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Under Flag Poem

699 Words3 Pages

The cost of freedom is always high during times of war and the effects can last a lifetime, forever impacting the lives of all who may have been involved. From the years 1950-1953, the Korean War raged on and the United States came to South Korea’s aid. Though born several years later, abstract, modernist poet Myung Mi Kim felt the impact of this war as it lead her country into a state of turmoil resulting in the immigration of her and her family to the United States. The Korean War caused a massive displacement of its people and this is a common theme along with Kim’s personal loss of her first language in her poem “Under Flag”. Kim represents her perspective on language and immigration in the poem through means of fragmented verse, historical …show more content…

Using such abstract phrases contributes to the idea of assimilation into another language and the inability for immigrants to fully cohere to an entirely new way of speaking and thinking. Kim uses the term “unsaid” in these couple instances to signify the loss and anonymity of her culture and herself. Some other key words that emphasize the theme of language and immigration are “call”, “meet”, and “family”, which exemplify Kim’s selective word choice throughout the …show more content…

was shot and instantly killed while stopping the Reds’ last attempts to overrun and take the hilltop (Kim 17)
The introduction into this stanza still complies with Kim’s abstract style, but then metamorphoses into an almost prose-like narrative. Considering the ties that formed during the Korean War and the American nationality of this corporal, which is presumably Corporal Leonard Hayworth as he was featured in TIME Magazine fighting in the Korean War in its inception, one might conclude that when it comes to the content of the poem, Kim shifts her level of coherency. This can be attributed back to the personal loss of Kim’s first language: Korean. “Under Flag” shows Kim’s perspective of confusion and incoherency when it comes to language, especially the loss of a language that should be second nature to her. When Kim writes pieces of her poem directly regarding Korea and its people, her language is abstract and vague, but when she brings about these historical transcriptions, parts of her poem can be read easily:
The demoralized ROK troops disappeared but the handful of Americans, completely surrounded, held out for seven hours against

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