Wed to a Bird With No Wings

Swimming Through Hell

After losing our father in that atomic explosion, a disaster so totally unforeseen, we set out to run our household once back in our home country without its main support. But we were never again able to live united as a loving family under a single roof, for my brother was already well on the way to becoming an adult and had to find his own way in life. He could not merely pass his time living with mother and me without any goal or plan.

The months from the moment we landed in Pusan until we were settled in Sangju were the last period when the three of us lived together for a comparatively long time. In the winter of that year mother gave birth to my little sister, father’s posthumous child. However, in spring the following year the child caught smallpox and died. My brother, now seventeen years old, left us too. He said he was going to visit a cousin on mother’s side living at Changsŏng up in Kangwŏn Province. Soon after, he sent news that he had enrolled in the second grade of T’aebaek Middle School, a technical high school.

For the next four years our family lived separated, then we were briefly united in the chaos of the start of the war in June 1950. Our cousin, together with other members of mother’s family, left home and came fleeing southwards; arriving in Sangju, he sent my brother to our home urging us to accompany them.

“Escape? What do you mean, escape? We’re not going.”

Faced with mother’s refusal, the rest of the family continued their flight toward the south-east. But we soon found that we could not remain in safety and just a few days later we belatedly fled southwards to Sonsan.

After ten days or so spent there, the North Korean army had advanced so far south that even Sonsan had become dangerous. We had no choice but to cross the Nakdong River. Swept onward in a flood of refugees, we were near the river when an American fighter came flying overhead and attacked.

It was a moment when disguised North Korean soldiers had hidden among the waves of refugees and so got across the Nakdong River. The American army had already cut the iron bridge crossing the river at Waegwan and their planes were indiscriminately bombing the boats carrying refugees across, too.

My brother, now twenty years old, calmly led the two of us on.

“Once a plane has finished bombing and gone away, there’s some time before it comes back for another attack. We must use that time to get across the river.”

Following his instructions, as soon as an attack started, we went into a nearby field of flax and lay flat.

“Quickly, let’s get across!”

As soon as the plane had finished its raid and flown off toward its base, my brother called us. Arriving at the river, we found a scene straight from Hell. The river was covered with the corpses of dead refugees and the debris of overturned and shattered boats. Oxen that had been brought along, and household goods, were drifting in chaos; women carrying little children were being swept away in the stream, unable to get to safety. Even when their husbands were able to get near them, they were still out of reach, they could do nothing but stamp their feet in anguish. My brother paused for a moment, aghast at the scene, then disappeared and returned dragging a kind of raft.

“I’ll take the luggage across first, then come back; so don’t move, just stay here.”

Having ordered mother to wait, he quickly began to row across to the far side of the river. Mother was silent, seemingly deeply afflicted by all her son’s efforts.

“It’s going to be too much for him, crossing back and forth again. Let’s get across on our own.”

I was by now in the sixth grade of primary school and was a good enough swimmer to get across ordinary streams, so I reckoned I could manage what mother suggested.

Feeling that it would help my big brother, I bravely plunged into the river, but once in the water things were very different. I set out to swim across, holding mother’s hand, but while I bobbed along, she kept sinking. Abruptly, sensing danger, mother pushed me away: “Look after yourself.” Splashing wildly, we drifted downstream as we made our way across and even a slight mistake in our direction might mean we were drawn into deep water where there were strong currents. It would surely be the end of us if we drifted into that; both I and mother kept calling for help on Avalokitesvara, Bodhisattva of Mercy.

I was floundering along when some men seized my arms and helped me stand upright. Standing there, I came to my senses and realized the water was lapping at my chest. I had been struggling on in a panic when in fact I was already across. Mother succeeded in following me over, and we heaved a sigh of relief.

We had made that enormous effort in order to spare my brother, but it all turned out to have been in vain. He had already gone back to fetch us. Being the sensible person he was, as soon as he saw that we were not where he had left us, he made his way back again. At last the three of us locked arms in an embrace and wailed together.

On crossing the river, we learned that we would still have to walk another twenty ri by night before we were safe. We walked all night and arrived at reception centers for refugees organized according to which province they came from. My brother stayed with us for over a fortnight in the center for people from Kangwon-do, then he set off again. He had enrolled as a student volunteer. As soon he had left at the head of fifteen younger recruits, mother and I set off south for the town of Kyŏngsan.

Kyŏngsan was a place where soldiers received training and, if there were fatalities, their graves were dug in the mountains there. It was as if mother thought that she had to be nearby, since if my brother happened to be unlucky, he would be buried in the hills behind Kyŏngsan.

The two of us found a room in a house attached to an orchard. Mother went up to the burial ground every day. When she left home she would be full of melancholy and when she came back home I would steal a glance at her face, visibly more relieved, with much the same feelings. Mother never once missed a day in her visits to those sorrowful graves. In the middle of all that came news that the course of the war had swung in the allies’ favor and they had recaptured Inch’on.

When August came, the refugees who had escaped south agreed that it would be safe to return home. So we went back to Sangju. But the eagerly awaited news of my brother failed to materialize.

Mother loved flowers, and she applied all her efforts to growing cosmos, crape-myrtle, balsams in the front yard. There was a terrace for keeping jars of preserves beside the flower-bed, where every evening I would place a bowl of water drawn at dawn, and pray that nothing had happened to my brother. Mother watched me as if she did not know me, in very much the same way as I had secretly peeped up at her face in the orchard house down in Kyŏngsan.

Once a letter came bearing the address of the battalion commander. Thinking it contained ominous news, mother’s face grew pale as she opened it, but it was simply the letter of greetings that the commander used to send to the families of the men in his battalion at special festivals.

In those days I was a schoolgirl, a mere child, ignorant of everything and I did not even realize that the address on that letter’s envelope was that of my brother’s battalion, so I did not reply. As a result, my brother naturally grew increasingly anxious about us and passed his days in great anxiety.

In spring the following year, I was in middle school by now, and I was on my way home from school. An older girl coming in the opposite direction saw me and called out: “Hey, Ok-a, your brother’s come home.”

I ran so fast that my heart was thumping and the breath stuck in my throat as I entered the yard, where a soldier wearing a revolver and with the insignia of a first lieutenant stood beaming broadly. Stern eyes, a bronzed face: it was my brother, Sun-bok. We were all together after a full year’s separation. That year had brought us all such anxiety that it felt as remote and distant as ten normal years.

On enquiry, he explained that he had been named second lieutenant after taking the civil service qualifying examination. As he had been leading his young recruits along, he had happened to see an advertisement announcing the qualifying examination. “Well, while I’m about it...” he had thought, had taken the exam on his own initiative, passed, and then received a fortnight’s training before putting on his second-lieutenant’s insignia and setting off for battle. He was in the engineers and had come close to death again when they were surrounded at the battle of Injei, but he seemed to be in good health.

Mother’s face too seemed bright with relief, after making so many visits to temples and offering so many prayers on behalf of her son. He spent his fortnight’s leave without budging from the house, then went back to his unit in Pusan. After that it was only when we reached Seoul that we all lived together under one roof again. By that time my brother and I had both gone out into the world.

After graduating from school in Sangju, I went up to Seoul and began my “Myŏng-dong period”. There I met again my future husband, whom I had first happened to greet by chance when I was in my second year of high school, and so the threads of our destinies began to weave together, something of which I had no inkling then.