When I first started to write poetry, I used to feel as if my tongue would go numb.

I have to reach "the poetry condition" to write. Then it is as if the border around me is thinned or blurred or erased or disappeared or dead.

There is a specific kind of day when I feel like writing poems. My senses become really sharp. This day is when I feel as if I am drowning into the abandonment of death.

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 people to be soldiers.

I did not have any role model. I could not learn anything from the female voice that male poets used, a voice which is more "feminine" than female. Nor could I learn anything from ancient female poetry that only sang about love, the feeling of farewell and longing for others.

My tough and grotesque images were thrown on the roads and were stepped on by my critics, and I was talked about with scorn. I felt regret that readers only seemed to like something they were accustomed to.

Living in 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 now.