Koji Hayashi 'Biographies of Zainichi Korean Writers' 05: Oh Im-jun (Part 8)
Oh Im-jun: The Life of a Passionate Poet (Part 8) - Koji Hayashi
7) Living as a Painter
In the late autumn of 1955, Oh Im-jun entered a small izakaya called 'Shin-koma' near Tsunashima Station on the Toyoko Line in Yokohama. As soon as he sat down, he began loudly cursing the United States, the Japanese government, and the military regime in South Korea. He then became close with a university student named Satoru Ito who was already there as a customer. Ito asked Oh Im-jun for his name and occupation at that time. Oh Im-jun replied, 'My job is that of a painter. No one thinks of me as a painter, those idiots. They've decided that because my name is Oh, I must be someone who writes poetry or sits at a desk. My true identity is that of a painter.' When Oh began to paint, he would hole up in his leaky room for over a week, sometimes even months, immersing himself in his creation while neglecting sleep and food.
About a week later, Ito visited Oh Im-jun's home and viewed his paintings for the first time. He assessed them as works where hope, which could be called the dawn, and despair coexisted within anger and lonely sorrow.
Ito began inviting Oh, whose diet consisted of little more than eating whole cabbages, to his home. Even when he was away, Ito asked his mother to allow Oh to come and go freely, borrow money from his desk drawer, and eat his fill. Oh would even change into Ito's underwear as if it were his own. The money he extracted from Satoru Ito disappeared into paying off debts at art supply stores or on drinks at izakayas.
When Satoru graduated from university and moved to Aizu as a teacher, it was Satoru's mother, Kiyono, who ran a nursery school, who began looking after Im-jun. This nursery school was near the former Tsunashima Korean settlement, and quite a few Korean children attended it. She also arranged for Oh Im-jun to hold a painting class for children after nursery hours, with the tuition fees serving as a source of income for him.
Later, Ito told Oh Im-jun's wife, Mie, and Kei Yamaguchi, who had come to interview Ito through Mie's introduction, that 'I am Oh Im-jun, and Oh Im-jun is me. It is as if Mie-san does not exist between us.' Kiyono would also go to various Zainichi Korean gatherings when forcefully invited by Oh Im-jun.
Around this time, Oh Im-jun was suffering from the pain of rheumatism, but because he was a Zainichi Korean without a health insurance card, he did not visit a hospital. (The
National Health Insurance had a nationality clause until 1986.)
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* The copyright for the text belongs to the author (Koji Hayashi), and the publishing rights belong to Keikosha.