The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (41 page)

March 6, 1995

Hello.

I read the second chapter of your novel a few days ago. There was more going on compared to the preceding chapter and I enjoyed it, finishing it in one sitting.

Enjoyed it?

It might be misleading to say I “enjoyed” it. It is my way of describing a compelling experience that gave me much to think about, not one that I found merely entertaining.

After publishing
The Dwarf Launches His Tiny Ball
, Cho Se-hui wrote one or two more linked stories for
The Literary Joongang
, but declared that he would no longer write fiction. Among his reasons, this is what I remember vividly. “Many people told me that they were moved by my story. But their faces appeared so bright and happy.”

It occurred to me that you might feel the same way when people tell you after reading your novel that they enjoyed it.

It’s been only two years since I began teaching at the Program for Industrial Workers, but as I read your book, there were so many things that I wanted to tell you. I wanted to explain to you the differences between the industrial scene that you experienced in the early eighties and one that my students are in
today, and I wanted to convey the differences between the classroom scene of then and now; the inferiority that is still seizing the students despite the change; their wary relationship with the day students; their work environment that I have observed; the companies’ method of managing the students; and so many other things.

March, 1979, the year you entered the Special Program for Industrial Workers at Yeongdeungpo Girls’ High School at the age of seventeen, was a special time for me as well. That was when I was appointed to a faculty position at Jangchung Girls’ Middle School, straight out of university. A couple of classes were set up there for industrial workers as well. But these students would arrive at school after we got off work, so the only time I got to see them was Field Day, which took place once a year. The students, who appeared two or three years older than the day students, and were taller as well, got to take the day off and participate in the activities, and they seemed excited.

What I remember about them was the three-legged race held on Field Day. You remember, two people racing with a leg tied to each other’s? It’s simple enough, if you just keep in step, one, two, one, two, but the students, older and taller, kept getting their feet tangled and fell behind the day students. I remember the teachers all saying, in surprise, “It’s the power of education. Learning from social experience. It has nothing to do with age, does it?” Other than that, I was barely aware of the special industrial workers program, until after working at many different schools, I was appointed to Yeongdeungpo
Girl’s High School three years ago. I was going through a difficult time, having entered a PhD program late in my career, and was planning to take a leave of absence in a year, but the vice principal recommended taking an English teacher position for the special classes, mentioning that the schedule should allow me to pursue my academic work as well.

Going into the program, I was prejudiced, that these students, “pitiful and faced with such hardship,” would require much care. My heart ached just thinking that they had to work all day and study at night. But when I read their self-introductory essays, my thoughts were changed. Their writings captured the same hopes, despairs, goals and the small, mundane joys of the everyday, no different from those of a day student. My previous position had been at a so-called “elite” school and I had spent the first year at Yeongdeungpo in the day program, so I was able to compare three different groups of students. And I had come to recognize the very ordinary truth that the quantities and the qualities of the dreams, hopes or despairs of the students in various environments were not different.

Of course, many of the students from affluent areas possess economic and material wealth. However, I do not believe that the dreams they write about, as in “I want to be a world-class designer” or “I want to be a doctor,” are any different, in quality, from the dreams of the students in the industrial workers classes, like “I want to learn the skills to become a beautician,” “I’m going to save up to open a small gift shop,” or “I want to go to college, even if it
’s just a two-year vocational school.”

There are students who have been damaged by parental negligence despite the material wealth that they were born into, while there are industrial worker students who say, “I couldn’t stand my drunken dad and practically ran away to Seoul. But nowadays Dad has gotten his act together and I visit home with gifts on Chuseok holidays.”

I recall the faces of students from wealthy neighborhoods, fatigued from academic pressure despite their affluence. One student, who looked like a doll with her round, twinkling eyes, always had on an anxious face, full of regret. She said her parents had both attended good schools but she would never get into a top university, so her mother was too embarrassed to leave the house, her heart always pounding.

When we have the physical fitness test for college entrance, every year I see a group of girls behind the current seniors, making their fourth attempt at entering college. How tame and good-hearted they seemed. They were in most cases students who had the lowest grades around. Their parents continued to send them to college prep cram schools because it was too scary to send a daughter overseas, but they still could not stand the idea of their daughter ending up a mere high school graduate. If these students had been born into a less well-off family, they would be enjoying a healthy work life. You wrote that you still wake up in the same crouched-up position as when you used to sleep in the lone room. These students might go to sleep in their soft beds, in their spacious rooms, but
they would awake each morning to find their minds crouched up even tighter.

Perhaps I am able to make this comparison only because the industrial labor conditions these days have far improved from the eighties. Last year I had the chance to visit several of the factories where my students worked. At one factory, where a majority of my students worked, labor representatives participated in wage negotiations, including one of my students. Working conditions were clean and many of the procedures had been automated. On weekdays they worked from eight thirty to five and until one
P.M.
on Saturdays. At some divisions, workers took every other Saturday off. If you could see fabrics being cut by computerized controls and automated robots ironing shirts on mannequins, I think you would be astonished at how times have changed.

Other factories offer slightly less favorable conditions but in most places, the workers get off work on Saturdays by three
P.M.
After Saturday classes were pulled up to four
P.M.
from six, some companies made their student workers resume work from ten
P.M.
to midnight on Friday nights when they returned to their dormitories after school, which “infuriated” the teachers and the students, but this is the worst that can happen in the work environment of the nineties.

Once, when students were absent without leave, protesting the use of abusive language by a mid-level managing staff, the school mediated by arranging a meeting between the students and company representatives. Companies have various tactics to keep a close watch
on the students. The worst kind has staff waiting outside the school and takes the students, almost by force. When students quit their jobs, unable to endure inhumane treatment, some companies issue official requests pressuring the school to expel the student. On the other hand, some companies try to guide the students when their work is unsatisfactory or when they have violated dorm regulations, and will fire them only when the efforts turn out useless.

But they will still say, “We will not notify the school, so do continue with your studies if you wish.” The bigger companies can afford to do this, but as with individuals, humane consideration is not always proportionate to the company’s wealth.

My first worker students, especially the first-year students, all seemed quite hopeful about the future. Many had come from the country, in hopes to make money and study at the same time. But as time goes by, they began to get weary. And about 30 percent of the students drop out. In many cases, they find it hard to overcome the hardships, the loneliness, and the fatigue they face living far away from home. But what I find more discouraging is when students get caught up in the glamorous temptations around them and leave the school for the entertainment district. Their parents, who should be disciplining them, are back in the country, while the students are so fragile, weary, and overwhelmed. Their work conditions might have improved compared to the eighties, but since their surrounding environment has become more decadent and affluent as well, their sense of relative poverty might also be heightened.

But the rest of the students
charge on energetically with their lives. Those suffering from stomach ailments or backaches often miss school, but there are also quite a number of students who maintain perfect attendance. When I encounter students who appear no different from students who have received a good education in well-to-do families, my heart brightens.

Last time I wrote to you, I did get the feeling that you probably would not accept my invitation. Thinking that you would be averse to expressions like “labor” or “working by day and studying by night,” I tried to “lure” you by trying to emphasize the occasion as a meeting between a writer and her readers, rather than one between an alumnus and current students, hoping it might appeal to your writerly sensibilities. But while I was reading the first chapter of your book a few days after mailing my letter, I thought, “She would not come. If I had read this first, I would not have written her.”

When I read the first chapter, I was quite surprised that you were looking back on those times with such pain, after all this time. And I asked my students whether they also felt shameful or inferior about attending night classes. About half appeared unaffected and the other half answered that they felt the same. I asked what there is to feel inferior about, when they were working so hard, at school and at the factory, and I got an unexpected answer.

“People don’t all think like you do. If you tell them you attend night classes, they’d look down on you, and if you tell them you attend night classes for industrial workers
, they’d look down even more.”

“If you have a boyfriend, it’s better to say you just stay home, without a job. People think it’s better to be idle and out of job than being a factory girl.”

“Our teachers are always talking about how we ‘work by day and study at night,’ but I don’t like hearing that expression.”

All I could offer them was that they are acquiring skills that could support them for the rest of their lives, while three fourths of the day students will never make it to college, and then I gave them this quote from Eleanor Roosevelt: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

One of the teachers, who has been teaching the special program for a long time, tells me that the students have an intense sense of inferiority, more than we think. They even think that only the most inferior teachers get assigned to the program, when the truth is that many of the teachers apply to the program in order to pursue their higher degrees and therefore are better educated.

Well, come to think of it, we had a big laugh hearing that a wife of one of our teachers was told this by a friend: “Is your husband still teaching the night program? You should make him study more and move to the day classes.”

We teachers try to be as considerate as we can so that the students don’t feel discriminated against. During school festivals when the day students stay behind late, we make sure to hold the music performances or film showings off campus to prevent any conflict. We hold special ceremonies to mark the beginning
of vacation, which, I heard, was devised in order to prevent any misunderstanding on the first day of school, about night students leaving a mess behind.

Once I told my senior class, “Don’t leave scribbles on the desks. You’re sharing them with other students,” and it started a clamor. They said, “We never write on the desks. We’ve been keeping our mouths shut until now, but you know what the day students write? Words like
bitch
we see all the time, and we get things like, ‘You’re factory girls, you should at least clean up your waste paper if you want to study at school.’ Or even, ‘If I were you, I’d rather die than work as a factory girl.’”

I was in such a fluster trying to comfort my students. “In any group, there are bound to be one or two people who lack character. I’m sure you have people like that at work as well, right? If the other students learned that their own classmates are writing such things, they will feel apologetic and ashamed,” I said to them. “If you trip on a rock as you’re walking down the street, say, ‘Just my luck,’ and keep going. What would people say if you shouted, ‘You rock, why were you there?’”

At my words, the students answered, “They’d say you’re crazy!” and burst into laughter. They were seniors, mature enough to laugh at this. If they were in their first year of high school, such scribbles would have hurt them more deeply.

The academic level of the students lags behind these days compared to when you were studying here. Back then, there were many applicants so the admission process was more selective, requiring a year or two of work experience. But nowadays, the number of students has dropped
and because they start school immediately after getting hired, most are young, lacking determination.

“Is someone still reading Hegel in that classroom today?”
Today, I asked my students if they knew who Hegel was. Most answered, “Sounds like a name that came up in ethics class, was he a scientist or a philosopher?” Come to think of it, such phenomenon is not restricted to night students in the Special Program for Industrial Workers.

A while back, I asked students at a so-called prestigious high school, “Do you know who Simone de Beauvoir is?” and no one could answer. So I asked if they knew what she meant when she said, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” and they all just looked at me blankly, except for one girl who said, “Doesn’t it mean that women should use makeup and take care of their looks?”