Planetary Translation
On December 15, 2016, I met Ahn-Kim Jeong-Ae—a feminist scholar and activist I knew through the International Women’s Network Against Militarism—in a district called Insadong. I waited for her in a restaurant, watching and listening to a plainclothes police officer talking on his phone as he slurped down his soup. Besides the usual busloads of young Korean soldiers (in compulsory military service) guarding the US embassy, downtown Seoul was crawling with police officers due to the weekly protest at Gwanghwamun Square. Citizens nationwide were demanding the impeachment of the corrupt president, Park Geun-hye, the daughter of former dictator Park Chung Hee.
From August 2005 to October 2007, during the progressive administration of President Roh Moo-hyun, Ahn-Kim had been involved in the investigation of abuses and human-rights violations committed by the South Korean military and its department of defense under the dictatorships of Park Chung Hee and his successor, Chun Doo Hwan. And from November 2007 to April 2010, as a lead researcher in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Korea, Ahn-Kim investigated several cases concerning massacres of civilians that took place just before and during the Korean War.
For lunch, we ordered fresh oyster salad and bean-paste stew. Ahn-Kim began telling me about the cases she had researched. She jotted down on scratch paper names and places and mapped out for me unspeakable orbits of torture and atrocities.
the end of a nation
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Marfa, Texas
30.3095 north
On July 2, 2018, my flight took me to Marfa, Texas—not my usual migratory route. Nevertheless, during my brief stay, I was able to meet swallows and sparrows, and I observed other exceptional migratory wings from Mexico. Some small-winged children were captured and separated from their parents and placed in concentration camps along the border of Texas, US and Mexico. Who will translate their wings? Whenever my ears would let me, I looked up at the night skies in order to track Planet Nine. Being the compulsive translator that I am, I traced and traced the planet’s orbitary routes, its rotations of capture, torture, and massacre. The universe is such a dizzying place that my ears were spinning out of control. Planet Nine! Come in, Planet Nine!
The language of capture, torture, and massacre is difficult to decipher. It’s practically a foreign language. What a nightmare! But as a foreigner myself, I am able to detect the slightest flicker of palpitations and pain. Difficult syntax! It may show up as faint dots and lines, but they’re often blood, snow, and even dandruff. How do I know? Foreigners know. Ahn-Kim calmly narrated as she continued to circle and circle Planet Nine with her pen. Her circles were extraordinary.
Interpellation of Return
Louis Althusser:
I shall then suggest that ideology “acts” or “functions” in such a way that it “recruits” subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all), or “transforms” the individuals into subjects (it transforms them all) by that very precise operation which I have called interpellation or hailing, and which can be imagined along the lines of the most commonplace everyday police (or other) hailing: “Hey, you there!”
Trans. by Ben Brewster
from Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays
These two pages are from the 1951 record of the Counterintelligence Corps of South Korea, regarding the Sancheong-Hamyang Massacre. A total of 705 were killed, among them 147 children under 14 years of age, 189 men, and 197 women. Only 386 have been officially identified. Until recently, the Sancheong-Hamyang massacre was lumped together with the more widely known Geochang massacre. According to Ahn-Kim, such non-differentiation or reduction is how the state continues to suppress knowledge regarding the mass executions of civilians that took place before and during the war. Through concealment, through falsification, through control, through “hailing”: “Hey, you there!” “Commies” “YOU.” The Sancheong-Hamyang-Geochang massacres, which led to 1424 deaths, was carried out by the soldiers of the 11th ROK Army from February 4, 1951 to February 11, 1951, under the command of Syngman Rhee, one of the main “cogwheels” of “the Designer.”
In April 1960, my father photographed and filmed the student-led revolution, referred to as the April 19 Student Revolution, that toppled Syngman Rhee’s administration. Rhee escaped to Hawaii and died in 1965. Escape and exile must be differentiated. The cogwheels are often given the privilege of escape because “the Designer,” too, thinks of everything. (It was noted earlier that children and artists think of everything. Unlike “the Designer” they think outside of interpellation, which is to say, they think of snow, which is to say, they think of everything in order to resist as subjects.) The victims of History are permanently exiled from home, within and without. The practitioners of memory are also. We live as foreigners, as translators. We translate everything, including what “the Harrow” has written. We see the point of re-scribing everything written upon the bodies.
Before the Korean War, under Rhee’s dictatorship, 300,000 so-called communists and suspected sympathizers were forcibly enrolled into Bodo League, a “re-education” league. It was a mechanism of surveillance, then later a mechanism of genocide—“the Bed.” It is estimated that 100,000 to 200,000 were killed during the single month of June in 1950, the same month the war began. Koreans indiscriminately killing Koreans. How does this happen? The Koreans already colonized by the Japanese military machine, were ready-made to be neocolonized by the US military machine. Not difficult to see each other as “scums of society,” “commies.” After all, (America) (=) (Beauty) (=) (Me=Gook). All we needed was language. All we needed was eternity. Many victims of Sancheong, Hamyang, and Geochang were found to have enlisted in the re-education league, that is to say, the commandment they had disobeyed was written upon their bodies, that is to say, they learned their sentence on their bodies.
As Ahn-Kim told me, it was not possible for her investigative team to count everyone who had perished. It is not possible to count ideology. It is not possible to count e. It is not possible to count snow. It is not possible to count blue. They are all eternal. They are “the eternity of the unconscious.” They can only be recounted through memory, through “an imaginary assemblage,” “bricolage,” through the “hailing” of return.
(Blue × 300!)
“Planetary Translation”: I made the tracings from Ahn-Kim’s scribbles on scratch paper.
“Interpellation of Return”: The photographs are my father’s, of the April 19, 1960, Student Revolution in Seoul, South Korea.
“(Blue × 300!)”: Pencil and watercolor on vellum paper.