THE CHOSUN Daily: Kim Hye-soon's Poetry: Death as Community Formation

Politics of Nothingness, Theology of the Tongue

—On Kim Hye-soon

“The last enemy to be destroyed is death,” (1 Corinthians 15:26) the Apostle Paul declares. He says that death, the “last enemy,” can be destroyed, can be overcome. This is also a “promise” to meet again after surpassing death. Is this promise trustworthy? Is it a simple truth, or a “holy lie” (Nietzsche)? Anyone can try to believe it, but no one can be entirely certain.

Why? Because death (死) is the negation of life (生), and as beings confined to the dimension of the living, we can never reach death while alive. Though aging (老) or illness (病) may narrow the gap, we can never truly touch it. Imagine the graph of a curve approaching an asymptote: the curve draws infinitely close but never touches it. Only through the concept of infinity do the line and the asymptote meet as a point.

The eternal and singular human desire is the transcendence of death. Yet, confined to finitude, we have no way to grasp infinity. Thus, the invention of God (神): an infinity beyond the asymptote, surpassing infinity itself. Christianity (or Paul’s philosophy), which promises that even finite humans can approach this infinity if they “only believe,” became history’s most powerful “teaching.” But is that all? Has death truly been overcome? Has mere belief allowed us to completely shake off the fear of death? Is it even possible to fully believe in anything? We live in an era that has passed through the writings of a philologist (Nietzsche) who interrogated Paul as a “liar,” arbitrarily “killed” God, and later died as a madman. We may never know if God is truly dead or can die, but it is clear that the once-omnipotent God now seems to be losing power.

This essay aims to negate the tradition of “overcoming death.” It will not view death as the end of life or the extinction of an individual. Instead, it will interpret death not as an “instinct-defying” event but as an opportunity to open a “community.” To do this, the text to be examined is the poetry of Kim Hye-soon.

Kim Hye-soon sings of death and the realms beyond through grotesque bodily language. Her work has been understood as a “politically radical” (Lee Gwang-ho) female language that exposes and dismantles the patriarchal order. But her poetry does not stop there. It is also a “philosophy of negation” that captures the metaphysical world beyond sensory perception through the language of sensation. Kim Hye-soon says: “Poetry can traverse the central domain by residing in its own absence, by confronting its own death with that death.” (‘Women, Poetizing’) In her poetry, death is the act of transforming “I” into “you” and “you” into “I.” Through death, through writing poems of death, we form solidarity and community. Thus, Kim Hye-soon’s literature becomes a small light that briefly illuminates the stage of death, eternally shrouded in darkness. In short, her poetry is the politics governing the world of “nothingness” (無) and the theology of the tongue tracing the traces of a God who has collapsed into infinite death.

Rhythm of Negation Seeking the Invisible God

The fear of death is physiological and universal. Hence, it is loss and sorrow. Cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker argued that the goal of all human activity is to “deny that death is humanity’s final destination.” Yes, death is something to avoid. But why must we not die? If the culmination of all life is death, why do we resist it? Becker concludes that it is because we think of ourselves as special “heroes,” stemming from the “self-love” inherent in any organism. Why is death sad? Why do tears flow? Kim Hye-soon carries this question forward to “after death.”

A woman lies on her side, embracing a round belly

An unhidden well

Flowing through the blood, it burst one day

Embracing the burst water vein

That woman laughed all day

All the moments of her life were too funny

The dead woman laughed after crying

…

Like someone cleaning a skyscraper

You wiped away tears on the glass window outside your body

You came from the other world

But now you are pregnant with that world

Like a newborn being born on a delivery table

A woman who stuck her head into her own grave

Looking at her photo on the mobile phone

“Tomb Blood,” The Autobiography of Death

The image of a woman lying dead with a round belly evokes a burial mound. In the poem, the dead woman “cries and laughs, laughs and cries.” Tears falling outside the body. Why does death lead to tears? What was there in life that the woman, with her head in the grave, looks at her photo on the phone? Her life was a collection of “funny moments.” Still, death could never be a joyful event. Could there be something left behind? Moments of brilliant love? The speaker reflects. Even after death, life remains a powerful temptation, like the instinct of a newborn. The woman is “pregnant with death.” Pregnancy is not an end but a birth and a beginning. The round belly, a symbol of circulation, contains death. Death is not an end or a finale but an event leading to a new dimension. The poet writes “the other world” (저 세상) with a space, indicating that the world after death is not a conventionalized place that can be expressed in a single word.

○

Hole, my beggar.

Hole, my prince.

Hole, the concrete for my body’s movement.

Hole, my distant mandala.

Smooth traffic of the hole, that is life.

The hole is my way, my truth, my beginning and end. Serve your hole with all your hole.

The identity of my hole, the loneliness of my hole. The addiction of my hole.

Who sits in the control tower of my hole?

I go through the maze of my hole, unwinding thread. A long, winding road.

Part of “Manhole Humanity,” Sorrow Toothpaste Mirror Cream

Color (色) becomes white (白), white becomes emptiness (空). The hole (○), empty inside, is the absolute law encompassing all phenomena, the form of “nothingness.” All “being” is eventually sucked into “nothingness.” Death is merely the organic expression of this process. The world we must explore is the world of the hole. The hole occupies a significant place in Kim Hye-soon’s poetry. She once said, “The place where a hole is pierced in the center of poetry, the placeless place, is the place of poetry” (‘Women, Poetizing’). The place that is both “beginning” and “end.” To approach it, we must “serve our hole with all our hole.” While doing so, someone is seen sitting in the control tower. Who could it be? The one who brought forth “creation from nothing” (creatio ex nihilo)?

Not-being does not know not-being, does not act on not-being, does not act, so not-being is not not-being

Not acting on not-being, not acting, not-being

Not-being that is not not-being is not not-being, so not-being is the not-being of not-being

Not-being that is not not-being is not not-being, so not-being is the not-being that does not act on not-being

Part of “Not-Being,” The Autobiography of Death

Negating negation. Negating the negation of negation. This playful repetition and variation is a fierce poetics of negation, a powerful negative theology. Starting with “Not-being does not know not-being,” this playful negation attempts to delve into “nothingness” through the language of “being.” Does it succeed? No. More accurately, it was never meant to. Failure is the success. Only by failing in the world of “being” can we shed light on the world of “nothingness.” To fail spectacularly, the poet weaves the “rhythm of not-being.” The incantation summoning the “invisible God” (‘Alamanoa,’ Synchronized Sea Anemone). In the repetition and variation of not-being, “Lord No” (Choi Don-mi) briefly appears.

One cannot view death as a beginning rather than an end while confined to the individual. A universal reasoning beyond the subject is required. Death serving the many beyond the one. Hegel once recognized that death becomes an event transcending the individual and forming a community. For beings with spiritual self-consciousness (Selbstbewusstsein), death surpasses the natural meaning of death, the “conclusion of a movement that ends in natural universality.” “Death … is transformed into the sanctity of a spiritual universality where the individual lives within their faith community, dying and resurrecting daily.”[3] Expanding and elevating the subject’s spirit into the communal concept of ethics (Sittlichkeit). This is the role of death.

Political Theology of Pigs and Tetris

In the preface to Wing Phantom Pain, Kim Hye-soon writes: “Our mom/Our dad//Now I see/We are/a community of farewell.” Can Hegel’s community and Kim’s community be directly connected? To do so, the two colossal words “faith” (Hegel) and “farewell” (Kim) must be explained. The link is found in Kim’s poetry: the “pig.” A poem will be examined. It begins with “Crucifying a pig seems too natural, meaningless,” and ends with “Joyful pig has come/All people, receive!” This is the theological and political long poem “It’s Okay to Be a Pig” (Bloom, Pig).

We are filming a documentary one day. Shooting a project for a farm of organs for an immortal self. … I am raised to become your heart. I am raised to become your lungs. I am raised to become your skin. I am raised to become your gallbladder. Even I am raised to become your brain. … You come wearing a green fluorescent vest, tie up my limbs, and drag me away. You are my liver, you are my kidney, you are my heart, you are my eyeball, you are my skin. Even if I cry out desperately, you drag me away without knowing I am you.

Part of “It’s Okay to Be a Pig — To the Pig,” Bloom, Pig

“Love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” (Leviticus 19:18) Is there any being on Earth that keeps Moses’ commandment better than the pig? The pig is thoroughly raised “for you.” You are human, the readers of this text. The pig is our skin, our gallbladder, our brain. But we kill the pig without knowing we are the pig. The reason why crucifying the pig seems natural, why the pig can replace the place of the savior (救主) that all people must receive, is clear. Jesus, who carried the cross to Golgotha, loved his neighbor as himself, yet was crucified amid insults. Are the humans killing pigs and the humans who killed Jesus long ago different? The bodies of Jesus and pigs converge on the word “sacrifice.” In this “blasphemy,” we confirm the essence of love: turning toward others even with one’s physical death imminent. “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—through faith in it. God did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished.” (Romans 3:25) God is revealed through the pain of the cross. As a renowned theologian put it, the cross is “a solemn remembrance that (God) is the one who gives life by killing.”[4] In the body of Jesus in agony on the cross, we see the light of God. Kim Hye-soon’s language, depicting painful bodies, becomes a political and theological practice moving toward love and solidarity.

Turning on the monitor, Benjamin starts Tetris. … A legion of redevelopment apartments in Myeongil-dong, where residents have all left to demolish a 20-year-old public housing complex and build high-rises in the same place, are lined up in front of the window. … They say the higher the level, the closer to heaven. Another rule: if a cement building touches the sky, that nation will perish. The taller the building, the shorter the time left to survive on this earth. … This electronic game is a fight against invisible angels. Invisible angels throwing cement blocks from the sky. It is Benjamin’s role to build an invisible house on earth, while the angels’ role is to throw cement blocks. … On one side, Building 301 collapses with a shudder, shaking the ground. Benjamin’s room, which hasn’t moved out yet, trembles. The sound of the Earth clock tossing its heavy body, like when you hear the sound of Buildings 302 and 303 collapsing one after another, is unbearable.

Part of “Benjamin’s Tetris,” My Upanishads, Seoul

“Benjamin” might be an empty signifier. The poet never reveals that the Benjamin playing Tetris is “Walter Benjamin.” Yet, with words like “heaven,” “angels,” “God,” and “perish,” we cannot help but recall the face of the Jewish philosopher who ended his life tragically. “To strive for decay, … this is the task of world politics, and its method can be called ‘nihilism.”[5] The final sentence of Benjamin’s 1921 short essay “Theological-Political Fragment” implies the inseparable relationship between theology and politics.

Considering secular politics, its task is to “build up.” To construct solid walls and perpetuate oneself comfortably within them. The walls are boundaries separating “us” and “them.” As Carl Schmitt defined politics as the “distinction between friend and enemy,” real politics, nourished by hostility, gradually builds stronger fortresses for themselves, increasing hatred and terror. However, the politics of Benjamin and Kim Hye-soon is the opposite. For them, politics is “striving for decay,” “collapsing,” and ultimately perishing. The “cement” thrown by angels is God’s test. Not realizing this and continuing to build cement buildings leads to destruction. Benjamin’s role, perhaps ours, is to build an invisible house on earth. To know we are thoroughly earthly beings and repeatedly collapse. Tetris, a game where a line disappears once filled and must be repeated infinitely, is a metaphor for the paradoxical distance between God and humans.

Buildings 301, 302, and 303 collapse one after another. The poem’s final line is: “Benjamin begins to climb the cement hill of Level 13.” Who knows how far one must climb the cement hill? But that is the entirety of politics and poetry. Simone Weil says: “Love dedicated to the dead is entirely pure, provided it does not turn toward the false immortality of a future imagined as a model. For it desires a life that is already over, which can give nothing new.”[6] Sinking infinitely in eternity. Savoring the gravity of the world and heading downward. Embracing collapse and death. Perhaps only collapse can shatter the stubborn fortresses of hostility.

I am now a beautiful synchronized anemone

Death of Love, or Love of Death

Even without water

As if in water

From my nose, an octopus-like, clam-like, elephant’s liver-like

Broad tongue-like

I am not a plant, animal, fish, or reptile.

…

When I sing to you, my gender changes

Becoming a woman

Then a man, then a gender of asexual reproduction that is neither woman nor man

Tossing and turning with you, my race changes

Red race, blue race, pink race

When I sing high notes, I have the face of a rodent

When I sing low notes, I have the face of an aquatic bird

When my body sprouts from my body

When my body is the entire world

Part of “Synchronized Anemone,” Synchronized Sea Anemone

Kim Hye-soon’s recent work Synchronized Sea Anemone (Nanda, 2025), following her “Death Trilogy” (The Autobiography of Death, Wing Phantom Pain, If the Earth Dies, Who Will the Moon Orbit?), is somewhat cheerful. Is it a struggle to escape death? No. The poet still discusses death. Then, how can cheerfulness and death coexist? Kim Hye-soon seems to know that death is not only intense sorrow but also touches upon extreme “love.”

The poet explores how to break the distinctions of sex (性) and species (種), the fate of the body. “I,” who is neither plant, animal, fish, nor reptile. Becoming a woman, then a man, then a being that is neither, my body becomes the entire world. The world is impermanent (無常). The body, part of the world, constantly changes, so the only way to grasp it is through endless negation. Thus, Kim’s poetry dances with negation.

“Song” is art speaking to others—it is poetry. In poetry, we can contain the world with our bodies. When the body becomes the world, it can embrace all beings within. Is there a greater love? Is this the “love of the cross”?

If someone asks me to show love,

Should I tear my clothes?

Should I dance?

…

If they keep asking, “Show it quickly, show it again,”

Let’s both wear plastic and get rained on

Let’s love until we want to take off this plastic

Let’s say that

Or let’s board a narrow spaceship together and go to space

Smelly, claustrophobic

Let’s love until we want to get off the spaceship

Let’s say that

Part of “Title Match with Lover,” Synchronized Sea Anemone

Now, the poet truly speaks of “sweet” love. Love is the most human act performed by the body. However, Kim’s way of capturing love is unconventional. The speaker suggests whispering love “until you want to take off the plastic” and “until you want to get off the claustrophobic spaceship.” Love until the moment of death. This is Kim’s version of the lovers’ common phrase, “I love you to death.”

Hegel also wrote meaningfully about love. In a short essay from his youth, he says: “Love excludes all opposition. … Love is angry at what is still separated, at individuality.” Yes, love is the act of uniting “I” and “you,” and being angry at what is separate. He adds: “Those who love are connected to many things that are dead.”[7] If love ends with death, how can it be love? Some love is completed through death. Tristan and Isolde prove this. “Longed-for and desired/death of love!/In your embrace,/Holy and warm, consecrated to you,/Free me from the pain of awakening!”[8]

What is love? Love means not having a center within oneself but having a deficiency. Someone else is needed. You cannot live without another person. … Love is confessing one’s deficiency. Even in a state of completeness, humans will exist as “we,” not “I.” Deficiency will exist even within completeness. As it is written in 2 Corinthians: “Your strength is at work in my weakness.”

Jacob Taubes, Paul’s Political Theology[9]

“I” cannot experience my own death. One can only “witness” the death of others. Grieving that, mourning, and realizing that I too can die. The reason death and love can coexist is here. Taubes is convinced that even in a state of “completeness,” humans will move toward “we.” No, his words must be corrected. “I” alone can never be “complete.” “I” must always need “you.” “I” is completed through “you.”

“A person becomes ‘I’ by encountering ‘you.’” For Buber, “I” and “you” do not exist separately. He argues that “I-you” are “root words (Grundworte) as word pairs (Wortpaare).” The interpretation is that the “relationship” of “I-you” is one of the essences of existence and the world. “A person who devotes their existence to a renewed relationship and goes to the world of ‘you’ with the power of that relationship realizes freedom.”[10] Love is the act of realizing deficiency and confessing and seeking the absence of “you,” who must always be with “I.”

Humans seek love through deficiency, grieve the death of their loved ones, and realize that they too can die. They finally recognize that my death unites us beyond “I” to form a true “we.” Thus, death becomes an event of the community. Look at the “disasters” that keep recurring. We might be beings who only confirm each other through the sorrow of death. Going beyond “I” through the other, through love, to become a true “we.” Here, Levinas’s words can be borrowed: “We must show a horizon in the face of the other’s epiphany, a horizon where the self sustains itself beyond death and recovers itself from return to the self. This horizon is the horizon of love and fecundity.”[11]

I cannot hear voices

I have become someone who sees only bones

Someone who sees only flesh

When a million people sing along to one person’s song

Jaws open, upper and lower teeth, jawbones and nasal bones

Bones receiving light in each hand, shaking bodies

No musical instruments are heard, only the sound of a million bones

…

These bones holding a million lights

A million plumes of smoke meeting in the air and sharing love

…

Who is this person singing by grinding their bones?

Part of “A Million Bones,” Synchronized Sea Anemone

Bones are material revealed after death. They are inside the flesh. The speaker, who “sees only bones,” gazes at death even in life. There are no instruments, but there is the sound of a million bones. There is even someone singing by grinding their bones. Here, the poet and poetry exist. “We grow with the hole of our mother’s body, the departure of our mother’s body, the death of our mother’s body. We became ‘I’ through our mother’s death, but because of that death, we run toward death.”

· This article has been translated by Upstage Solar AI