WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.990 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.990 --> 00:00:05.460 align:middle line:90% I was in Korea in-- 00:00:05.460 --> 00:00:07.350 align:middle line:90% I'm so bad at time. 00:00:07.350 --> 00:00:08.340 align:middle line:90% I think it was July-- 00:00:08.340 --> 00:00:09.870 align:middle line:90% July or August. 00:00:09.870 --> 00:00:14.310 align:middle line:84% Wasn't that-- yeah, and it's true. 00:00:14.310 --> 00:00:19.625 align:middle line:84% I can't-- Helen, I had Snearson in the eighth grade. 00:00:19.625 --> 00:00:21.000 align:middle line:84% She discovered that I didn't have 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:22.740 align:middle line:84% the months of the year in the right order, 00:00:22.740 --> 00:00:23.700 align:middle line:90% and I didn't know them. 00:00:23.700 --> 00:00:27.500 align:middle line:90% 00:00:27.500 --> 00:00:31.860 align:middle line:84% I was in Korea for an international Congress-- 00:00:31.860 --> 00:00:33.270 align:middle line:90% poets and peace. 00:00:33.270 --> 00:00:35.460 align:middle line:90% It was a peace congress. 00:00:35.460 --> 00:00:38.140 align:middle line:90% We all wrote a poem about peace. 00:00:38.140 --> 00:00:43.300 align:middle line:84% And I gave the keynote address, and we 00:00:43.300 --> 00:00:45.505 align:middle line:90% had one night in the North. 00:00:45.505 --> 00:00:47.380 align:middle line:84% I'll tell you, there's a lot to say about it. 00:00:47.380 --> 00:00:49.420 align:middle line:84% I'll tell you one very striking moment. 00:00:49.420 --> 00:00:50.530 align:middle line:90% We had panels. 00:00:50.530 --> 00:00:58.330 align:middle line:84% We had poets from Brazil, from France, from Turkey, 00:00:58.330 --> 00:01:06.210 align:middle line:84% from Ireland, from England, from Germany, many panels from Japan, 00:01:06.210 --> 00:01:11.200 align:middle line:90% from Malaysia. 00:01:11.200 --> 00:01:13.690 align:middle line:84% One of these panels, we were celebrating. 00:01:13.690 --> 00:01:19.280 align:middle line:84% The occasion for this was the 60th anniversary of Korean 00:01:19.280 --> 00:01:20.300 align:middle line:90% independence. 00:01:20.300 --> 00:01:23.000 align:middle line:84% And in the very weird, very oppressive, 00:01:23.000 --> 00:01:25.460 align:middle line:84% very strange North, of which we got only a glimpse. 00:01:25.460 --> 00:01:29.610 align:middle line:84% And in the South, there were banners showing the peninsula 00:01:29.610 --> 00:01:32.130 align:middle line:90% without a line through it. 00:01:32.130 --> 00:01:33.610 align:middle line:90% And it was very moving. 00:01:33.610 --> 00:01:36.950 align:middle line:84% Very, very astonishingly important to those 00:01:36.950 --> 00:01:39.450 align:middle line:84% people that they could even think about having their country 00:01:39.450 --> 00:01:41.040 align:middle line:90% be one country again. 00:01:41.040 --> 00:01:44.760 align:middle line:84% And the great contrast between this tremendous prosperity 00:01:44.760 --> 00:01:48.150 align:middle line:84% and unsettling Westernization in the South, and this 00:01:48.150 --> 00:01:52.050 align:middle line:84% really terrific you know starvation and oppression 00:01:52.050 --> 00:01:54.630 align:middle line:90% in the North. 00:01:54.630 --> 00:01:58.110 align:middle line:84% I'll give you one striking moment to me. 00:01:58.110 --> 00:02:00.720 align:middle line:84% One of the very last panels, there 00:02:00.720 --> 00:02:03.030 align:middle line:84% was a very elegant Japanese poet, 00:02:03.030 --> 00:02:07.380 align:middle line:84% who gave a marvelous, poetic talk about the Bo tree, 00:02:07.380 --> 00:02:10.830 align:middle line:90% under which the Buddha was-- 00:02:10.830 --> 00:02:13.060 align:middle line:84% when he dies, the flowers come down 00:02:13.060 --> 00:02:17.352 align:middle line:84% and his mother gave birth to him under it, and it was very-- 00:02:17.352 --> 00:02:20.100 align:middle line:84% a young woman in the question period-- 00:02:20.100 --> 00:02:22.740 align:middle line:84% a young woman in the audience, a young woman 00:02:22.740 --> 00:02:27.700 align:middle line:84% who is ethnic Korean, but an American citizen, 00:02:27.700 --> 00:02:28.840 align:middle line:90% she spoke perfect Korean. 00:02:28.840 --> 00:02:32.170 align:middle line:84% She was teaching at a University in Korea. 00:02:32.170 --> 00:02:34.940 align:middle line:84% She said two things had bothered her. 00:02:34.940 --> 00:02:36.620 align:middle line:90% One of them had bothered me too. 00:02:36.620 --> 00:02:37.953 align:middle line:90% The other hadn't occurred to me. 00:02:37.953 --> 00:02:42.810 align:middle line:84% She said she was bothered by the chauvinism about the Buddhist 00:02:42.810 --> 00:02:45.090 align:middle line:84% view of life and the Korean view of life that 00:02:45.090 --> 00:02:46.170 align:middle line:90% had not been questioned. 00:02:46.170 --> 00:02:49.467 align:middle line:84% That people had talked about resisting the West 00:02:49.467 --> 00:02:51.300 align:middle line:84% and correcting the West, and there has never 00:02:51.300 --> 00:02:54.670 align:middle line:90% been any reservation about that. 00:02:54.670 --> 00:02:57.220 align:middle line:84% And then she said something that I felt very stupid 00:02:57.220 --> 00:02:58.770 align:middle line:90% and had not occurred to me. 00:02:58.770 --> 00:03:00.695 align:middle line:90% She said the other thing-- 00:03:00.695 --> 00:03:02.820 align:middle line:84% remember, there's a Japanese poet on the panel too. 00:03:02.820 --> 00:03:07.670 align:middle line:84% She says, the other thing that bothers me is that 00:03:07.670 --> 00:03:10.220 align:middle line:84% we're celebrating the 60th anniversary of Korean 00:03:10.220 --> 00:03:11.820 align:middle line:90% independence. 00:03:11.820 --> 00:03:14.630 align:middle line:84% When we were celebrating the 60th anniversary of Korean 00:03:14.630 --> 00:03:17.630 align:middle line:84% independence, what we were also celebrating is the dropping 00:03:17.630 --> 00:03:21.320 align:middle line:84% of the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 00:03:21.320 --> 00:03:23.960 align:middle line:84% And she said I'd like to hear members of the panel comment 00:03:23.960 --> 00:03:26.670 align:middle line:90% on those two things. 00:03:26.670 --> 00:03:28.410 align:middle line:84% And I'm here to tell you, the four-- 00:03:28.410 --> 00:03:29.730 align:middle line:90% it happened to be all-male. 00:03:29.730 --> 00:03:32.990 align:middle line:84% I don't want to be male baiting, or curry favor 00:03:32.990 --> 00:03:34.080 align:middle line:90% in some feminist way. 00:03:34.080 --> 00:03:37.640 align:middle line:84% But the five guys on the panel, some of them 00:03:37.640 --> 00:03:40.820 align:middle line:84% attempted to respond to the first thing she said, none 00:03:40.820 --> 00:03:44.390 align:middle line:84% of them, including the Japanese poet responded 00:03:44.390 --> 00:03:48.130 align:middle line:90% to the second thing she said. 00:03:48.130 --> 00:03:50.095 align:middle line:84% I just tell you that as a striking story. 00:03:50.095 --> 00:03:51.970 align:middle line:84% I don't know what the point of it is exactly, 00:03:51.970 --> 00:03:54.270 align:middle line:90% but there's something.