The Gold-Crowned Jesus and Other Writings (review)

BOOK REVIEWS141 lies in Washington state. This paper is seriously weakened by oversimplistic data analysis (among other things, Pearson's C is not a very good choice for correlation analysis), and, although the subject matter of Yu's chapter is important, the results are not very convincing. The book ends with an excellent summary of source materials on Korean immigrants to the United States by Arthur L. Gardner. This may be, in time, the most valuable contribution of the volume. Hyung-chan Kim's editorial contributions are clear and he gives succinct summaries of the various chapters, but little or no attempt is made to pull the whole together. In all, this volume is important as source material for students of Korean assimilation , and may be of interest to Korean immigrants. However, the uneven quality of various contributions, plus the failure to place the Korean experience in some relevant context, lead me to recommend it only to those seriously involved in the study of Korean assimilation, and then with reservations. Herbert R. Barringer University of Hawaii The Gold-CrownedJesus and Other Writings. By Kim Chi Ha. Edited by Chong Sun Kim and Shelly Killen. Illustrated by George Knowlton. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1978. 11I pp. $5.95. Who is Kim Chi Ha? In this long-needed anthology, historian Chong Sun Kim, prison art scholar Shelly Killen, artist George Knowlton, translation assistant Winifred Caldwell, translators of the Japanese Council for Justice and Peace, and the staff of the publishing house of the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America (Maryknoll) have combined their talents to help the English-reading world find out. In the preface the editors insightfully introduce Kim's life and works, partly by comparison with Camus, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy, but with emphasis on Kim's Korean cultural roots. They conclude that as "a charismatic figure who uses the forms of shaman incantations and rich Korean colloquialisms in his poetry, Kim is the only Asian poet to combine the essence of Christian socialism with his native tradition" (p. xiii). Fair enough, but perhaps Kim, who resists labeling , would not find even this completely comfortable. "I hate to stick things within the confines of a certain defined framework" (p. 50). The interpretive preface is followed by a biographical chronology: Born Kim Yongil in Mokp'o on February 4, 1941 , Kim Chi Ha participated in the 1960 student movement, opposed the normalization of Korean-Japanese relations in 1964 and 1965, and has been a poet-playwright critic of poverty, corruption, dictatorship , and torture since 1969. In 1971 he was active in the Farmer's Cooperative Movement, which was led by the Catholic church, and he also organized several hundred Catholics in a demonstration for the realization of social justice (Kim formally converted to Catholicism in 1973). Condemned to death on July 142ha 13, 1974, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment on July 20; and he was suddenly released from prison on February 15, 1975. Rearrested on March 13, 1975, after the publication of his prison diary, Torture Road, he was tortured into admitting he was a communist on March 20. In response, Kim smuggled out an explanation of his true beliefs, a "Declaration of Conscience," on August 4. Seven years were added to his original life sentence in December, 1976. The chronology just outlined ends with 1977, however, it should be added that Kim's sentence was reduced to twenty years on December 27, 1978, in a presidential amnesty that freed 5,378 other prisoners. In the remainder of the book Kim speaks for himself in poems, "Prayer," "Mount Chiri," "Seoul," "The Road," and "The Rope Walker"; in his "Declaration of Conscience" (1975); in religious testimony, a letter to the National Priests Association for the Realization of Justice (1975); in excerpts from his court interrogation (1976); in an abridgement of his final statement in court (1976); in the prose-poem "Torture Road—1974"; and finally in the play The Gold-Crowned Jesus (date not clear), whose main characters are a leper, a beggar , a prostitute, a businessman, a policeman, a priest, a nun, and Jesus. Kim speaks best for himself. As poet, political prisoner, and playwright he reveals himself to...