Although you touch on a number of social issues such as suicide, war, and economic struggle, your poetry displays a particular interest in women’s issues. Indeed, I’d say many of them — “Death Korean Style” and “A Cast of Ghosts,” for instance — take direct aim at the patriarchy that oppresses women in Korea and beyond. What is the relationship between your poetry and your feminism?

I don’t define the world by applying an ideology such as feminism. In fact, I don’t like any ideology because it places shackles on us. Nevertheless, I intend to practice a critical autopsy on authority that deceives us with lies disguised as culture.

Poetry seems to have spurred me to look at the patriarchal, masculine, and oppressive reality of Korean society, to search for its invisible elements — those that are tarnished and hidden under the disguises of culture, and use the poem to make them appear in front of us. That is why I analyzed the patriarchal and masculine elements that wield their power in Korean culture. My writings such as “Death Korean Style” and “ Institution (제도)” are examples. I looked at the world with the eye of a woman, inhaled the world with the lungs of a woman, felt sorry for the world with the heart of a woman, and sang a song with the voice of a woman. However, I’m not an activist.

Your poems also address global events such as 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan. I’m curious to hear you discuss your sense of nationality and how this impacts the themes that appear in your work.

Naturally, our existence is confined to the concept of nationality. Whenever we go abroad, we have to carry passports that show our nationality. When we cross national borders, nationality gets an absolute meaning. I taught Korean literature at the University of Berkley in California for a couple of years. When I moved to California, it was a symbol of freedom. However, during my stay, I found out that in a foreign country, when I act in a certain way, people assume that is how all Koreans act. What I wanted in California was to have the freedom to be incognito, but Californians looked at me as if they were looking at Koreans as a group. When I realized that, I came to understand that personal freedom is locked in a prison of nationality.

Affairs around the world are not owned by only people in their country, they are also mine. This is closer to the concept of sympathy as explained by Czech writer Milan Kundera. The ability to be sympathetic comes from a poetic and feminine understanding.

On the other hand, people share a universal self, which is different from nationality. Being an attentive reader of newspapers, I don’t think that incidents in faraway countries or experiences of people of different nationalities are unrelated to me. My poem “Floating Pot (냄비는 둥둥)” describes how the issues raised during cacerolazo [a form of popular protests in which people bang on pots] in Argentina overlap with the extreme poverty of the Korean seniors, and especially women. It might be true of East and West as well as North and South that the worst poverty is always inflicted upon old women.

Affairs around the world are not owned by only people in their country, they are also mine. This is closer to the concept of sympathy as explained by Czech writer Milan Kundera. The ability to be sympathetic comes from a poetic and feminine understanding. When I wrote the poem about the attack on September 11th [“The Woman Falling From the 110th Floor”], rather than focusing on the meaning of such a political, social and historical disaster, I tried to imagine what a person would think and say in the time of such a crisis, as he or she is an individual who both loves and is beloved. In this mindset, the falling of a woman from the World Trade Center is my falling; her failed love is my love; her cry “I love you” as she crashed to the ground while holding her cell phone, is my scream before death.

Similarly, I always have the illusion that Sylvia Plath, Frida Kahlo, and Georgia O’Keeffe — who lived alone in New Mexico painting flowers — are my sisters. Also, I have the same illusion with Hwangjini (황진이) and Hunanseolhun (허난설헌), who were both female poets in the fifteenth century Joseon Dynasty. They are a part of me which I call “intersubjectivity,” formed by a poetic “intertextuality” that transcends history and space.