Maninbo (12 page)

In January 1951, Yi Cheol-su was fourteen.

His grandmother, Yu Bun-nyeo,

his father, Yi Jong-muk,

his mother, Ms Baek,

his younger brother, Cheol-ho,

the farmhand, Mr Bak,

the maid, Cham-rye with the double-crowned hair,

all six were massacred for the crime of being reds.

However,

Cheol-Su and his younger sister Bok-nam survived,

having gone to their mother’s home.

The southern soldiers

dragged ten-year-old Bok-nam off

and drove a nail through her palm

to force her to say she was a red.

‘I’m not a red,

I’m not a red,’

she screamed.

Finally,

she said,

‘I’m a red,’

and fainted.

The world was frozen.

The sky

was frozen

blue,

deep blue.

Her brother, Cheol-su,

afraid of the world,

afraid of the soldiers,

stole away into the mountains.

Inevitably,

he became a young partisan guerrilla.

In 1956,

nurse Yi Bok-nam of the Red Cross Hospital in Daejeon,

a scar in her right palm where the nail went through, was quiet.

Right-handed as a child,

she was quiet now and left-handed.

She was so good at giving subcutaneous injections

that the patients never knew if the needle was in or not.

When she delivered an injection into a vein

nobody felt the least pain.

Sadder by far to lose his mother at eleven

than at five.

At five, he wouldn’t have known the sorrow.

He grew up on sorrow,

here, on the earth.

Paternal aunt’s skirt,

maternal aunt’s skirt,

maternal uncle’s wife’s skirt,

as he grew, he learned that none of those

was as good as his mother’s.

In lieu of fertile earth,

he put down roots in rock,

so his life was tough.

The leaves that would dance when it rained

withered.

When he was three,

his father had died.

After that the years were all uneasy.

In January 1951 when he was eleven,

his mother was dragged off to Baksan Valley

and died with the other villagers.

She died without learning why she must die.

The noun ‘red’ –

a traitor who secretly collaborated with communist guerrillas –

that was all.

A few shards of human bone

no one could tell apart,

whether they were his mother’s –

who could never tell A from B –

or someone else’s

emerged from the ground.

Twenty-year-old Im Chae-hwa’s eyes grew moist.

This world was all wrong.

The official name of the Geochang Massacre of the Innocents

was the CheongYa Operation.

Some six hundred people were brought

into the classrooms of Sinwon primary school.

One officer asked if any were families of military policeman.

A few families came forward.

It was true.

A few more families came forward.

This was not true.

They claimed they were MP families

in order to survive.

Then township head Park Yeong-bo stepped forward,

brazen faced,

with a large birthmark on his face.

He dragged one man out:

‘You’re from no MP family.’

Then he dragged another one out:

‘How can
you
be from a policeman’s family?’

The six hundred or more townsfolk were bound and taken away.

Gunfire ran out in a gully

beneath a steep hillside.

Then

all was quiet.

Ten years later came the April Revolution.

On the day a cenotaph was to be erected

the families of the victims

went
en masse
to Park Yeong-bo’s house.

They dragged him a couple of miles

and made him stand before the graves.

He ran away.

People hurled stones furiously.

He fell as he fled.

One year later came the military coup of May 1961.

People were arrested

for the murder of Park Yeong-bo.

The CheongYa Operation is still on. It’s lasted a long time.

On 31 December 1951

President Syngman Rhee reluctantly ordered the citizens of Seoul to evacuate.

The Chinese human wave strategy

was once again threatening Seoul.

General Ridgeway, commanding the American forces,

ordered his men to retreat to the south of the Han River.

On 3 January 1951 –

not much of a new year –

the government hurriedly left.

Three hundred thousand Seoul citizens

had to cross the frozen Han River

to head farther

and farther south.

In Waryong-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul,

one newborn,

the youngest child of the owner of the Seonil Printing Company,

a baby not yet entered in the family register

so still nameless,

was just called,

Dear,

My dear,

My weevil, little rice weevil.

It crossed the Han River ice

on its mother’s back

So it began life.

They were lucky. At Suwon they got a ride on a freight train.

Su-dong’s grandmother

who lived below Jinnamgwan Hall in Yeosu, South Jeolla province,

knew exactly how many roundworms

her little grandson Su-dong had in his stomach.

When I’m with my grandson

I can see the camellias on Odong Island;

more than that, I can even see

the camellias on Geomun Island over the sea.

Yeong-u, a refugee child,

was extremely envious of Su-dong.

Ah, if only I had such a clairvoyant grandmother!

The siren of the boat heading for Tong-yeong came echoing.

Or maybe it was the boat
from
Tong-yeong?

If you did not provide a traveller with a place to sleep,

your family was disgraced.

If you offered cold food

to a traveller,

several generations of your family were disgraced.

Even sixty years ago,

even fifty years ago,

even in days when the nation was stolen from us,

even in wartime,

traces of that old hospitality remained.

Whenever you set off

carrying only a staff and a change of clothes,

each village you passed through

took warm-hearted care of you,

your food and lodging.

If you stayed somewhere for three days, then fell sick,

they’d even provide you with medicine.

Long ago, when Hamel and his companions,

Dutch survivors of shipwreck,

were being escorted from Jeju Island to Seoul

by way of Jeolla Province,

they received a warmer welcome

than they had ever received

in any Christian country in the world.

It was the hospitality given

when humans meet other human beings.

They were moved to say: on our weary journey

the generous hearts of Joseon’s people

are incomparable with those of other lands

Some centuries later,

after the war,

that hospitality vanished.

Not only were visitors treated coldly;

people began to report them to the police.

A suspicious person is a spy.

A traveller is a spy.

Anyone loitering at the seaside early in the morning,

anyone who laughs for no reason

at the sight of someone, anyone, all are spies.

Report them.

Report them and earn a reward that will change your luck.

In this country today we have no more wandering travellers.

In 1926, Korea’s Provisional Government

was being pursued all the time,

starving

as it fled along the shores of the Yangtze River.

Kim Gu, the acting premier,

had abolished things like birthdays long ago.

He was stern with himself:

How can people fighting to regain their nation

celebrate a birthday?

However, Na Seok-ju found out when Kim Gu’s birthday was,

pawned his clothes

and bought two kilos of pork.

Everyone cheered up.

With that meat, they were spared for once

their usual poor breakfast.

Kim Gu scolded them:

This will not do.

This will not do.

The Independence Movement knows no birthdays.

Na Seok-ju soon after threw a bomb

that scared the Japanese out of their wits.

He sacrificed himself.

He became a man with no birthday forever.

The war did not spare even public cemeteries.

The public cemetery in Manguri,

was the underworld of Seoul.

On September 30, 1950,

even that site

became a battlefield.

While six thousand graves lay there,

UN soldiers

and communist soldiers

showered bullets

between the graves,

charged at each other,

stabbed one another with bayonets.

Bodies of fallen soldiers

lay scattered here and there

among the graves.

Bodies of black soldiers,

white soldiers,

bodies of communist soldiers,

were scattered all over the unmown grass.

Seventy-five minutes of deadly battle,

seventy-three dead bodies on both sides:

that was all.

Manguri Cemetery went back to being a cemetery.

Seoul belonged to the enemy for three months

under the rule of the North Korean People’s Republic.

The American air force’s bombing raids

went on day after day.

Seoul was reduced to ruins.

Grass grew

between the broken bricks in the ruins.

South Korean troops

recaptured Seoul.

The Northern flag was lowered

from the flagstaff on the Government Building,

the American flag was raised,

followed by the South Korean flag,

and the two fluttered there.

Seoul was under martial law.

Curfew lasted from seven in the evening

until five the next morning,

the time for mice.

Checkpoints stood here and there

in the ruins.

The police who had come back

set about arresting those who had collaborated during the past three months,

even children under ten

The kid of the noodle bar in Juja-dong in central Seoul,

got to know about this harsh world

from early on.

He got to know all about

the world with its beaters-up

and its beaten,

a world where there were thieves

amidst all that fear,

a world where even robbers

and thieves were arrested and beaten with clubs.

He was envious of robbers, envious of thieves.

North Korean soldiers

who drove south

of the 38th parallel

in the summer of 1950…

North Korean soldiers who supervised night operations on aerodromes.

North Korean soldiers never smoked a cigarette,

afraid of American airplanes:

‘The glow of a cigarette can be seen 5 kilometres away.’

They were sixteen,

seventeen years old.

They were carrying submachine guns as tall as themselves.

They had just been mobilised from remote villages.

They were naive,

very shy.

Boys like them were dumped out by the basketful

into the exorbitant war.

Everyone was leaving

leaving in a hurry

southward, southward, fleeing refugees

on the 4 January Retreat in 1951,

all but one.

He who refused to leave

had the notion of stopping

this immense calamity,

with his two hands

at any cost

stopping

this war,

a war in which fellow-countrymen were killing one another

left and right

South and North.

Disorder

lawlessness

thieves

ransackers of empty houses

those who had an eye on refugees’ bundles

extortionists charged with arresting collaborators

who threatened you with jail

unless you gave up your valuables

absolute confusion

every kind of crime.

After such chaos,

by the end of December 1950

Seoul was utterly empty; everyone had left.

Except one:

Choi Ik-hwan.

Who refused to leave, saying

somehow or other

this brutal game of death must stop.

Choi Ik-hwan.

He remained in his small room

in a shabby house in Seongbuk-dong in Seoul and wouldn’t leave,

intending to meet the approaching Northern army

to bring about an end to the war

and persuade the leaders to stop the fighting.

Far from making for Busan

where all were fleeing,

he didn’t even head back toward his hometown in Hongseong.

Early in his life

he joined Son Byeong-hui’s
Donghak
,

and opened his eyes to the people.

Then he went to Shanghai

with Euichin, one of the last Korean princes,

and took charge of an Independence Movement group,

one known as
Daedongdan
.

After Liberation,

he was a member of the Democratic Assembly.

In January 1951 he did meet Northern officials

and risked his life negotiating a ceasefire.

Starving,

shivering with cold,

suffering from pleurisy,

he never left.