Azaleas
(진달래꽃)

Azaleas (진달래꽃) is both the title of Kim So-wol's poetry collection published in 1925 and the best known work in it. It is probably the most popular poem in the history of Korea, perennially featured in textbooks and adapted to songs. You could almost say anyone who doesn't know it is probably not a Korean.

The poem has the protagonist (let's assume it is a female to avoid repeating he or she or they) saying what she will do when her loved one leaves her, all grown tired of her. She wouldn't make a scene or cry, but instead gather the azalea flowers and strew them on his path, to make his departure that much more pleasant. She is vowing to do her best for the last time so that her man won't feel guilty or uncomfortable - un utterly selfless devotion you would see in fairy tales.

While on the surface it appears to describe a heart-rending breakup in the woman's relationship, it could as easily be just an imagined situation, as this sort of expressing the opposite appears often in Kim So-wol's work. It could very well be that there is nothing amiss and our protagonist is in such a bliss that she undergoes an emotional inflection point, imagining what she would do in that unthinkable development, savoring her blessings all the more in the process.

However you interpret it, it undeniably captures a profound and boundless love, which appears to be the single most important subject in Kim's works. The poem combines this traditional ideal of love with the visual motif of azaleas - the humbly beautiful flower familiar to most Koreans - resting upon the foundation of time-proven meter of seven-fives (7·5 조) and the simple and earthy language Kim is known for. It must be this lofty yet down-to-earth devotion, the at once ideal and all too familiar emotion that everyone can relate to, which make this work nothing short of a watershed in modern Korean poetry.