Author Biography
Pak Tu-Jin was born on March 10, 1916, in
Anseong, Kyonggi province, forty miles to the
south of Seoul in South Korea. His family was
too poor to send him to school, but he learned to
write poetry, probably through reading the
Korean-language Bible and volumes of modern
Korean poems. He made his literary debut in
1939 with three original nature poems published
inMoonjang-Ji, a prestigious journal of litera-
ture. However, between 1941 and 1945, the Jap-
anese occupiers prohibited the use of the Korean
language except in writings that promoted the
Japanese war cause. So Pak did not publish, but
he wrote, and his work, when not hidden under
the chicken coop, was shown to fellow writers,
probably others involved in the resistance move-
ment with Pak.
Before and after liberation, Pak held various
jobs at a tax office, bank, publishing house, and
magazine. In 1946, Pak, with Pak Mogweol and
Cho Chihun, publishedThe Green Deer Anthol-
ogy,a collection that greatly influenced modern
Korean poetry. After liberation, leftists who
eventually supported the communist takeover
of North Korea dominated the literary scene,
but Pak joined the nationalist writers supporting
democracy. In 1949, Pak publishedSun, his own
collection of poetry, and by the early 1950s, he
had established such a good reputation as a poet
that he was invited to teach at Yo ̆nsei, Ewha,
and other universities in Seoul. However, after
the student uprisings in 1960 and the military
takeover of the government in 1961, Pak lost
his teaching position for a time and entered a
dark, bitter period in his life. Nonetheless, he
wrote more poetry than ever before, taking a
stand against the military dictatorship and pro-
moting the application of a strong historical and
cultural consciousness to contemporary reality.
Among his many books of poetry were also three
books of essays.
Pak retired from Yo ̆nsei University in 1971,
but continued to teach for another fifteen years
at a couple of artistic and academic institutions.
He won the Freedom Prize for Literature in
1956, the Seoul City Cultural Award in 1963,
the Korea Academic Award of Art in 1976, and
the fifteenth Sole Pine Tree Award in 1993,
among other awards. He refused induction into
the National Academy of Arts while Korea was
still under dictatorial rule, but accepted it in
- His work has been taught to school chil-
dren for years in the standard curriculum of
Korean literature. Pak died on September 16,
1998, at the age of eighty-two.
Poem Summary
The title and recurring phrase, River of August,
refers to the element of nature that Pak chose to
represent Korea: a river flowing out to sea. It is
called the River of August because it was in
August 1945 that Korea was liberated from Jap-
anese occupation. Throughout the poem, Pak
uses personification, a type of analogy that
gives human attributes to a non-human subject;
personification makes it possible for Pak to
imbue the river the emotions of the people of
Korea.
The point of view in the poem is that of a
narrator observing the actions of the river and
speaking of the river in third person. The tone is
emotional, which is conveyed in the words used
to describe the action and memories of the river:
writhes, agony, sighs, tears, wrath, andbetrayals.
But the negative remembrance shifts midway to
a more positive remembrance of a Korea that
had developed a beautiful culture. The tone
becomes hopeful with words such asgolden, bril-
liant, achievement, victory, stately, lofty, and
boundless. The narrator believes that the glory
that once was Korea can be recaptured and
transformed by a nation that can march into
the future with its own identity and purpose.
Meter and rhythm cannot be discussed with
accuracy when dealing with a translation. A tal-
ented translator can perhaps capture the essence
of the original rhythm, but sound devices such as
alliteration, assonance, and onomatopoeia can-
not be reproduced because of the word differ-
ences. For example, there are a lot of differences
in meter and sound betweenadiosandgoodbye.
The two words have the same meaning, but one
starts with a vowel and has three syllables; the
other starts with a consonant and has just two
syllables, among other poetic differences. How-
ever, phrases such as ‘‘River of August,’’ line and
stanza length, and punctuation can be retained
in a translation. Also, whatever the wordsclaps
and sighs sound like in Korean, there is an
assumption about the sound that goes with
these actions, a sound the readers will hear in
their minds. In this poem, the stanza and lineRiver of August