SABUK, GANGWON PROVINCE (ANN/THE KOREA HERALD) – The profound impact of the three-line stanza in poet Ahn Do-Hyun’s Korean poem that reads “Never kick a lump of used coal briquette; has your heart ever burned for someone?” is rooted in everyday ‘yeontan’. The symbolic significance of the yeontan – punctured, cylindrical briquettes once ignited the […]
SABUK, Gangwon Province “Never kick a lump of used coal briquette; has your heart ever burned for someone?” reads one of the most beloved Korean poems by poet Ahn Do-hyun. The resonance of this three-line-stanza poem in Korean draws its depth from the commonplace “yeontan” the perforated, cylindrical briquettes that fueled the hearths of most Korean households in the mid- to late-.