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[News Wave] Poet Jung Myung Seok officially chosen as a poet in Korea’s 100 years of poetry

February 13, 2017February 13, 2017 providencehubLeave a comment

Introduced in ‘The Encyclopedia of Korean Poetry’, page 2717

‘Poet Jung Myung Seok is someone who has opened his eyes to the mysterious and profound wonders of the world created by the Creator. He discovered the law of creation, which states that nature is like human beings, and human beings are like God. In his poems, he ties together and connects a variety of difficult concepts [within this theme]. Then he gains the power to embrace both heaven and earth. He pursues an ideal world and at the same time, reveals [in his poem] his strong will to maintain his optimism and endure his difficult life.

Along with 3500 others, President Jung Myung Seok of Christian Gospel Mission is a believer of God who lives only for the sake of saving lives, and was recently recorded in a larger, revised edition of ‘The Encyclopedia of Korean Poetry,’ which represents 100 years of the history of poetry in Korea (1908 ~ 2010).

The book made the evaluation that Poet Jung views the essence of nature from the perspective of the Creator’s law of creation. He was also described as someone who binds the love of Heaven and Earth through his world of poetry.

Especially through the following appraisal [of Jung], it was acknowledged that he has penetrated both the world of God and the world of reality: ‘His sincere world of poetry expresses a love of praising Heaven and love of embracing the broken Earth. His literature creates hope and harmony for modern people whose lives lack a balance between reality and ideals.’

Poet Jung’s name was recorded on page 2717 of The Encyclopedia of Korean Poetry, published last March.

Jung Myung Seok in Korea Poetry Dictionary.png — Page 2717 of The Encyclopedia of Korean Poetry

In this book, Jung was introduced as a poet and ten of his poems were introduced, such as ‘Narrow mind,’ ‘Life,’ ‘Our love,’ ‘Movement of the cloud,’ ‘Never-changing heart,’ ‘Hope,’ as well as others.

In his poem ‘Hope’, he sings of true happiness and hope that is gained only by someone who has overcome difficulties and has been trained in perseverance. He also reveals the deep truth of life and initiates deep thoughts within the reader.

Happiness goes/even in a blizzard /life winter// Happiness goes/in the thorny field/even in a bone-aching life/of hardship and difficulty//Happiness/doesn’t want to give herself to anyone/she takes the painful road/that creates struggle//Hope too/doesn’t want to live with anyone/it looks for and goes to one/who endures and perseveres//

Poet Jung Myeong-seok’s book, ‘Spiritual Poem’, became a best seller in 1989. He officially became a poet through ‘the Munyesajo (Literary Movements and Trends) Writers Association’ in 1995, and had the spotlight shone on him in the world of Korean poetry and literature.

Since then, Poet Jung has never slackened in his writing of poetry as he releases between three to five poems every month. He has now released around 3,000 poems. He has written around 30,000 proverbs of wisdom that he received through his life of faith and, among them, 6,000 proverbs were published in six books (Heaven’s Words, My Words).

The large, revised version of ‘The Encyclopedia of Korean Poetry’ shows 100 years of the history of Korean poetry at a glance. It includes all the poets [of the 100 years], from the early poets in the history of Korean poets (Choi Nam-seon, Lee Yuk-sa, Lee Sang-wha, Jung Ji-yong), to the most recent poets (Jung Hyun-jong, Cheon Yang-hee, Hwang Dong-gyu). [The book includes poetry from] poets who have deceased, poets who were lost due to being kidnapped to North Korea or defecting to North Korea, and poets who are still alive.

Article published on Newswave, 7 June 2006 Original | Archived

2013 Seoul Literature Award: Poet Jung Myung Seok

February 4, 2017February 7, 2017 providencehub3 Comments

Seoul Literature Publications

Report No. 305-2014-0000036

2013 Seoul Literature Award Winner: Poet Jung Myung Seok

Jung Myung Seok 2013 Most Beautiful Person Seoul Literature Prize Winner.jpg

Poet Jung Myung Seok has never given up his life of composition, even in his current most inadequate environment, but has sublimated his misfortunes into happiness by challenging himself endlessly with hope. That is why the board committee of The Most Beautiful People of 2013 from Seoul Education Broadcasting highly appraised his passionate creative writing activities and nominated poet 1178 Jung Myung Seok as The Most Beautiful Person of 2013. His heart for life beats and surges like a wave throughout his compositions and within the merit of his missionary works.

The Selection Committee of The Most Beautiful Person of 2013

How he was nominated: This year poet Jung Myung Seok published two volumes of the series, Poems of Inspiration– The Woman of Poetry and Speaking Through Poetry. Since he has a wide circle of readers, both of his books made records as weekly bestseller at Kyobo Book Centre. Despite being imprisoned currently in Daejeon prison, we found that his fervor for literary creative writing has transcended his confinement; he has been writing almost as many pages as one book every week.

There are many people who have different views towards Jung. However, from a literary point of view, the diction Jung uses in his poems is unique, and at this time when poetry is already being considered a dead literary genre, Jung has engrossed himself in only writing poetry instead of essays or novels and has written thousands of poems thus far. Among those poems, he selected some of his works and published them into two books. In the future, we hope that more budding poets will be born from many other places so that poetry will resurrect again from its current state of depression in Korean literature. With that anticipation, we have nominated poet Jung Myung Seok as The Most Beautiful Person in 2013.

Furthermore, Jung has established a very special theory on psychoanalysis. In contrast to Carl Jung’s theory of dream interpretation, he has proven the reality of dreams empirically. His theory is known as the soul entity theory, which uses psychoanalysis to interpret the way dreams reflect reality. Although dreams reflecting reality is already widespread, his theory of psychoanalysis is revolutionary. In his theory, dreams are the reality of the soul entity; just as we have a physical body in the physical plane, the soul entity of the brain surely exists.

Who is poet Jung Myung Seok?

Who is poet Jung Myung Seok? He was born in 1945, the year of the rooster. At that time, Korea was under Japanese colonial rule. Around the time when Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin were making an agreement on the 38th parallel at Yalta on the coast of the Black Sea in the Soviet Union on February 4, 1945, a boy was born in Wolmyeongdong (Dalbar-gol), Seokmak-ri, Jinsan-myeon, Chungcheongnam-do, South Korea. At that time, the district was not called Chungcheong Province but Jeolla Province. Poet Jung Myung Seok was the third son of Jung Pal Seong.

What kind of hope was there during the colonial period? Even at birth, Jung faced death. Because of his lack of immunity as a baby, he stopped breathing due to a certain disease. His mother-in-law kept nagging his mother to bury him quickly because it was an ominous sign, but his mother felt sorry for him. When she looked at her baby’s face, thinking that would be the final time she would ever see him, at that moment, he suddenly opened his eyes.

“Since he is still alive, let me have him for one more night…”

During that time, he had become unresponsive. His mother thought he had died after suffering from his high fever, so she laid him down at the corner of the room and covered him with a cloth. His mother was waiting for night to come so that she could try burying him discreetly at the back mountain. She wanted to see her son for the last time, the one whom she had given birth to with labor pains after 10 months, so she peered through the blanket. At that moment, he suddenly opened his eyes again. He wasn’t even crying. Jung spent three days like that. This miracle happened as his swelling subsided. That’s why his mom named him Myung* Seok because he seemed to have many lives. This is the childhood story of poet Jung Myung Seok.

(Translator’s note: Myung(命) is a Chinese character and means a life. However, later he changed his name to Myung(明), which means bright.)

Could the reason all his poetry is directly connected to life perhaps be because of what had happened in his childhood? Since he had experienced death at such a young age, during his adolescence, he often pondered deeply in solitude about life. Later on, while serving in the Vietnam War, he realized the value of life, the futility of life, and the fundamental world of God through first-hand experiences. He was able to live because of his mother’s love, which had compelled her to peer through the blanket to see her son’s face one last time, and so his affinity towards lives also stems from love.

The reason Jung’s poems are so good lies within their earnestness. His unquenchable earnestness towards what he is yearning for is carved deep into his poems like markings. When you see a flower, you can know about it by its fragrance. In the same way, all his poems give off a certain fragrance. Vol. 3 of his Poems of Inspiration titled, The Woman of Poetry, contained truly beautiful pieces. In order to understand the poet Jung Myung Seok, just as a work of art tells something about its author, reading his poetry yourself is the fastest and the most genuine way to get to know him.

Within Korean literary circles, there is a history book of literature known as The Encyclopedia of Korean Poetry. Poet Jung is officially registered in the 2011 edition of The Encyclopedia of Korean Poetry. On page 2717, readers can learn about him in a more detailed and genuine way. The fact that he is on page 2717 goes to show that The Encyclopedia of Korean Poetry is a very thick history book of literature. It presents 100 years of Korean poetry history.

The Encyclopedia of Korean Poetry was published by EJP Books, and Jung is in the 2011 edition. This book includes poems written by 3,500 poets who represent the history of Korean poetry from 1908 to 2010. The encyclopedia showcases ten of Jung’s poems; some of which include The Terrain of the Heart, Life, Good and Evil, Our Love, Operation, A Never-changing Heart, and Hope.

When you read his poem called Happiness is on Its Way, you can see how he depicts a deep aspect of life with simple yet meaningful diction.

Happiness is on Its Way (Full-version)

In life’s winter, where blizzards blow, there Happiness goes,

Even in a bone-aching life of anguish and suffering,

Happiness still goes on that thorny road.

Not permitting itself to just anyone,

It heads toward the path of pain, of man’s struggle.

Hope, also, not wishing to live with just anyone;

Seeking the one who endures, it goes.

Happiness and hope are surely abstract nouns. We cannot touch them and they don’t have specific forms. However, poet Jung describes happiness and hope as entities that exist and that are living. Happiness and hope are not abstract to Jung. He personifies them as entities that have a specific form. We wonder, how earnestly did he want happiness and hope to the point that he would portray their looks with such diction? When we look at his style of speech, the way he connects the verb, seeking, to the abstract nouns, we catch a glimpse of his bold transcendence of the existing grammatical rules in poetry. Of course, modern poetry is also highly influenced by free verse, so it is not bound by grammatic structure either.

Once again, we’d like to ask, who is poet Jung Myung Seok? Hearing from Jung directly about who he is would be the most genuine approach. However, written words are an expression of one’s heart. An art piece reflects the thoughts of its author, and an author speaks through his work. Likewise, Jung speaks directly through his work, one being The Woman of Poetry. What more words are needed? Who knows? During the times of our deepest despair, perhaps you will also be able to draw hope like finding an oasis in a desert through the words of his poetry.

Original | Archived | Translated

Spiritual Poem 1 – Never Changing Heart

January 24, 2017January 24, 2017 providencehub1 Comment

Published on 27 Sep 1998 (ISBN: 8986813041), “Spiritual Poem 1” is Pastor Jung Myung Seok’s first book on poetry.

We feature the first poem in this book, titled “Never-changing Heart.” The poet writes this poem with the heart that never changes as a bride towards the heavens, even if the situation may seem detestable or unfavorable.

Never Changing Heart

I like it, though it is detestable.
I like it, though it is unfavorable.
Would I discard it simply because it’s unfavorable?
Would I forget about it just because it’s detestable?
With rouge on my cheeks and lips,*
On the path of a thousand years I have come, riding on a palanquin,
Never again turning back.

(*Translator’s note: For traditional Korean weddings, the bride adorns herself with rouge on her cheeks and lips.)

“Never-changing heart” poem from Spiritual Poem 1.

A Palanquin, where a bride sits and is carried to her groom.

일편단심

미워도 나는 좋아

싫어도 나는 좋아

싫다고 버릴쏘냐

밉다고 잊을쏘냐

연지 찍고 곤지 찍고

가마타고 오던 천년길을

다시는 돌아가지 않으리라

The contents of this page are permitted for reuse under the CC-BY-SA.

The poet Jung Myung-seok meets the “The Woman of Poetry” with “Speaking through Poetry.”

January 12, 2017February 13, 2017 providencehubLeave a comment

The poet Jung Myung-seok meets “The Woman of Poetry” with “Speaking through Poetry.”

Poems that overflow from poetic inspirations throughout one’s life journey… They move and lead your soul, and allows your soul to cry out

Sky light | 2013: 09: 30 [16:08]

Recently, Poet Jung Myung Seok’s poetry collections “The Woman of Poetry” and “Speaking through Poetry” became a hot topic by being Kyobo Bookstore’s best sellers. In July when these poetry books were released, the hearts of readers were captured as the books battled for the first and second place among poetry books. These poem collections are part of the author’s series of “Poems of Inspiration,” and were published 17 years after the second edition of the “Poem of Inspiration” in 1996.

Through an extreme heart-wrenching life journey, he meets God and poetry

The third book of the poetry collection, “The Woman of Poetry,” contains the life story of a person who regards the creator God and the savior Holy Son as his Lord and lives serving them. It expresses that the core of human beings is the “heart and soul,” and the core of life is “love.” By communicating deeply with the core and root of all creation – God’s world, deep inspirations produce content which then becomes written in the form of poems. A human being living on this earth who climbed up steep and treacherous cliffs to reach the heavens will experience all kinds of training and pains that lead to the loneliness of life. However, to a poet who has the absolute belief that the invisible God truly exists and is present, these become a longing, a waiting, a meeting, happiness and hope, and overflows from his earnest and brimming love. That was how he could confess saying, “I met ‘The Woman of Poetry’ and wrote down these poems in the midst of the ‘desolate and lonely valley of life.’”

The poet’s prologue writes “Contents from heaven’s secrets are unraveled by poets, who use “Poems of Parables” to hide and write down these contents, in order for people to realize God’s time period.” As the poet writes, if one finishes reading the poems but is unable to unravel or realize the things hidden within, then there is no sense of achievement of reading the poems, and it will make the poet feel frustrated. It is hoped that there will be people who can realize through wisdom and understand the poet’s deep heart, thus discern the time period, redress grievances and ride on the times. The poet longs for such people of wisdom to appear.

Poetry is like a fruit that conceals a person’s life, a life of painstakingly loving God and making his soul complete. After the life has ripened, poetry reveals the poet’s completed soul, and presents his life unwaveringly. This poem collection comprises four major works: “The path of the cross,” “Poetry is flowing,” “Please go and love,” “God’s hands are pierced.” These let people realize the noble laws of life, including happiness in the midst of rainstorms, a masterpiece after struggles, sweetness after bitterness, and resurrection after sacrifice etc., and leads many souls who resonate with these laws to achieve a beautiful, mysterious and majestic history of recreation.

Another book that was released is the fourth book in the “Poems of Inspiration” series titled “Speaking through Poetry.” It intensely reveals the religious life and the life perspectives of the poet who has studied and preached the Bible for over 50 years. In particular, it recognizes the time of God’s providence and historical time. The works written in 2012 are categorized in four major chapters “Love one other,” “In progress,” “My beloved, please spread this word,” and “Eternal road,” and were made into a poem collection.

Through this collection, the poet poetically depicts the world of pain and joy that he dramatically experienced in life, and the scenes of hell and heaven that his soul witnessed through traversing the spiritual world. Thus, he conveys “if one lives centered on the ever-changing physical body, it will end in meaninglessness and death; if one lives centered on the eternal love that exists in the Almighty, then heaven can be achieved.”

Complemented by uplifting and appealing designs and eye-catching illustrations… the poems becomes more inspiring

Particularly in “Speaking through Poetry”, illustrations were drawn personally by the author who is both a poet and an artist. Just as one can recognize the species of the tree through the fruit it bears, the uplifting and appealing designs are works of art that let people recognize the poet’s sophistication at a glance. A drawing becomes a poem, and makes the poem more inspiring, leading people to the world of even higher realizations.
Just as a poem expresses a secret that cannot be comprehended by simple words, the picture is expressed in simple strokes, but contains the deep things hidden in the poem which form the core. The poet shares, “When you affix an appropriate drawing to the poem, it is like putting condiments onto the food, spreading a similar fragrance; it is also like a pine tree that stands erect on a rock, achieving harmony.” As you can see two works of art with different genres at the same time in one book, it creates more synergy and gives the readers added satisfaction and inspirations.

Jung Myung Seok was born in 1945 in Geumsan County, Jinsan-Myun. After appearing in the monthly “Literary Movement and Trends” in 1995, he published four volumes of “Spiritual Poem.” Ten of his poems were listed in The Encyclopedia of Korean Poetry (2011), which encompasses 100 years of Korean poetry history. In addition to his poetry work, he has been studying the Bible for more than 50 years, has been a regular speaker of the Christian Gospel Mission, and has been consistently written religious books such as “The Word of Salvation,” “The Word of Life,” and the proverbs collection “Heavens Words, My Words” etc. In addition, he exhibited many paintings and calligraphy works both in Korea and other nations (England, France, Germany, Argentina, etc.).

Original News Report and Press Release (News Wave) | Archived 23 Jan 2017

Chinese Translation of the report on God21.net

Translated by Providence Hub.

Tag: poetry