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 reade…

- Kim Hyesoon

In Korea, a woman must first obey her father, then her husband when she becomes an ajuma, and finally obey her son as a halmoni. Any woman who violat…

- Kim Hyesoon

Our mothers who have gone are buried in our bodies. It can be said that we were born with dead mothers in our body.

- Kim Hyesoon

When anger and sorrow overflow, sometimes it becomes poetry.

- Kim Hyesoon

The rhythm of my body is the same as my mother tongue. It is in this rhythm where I find sanctity, that I can return to my mother who is everywhere i…

- Kim Hyesoon

We carve on our body what society teaches us and continue this task, not knowing the identity they force us to have. This identity is carved on our f…

- Kim Hyesoon

I came to grotesque language in the patriarchal culture under the dictatorship. The body that was broken into pieces is a sick body. I put the diseas…

- Kim Hyesoon

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 literar…

- Kim Hyesoon

Women are foils to men in South Korea. It is hard for women to take a lead role even in NGOs for political resistance. Men think women should do triv…

- Kim Hyesoon