“The first time I looked at the poems, they were full of unfamiliar words. I had no idea what all of them meant. I learned the meanings of the words one by one as I read with a dictionary. I did it while eating and walking. It took over a week to memorize and it wasn’t easy.” On May 29, Sunday Skony (Tanzania) won second prize in the Yun Dong-ju Poetry Recitation Contest, which is sponsored by Yonsei University’s Yun Dong-ju Memorial Project. There were around 130 contestants this year, representing a wide range of ages and backgrounds, from elementary school students to sixty year olds. This year marked the first time that international participants have taken part in the recitation contest. The judges, who did not differentiate between domestic and international participants, made their determinations based upon the precision of the recitation and the ability of the reciter to bring the feeling and spirit of the poetry to life. Sunday Skony, whose Korean name is Park Ju-il (Ju-il means “Sunday” in Korean), was encouraged to participate in the contest by one his instructors at the Korean Language Institute (KLI). “As I appreciated the poems a great deal, I thought my heart would explode reciting them in front of so many people,” said Skony. “I felt that I had to recite the poems in their original way, ‘according to feeling.’” For the contest, Skony memorized “Seosi” and five other poems. His favorite is “Another Hometown.” When asked to recite one of the poems, Skony’s playful face became serious. He looked very reverential as he put his hand on his chest and closed his eyes, preparing to recite the verse: “The night I return to my hometown / I lay in the same room as my bones…Do I cry over what moves me to tears? / Is it my bones that cry?” “When you say the poem out loud, you can feel the deep feelings [the poet] felt in Japan,” said Skony. “It’s a sad poem, but it’s good.” Skony continued: “He must have thought about his Korean hometown a lot when he was in an unfamiliar land during the Japanese colonial period. Although he wanted to go home, he couldn’t. It’s like he wanted to go to ‘another beautiful hometown.’” Yonsei professor Chung Myeong-gyo, one of the judges at the contest, said: “He has an ability to recite beautifully. Sunday really captured the essence of the poem, as well as Yun Dong-ju’s compositional form and characteristic purity. His pronunciation was natural too.” Skony, whose hometown lies on the other side of the globe, first learned about Korea because of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Curious about Ban’s homeland, Skony became interested in Korean movies and dramas, which he watched on TV and through the Internet, and that led him to come to this country. He arrived in Korea last year and immediately began studying the Korean language at the KLI. This year, he will enroll at Yonsei, ideally as an economics major. His long-term goal is to become an academic who will contribute to the economic development of Tanzania. Thanks to the Yun Dong-ju Poetry Recitation Contest, Skony has learned something new about Korea. While he has long had a fondness for literature, he had never memorized any literary works prior to the contest. “I think I’ll remember Yun Dong-ju’s poetry throughout my life,” he said with a smile.