Emily Jungmin Yoon, a poet who boldly debuted in the American literary scene, has recently published a poetry collection with a title that stands out: "A Cruelty Special to Our Species." Notably, the stories of the comfort women victims are prominent in this work. Throughout the collection, Yoon maintains a first-person perspective, presenting the world through her own eyes, conveying her feelings, and sharing that world with us. She encompasses not only the harsh wounds and pains of the comfort women but also the experiences of the Korean diaspora living as a minority immigrant in the vast foreign land of America, as well as the suffering of women enduring war and gender discrimination. Rather than observations from an outsider's perspective, her work evokes the scars of violence and pain as if they are felt personally. What landscapes does Emily Jungmin Yoon hope we will see through these experiences?

Emily Jungmin Yoon was born in South Korea in 1991 and immigrated to Canada with her parents at the age of 11 in 2002. She studied English literature and communication at the University of Pennsylvania, earned an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University, and is currently pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. In 2018, she published her poetry collection "A Cruelty Special to Our Species" with HarperCollins, and the same work has recently been translated into Korean as "우리 종족의 특별한 잔인함." This collection has garnered attention in both the U.S. and South Korea for its artistic merit and profound contemplation of "pain." Currently, she lives in Honolulu with her husband, a professor at the University of Hawaii since 2021.

Yoon has consistently studied writing, literature, and communication at prestigious institutions such as the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, and the University of Chicago. Her work has been welcomed by renowned media and literary magazines, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Paris Review, and POETRY.

When did you start writing, and what inspired you?

I have loved reading and writing since I was young. I began writing seriously around the second grade, inspired by reading "Harry Potter," and I wrote a novel about magic. I would fill a page on the computer almost every day, print it out, and show it to my parents, who still keep it. Living in an English-speaking country, I was exposed to more English literature, which naturally led me to major in English literature. I became interested in race and cultural theory while taking communication courses, which prompted me to pursue a double major. In college, I felt I didn't have enough time to focus on creative writing, so I decided to secure time for writing during my MFA program. Through writing, I reflected on my identity, linguistic background, and Korean history, which ultimately led me to pursue a PhD in Korean literature.

You debuted in the American literary scene with your poetry collection. What was that work?

In 2018, I published "A Cruelty Special to Our Species" with HarperCollins. The recent Korean edition, "우리 종족의 특별한 잔인함," is a translation of that book and includes the English text, allowing readers to enjoy the poetry in both languages. The Korean translation was done by novelist Han Yoo-joo. Additionally, I published a poetry chapbook titled "Ordinary Misfortunes" with Tupelo Press in 2017 and translated works by nine Korean women poets into a chapbook anthology titled "Against Healing," published by Tilted Axis in 2019. My poems have appeared in magazines such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Paris Review, and POETRY, and I have received awards from institutions like the Poetry Foundation and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

When did you become particularly interested in poetry among various literary genres?

I developed a love for poetry in 11th grade while taking a creative writing class. My teacher was a poet, and I was moved by their passion for poetry. The poems we studied in literature classes were mostly written by white men from a long time ago, but the contemporary poems we encountered in the creative writing class resonated with me. As a Korean who became comfortable with English only in upper elementary school, I found great freedom in poetry, as it allowed me to break away from conventional vocabulary and grammatical structures.

People often say that for poets, nothing in everyday life seems ordinary. What motivated you to write about the stories of comfort women?

As a Korean, I was naturally aware of this history, but many people in Canada and the U.S. were hearing about it for the first time. I had many discussions with poet friends about how to convey "our forgotten, damaged, erased, and ignored history and culture," and what the role of a poet should be in that process. I felt that if I were to write about historical truths, I needed to educate myself first, so I began studying. I found myself increasingly drawn to the history of the Japanese military comfort women. As I wrote poems about their history and stories, I ended up with a substantial body of work.

In addition to the comfort women, your collection features many instances of violence and its victims, including animals affected by environmental pollution. Why do you choose to address pain, wounds, and suffering so poignantly among various themes?

For me, poetry is a medium that allows me to confront pain and gives me courage. Through writing poetry, I question how I interpret and experience painful events and how I should move forward. Poetry emphasizes not only what is said but also how it is said. It requires a new way of speaking that transcends the mundane, formulaic language of everyday life. Language governs much of our thought processes, and writing poetry about a fact involves contemplating how I express and convey it and why my perspective is shaped this way. I believe I write about pain because I want to deeply understand and confront difficult and painful realities.

When people think of poetry, they often associate it with lyricism—something sad and poignant yet soft and beautiful. However, the theme of your collection, indicated by the word "cruelty" in the title, revolves around "violence" and "wounds." Did you find it challenging to express such themes in the genre of poetry? Perhaps the painful subject matter made poetry an even more fitting medium?

There are challenges. Writing about any history or experience requires reliving and imagining those events. However, as I mentioned earlier, I believe we do not necessarily need to be protected from pain. Our painful past allows us to reflect on our ethical consciousness and culture today. Moreover, painful stories can also become beautiful poetry. Ultimately, I believe the goal of all poetry is beauty. Expressing pain in beautiful language and etching it into memory breathes new life into those stories or extends their existence. Poetry is a medium that must be read slowly; it resists skimming. If even one line is read carelessly, the entire atmosphere and flow of the poem can be lost. Thus, poetry serves as a good vessel for stories that are painful yet necessary to know.

You employ a unique expression technique called "found poetry" in this collection. What led you to incorporate this technique?

Since I translated the testimonies of the Japanese military comfort women into poetry, I wanted to use a technique that selectively extracts and rearranges existing texts. I wanted to preserve their voices. Because their stories are not my direct experiences, I felt a reluctance and fear about overlaying them with new language.

Your poems are vivid and specific, almost as if they are written from the perspective of someone who has experienced the events rather than merely observing them. How did you achieve this?

Thank you for that observation. To translate either my own past or someone else's story into poetry, a poet must engage in a deep emotional connection. Only then can the story be represented effectively through imagery and language. My poetry collection also addresses many of my own experiences. It contains the complex thoughts and experiences of "me" as a Korean American woman living in the U.S. While the poems about the comfort women and modern Korean history refer to events that occurred before my existence, I believe that the broader themes of war, violence against women, colonialism, and imperialism continue to be reproduced in new forms today, allowing us to connect them to our contemporary experiences.

In the "Witness" chapter of your collection, the poems are uniquely printed vertically, with ample white space. Is there a special reason for this?

The vertical printing is not because I intentionally rotated the paper; it's due to the page width being narrower than the length of several lines, causing the text to flow to the next line. This was a consideration by the editorial team at the publisher, 열림원, to preserve the form of the poem (in the English version published first in the U.S., the page width was appropriate, so the text is not vertical). The ample white space visually represents the places where words were excluded while translating the witnesses' words into poetry, as well as the unspoken memories that were edited or not articulated in the witnesses' hearts. Audibly, it expresses my own tremors as the translator. When readers engage with the poem, the spaces between sentences and words disrupt their reading experience. In other words, it does not read easily or comfortably. I wanted to share the discomfort of translating the pain of others with the readers.

Among literary genres, poetry seems particularly capable of providing "comfort" and "healing" for internal human pain and wounds. What do you hope to convey to readers through this collection?

Since the history of the Japanese military comfort women is at the heart of my book, I hope readers will view it as an opportunity for new emotional engagement, even if they are already familiar with the historical facts. As mentioned, this book also includes my