I sell my daughter for 100 won (Defected North Korean Poet)

 

'North Korea' is not bad. 

It's the leaders that drive the people to starve or freeze to death, fear public execution at every uttered word, and be stripped of every single right as a human being that's bad.

I am of South Korean heritage. My father's father's father knew of a nation that was one. 

Though many people say I am lucky to be from South. My heart aches because I was born only on half of my nation. 

Many Koreans still suffer from separation of family.Where-ever you were at the time of separation is where you had to stay, unable to cross borders, unable to contact each other. 

Not by our will, but because at the time of end of 2nd World War: To disarm Japanese forces, Russians had come down to the Northern part of Korea and Americans had occupied South Korea.

Some North Koreans risk their lives to cross the border. 

The following is a poem written by Jang Jin Sung, a North Korean who escaped.

 

 내 딸을 백 원에 팝니다 (장진성 탈북 시인)

Exhausted, in the midst of the market she stood
"For 100 won, my daughter I sell"
Heavy medallion of sorrow
A cardboard around her neck she had hung
Next to her young daughter
Exhausted, in the midst of the market she stood

A deaf-mute the mother
She gazed down at the ground, just ignoring
The curses the people all threw
As they glared
At the mother who sold
Her motherhood, her own flesh and blood

Her tears dried up
Though her daughter, upon learning
Her mother would perish of a deadly disease
Had buried her face in the mother’s long skirt
And bellowed, and cried
But the mother stood still
And her lips only quivered

Unable she was to give thanks to the soldier
Who slipped a hundred won into her hand
As he uttered
"It is your motherhood,
And not the daughter I'm buying
She took the money, and ran

A mother she was,
And the 100 won she had taken
She spent on a loaf of wheat bread
Toward her daughter she ran
As fast as she could
And pressed the bread on the child's lips
"Forgive me, my child"
In the midst of the market she stood
And she wailed.