Han Yong-un
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Han Yong-un ( ko, 한용운; August 29, 1879 – June 29, 1944) was a twentieth century
Korean Buddhist Korean Buddhism is distinguished from other forms of Buddhism by its attempt to resolve what its early practitioners saw as inconsistencies within the Mahayana Buddhist traditions that they received from foreign countries. To address this, the ...
reformer and
poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...
. This name was his religious name, given by his meditation instructor in 1905, and Manhae (만해) was his pen name; his birth name was Han Yu-cheon.


Life

Manhae was born in Yucheon in
Chungcheongnam-do South Chungcheong Province ( ko, 충청남도, ''Chungcheongnam-do''), also known as Chungnam, is a province of South Korea. South Chungcheong has a population of 2,059,871 (2014) and has a geographic area of 8,204 km2 (3,168 sq mi) located in ...
,
Hongseong Hongseong (''Hongseong-gun'') is a county in South Korea, and the capital of South Chungcheong Province. The current governor is Yeoung Lock Lee. The original name of the city is ''Hongju''. Symbols * The flag represents the Joyang Gate along w ...
. During his childhood, he studied Chinese classics in
Seodang Seodang were private village schools providing elementary education during the Goryeo and Joseon dynasties of Korea. Background They were primarily occupied with providing initial training in the Chinese classics to boys of 7-16 years of age, bu ...
, a popular elementary school during the Joseon Dynasty. Prior to being ordained, he was involved in resistance to Japanese influence in the country, which culminated in the Japanese occupation from 1905 to 1945. He lived in seclusion at Ose-am in the
Baekdam Temple Baekdamsa (Korean: 백담사; Hanja: 百潭寺) is a Buddhist temple in Inje County, Gangwon province, South Korea. It was originally built in the 7th century, but because of war and natural disasters has been rebuilt numerous times since then. ...
from 1896. During this period, he studied Buddhist sacred texts and several books of modern philosophy. In 1905 he received the robes of the
Jogye Order The Jogye Order, officially the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism (대한불교조계종, 大韓佛敎 曹溪宗), is the representative order of traditional Korean Buddhism with roots that date back 1200 years to the Later Silla National Master Do ...
of monks and in 1908 he went to Japan and visited several temples to study Buddhism and Eastern philosophy for six months. In 1919 he was one of the patriot signatories to the
Korean Declaration of Independence The Declaration of Independence is the statement adopted by the 33 ethnic representatives meeting at Taehwagwan, the restaurant located in Insa-dong, Jongno District, Seoul on March 1, 1919, after World War I, which announced that Korea would ...
.


Work

As a social writer, Manhae called for the reform of Korean Buddhism. Manhae's poetry dealt with both nationalism and sexual love, often mingling the two. One of his more political collections was ''Nimui Chimmuk'' (Lover's Silence, 님의 침묵), published in 1926. These works revolve around the ideas of equality and freedom and helped inspire the tendencies toward passive resistance and non-violence in the
Korean independence movement The Korean independence movement was a military and diplomatic campaign to achieve the independence of Korea from Empire of Japan, Japan. After the Japanese Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910, annexation of Korea in 1910, Korea's domestic resistance pe ...
. In 1913, Han Yongun published "The Restoration of Korean Buddhism (''Joseonbulgyo-yusimlon''), which criticized the anachronistic isolationist policy of Joseon Buddhism and its incongruence with the then contemporary reality. The work sent tremors through the intellectual world. In this work, the author promulgated the principle of equality, self-discovery, the potential for Buddhism for safeguarding the world, and progress. His development as an activist and thinker resulted from his adherence to these very principles.Source-attribution, "Han Yong-un" LTI Korea Datasheet available at LTI Korea Library o
online
In 1918, Han published "Whole Mind" (''Yusim''), a work that aimed to enlighten young people. In the following year, he played an important role in the 3.1 Independence movement with Chae Lin, for which he was later imprisoned and served a three-year sentence. During his imprisonment, Han composed "Reasons for Korean Independence" (''Joseondoglib-i-yuseo'') as a response to the official investigation into his political engagement. He was later acquitted in 1922, at which time he began a nationwide lecture tour. The purpose of the tour was to engage and inspire youth, an objective first established in Han's "Whole Mind". In 1924, he became the Chair of the Buddhist youth assembly. The poems published in Han's ''Nim-ui Chimmuk'' had been written at Baekdam Temple in the previous year. This book garnered much attention from literary critics and intellectuals at the time. Despite his many other publications, from Chinese poems to
sijo ''Sijo'' () is a Korean traditional poetic form that emerged in the Goryeo period, flourished during the Joseon Dynasty, and is still written today. Bucolic, metaphysical, and cosmological themes are often explored. The three lines average 14 ...
s and the poems included in ''Yusim'', and novels such as Dark Wind (''Heukpung''), Regret (''Huhoe''), Misfortune (''Bakmyeong''), this collection remains the poet's most significant and enduring literary achievement. In it, love for the motherland plainly appears under the guise of longing for the loved one, as in the poem "I Do Not Know". Han's model for such rhapsodic, long-lined expressions of devotion was
Rabindranath Tagore Rabindranath Tagore (; bn, রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He resh ...
, whose work he knew, and behind Tagore the long Indian tradition of combining mysticism with eroticism. In 2007, he was listed by the Korean Poets' Association among the ten most important modern Korean poets.


Poetry in translation

* Younghill Kang & Frances Keely, ''Meditations of the Lover'', Yonsei University 1970 * Jaihiun Kim, ''Love's Silence and other poems'', Vancouver B.C. 1999 * Francisca Cho, "Everything Yearned For: Manhae's Poems of Love and Longing", Wisdom Publications 2005


References


External links


An article
discussing Manhae and Baekdam Temple
Manhae Memorial Hall
{{DEFAULTSORT:Han, Yong-Un 1879 births 1944 deaths Korean independence activists Dongguk University alumni Korean Buddhists 20th-century Korean poets Literature of Korea under Japanese rule Buddhist writers South Korean Buddhist monks Korean philosophers People from Hongseong County Korean male poets Cheongju Han clan 20th-century male writers