Meteor, Setting Sun
(별똥, 지는 해)

Here are two of Jeong Ji-yong's short children's poems that are in fact more than just for children. One is witty and ironical, and the other a sad cry against the cruel and indifferent world.

Meteor (별똥) is a cute work concerning an irony of life, one about how we busily make plans which never seem to turn out as we intended. If you're religiously inclined, you might think that it's because mere mortals plan and plan but it is God who directs their steps. If not, you can take it like the well known saying that Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans. It was made more popular by a John Lennon song that used it, but it is said to have orginated from the 1950s. Jeong's work touches on the same theme, I think, through the words of a (presumed) boy who planned to go check the meteor site but kept procrastinating for one reason or another until, voila!, he's all grown up. Isn't that cute!

Setting Sun (지는 해) is not a cute story but a sad one. A girl is looking at the sun going down in the west, where she thinks her older brother has gone, perhaps for good, judging form the tone of the line. In her eyes, the sky appears all bloody red and scary, making her wonder, or she might really be trying to distract herself by thinking whether there's a war or fire. It is a stark cry at the merciless reality, which was all too often the norm in those days almost a century ago. Too many families went asunder, too many men and women were sent to labor camps or to a war not knowning why they had to fight it, and those left behind had to live waiting, waiting, and waiting, often times never seeing them again. Jeong Ji-yong's Setting Sun reads like a scene in such a story.