시집
Poetry.

The lonely, solitary being is God.

It was because God was alone

that God could create the universe and all things.

Though God cannot be seen,

in solitude, I can feel God.

And because I can feel

that God is watching me,

I cannot deny God’s existence.

Only now do I think I understand:

existence is not singular—

that God and I, too, are flashes of a single moment.

Even as I gaze upon the beautiful sea,

my heart lies quietly asleep.

In the passing wind,

I discover myself, standing still.

Time flows on,

and unable to step outside its current,

I quietly grow older.

The stars seen in the countryside

are magnificent and beautiful.

The stars seen in the city

are faint and lonely.

If I live struggling to prove my existence,

I will be endlessly alone.

But there is no need to prove it.

Even if I do not know,

someone

knows that I exist.

Long ago,

I once possessed

a butterfly patterned beautifully.

When sunlight fell at an angle,

the butterfly was beautiful beyond words,

and I still remember

the rapture of that moment.

But

the moment I possessed the butterfly,

the rapture vanished with it.

Under artificial light,

even when lit at an angle,

even when released again beneath the morning sun,

the butterfly was no longer

beautiful.

I was sad.

I had only wanted

to see that beauty again.

I had only wanted

to feel that rapture every day.

Perhaps

through my own desire,

I had moved the butterfly

from the place where it belonged?

The next day,

I returned to the place where I first saw it

and waited for sunlight to fall at an angle.

And at last—

“Ah… beautiful.

When you are in the place where you belong,

you shine again.

If I were in the place where I belong,

could I be beautiful like you?”

Every photograph

tries to say something.

In the space between light and time,

a single existence is captured.

And yet, some photographs

remain silent.

Not because they have no story,

but because they failed to hold one.

Just as music without rhythm

is nothing more than noise,

a photograph untouched by feeling

is only a shell carrying the absence of meaning.

The mere arrangement of images

does not complete a narrative.

A connection through which no sincerity flows

is only a repetition of scenes;

there is no soul within it.

No matter how precise the composition,

no matter how clear the image,

if it cannot reach the heart,

what does that photograph exist for?

Rather,

a photograph containing a single confession

awakens a sense beyond reason.

It is not something seen,

but something felt.

Splendor fills the eyes,

but sincerity shakes the silence.

Art leaves traces of existence

through resonance, not explanation.

I ask:

Does rhythm flow

through your photographs?

Is that vibration

deep and true enough

to move the inner world of a single being?

The sea breeze blew,

and a girl passing by

picked something up from the ground.

A small breath of wind

stirred the girl’s hair,

and she,

quietly turning

whatever she held in her hand,

was feeling it.

I watched her

until I sank

into an emotion without a name.

What had she found?

What was she thinking—

more than that,

I wanted to feel

this emotion a little longer.

When I came to my senses

and raised my head again,

the girl was already

gone from that place.

Only inside my camera

did that moment

quietly remain.

The emptiness that approaches with autumn

On a silent night, even the wind stands still,

and even the shadows trembling beneath the moonlight

brush past me and disappear.

Even the warmth that lingered at my fingertips

thins and spreads away,

leaving only the empty place carved deep within my heart

to emerge more clearly.

Unable to rest anywhere,

this emptiness

wanders as if forgotten,

then finally seeps into me

and leaves behind a cold silence.

From far away,

a distant echo approaches.

Is it a sound I have lost,

or

a fragment of longing

that has always remained beside me?

In the gently spreading dark,

nowhere

will there be an answer.

Emptiness simply

holds me in its arms

and quietly draws near.

In this world,

there is no bad camera.

The lens always

holds the truth,

and light simply

flows along its path.

But if the hand pressing the shutter

held a trembling heart,

the photograph would be

shaken just as much.

Within the moment where light and shadow intertwine

and lose their form,

no one is at fault.

Even if the scene held inside the frame

is not perfect,

it is only

the direction of one’s gaze.

In this world,

there is no bad camera.

Only photographs that fall short

and hearts unable to hold it all

remain.

The truth within a photograph,

in the end, is made by the heart.

The human who abandoned me

I still miss.

I miss him.

I go to the place where he left me

and quench my thirst

with water pooled on the street.

I still remember

that human’s retreating back.

As I watched him walk away,

what expression was on my face

in that moment?

“I want to ask

that human who watched me

holding something strange.

But

we cannot speak to each other,

and that is simply sad.”

In the end,

holding only that departing back within me,

upon the hard asphalt

I return to being no one.

We stray cats

from the very beginning

are beings who do not exist.

The girl

was someone who, to endure herself,

quietly delved inward.

What she held was always cold,

and wherever it touched,

she confirmed how empty she was.

Without anyone knowing,

in a place no one could reach,

the nights when she opened herself little by little.

Then,

someone’s arms

for no reason at all

wrapped around the girl.

They did not push her away,

nor did they ask.

They simply,

slowly, deeply,

like a clear blue sea

submerging her body,

quietly seeped

all the way into the girl.

The things hardened by cold

for the first time

loosened without breaking.

The sensation of opening

without pain.

For a while, the girl,

unable to do anything,

within that embrace,

began to wonder

whether she no longer needed

to dig so deeply within,

for the very first time.

Sweat pooled on the asphalt.

A single drop is already a lake.

Black figures clenching fists,

black figures gripping resolve.

White figures bearing shields and guns

press down upon the asphalt

and slowly advance.

Between the barricades,

between white and black,

the air stretches taut without a word.

From above to below,

sweat falls like gravity.

When one drop falls,

then another,

then another—

soon it becomes a shower.

The asphalt

becomes an immense lake,

and across the once-clear water

red begins to spread.

Batons split the air,

and red and yellow smoke rises.

Tear gas and gunfire

break, overlap, and begin again,

beating against the night.

If a dream begins and ends with words,

it remains an illusion.

If words lead to action,

the dream becomes reality.

Those who gaze at the sea

speak little.

A city of straight lines and weight,

Busan.

Yet those who enter this city

take on color little by little,

and soften little by little.

Across rough and hardened expressions,

a modern, avant-garde sensibility seeps in,

and Busan changes into another face.

Busan

is a city of freedom,

and a colorful city.

As everything in the universe vibrates,

so do our brains and hearts.

Energy does not disappear;

it is eternal and flows somewhere.

Like a radio frequency,

each person is born

with a frequency all their own.

Human emotion, like energy, like frequency,

continues to vibrate and reaches another person.

When my frequency and another’s become the same,

when energies collide and a wave arises,

we sometimes call it empathy,

and sometimes call it love.

The sound of a cat unsettles me.

What could be wrong?

It does not feel like someone else’s concern.

I imagine it standing alone in the middle of a desert,

shivering in the cold and drifting

into sleep.

The many sounds echoing through the city

resemble gunfire and explosions, and I

cannot sleep.

I would rather be

on a battlefield.

The moment I chose my genre of photography in my twenties,

I gave up the desire for wealth, fame,

and recognition.

I want to make money quickly

and set the final chapter of my life ablaze

in the Middle East.

A peaceful life is hard for me.

A small square box rests against a white background.

They try to place a person inside,

but the box is too small to hold them whole.

In the end, to fit inside the box,

the person reshapes their body into a square.

They form corners,

cut away the parts considered unnecessary,

and force themselves to fit the frame.

At last, they fit precisely inside the box.

But they no longer resemble a living person.

They fit the prescribed frame perfectly,

yet expression and movement have vanished,

and their vitality slowly fades.

Unable to leave the box,

they gradually wither away.