Celebrating Yun’s Patriotism and Poetry The Yun Dong-ju Memorial Society held the Seventh Yun Dong-ju Literary Awards and Commemorative Lecture on May 30 in the Theology Hall. Over a hundred people attended the ceremony, notably among them Yun’s eldest nephew and Sungkyunkwan University professor Yun In-suk, Ms. Park Yong-gil (widow of Yun’s boyhood friend, the late Reverand Moon Ik-hwan), and the writer Song Woo-hye (distant relative). The Yun Dong-ju Literary Awards celebrates Yun’s love for his country and his poetry. In this seventh year of the Awards, 314 college students nationwide submitted 1,696 poems, and the winner was “Camellia Skirt” by Jo Yoon-hee, a freshman in the Department of Creative Writing at Woosuk University. Lee Seung-wook (junior, Department of Creative Writing, Chung-Ang University) and Lee Hyun-jeong (junior, Department of Korean Language and Literature, Gyeongsang National University) received honorable mention. The judges chose “Camilla Skirt” because it sketched in three short stanzas (revealing in sequence a camilla flower, the speaker’s mother, and a pond) a process of maturity. “The language was full of resonance, owing to the excellent choice of words that were both unusual and economical.” After the awards ceremony, Professor Hong Jung-sun of Inha University gave a commemorative lecture on the theme of “Poetry and Transcendental Imagination.” Professor Hong provided a corrective to the simplistic dichotomy of resistance to or acceptance of Japanese colonization by pointing out that Yun looked to the world with sorrow and pity, and hope for salvation, derived from the nationalistic and Christian backgrounds of Gando (now located in China in the plains of Manchuria). Yun Dong-ju Yonsei alumnus and national poet Yun Dong-ju (class of 1941) was born on December 30, 1917 in Gando. After graduating from Yonhi College, Yun studied at Doshisha University of Japan. While in Japan, Yun was arrested by the Japanese police on charges of participating in the independence movement, and died at the age of 27 in Fukuoka Prison on February 16, 1945, just six months before the liberation of Korea. Yun’s poetry, most of them written during his time of incarceration, became widely known through the posthumous publication in 1948 of the collective edition, Heaven, Wind, Stars, and Poetry. Yun’s poetry continues to inspire Koreans and people throughout the world with the voice of hope and courage in times of hardship.