him in the pro-democracy movements. The late poet openly supported Park Geun-hye, the presidential candidate of the Saenuri Party in the 2012 presidential election. In 2018, he published the collection of poetry, White Shade and a collection of essays, Space Life Science and announced that he would no longer write.

Kim Chi-ha married Kim Young-joo, the daughter of novelist Park Kyong-ni in 1973 and is survived by his sons Kim Won-bo (writer) and Kim Se-hi (chairman of the Toji Cultural Foundation and the director of the Toji Cultural Center).His funeral will be held at the Wonju Severance Christian Hospital Funeral Parlor.