Easily Written Poem

Easily Written Poem

—after seeing documentary film, secret underground train to Seoul

 

By Yearn Hong Choi 

 

The leftists did not know how dangerous it was when wecrossed the Tuman River to arrive at the Manchurian sideof China. We did not know how dangerous it was to escape the spies of North Korea and China in Manchuria until we crossed the border of China and Mongolia.

 

Many were killed on the barbed wire. We took a long underground soul train from there to the Southeast Asian jungle and sought political asylum. We did not know how to distinguish the leftists from the rightists. We just risked our lives for minimum food and minimum freedom.

 

The leftist regimes donated astronomical amounts of money to the dictator in North Korea under the name of nationalism and humanitarian aides. However, they did not see the North Korean refugees. They did not hear the screams of those who shot at the borders.

 

They did not know the existence of the soul train that went through a long tunnel underground. They were careless of the dictator’s firing of long- and short-range missiles toward the East Sea and the Pacific Ocean and underground testing of nuclear bombs.

 

They just believed in nationalism and reconciliation between the two Koreas.

They did not ask who we were. They were careless about how many of us were killed in North Korea, in the River, and in the border of China and Mongolia. They just shout that they are the nationalists.

 

How pathetic! How ridiculous! They don’t see that the dictator is a naked emperor.