“A voice that must be raised / without a sound. / A season seeping up from the depths.” (“Yeoreum” (여름 Summer), Ireobeorin gyejeol (잃어버린 계절 The Lost Season), Changbi, 2019)
Gim Si-jong is one of the representative poets of Zainichi Korean literature.
1. Life
Gim Si-jong was born in 1929 in Busan and raised in Jeju. In 1948, he took part in the Jeju April 3 Uprising and smuggled himself into Japan in 1949. Beginning in 1950, he devoted himself to writing poetry in Japanese. Settling in Ikuno, Osaka, one of the largest Zainichi Korean communities in Japan, he became actively involved in cultural and educational activities in the community. In 1953, he founded the poetry coterie magazine Jindallae (진달래 Azalea). In 1998, he was able to return to Jeju for the first time since May 1949, thanks to a special measure initiated by the Kim Dae-jung administration. He became a citizen of the Republic of Korea in 2003 in order to visit his parents’ graves.
2. Writing
As a Zainichi Korean, Gim Si-jong experienced the tragedies of modern history firsthand. He transformed the hardships of his life through aesthetic reasoning to achieve a vision of aestheticism unique to Zainichi poetry. In particular, caught between the language of the homeland (Korean) and his mother tongue (Japanese), he confronted the linguistic duality that defines the Zainichi Korean experience and was able to employ Japanese that was not Japanese—in other words, a heterodox Japanese that destroys the beauty of the language—as poetic language. For this aspect of his literary world, he is considered a provocative poet. Gim’s poetic exploration ultimately reaches beyond the conventional ethnic nationalism of the Zainichi Korean society and aims to articulate the distinct identity and subjectivity of the Zainichi experience itself. His poetry is grounded in the fundamental awareness of what Zainichi Korean literature is, and it is significant that this critical interrogation is tied to broader questions about a new kind of world literature.
Reference
Moon Ji Hee, “Gim Si-jong’s Jeju April 3rd Uprising – A Memory of Resistance Against Violence,” Yeongju eomun (Journal of Yeongju Language & Literature) 56, Association of Language and Literature, 2024.
Yi Hanjeong, “Gim Si-jong, the Japanese Language, and the ‘Korean Language,’” Hyeondae munhagui yeongu (Journal of Korean Modern Literature) 45, Society of Korean Literary Studies, 2011.
Ha Sang-il, “Gim Si-jong's ‘Jaeil’ (Being Zainichi) and the Poetic Embodiment of the Jeju April 3rd Uprising,” Hanminjok munhwa yeongu (Review of Korean Cultural Studies) 65, Association for Korean Cultural Studies, 2019.
Poetry collections and anthologies
(Korean translations of the author's Japanese-language works)
trans. Yu Sook Ja, 《경계의 시》, 소화, 2008 / Gyeonggyeui si (Poems of the Boundary), Sohwa, 2008
trans. Kwak Hyoungduck, 《지평선》, 소명출판, 2018 / Jipyeongseon (Horizon), Somyung Books, 2018
trans. Kwak Hyoungduck, 《일본 풍토기》, 소명출판, 2022 / Ilbon pungtogi (A Topography of Japan), Somyung Books, 2022
trans. Kwak Hyoungduck, 《니이가타》, 글누림, 2014 / Niigata, Geulnurim, 2014
trans. Lee Jin Kyoung et al., 《이카이노 시집, 계기음상, 화석의 여름》, 도서출판b, 2019 / Ikaino sijip, gyegi eumsang, hwaseogeui yeoreum (Ikaino Poetry Collection / Cacophony / Fossil Summer), b, 2019
trans. Lee Jin Kyoung et al., 《잃어버린 계절》, 창비, 2019 / Ireobeorin gyejeol (The Lost Season), Changbi, 2019
trans. Kim Jung Rey, 《광주시편》, 푸른옮김사, 2014 / Gwangju sipyeon (Gwangju Poems), Pureun Omgimsa, 2014
trans. Kwak Hyoungduck, 《배면의 지도》, 소명출판, 2024 / Baemyeonui jido (Map of the Reverse Side), Somyung Books, 2024
Essays
(Korean translation of the author's Japanese-language work)
trans. Yoon Yea-Yl, 《재일의 틈새에서》, 돌베개, 2017 / Jaeirui teumsaeeseo (In the Cracks of Japan), Dolbegae, 2017
LTI Korea 
DLKL 
SIWF 
