Friends and brothers! Thirty millions!
Today must my voice be heard!
May the waves of the Lake of the Heavens
Rising like rampant white tigers
Up to the clouds of the sky
Fill my heart with their cold flooding waters.
It is seared by the withering blasts
Which have raged in ages past
In Korea, this land of mine.
I take in hand my trusty brush,
A poet untried and unknown:
In days of freedom this is my weapon,
The bayonet with which I thrust.
Today must my voice be heard!
The rocky cliffs thrust up into the sky,
Steep and fearful, upward-soaring
Their naked peaks ineffably high,
Far beyond the mists of morning.
But we will launch the ship of memory
Against the rushing tide of time
Back, back to those terrible years
When the warriors of our nation
Made that steep and fearful climb,
And lit upon those soaring peaks
The beacon of our liberation.
Those who fought against Japan
Gave Korea back its freedom,
They passed across the broad river Tuman
They passed across the peaks of Changbai,
Where in every mountain valley
Lie the marks of recent battle.
And now I–a free Korean,
Ascend quite freely to the peak.
My homeland is laid out before me
From a height of three thousand ri.
O ancient ancestral land!
O lifeblood of my people
Running for over fifty centuries
Through our homeland’s veins!
We recall how you were spilt
By the knives of the Japanese.
We recall warriors in their thousands
Sleeping on the fallen leaves,
In the dark of Paektu forest,
Entering the Land of Death
Like the door of their father’s house.
Speak, grey-headed Paektu!
Who in this free land
Is the champion of the people,
Who their general in the battle?
Atop the mountain stands a tiger,
Like a statue, calm and still
The Paektu tiger of the legend,
With one mighty paw outstretched,
Gazing southward down the hill.
The gorge shakes to his fearsome roaring,
Threatening vengeance to the foe.
In one bound, swift as the wind,
He has vanished in the mist,
And left the wind alone and sighing
To swirl and play among the cliffs.
Recovering my startled wits,
I harken to the whistling wind,
And I seem to hear once more
The echo of that terrible roar.
I stand here high upon the cliff.
Perhaps this is the very spot
Where our partisans crushed our foes
And fulfilled their wrathful oaths,
As deadly as the swords of battle
Perhaps this is where our bold warriors
Raised aloft our freedom banner.
O lofty and unknown cliff
On the ancient ridge of Changbai,
Whose age-old branching roots
Are entwined with the roots of my heart!
I follow the old battle traces
Collecting my thoughts as I go,
Though surely they are unworthy
Of the heroes who battled here.
Still I wish, fellow citizens, brothers,
Though my voice be uncertain and weak,
To sing with my heart and my soul
Of our people’s heroic deeds.
Jo Ki Chon (1913 – 1951) North Korea (born in Russia)
Translator not stated
Source: Mt. Paektu, Jo Ki Chon, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1990
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