Korean Independence Day 2020

Korean Independence Day 2020.

 

Today, August 15th we celebrate Korean Independence Day and wish all the people of Korea every blessing on this special day. 

In South Korea, the name of Independence Day 광복절 is officially called Liberation Day, or Gwangbokjeol, literally meaning: “the day the light returned.”

Koreans saw that the time of the Japanese invasion of Korea was the time of living in the dark.

There is one beautiful poem written by Han Yong-Un (1879-1944), a Korean Buddhist monk, author, poet, and activist for Korean independence from Japanese rule and was one of the thirty-three signers of the Korean Declaration of Independence. He died in 1944, one year before Korean liberation. “The Silence of My Beloved” was published in 1926, sixteen years into the Japanese imperial rule of Korea. This is one of the famous poems, a love story for one’s country that expresses the sadness of having lost one’s country to a foreign hand. 

The idea expressed in this poem is straightforward: Lost love, sorrow, and then the refusal to give up hope, resulting in the emotional distinction between the love in itself and the beloved. rendering the crucial metaphor that turns sorrow into hope as follows: I took the overbearing force of my grief and poured it out into a wellspring of new hope

The Silence of Love

 Love is gone, gone is my love.

Tearing himself away from me he has gone

on a little path that stretches in the splendor of

a green hill into the autumn-tinted forest.

Our last oath, shining and enduring

like a gold-mosaicked flower,

has turned to cold ashes, blown away

in the breath of wind.

I remember his poignant first kiss and its memory

has wrought a complete change in my destiny,

then withdrawn into oblivion.

I hear not his sweet voice; I see not his fair looks.

Since it is human to love, I, alert, dreaded a

parting to come when we met.

The separation came so suddenly

it broke my heart with renewed sorrow.

Yet, I know parting can only destroy our love if

it causes futile tears to fall.

I would rather transfer the surge of this sorrow

onto the summit of hopefulness.

As we dread parting when we meet, so,

we promise to meet again when we part.

Though my love is gone, I am not parted from love;

an untiring love-song envelops the silence of love.

 We rejoice with the people of South Korea today as they carry the wellspring of hope and continue hoping that there will be another day when the light will shine so strong that there will be no division, partition and the Silence of Love will prevail.

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