Yun Dong-Ju is a Korean poet, born on December 30th, 1917. His death was in Fukuoka Prison, where he died on February 16th, 1945.
Based on the movie “Dongju: The Portrait of the Poet,” there are many theories adding onto his life plot, and my rephrasing and the movie itself could have theories that are not necessarily true, however the theories were and still are the most popular theories on Yun DongJu AND Song MongGyu’s [his cousin and friend, who is very important to the plot.] life plot. for example, their death. What caused it?
Yun DongJu and Song MongGyu were both very into poetry. What the difference between them was, that MongGyu was more “successful” in writing. He got the winning part, always succeeded. That wouldn’t have been a problem if DongJu was the same, but no.
Although his 100+ poetry’s were very heartwarming, touching, emotion filling, etc., he never seemed to succeed.
During the times of Koreans and still to this day, writing, art, and as such was a way to “fail yourself.” Asians particularly have a “thing” for more high paying jobs, such as doctors and lawyers, etc. So you would imagine how DongJu felt when he tried to tell his father about his passion in poetry.
Now going deeper, MongGyu and DongJu decide to study abroad in Japan. They land in Kyoto, and study in Kyoto University. But DongJu doesn’t seem to have any luck, and fails in school. Guess who didn’t fail? MongGyu. He passed and got to stay, whereas DongJu decided and maybe needed to move schools. He landed back into Seoul, and went to Yeonhee University, where he graduated. He afterward went to Rikkyo University, to study English Literature. He later meets Kumi, who seems to be able to help him with publishing his poems.
Did he realize his interest in poetry was going to cause problems? Maybe.
Did he choose the worst of his decisions to keep on moving forward with poetry? Yes.
He started skipping Military Drills, and since he was in Tokyo, there were thousands of hundreds of Japanese Soldiers. Having power was the main focus of Japan, with goals of taking over countries and states and continents etc. [please don’t attack me for this it’s true and obviously not all Japanese people were like this, it was the majority of Japan and it doesn’t make the Japanese horrible people in the present.] Because of his absence in Military Drills, it gets him in trouble by a couple of soldiers, beating him while cutting his hair, while cursing at the teacher on how “Western” Literature is useless.
At “home” with Kumi and his English Literature teacher, the teacher recommends he goes back to Kyoto, where MongGyu was.
That was exactly what he did.
When DongJu returned to Kyoto, things seemed to have changed with MongGyu. I forgot to mention, but MongGyu had done a couple of dangerous things to “save” Korea [named as Joseon back in the day], and ended up in jail a few times. His “crimes” were unspecified, however.
MongGyu decided to choose the activists side and decided to leave poetry. He never decided to tell DongJu, since he thought that DongJu wouldn’t support his public actions on saving Korea, so he decided to not tell him and tried to keep him out of meetings to make DongJu clueless.
One day at the crack of dawn, MongGyu tells DongJu he AND him needed to leave Kyoto, and go back to their hometown. However, DongJu had a meeting plan with Kumi, since they were in the middle of publishing his beautiful poetry. He tells MongGyu to go without him, and he would catch up.
Extremely unluckily, MongGyu gets caught. He was planning to run away from Kyoto since he had done something very dangerous, for the second or I don’t know time. Unfortunately, I cannot specify what his dangerous risk was, maybe he killed someone, from the front part of the movie, DongJu is shown at the police station, where the investigator brung up MongGyu killing someone.
Kumi and DongJu meet up in a café in Kyoto [obviously] and discuss the next phase of publishing his poetry. Kumi asks what his name for the poetry was, and he starts writing it down, and gets interrupted by the police, where he gets taken to the police station.
After investigations, manipulation, DongJu and MongGyu were forced to be injected by many toxic “items.” In the police stations in Japan, they would test things onto humans, which now we do to animals. This was a extremely dangerous and horrible thing to do, and if this happened now, it would have been more dangerous. They get injected with things like saltwater, seawater, I’m not sure. By this time both their parents realize they’re in prison, and head their way to Kyoto.
Unfortunately, DongJu had a sensitive reaction to the injections, and died before his father could last see him, with MongGyu telling his father and DongJu’s father he wasn’t going to live for much longer either.
