If you happen to live in Korea, you might always suffer from anger towards people in power, because of political and social problems. I felt gloomy under this social dictatorship. Looking back, I feel like I never saw a sunrise in Seoul. When I was at university, the policemen used to measure how short the women's mini-skirts were and how long guys' hair was. We were living under a government that considers her people to be soldiers.

Speaking as an outsider is the most authentic voice for a poet. Poets who have one hundred thousand or one million readers [as many South Korean poets do] might not be a real, authentic poet.

Mother does not exist, like water that has given life to a flower and then disappeared. Mothers live somewhere after giving birth to us.

Living in South Korea as a girl meant living under a lot of discrimination and limitation. It was the same in my university and in the Korean literary world I am involved in.

The body of poetry is nothing but energy, waves, rhythm.

My mom does not exist anymore, and I cannot see my mother in myself. To me, the word "mother" is the synonym for the words "parting" or "separation" or "farewell."

My body is full of graves. A sepulcher is dug up, and a young girl comes out of it with her dusty hands in tears. A lady who is a young girl and an old girl at the same time feels the presence of the young girl. I feel that the 15-year-old me and the 50-year-old me come out of the sepulcher through an illegal excavation.