Dawn of Labor

Dawn of Labor , at last translated into English, is the legendary South Korean poet Park Nohae’s first collection, published in 1984 when he was twenty-seven years old. Despite a government ban, the book sold a million copies and propelled Park Nohae as the generation’s leading resistance poet. Dawn of Labor is an enduring classic that shook a society, transformed lives, and demonstrated the power of poetry. The war of night labor once over, I pour cold soju over my aching heart. Ah . . . I can’