Jessai Flores
골목길 머뭇하던 첫 안녕을 기억하오
Lover, do you remember our wavering goodbyes in the corridor?
그날의 끄덕임을 난 잊을 수 없다오
Lover, I cannot dare forget the slight nods exchanged that day.
길가에 내린 새벽 그 고요를 기억하오
Lover, do you remember the twilight-laden street, its quiet?
그날의 다섯시를 난 잊을 수 없다오
Lover, I cannot dare forget that day’s five o’clock
반듯하게 내린 기다란 속눈썹 아래
Beneath those delicately-shaped, long eyelashes of yours
몹시도 사랑히 적어둔 글씨들에
The letters, scribbled with far too much love
이따금 불러주던 형편없는 휘파람에
The ever-so-often, clumsy whistling
그 모든 나의 자리에 나 머물러 있다오
Lover, in all of my dwellings, I still linger
아끼던 연필로 그어놓은 밑줄 아래
Beneath the line drawn by my so-cherished pen
우리 둘 나란히 적어둔 이름들에
Our two names, scribbled side-by-side
무심한 걱정으로 묶어주던 신발끈에
The shoelaces that you so casually tied
그 모든 나의 자리에 나 머물러 있다오
Lover, in all of my dwellings, I still linger
좋아하던 봄 노래와 내리는 눈송이에도
Even in your beloved spring tunes and the fluttering snow-petals
어디보다 그대 안에 나 머물러 있다오
Lover, more than anywhere, I dwell within you
나 머물러 있다오 그대 울지 마시오
Lover, I still linger. Lover, please do not cry.
It is the age of romance. Fingertips brush against each other. Skin touches skin delicately, fleetingly. In the blink of an eye, the two lovers are on opposite ends of the busy town square, both with a love confession in hand. Secret smiles paint their lips, as their fingers loosely and gingerly encase the slips of paper, so as not to crush it. With each stride, the 쪽지 (slip) flutters inside their loose hands.
When I watch the black and white, romance flicks from 1940s Hollywood, I wonder if this is the memory of love that my white American friends have inherited throughout time. Perhaps, they locate the love stories of their grandparents or great-grandparents on the screen. For me, it’s not as simple. I can’t find the faces of my grandparents in that of Humphrey Bogart’s “Rick Blaine” or Audrey Hepburn’s “Princess Ann” — very few people can see their faces in Hepburn’s doe-eyes or prominently-curved nose, but you get my point.
My grandparents never told me about their cinematic love — probably, because the gloomy aftermaths of the Korean War, during which they grew up, afforded them little romance. I weave together the bits and pieces of my ancestors’ stories in my imagination.
For Indonesian artist Niki, she pursued a similar endeavor when writing her hit-song, “Every Summertime” — one song from the Asian diaspora-spanning soundtrack of “Shang-chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.” In the song, two lovers stroll down the boulevards and dance under the streetlights of San Francisco. From the Genius page: “Modeled after Shang-Chi’s parents in the film as well as some of Niki’s own experiences, the song tells the story of two Asian teens falling in love in the 80s.”
This essay, and the beginning, italicized excerpt, is my answer to the question: how would my teenaged-grandparents have fallen in love in 1950s Korea?
This story takes place in the musical landscape of 사랑 편지, or “Love Letter” — a song written and sung by South Korea’s darling singer IU. Accompanying the song is my own Korean-to-English translation of the song.
I encourage Korean-readers to take note of the sentences that end with “오,” pronounced as “–oh.” From my research — consulting my mother and scenes from sageuks, or Korean period dramas — I gathered that the “오” ending is an in-between form of casual address (반말) and formal speech (존댓말) that was used in older times.
According to my mother, the participle was usually used by noblemen (양반). Strangely, all of the instances of “-오” I could recall were used between lovers or close friends. Additionally, the “-오” betrays a sense of mercy begging for mercy.
As IU sings to an unknown lover, through this antiquated, strangely-nostalgic language, she pleads with her lover to remember her. For all of the sentences with -오, I attached the word, “Lover” — perhaps the “noun” that properly conveys/translates the identity of “bearer of mercy.” After all, aren’t we all in mercy when we love?
In his scholarly article, “The World in a Love Letter,” Boduerae Kwon outlines the history of “yonae,” the Korean word for romance, and how this modern concept of romantic love was a colonial import. In fact, this “yonae” is at the heart of modern Korean literature’s origin. As modern literature appealed to readers with its sense of intimate and immediate communication, the concept of love letters was born (Kwon 21). In fact, the medium of the love letter soon became synonymous with the quiet, yet fatal intensity of the lovers’ correspondence.
“Lovers would sometimes ride the same bus and get off through different doors, as though strangers, and exchange a few words while walking together… The more timid and awkward one’s actual contact with the object of desire, the more fervent became the confession of one’s inner self in letters (Kwon, 29).”
To my ears, IU’s “Love Letter,” released in 2021, sounds like a letter that has time-travelled from the 1940s. Despite the vanilla actions described in the lyrics — the nonchalantly-tied shoe-laces, slight nods, wavering exchanges — she makes a burning confession: “I dwell within you.” Despite the presumed physical distance between the singer and her lover, the song’s lines destroy any sense of separation: “I still linger” in all of our shared exchanges, moments and places.
In the warmth of her room, the woman grabs her so-cherished pen and hovers over the paper. Reaching for the diamond-shaped bottle of perfume, she presses lightly and sprays a mist of sweetness over the envelope. Heart stirring, she begins to write: ‘Lover, do you remember….’