[One Thousand Characters a Day] Yun Dong-ju's 'Gil'

Editor's NoteAsia Economy provides daily 1,000-character transcription content for the 'Harumanbo Harucheonja' newsletter readers. The transcription content is carefully selected according to themes on a daily and monthly basis from Eastern and Western classics, Korean literature, famous columns, and notable speeches. If you upload your transcribed content to the 'Harumanbo Harucheonja' board (goodbrainboard.asiae.co.kr) by the end of May, you will be entered into a draw to win a 1-month free subscription to 'Millie's Library'. Today's featured passage is ＜Gil (The Road)＞, considered a representative work of poet Yun Dong-ju. Walking along a stone wall but unable to go beyond it, and the iron gate inside the wall firmly closed, symbolize the tragic reality of the homeland under Japanese colonial rule. The intellectuals of the time, powerless to do anything, can only look up at the sky with shame. The text contains 246 characters.

I have lost it.
I do not know what or where,
My two hands grope in my pockets
And I step onto the road.

Stone after stone endlessly connected,
The road runs alongside the stone wall.

The wall firmly closes its iron gate,
Casting a long shadow on the road,
The road connected from morning to evening,
From evening to morning.

Tracing the stone wall, shedding tears,
When I look up, the sky is shyly blue.

Walking this road without a single blade of grass
Is because I remain beyond the wall,

And the reason I live is simply
To find what I have lost.

- Yun Dong-ju, ＜Gil (The Road)＞