“Sisters, We Are the Way and the Light”

As much as the 2012 U.S. presidential election and issues related to it have been at the center of public debate in America, so too have the election of the 19^th National Assembly members (April 11^th) and the 2012 presidential election (December) occupied the hearts and minds of people in South Korea. Given the heavy influence of the U.S.—political, military, and economic—on the Korean peninsula, it is not surprising that FTA (Free Trade Agreement) with the U.S. and the construction of a U.S. naval base on Jeju Island have been two of the major issues of political contention in this election year.

FTA with the U.S.will further widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots in South Korea, where the top 1% can enjoy most of what the global top 1% relishes. The construction of the U.S. naval base on Jeju Island will not only bring environmental destruction to this beautiful island, but it will also further relegate the Korean peninsula to a potential battlefield in East Asia between the two military and economic global powers—the U.S. and China. In the midst of these power struggles, most marginalized people in South Korean society, often women with few to no resources, children, people with disability, elderly people, and (im)migrant laborers from other Third World countries, will continue to bear the brunt of harsh reality.

With the anguished, heart-wrenching stories of daily survival across the transpacific in mind, I would like to invoke “Sisters, We Are the Way and the Light,” a poem that calls for sisterhood and solidarity among women, in this national month of poetry.[i] It was written by the late feminist poet Koh Jung-Hee (1948–1991), who began her career as a poet and served as the first editor of the Feminist Newspaper in South Korea. Struggling with the Christian meaning of salvation and suffering, Koh channeled the direction of poetry to embrace the suffering and struggle of “women minjung (ochlos).”[ii] She firmly believed that Jesus’s message was centered on the life of minjung. Koh’s solidarity with women minjung and a deep yearning for a wholistic salvation compelled her to write powerful and passionate poems that conveyed the wisdom of the Divine. After participating in a yearlong “Post-colonial Poem and Music” workshop in the Philippines, Koh began to see more clearly how capitalism has exploited and dehumanized not only women in South Korea but also women in other parts of Asia. Subsequently, Koh’s emphasis on sisterhood gained more strength than it had had before. Many of Koh’s poems are about sisterhood and solidarity among women that transcend class, regional, religious, age, and national differences.[iii]

When women around the world continue to come out to the streets demanding justice, freedom, and peace by challenging ruthless forces of globalization, war, militarism, and all other forms of violence at the risk of their own lives, a poem about sisterhood and solidarity among women is still vital and powerful.

“Sisters, We Are the Way and the Light”[iv]

             Sisters,

            Now we are the way and the light

            Now we are the rice and the hope

            Let’s put our belief upon the wishes of a hundred people

            Let’s raise the moon upon the river of a thousand people

            On the day when twenty million women ignite the light of the wish,

            Half of the sky comes back

            Half of the earth comes back

            Half of the people come back

            On the day when the new history begins,

            Let’s wake up the river of the silence in your heart

            Let’s pull out the nail of the oppression stuck in my heart

            Let’s cut off the thick weeds of inequality in our hearts

            …

            Women-wind, new wind, the energy of the heaven and earth are

            originating, spreading flame

            From one to two, from one to ten thousand, to a hundred thousand

            have gotten together

            This flame is the flame of equality

            This energy is the energy of unification

            Isn’t this wind the wind of liberation?

            Sisters,

            Now we are the way and the light

            Now we are the rice and the hope

            Now we are love and life-giving power