Yoon Dongju Memorial Hall, A Place Where The Poet’s Spirit Lives And Breathes

Here, you can look through the life and poetry of Yoon Dongju according to the flow of time, his movement to different locations, and the people who were with him. As you open the 252 chest drawers in the exhibition hall, new stories will unfold before you. You can enjoy exhibits and commentaries prepared based on the relics donated by the bereaved family and his acquaintances and see the diverse layers of culture that have been accumulated under the name of Poet Yoon Dongju.

In the past, the first floor of Pinson Hall had a narrow corridor along which rooms for two people were lined up. At the southern end was a rest area where students gathered to chat and relax. The newly constructed memorial hall maintains these existing  spatial structures but changed the visitor circulation from the central corridor to the outer walls so that visitors can walk along the windows and enjoy both the inside and outside views of the building. The main corridor area that glows quietly in the dark is an emotional space, and the lighting that illuminates the boundary between the corridor and the rooms highlights the meaning of a dormitory as a space – a collective and private space. 

“Prelude” Hall is an entry to the life and poetry of Yoon Dongju. This is the only place you can find his handwritten manuscript and the books that convey his thoughts. It is also a special zone where the poet’s handwritten manuscript, Registered Cultural Heritage No. 712, is joined with Pinson Hall, Registered Cultural Heritage No. 770.

“Where the Falling Star Drops” Hall is a space that shows the journey until Yoon Dongju’s poems came to be loved by so many people. How did a young man who did not publish a single poetry book become the most recited poet among Koreans? Here, you can find the first edition of Yoon Dongju’s poetry book, the publication process of major editions afterwards, the memorial service guestbook, the first introductory page, and the letters exchanged with the bereaved. You can also find a text that captures the feelings of the bereaved families when donating the poet’s relics.

“The Youth” Hall is where you can see the scenery of the hometown Yoon Dongju was born and grew up in. As an elementary school student, Dongju grew up in Myung-dong Village based on a tradition of Chinese studies and the Christian faith, wrote children’s poems  with pure curiosity in poetry, and created literary magazines. As a middle school student, he started writing down the dates of his poetry in his study notes and dreamed of becoming a poet in the future. In this hall, you can see pictures of his extended family, the first printed page of his poem, pictures taken with his companions, his study notes, etc. As a boy, Dongju sensed the solid walls of colonial reality in Bukgando, a region beyond the  Dumangang, and began writing poems in Korean.

Even as the war clouds of the Second World War gathered, Yonhui College was a cradle for laying the national spirit to heart and acquiring knowledge about the world. Along with the world’s advanced studies, young Koreans learned their national language and  history – something that was difficult to do elsewhere –from teachers like Choe Hyeonbae, Son Jintae, Jeong Inseop, and Lee Yangha. In this hall, you can see the new path Yoon Dongju took after leaving his hometown. You can also find valuable materials, such as the poet’s graduation belt buckle, class scenes, and the former appearance of Pinson Hall and Baekyang-ro, here.

Yoon Dongju’s poetic ideas and thoughts continued to mature day by day through exchanges with his friends at Yonhui College. He listened and opened his heart to various fellows from all over the country. However, war clouds thickened and intruded the campus, and the use of Hangul (Korean characters) became strictly prohibited. But still, Dongju did not stop writing poems in Korean. In this hall, you can see the poems Dongju published in his college magazine, friends with whom he connected, including Jeong Byeonguk,  Song Monggyu, Kang Cheojung, and Kim Sambul, his handwritten prose manuscript, etc. Come see the self-portraits of young people who walked through the same era together.    

In this hall, you can find the books and representative poems that provided literary nourishment to Yoon Dongju. Although the political and literary realities got gloomier towards the end of the colonial period, Dongju’s world of poetry broadened as his scope of learning and experience expanded. Unraveling his in-depth insights into simple Korean poetry, he dreamed that his poems would not remain as monologues but expand into dialogues with others. In this hall, you can look through the collections of literature,  philosophy, and thoughts that laid the foundation of the poet’s creations, as well as the poems he carefully selected himself. 

This space follows the traces of Yoon Dongju’s overseas studies in Japan and allows you to think about his unrecorded last hours. Here, you can see the poems he wrote, agonizing over what it means to write poems in a foreign space called ‘six-mat room', and an outing scene where he could laugh, although this did not last long. The poet was arrested on charges of independence movement, and his family, who learned of his death through a telegram, hurriedly recovered his body and erected a gravestone of 'Poet Yoon Dongju'. He departed this life, but his poems left those remaining with the task of opening a new beginning. 

This media art space allows you to appreciate Yoon Dongju’s poetry and life through light and sound. A shadow of the poet is cast on the wall of an alleyway he used to walk through, and the skies of the four seasons he would have seen are reflected on the  surface of a well he used to look into. You can also have the special experience of listening to the sound of nature from Yoon Dongju’s grave and hometown village that the bereaved family recorded. As you quietly listen to the sound of rain, wind, grass bugs, and bell in the dark, you will be driven into a distant space that cannot be easily reached and led to the irreversible time of Yoon Dongju’s days.    

This is a must-see zone for those who are curious about Yoon Dongju’s dormitory room. The date, time, and weather here change periodically. The first exhibition guides you to a rainy evening before summer vacation on July 25, 1938. There is even a class  schedule of the poet’s roommate on the desk. Aren’t you curious to know what kind of movies and books Dongju and his friends watched and read, what he packed in his homecoming bag placed on the bed, and what poems he was conceiving at the time? Experience the at the time? Experience the atmosphere of a dormitory bustling with preparations to return home for vacation.    

In this hall, you can enjoy Prelude, One Night, Counting the Stars, and A Poem Easily Written – Yoon Dongju’s representative poems, as well as many people’s favorite poems – in Korean, English, Japanese, and Chinese. You can watch videos of his poems being  calmly recited by those who have a deep relationship with the poet or who study and love him. The unfamiliar experience of listening to a familiar poem in a foreign language will be a new experience to you. Yoon Dongju’s poems, already translated into more than 10 different languages, are consistently being interpreted and re-examined under new perspectives and languages.    

This space gathers materials related to Yoon Dongju from all over the world. At a glance, you can see not only books of various genres related to him, but also event posters or articles in honor of him, dissertations, Korean literature textbooks that have  consistently published his poems over the past 70 years, and many more interesting materials. The works of alumni writers – Dongju’s juniors in college – are also displayed on the side. Even at this very moment, there are people around the world who are sending  us materials related to him, so the library is getting richer day by day. It is based on these accumulated materials that the explanations of the exhibits on the first floor were prepared.    

The second floor of Pinson Hall was used in different ways, as an open and private space, when it was a dormitory, and it is believed that Yoon Dongju stayed here in his third year of college. This space where the light shines in brightly through the repetitive windows was transformed into a space where new knowledge is produced – the Yoon Dongju Library – and given a modern and open atmospheric look. The internal walls that have been adding numerous layers of finishing materials, such as paint and wallpaper, over the years were exposed to reveal the layers of time. The open space surrounded by windows and archives signify a new creation of Yoon Dongju’s past heritage and expansion into the future.

The third floor of the memorial hall is an elegant space with an attic ceiling and a dormer window structure, and the sunlight shining through the wood finishing materials create a poetic space. This empty space will be providing complex cultural experiences  through various projects in the future. In the small room in the middle, you can listen to interviews with 11 people, including those who spent middle school with Yoon Dongju. The timber on the ceiling that has lasted more than 100 years has traces showing that it crossed the Amnokgang. This space will become a cradle of new creation and inspiration that opens a new future.

As soon as you step out of Pinson Hall, you will find the Yoon Dongju Literary Garden. This is where the poet’s first poetry stone, inscribed with Prelude, was erected in November 1968 by the Student Council, his family, and writers. Every year, many mourners  visit this garden on his memorial day. At the bottom of the stairs, there is a literature yard where you can enjoy the poems of Yonsei alumni writers, including Yoon Dongju. This is an area where you can lay down the weight of life and contemplate as you gaze at the shining poetry panels from a bench under the shade of a tree on a sunny afternoon or under the subdued lighting of the night.