Occupation Summary & Analysis
by Suji Kwock Kim

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"Occupation" was written by Korean-American poet Suji Kwock Kim in 1994 and later included in her 2003 collection Notes from the Divided Country. The poem describes soldiers building a house with a foundation made of corpses, walls painted with blood, and a roof covered with the ash of burning bodies. While "Occupation" never mentions specific countries, readers can interpret the poem as an extended metaphor for the Japanese occupation of Korea. After annexing Korea in 1910, Japan brutally suppressed Korean culture while also conscripting hundreds of thousands of Koreans into forced labor and sexual slavery. "Occupation" depicts the horror of the Japanese rule through graphic imagery and the soldiers' sinister invitation to occupy this "house" built on the backs of the Korean people's suffering.

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