December 2001
Damyang County is situated north of Mt. Mudeung and is only a forty-minute ride on a city bus #28 from Gwangju. The bus ride itself is great way to see the entire city as it makes its way up the mountain on a winding road. At the end of the bus route is the Gasa Literature Museum. This area of Damyang-geun(county), east of Mt. Mudeung and along the south end of Gwangju Lake, is the birthplace of gasa literature. Gasa is an old form of verse or poem popularized during the Yi Dynasty (around the 16th Century) written exclusively in hangul(Korean writing system), which was invented at about that time. Song Suen, Jung Chul, and Im Ukryung are among the gasa poets who lived in the area, composing their famous verses about nature and human ways. Just south of the museum is the Shikyoungjung Pavilion, where Jung Chul composed poems. There are three, small, tile-roofed pavilion on the grounds, all the same size and configuration with a small room and an open, hardwood-floor verandah. With not a soul around, I took my shoes off and went inside, sitting in the room and the open-air floor to see the peaceful landscape the poet must have seen and been inspired by.
I walked a kilometer up the road
to Sosewon. This Josun-era garden was frequented by poets and artists. The
walk to the garden goes through a grove of tall bamboo. The garden looks incredibly
the same as it did then, more than 500 years ago, when compared to Kim Inhoo's
painting. It's not a grand place, but has important meaning as a place where
many of the great Korean poets and intellectuals gathered during Korea's literary
renaissance.
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