Song Mong-gyu's works searched and burned in N. Korea

“We had a mountain of writings by my father's eldest brother (Song Mong-gyu) at our house.”

This is what Song Si-yeon (56), a writer and a niece of independence activist Song Mong-gyu (1917-1945), had to say in a phone interview with The Dong-A Ilbo on Wednesday. Her father is Song Woo-gyu (1931-2008), a 14-year younger brother of Song, a cousin of poet Yoon Dong-joo. Ms. Song defected from North Hamgyong Province in North Korea and came to South Korea in 2007.

“My grandfather would keep a large sag full of writings hidden deep inside a wardrobe. But as the North Korean authorities repeatedly searched our house, he eventually ended up burning them," Song said. "Of course, there's nothing bad in the writings, but in North Korea, they can do whatever they want. So my grandfather burned them because he thought, 'if we get caught, it will harm the future of the rest of his children.'”

Song kept her middle school yearbook and photos even during her three years on the road, including two repatriations to North Korea from China. As a child, she often heard his grandfather talk about the late eldest brother of his father. “I heard he was smart and well-spoken,” Song said. “When he wanted to study abroad in Japan, he reportedly told his father, ’If you don't say yes, I'll kill myself. He thus convinced his father by saying, ‘We will win over Japan only when we know Japan.”

Song said that she never learned Yoon Dong Joo's poetry in the North as a student. Not until she went to China did poet Yoon's younger sister, Yoon Hye-won, send him a book of poems.

“When I read Yoon’s ‘A Night of Counting the Stars' for the first time, I thought to myself, 'How could he write such beautiful poem?”

Song will attend a wreath-laying ceremony at Yonsei University's Yoon Dong-joo Memorial Hall in Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, to mark the 80th anniversary of the death of her father’s eldest brother, Song Mong-gyu.


김소민기자 somin@donga.com