Earning My Keep by Jeong Ho-seung - Words Without Borders

Mother,
I think I’ll go pay a visit to Hell.
No matter how far away,
I’ll set off as if leaving for work in the morning
then come back as if coming off work in the evening.
Don’t skip meals, chew your food well before swallowing,
be sure to turn off the gas when you step out,
and don’t worry too much about me.
Hell too must be a place where people live,
so if I go to Hell to earn my keep
at last I’ll be able to become a human being.

Meet the Author and Translator

Watch Jeong Ho-Seung and Brother Anthony read his poems in Korean and English at L.A.’s Korean Cultural Center. You can find translations of the poems, “The People That I Love” and “Flower-falling Evening,” on Brother Anthony’s website.

Then find out how Brother Anthony came to live in Korea in this article from his blog. And read an interview in which he explains why there is no such thing as a “perfect” translation, published in Asymptote magazine.

Finally, find out about co-translator Susan Hwang’s particular areas of interest in her academic profile on the University of California, Santa Barbara website.

Hear the Names

Listen to pronunciations of the Korean terms in this story, read aloud by WWB Campus graduate intern Olan Munson.

Words Without Borders Campus · EarningMyKeep Audio

Then, listen to the full poem in Korean, also read by Olan Munson.

Words Without Borders Campus · 밥값 3 Earning My Keep

A Scholar's Notes

Read what Brother Anthony of Taizé writes about this poem in his introduction to Korean literature:

The humorous poem “Earning My Keep,” by the popular poet Jeong Ho-Seung, has a lighter tone [than “Grass”], but perhaps a similar attitude toward the future. It is in part a reflection of the challenges many Korean men faced as they left their village homes to find work in the cities, often facing hellish conditions.

In an article for Voices magazine, Brother Anthony writes that: “older poets such as Jeong Ho-seung enjoy tremendous popularity with poems that gently express nostalgia and melancholy at life’s transience and love’s uncertainty.”

"Hell" Elsewhere in Korean Culture

Large numbers of young adults in South Korea call the country “hell” — is this a sign of “global middle class angst, a uniquely Korean malaise – or mere talk?” Find out in an article from the Asia Times.

Then, look at the satirical “Marketing I – Hell Painting” (1980) by O Yoon, part of the “Minjung” art movement that emerged after the brutal suppression of a pro-democracy protest in Gwangju, Korea, in 1980. (The death toll quoted in the Tate article has been disputed by human rights groups. For more on Gwangu, see the resources posted for the essay “A Meal of Solitude for a Restless Heart.”

Working Life—and Death

President Park Chung Hee, by Ludwig Wegmann. License: CC BY-SA 3.0.

Learn how former President Park’s program of rapid industrialization allowed for workers to be exploited in this article from the Asia Society. The article also explains how a philosophy called “neo-Confusianism” continues to shape Korean working life.

Next, find out why literally “working yourself to death” continues to be a possibility today – both in Korea and in the worldwide gig economy.

Finally, find out about worldwide efforts to create more opportunities for “decent work” in this fact sheet for the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goal #8: Decent Work and Economic Growth.

Background on Korea

Street painting in Seoul, by leifbr. License: CC BY-SA 2.0.

New to learning about Korea? Read the BBC’s country profile or a more detailed profile from the Korean Ministry of Culture.

Jeong Ho-Seung

Jeong Ho-Seung (born 1950) is probably Korea’s most popular poet. His poetry collections are Seulpeumi gippeumege (Sorrow to Joy, 1979), Seoului yesu (Seoul’s Jesus, 1982), Saebyeok pyeonji (Dawn Letter, 1987), Byeolteureun ttatteuthada (Stars Are Warm, 1990), Saranghadaga jugeobeoryeora (Love, Then Die, 1997), Oerounikka saramida (Human Because Lonely, 1998), Nunmuri namyeon gichareul tara (If Tears Flow, Take a Train, 1999), I jalbeun sigan dongan (During this Short Moment, 2004), Poong (Embrace, 2007), Bapgap (Rice-Price, 2010), and Yeohaeng (Journey, 2013). He has received the Seoul City Literary Award, the Jeong Ji-yong Literary Award, the Pyeonun Literary Award, the Sanghwa Poetry Award, and the Gongcho Literary Award.

Brother Anthony of Taizé

Brother Anthony of Taizé was born in Cornwall (U.K.) in 1942. He studied medieval European literature at the University of Oxford. A member of the Community of Taizé since 1969, he has been living in Korea since 1980. He is now an Emeritus Professor of Sogang University (Seoul) and a Chair-Professor at Dankook University. A prolific translator, since 1990 he has published some 50 volumes of translations of Korean literature, mostly contemporary poetry. He took Korean citizenship in 1994. He received the Korean government’s Award of Merit (Culture) in 2008. In 2015 he was awarded an honorary MBE by Queen Elizabeth.

Print Bios

More on Work Around the World

Kimchi Preparers — Kimchi preparers in the U.S. by TheeErin. License: CC BY-SA 2.0.

Look through The Guardian’s photo gallery of women at work, including a Korean freelance photographer (about halfway down the page).
Then, find out why “For #BlackLivesMatter supporters, black work also matters” in CNN’s look at “the changing face of modern U.S. labor”
Next, find out more about why it might be that Korean workers put in the equivalent of a month more per year than their American counterparts; and the economic reasons behind one worker’s comment that today in Korea, “you can’t get back up if you fall.”

"Work" on the Big Screen

For a classic Korean film about trying to make a living “under vicious, inhuman circumstances,” try “Aimless Bullet (or Oblaton),” described in the New Yorker as one of the best films in a “golden age” of Korean filmmaking that began in the 1960s. “Aimless Bullet” is available in full, with subtitles, from the Korean Film Archives.

A Vision of "Industry"

Take a closer look at Diego Rivera’s “Detroit Industry” murals, which reviewers called “a slander to Detroit workmen” and “un-American” when they were first painted.

Visions of Hell

"Christ's Descent into Hell" — “Christ’s Descent into Hell” by follower of Hieronymus Bosch. License: CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0)

Look at a few examples of how artists have imagined Hell over the past 600 years:

“The Last Judgment” (1440) by Jan van Eyck (Hell is in the bottom half)
“Hell” (1490) by Hieronymus Bosch, and an Atlantic article about how “Bosch’s Hell lives on today“
“The Punishment of the Thieves” (1824-7), by William Blake
“Self-Portrait in Hell” (1903), by Edvard Munch, published in Google Arts and Culture—an article beneath the painting comments that the subject “is totally aware of his horrible situation, but has decided not to succumb,” like the speaker of “Earning My Keep”
“Coffee House Painting” (2009) by Shoja Azar, described in Art in America as “a meditation on current, living versions of hell.”

Visiting Someone Else's Hell

*The cover of The Disaster Tourist by Yo Ko-Eun, translated by Lizzie Buehler*

Read about The Disaster Tourist, a novel by Korean writer Yo Ko-Eun that tells the story of a woman whose job is to organize people’s excursions into various “hells.”

More Disorienting Writing**

Poems on WWB Campus:

I Spat Out This Poem: A Pakistani poem that begins with a shocking line
Do Not Tremble, by Japanese poet Hirato Toshiko: Written in response to the disastrous 2011 earthquake in Japan, this poem gives a sense of the shock of its arrival.
Notes on a Zombie Cataclysm, by Luis Felipe Fabre: Another poem with a surprising, eye-opening metaphor, “Notes” compares Mexico’s drug wars to a zombie apocalypse.

Poems Elsewhere:

I heard a Fly buzz – when I died – (591) by Emily Dickinson
A Few Words About Myself and Cloud in Trousers by the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky.
A Myth of Devotion by Louise Glück, based on the Greek myth of Hades and Persephone
I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra by Ishmael Reed, which brings together references to ancient Egyptian religion and the American West
A Season in Hell by French poet Arthur Rimbaud

For even more poems, check out the “Poetry about the Underworld” collection from the Poetry Foundation.

**For Teaching Idea 1

More Poems That Defy Conventional Wisdom**

A line outside a cinema in Kharkov, the Ukraine, USSR, 1981. By Л.П. Джепко

“You’re Right“: From one of Estonia’s “angry young women,” a poem pushing back against know-it-all elders and their tales of the old days
“My Man“: An Afro-Brazilian performance poem defying stereotypes about black men and racial hierarchies
“First Fig,” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, which subverts the idea that a person should avoid “burning your candle at both ends,” that is, working or living too intensely
Hilaire Belloc’s satirical “Cautionary Tales” for children, such as “Sarah Byng, Who Could Not Read and Was Tossed into a Thorny Hedge by a Bull”; a recent New Yorker essay discussed their lasting appeal

**For Teaching Idea 2

To access standards-linked teaching ideas and our full array of classroom resources, please visit wwb-campus.org.

Mother,
I think I’ll go pay a visit to Hell.
No matter how far away,
I’ll set off as if leaving for work in the morning
then come back as if coming off work in the evening.
Don’t skip meals, chew your food well before swallowing,
be sure to turn off the gas when you step out,
and don’t worry too much about me.
Hell too must be a place where people live,
so if I go to Hell to earn my keep
at last I’ll be able to become a human being.

밥값

어머니

아무래도 제가 지옥에 한번 다녀오겠습니다

아무리 멀어도

아침에 출근하듯이 갔다가

저녁에 퇴근하듯이 다녀오겠습니다

식사 거르지 마시고 꼭꼭 씹어서 잡수시고

외출하실 때는 가스불 꼭 잠그시고

너무 염려하지는 마세요

지옥도 사람 사는 곳이겠지요

지금이라도 밥값을 하러 지옥에 가면

비로소 제가 인간이 될 수 있을 겁니다.

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Earning My Keep

밥값

Jeong Ho-Seung

Brother Anthony of Taizé

Susan Hwang

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