DMZ Colony - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Born in Seoul, South Korea, Don Mee Choi is the author of Hardly War (Wave Books, 2016), The Morning News Is Exciting (Action Books, 2010), and several chapbooks and pamphlets of poems and essays. She has received a Whiting Award, Lannan Literary Fellowship, Lucien Stryk Translation Prize, and DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Fellowship. She has translated several collections of Kim Hyesoon's poetry, including Autobiography of Death (New Directions, 2018), which received the 2019 International Griffin Poetry Prize.

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Orphan Cheo Geum-jeom
(Age 13)

New Years day! I was stuffed from eating too many rice cakes. My favorites are the ones with chestnuts in the middle. It was so cold that my fingers were ready to snap off, but I still went over to my friend's house to play. Then I heard a machine gun and saw a swarm of soldiers. They looked like ants against the snow. Come out! They shouted. We will kill you all! But my friend and I kept on playing. We pretended it was summer and made green noodles by rolling up camellia leaves and sliced them ever so thinly. Now all the village people were rounded up. My mom was crying, and I had never seen her cry before. Maybe that's why I started crying too. The soldiers made us go up the hill into the forest where my mom and I picked chestnuts. I was in such a panic that I didn't realize my shoes had come off. I cried even more. I hate being shoeless more than anything in the world. I held onto my mom's hand and turned around because the soldiers told us to. I looked down at the pit. I couldn't see anything but dirt. I thought to myself, How will I ever find my shoes again? Then suddenly my mom floated up in the air again and again. Somehow I was already lying beneath her. Somehow a bullet pierced through my left foot. Somehow it was so quiet that I could hear everything inside my head. Somehow I jumped up. All the corpses were burning. Somehow my mom was headless. My uncle, covered in blood, acted crazy. Somehow somehow. We ran across the creek and up the mountain. The soldiers saw us and started shooting again.

The Apparatus

 

IN THE PENAL COLONY: "It's a remarkable piece of apparatus" however "the explorer did

not much care about the apparatus" and noted "These uniforms are

too heavy for the tropics, surely" nonetheless "the officer" said

"but they mean home to us; we don't want to forget about home"

however "the officer" phonated "Have you ever heard of our

former Commandant?" still "A pity you never met the old

Commandant!" anyhow lingually "here stands his apparatus before

us" and withal "The lower one is called the 'Bed,' the upper one

the 'Designer,' and this one here in the middle that moves up and

down is called the 'Harrow'" after all "the officer was speaking

French" though utterly "neither the soldier nor the prisoner

understood a word of French" even so "the explorer" noted again

"It was all the more remarkable, therefore, that the prisoner was

nonetheless making an effort to follow the officer's explanations"

yet verbally "The Bed and the Designer were of the same size."

 

IN THE NEOCOLONY: "Horrific!" "(the translator who made herself as lowly as she

could)" reuttered in Korean "discarded language that no one needs,

surely" however "the investigator" in turn added phonetically "The

U.S. military!" "[The neocolonizer!]" yet "the prisoner said he

understood Japanese" noted "(the translator who didn't know a

word of it, and equally foreign to English'hence lowly)"

regardless "(the investigator)" sonated "The Japanese military!"

"[The former colonizer!]" and recounted "The military apparatus"

"The intelligence apparatus" "The police apparatus" even so

"What? Precisely this: that the upper floors could not 'stay up' (in

the air) alone, if they did not rest precisely on their base"

"(Althusser)" but then "(the translator)" politely paraphrased in

translation "there was no Bed to begin with" "soldiers who didn't

know a word of English" "only had to use their innate muscles to

dig deeper holes and trenches" "a primitive apparatus, surely"

"commies, surely" then ratted on "while the US military apparatus

provided extra-man-power machine guns and essential trucks to

transport the commies to their rightful digs" "Rat-a-tat-tat!" "Ra-atat-

tat!" In other words "[commie genocide]." And "[before the

war the US-backed Commandant, Syngman Rhee, kept a list of

300,000 commies in order to eradicate them]"'"[of course we

couldn't count every single civilian who was killed]"'"[some

were chained to rocks and drowned in the sea]"'"[the so-called

commies were mostly farmers, elders, women, children who lived

in villages beneath so-called commie mountains where the anticolonial

guerilla fighters hid during the day and came down at

night to collect provisions]" "(the investigator)" patiently spelled

out as she kept drawing "extraordinary circles" while "(the

translator)" could only helplessly flutter her ears. Anyhow, "The

State apparatus, which defines the State as a force of repressive

execution and intervention 'in the interest of the ruling classes [and

the neocolonizer] in the class struggle conducted by the

bourgeoisie and its allies against the proletariat [the neocolonized],

is quite certainly the State, and quite certainly defines its basic

'function'" enunciated "(Althusser)."

 

IN THE PENAL COLONY: "Does he know his sentence?" "(the explorer)"

"No" "(the officer)"

"He doesn't know the sentence that has been passed on him?"

"(the explorer)"

"No" "(the officer)"

"There would be no point in telling him. He'll learn it on his body"

"(the officer)"

"Whatever commandment the prisoner has disobeyed is written

upon his body by the Harrow" "(the officer)"

"HONOR THY SUPERIORS!" "(the Harrow)"

 

IN THE NEOCOLONY: (HONOR THY SKY!) "the old wisdom"

(YOU EVIL BITCHES!) "the neocolonial wisdom"

(HONOR THY KING!) "the old wisdom"

(YOU SCUMS OF SOCIETY!) "the neocolonial wisdom"

(HONOR THY HUSBAND!) "the old wisdom"

(YOU!) "the neocolonial wisdom"

(HONOR THY SON!) "the old wisdom"

(Before the woman was released, that is to say, after she was

clubbed nonstop for an entire month she received orders to bathe at

a creek in a remote area. When she took off her clothes, the same

ones she was wearing the day she was captured for no apparent

reason and put into a so called "mind-heart-soul" reform camp

under the command of a new Commandant [one more U.S.-backed

dictator a.k.a. "Your Excellency"] [for there is never a shortage of

them]'after all the police had to fill a certain quota of women

[300 out of 60,000]'the woman went into shock from what she

saw. Her whole body was blue! There wasn't a single part of her

body that was not blue from the savage beatings. She thought she

was the only blue one, but the woman next to her was also blue!

The woman in front of her was, again, blue! And the woman

behind her was totally blue!) "the investigator"

(BLUE x 300!) "the translator"

IN THE PENAL COLONY: (The batons energized by muscles alone lack the technology

and sophistication of the Harrow but nonetheless it should be

understood as an instrument of writing) "the translator"

(Are you saying blue can be translated?) "the USA"

(Yes, blue can be translated as BLUE x 300, without the

exclamation mark, if need be) "the translator"

("LOST IN TRANSLATION" is an old wisdom) "the translator"

("TRANSLATOR, TRAITOR" rhymes yet undoubtedly an old

wisdom) "the translator"

("WE DON'T WANT TO FORGET ABOUT HOME" is entirely

universal, therefore, remains untranslatable) "the translator" [who

was terribly homesick even at home'the translator is without a

uniform, mind you]"

("In order to advance the theory of the [neocolonial] State) (I shall

call this reality by its concept: the [neocolonial] ideological State

apparatuses") "Althusser"

(And in order to advance the theory of translation I translate "the

State" as "the [neocolonial] State" and "the ideological State

apparatuses" as "the [neocolonial] ideological State apparatuses"

and "the USA" as "the united status of apparatus" considering

ample "reality" has already been offered to the curious reader [not

to dismiss "the USAs"] [plurality of reality propels translation]

[difference propels theory] [memory propels art] [which may all be

beside the point]) "the translator"

("But now for what is essential. What distinguishes the ISAs from

the (Repressive) State Apparatus is the following basic difference:

the Repressive State Apparatus functions 'by violence', whereas

the Ideological State Apparatuses 'function by ideology'")

"Althusser"

IN THE NEOCOLONY: "(')" "(e e e)" "(')" "(ideology)" "(')" (Mr. Ahn)

"(ideology)" "(ideology is a system of the ideas and

representations which dominate the mind of a man or a social

group)" "(ideology)" "(before Freud)" "(is for Marx an imaginary

assemblage)" "(bricolage)" "(a pure dream empty and vain)"

"('day's residues')" "(It is on this basis)" "(ideology)" "(has no

history)" "(since history is outside it)" "(ideology)" "(can and

must)" "(be related directly to)" "(Freud's)" "(that the unconscious

is eternal)" "(i.e. that it has no history)" "(if)" "(eternal)"

"(means)" "(not transcendent)" "(but)" "(omnipresent)" "(transhistorical)"

"(and therefore)" "(I shall adopt Freud's expression)"

"(word for word)" "(and write)" "(ideology is eternal)" "(exactly)"

"(like)" "(the unconscious)" "(the eternity of the unconscious)"

"(is not)" "(unrelated)" "(to the )" "(eternity of ideology)" "(in

general)" (Althusser)

IN THE NEOCOLONY: "(')" "(e e e)" "(')" "(I was on Planet e)" "(')" (Mr. Ahn)

"(Ideology has a material existence)" "(ideology)" "(always exists

in an apparatus)" "(ideology)" "(=)" "(an imaginary relation to real

relations)" "(imaginary relation)" "(is)" "(itself endowed with a

material existence)" (Althusser)

(e e e) (=) (ideology) (=) (imaginary) (=) (eternity) (the translator)

IN THE NEOCOLONY: (eliminate) (eradicate) (obliterate) (the National Security Law

apparatus)

(will you change your political view or not?) (old Your

Excellency)

(will you change your political view or not?) (new Your

Excellency)

"(oe)" "(ae)" "(ie)" "(e)" "(e)" "(e)" (Mr. Ahn)

IN THE PENAL COLONY: 10. Have you EVER been a member of, or in any way associated

with the Community Party? (old INS apparatus)

10. Have you EVER been a member of, or in any way associated

(either directly or indirectly) with: A. The Communist Party? B.

Any other totalitarian party? C. A terrorist organization? (new

USCIS apparatus)

(chorus of allegiance: EVER, EVER, EVER)

A. Eternity

B. Eternity

C. Eternity

IN DMZ COLONY: I'll leave it up to your imagination

A. ?

B. ?

C. ?

What I remember about my childhood are the children, no older than me, who used to come around late afternoons begging for leftovers, even food that had gone sour. The drills at school in preparation for attacks by North Korea kept me anxious at night. I feared separation from my family due to the ever-pending war. I feared what my mother feared'my brother being swept up in protests and getting arrested and tortured. Our radio was turned off at night in case we were suspected of being North Korean sympathizers. At school, former North Korean spies came to give talks on the evil leader of North Korea. I stood at bus stops to see if I could spot any North Korean spies, but all I could spot were American GIs. My friends and I waved to them and called them Hellos. In our little courtyard, I skipped rope and played house with my paper dolls amongst big glazed jars of fermented veggies and spicy, pungent pastes. I feared the shadows they cast along the path to the outhouse. Stories of abandoned infant girls always piqued my interest, so I imagined that the abandoned babies might be inside the jars. Whenever I obeyed the shadows, I saw tiny floating arms covered in mold. And whenever it snowed, I made tiny snowmen on top of the covers of the jars. Like rats, children can be happy in darkness. But the biggest darkness of all was the midnight curfew. I didn't know the curfew was a curfew till my family escaped from it in 1972 and landed in Hong Kong. That's how big the darkness was