Poet Ko Un erased from Korean textbooks after sexual harassment claims

Poet Ko Un erased from Korean textbooks after sexual harassment claims

The 84-year-old Nobel favourite ‘flatly denies charges of habitual misconduct’, writing in a statement that he had ‘done nothing which might bring shame on my wife or myself’

Alison Flood

The Guardian, Fri 2 Mar 2018 13.30 GMT 

Korea’s most famous literary export Ko Un, a former Buddhist monk who is often named a frontrunner for the Nobel prize in literature, is at the centre of sexual harassment accusations. It has led to his poems being removed from textbooks and the shuttering of a library established by Seoul local government in his name.

The allegations, which have been denied by Ko in a statement provided to the Guardian, surfaced in the form of a poem by the poet Choi Young-mi. In The Beast, published in December, Choi did not name the major poet she accused of sexual harassment in the poem, instead calling him En.

“Poet K warned me of his bad habit of groping young women. I blame my fading memory as I sat next to him some time later. Me too. My silk blouse that I borrowed from my sister for the outing was creased. Years later I met him again at a year-end party thrown by a publishing company. He sat next to a married editor and as usual he was groping her. ‘You, the cranky old man!’ I yelled at him and ran away …” she wrote, according to a translation in the Korea Times . The subject has been widely identified in Korean media as Ko.

In an interview with the Korea Times, Choi claimed the poet’s behaviour was an open secret, and that writers, editors and publishers have been victims of his “bad habit”.

“People like him were members of the editorial boards of major literary quarterlies, through which aspiring writers and poets make their literary debut or publish their works,” she said. “If someone refuses their request to curry favour with them sexually, retaliation awaits them. Their works won’t be chosen for publication.”

Official responses to the allegations have snowballed over the last week. The Korea Times reported that 11 of Ko’s poems were to be removed from school textbooks, while the Dong-A Ilbo newspaper published an image of the Maninbo Library, which had featured Ko’s handwritten literary works, covered with white sheets. A Seoul Metropolitan Government official told the paper: “We started to close the space in the afternoon of Tuesday as we couldn’t delay the decision any longer with more people speaking up and revealing what the poet did in detail. When we sent him a text message to inform him that the Maninbo Library will be shut down, Ko sent a reply, ‘Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.’”

The 84-year-old poet is widely acclaimed both inside and outside Korea. Before he was a major literary figure, Ko was a Buddhist monk for a decade, until he left the clergy in 1962 and became a writer. His Maninbo collection contains 4,001 poems featuring the names of 5,600 people – 30 years of work that stemmed from an oath he made while in prison for political activism: to memorialise every person he had ever met with a short poem.

The author of more than 150 volumes of poetry, Ko was described by Allen Ginsberg as “a magnificent poet, combination of Buddhist cognoscente, passionate political libertarian, and naturalist historian”.

Neil Astley, at his UK publisher Bloodaxe Books, gave the Guardian a statement from Ko, in which he denied the allegations. “I regret that my name has been brought up in the recent allegations. I have already expressed regret for any unintended pain that my behaviour may have caused. However, I flatly deny charges of habitual misconduct that some individuals have brought up against me,” said Ko. “In Korea I would simply wait for the passage of time to bring the truth to light and settle the controversy. However, to my foreign friends, to whom facts and contexts are not readily available, I must affirm that I have done nothing which might bring shame on my wife or myself. All I can say at the moment is that I believe that my writing will continue, with my honour as a person and a poet maintained.”

Astley said that Ko was hospitalised last month for treatment of a tumour, and “and is now in recovery but weakened physically by the operation as well as by the effects and consequences of the public shaming of him”. The publisher added that what had been published in the Korean press so far was “still based on one person’s allegations, supported by unsubstantiated comment from other quarters, despite the impression given here and elsewhere of wider proven misconduct”.

“The response to all this in Korea has gone to extremes, including removing Ko Un’s poetry from school texts and pressuring him to give up various privileges he has enjoyed as one of his country’s most esteemed and feted writers. His fall from grace, following the scandal, is in part a reaction against the celebrity status and public adulation he has had in Korea far above what any writers in the west would have known,” said Astley, adding that Bloodaxe “stand[s] by Ko Un’s literary legacy, which is now in the process of being erased in Korea, but would not condone the alleged personal misconduct in any way”.