• Sound I : The Wind and Earth Cover Kaliyuga— And vision shall come to a halt.

A small village
labors toward sleep,
restless—
bodies turning like uneasy tides.

From a rooftop,
a scream splits the dark,
shattering the heart.

As if a single, burning star
had clenched its jaw
around a mouthful of flame.

The mountains hold their silence—
not carved from stone,
but swelled with breath,
dizzy in the night air.

The sound drapes itself
in the thick curtain of night,
refusing to fade.

© TaeHun Yoon, 1980

Note: …The Buma Democratic Uprising was a short-term citizen movement that occurred between 16th and 20th of October, 1979. It was related to the incident that Kim Young-Sam, the president of New Democratic Party, was dismissed from membership of the Assembly relating to the YH incident under the economic instability of inflation due to oil shock during the Yushin Regime. As the dictatorship’s tyranny of the Yushin Regime continued, Busan University students began anti-government demonstration, which was expanded to universities in Gyeongnam and Masan. The government enforced martial law and invoked the Garrison Act to firmly control the demonstrations in Gyeongnam including Busan. As President Park Jeong-Hee was assassinated on October 26, 1979 while the Buma Uprising was coming to a lull, the uprising ended early and became a historic citizen movement that had a decisive influence on the termination of the Yushin Regime. It was understood that the Gwangju Democratic Uprising on May.18 occurred in relation to the Buma Uprising and is categorized into a representative democratic movement against the cruel military power. The Gwangju Democratic Uprising is similar to the Buma Uprising in that both of them resisted dictatorship. However, the Gwangju Uprising is different in that it was a citizen’s movement against military power and citizen soldiers were organized, and is also different in the period of the movement, the number of victims, and the process of truth ascertainment. Korea’s democracy contains a variety of components including independence movement and nationalism during the Japanese Imperialism, the Korean War, anti-communist education, democratic movement and citizen education. The Buma Democratic Uprising and the Gwangju Democratic Uprising have a significant meaning in that they developed Korea’s democracy further as they were inherited to the June Democracy Movement of 1987. – by Kim Joo-Sam, Daejin University