‘The Spirit of the October Uprising Was the People’s Desire for Freedom, Equality and an Independent Nation’

For poet Go Hui-rim, the October Uprising began with a family member saying that, although her father had been massacred, she did not know where he was. The story set him on a path that led away from graduate school and into years of work with survivors’ families.

Go has taken oral testimonies from about 200 relatives of victims and helped excavate the remains of people killed in the Bodo League massacres around the time of the Korean War. He says lawyers used the records he collected in lawsuits seeking state compensation, and about 50 people ultimately received compensation.

“Listening while holding the hands of people with all those heartbreaking stories was the only thing I thought I could do. Isn’t that what a poet does?” Go said. He later joined relatives and civic groups in excavation work at Gachanggol in Daegu’s Dalseong district, where some families initially mistook him for one of their own because he spent nearly every day with them.

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Listening while holding the hands of people with all those heartbreaking stories was the only thing I thought I could do. Isn’t that what a poet does?

The October Uprising began in Daegu on Oct. 1, 1946, after coercive grain collection under the U.S. military government, and spread to 73 cities and counties by mid-December. Participants were later subjected to mass killings during preliminary arrests after the Korean War began. Researchers believe many of the more than 10,000 victims of massacres in Daegu and North Gyeongsang province before and during the war were linked to the uprising.

Go’s poetry collections include “The Human Problem: An October That Never Ends,” “The Head” and “The Gachanggol Massacre.” Critics have praised their immediacy and factual quality, while some have questioned their literary finish. Go accepts that criticism, saying he published quickly because someone had to make the uprising known. The eight-member October Literature Society, formed 12 years ago, has now published “October, Songs of the Professional Mourner,” a collection drawn from poems about the uprising. In the title, a professional mourner means someone who cries on behalf of another person.

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It was a heartbreaking yet historic and honorable thing to do.