money, he would honor the pledge to repay, even
if it meant selling the family cow or even removing one
of the pillars from our home and selling it at market. He always said, “You can’t change the truth with trickery. Anything that is true will not be dominated by a small trick. Anything that is the result of trickery won’t go more than a few years before it is exposed.”
My father had a large stature. He was so strong that he had no
difficulty walking up a flight of stairs carrying a bag of rice on his
shoulders. The fact that at age ninety I’m still able to travel around
the world and carry on my work is a result of the physical strength I
inherited from my father.
My mother, whose favorite Christian hymn was “Higher
Ground,” was also quite a strong woman. I take after her not only
for her wide forehead and round face but for her straightforward
and high-spirited personality as well. I have a stubborn streak,
and there is no doubt I am my mother’s child.
When I was a child, I had the nickname “day crier.” I earned this
nickname because once I started to cry, I wouldn’t stop for the entire
day. When I cried, it would be so loud that people would think something
terrible had happened. People sleeping in bed would come outside to see
what was going on. Also, I didn’t just cry sitting still. I would jump around
the room, injuring myself and creating an uproar. Sometimes I would bleed.
I had this kind of intense personality even when I was young.
Once my mind was made up, I would never back down, not even if
it meant breaking a bone in my body. Of course, this was all before I
became mature. When my mother would scold me for doing something
wrong, I would talk back to her, saying, “No. Absolutely not!” All I had
to do was admit that I was wrong, but I would rather have died than let
those words out of my mouth. My mother, though, had quite a strong
personality as well.
She would strike me, and say, “You think you can get away with not
answering your parent?” Once, she struck me so hard she knocked me
down. Even after I got up, I wouldn’t give in to her. She just stood in front
of me, crying loudly. Even then, I wouldn’t admit that I was wrong.
My competitive spirit was as strong as my stubbornness. I couldn’t
stand to lose in any situation. The adults in the village would say, “Osan’s
Little Tiny-Eyes, once he decides to do something, he does it.”
I don’t remember how old I was when this happened. A boy gave
me a bloody nose and ran away. For a month after that, I would go to
his house every day and stand there, waiting for him to come out. The
village adults were amazed to see me persist until finally his parents
apologized to me. They even gave me a container full of rice cakes.
This doesn’t mean I was always trying to win with stubborn persistence.
I was physically much larger and stronger than other children
my age. No child could beat me in arm wrestling. I once lost a wrestling
match to a boy three years older than I was, and it made me so angry
that I couldn’t sit still. I went to a nearby mountain, stripped some bark
from an acacia tree, and for the next six months I worked out on this tree
every evening to become strong enough to defeat that child. At the end of
six months, I challenged him to a rematch and managed to beat him.
Each generation in our family has had many children. I had one
older brother, three older sisters, and three younger sisters. I actually
had four other younger siblings who were born after Hyo Seon. Mother
gave birth to thirteen children, but five did not survive. Her heart must
have been deeply tormented. Mother suffered a great deal to raise so
many children in circumstances that were by no means plentiful. As a
child I had many siblings. If these siblings got together with our first and
second cousins, we could do anything. Much time has passed, however,
and now I feel as though I am the only one remaining in the world.
I once visited North Korea for a short while, in 1991. I went to my
hometown for the first time in 48 years and found that my mother and
most of my siblings had passed away. Only one older sister and one
younger sister remained. My older sister, who had been like a mother to
me when I was a child, had become a grandmother of more than seventy
years. My younger sister was older than sixty, and her face was covered
with wrinkles. When we were young, I teased my younger sister a lot.
I would shout, “Hey, Hyo Seon, you’re going to marry a guy with one
eye.” And she would come back with, “What did you say? What makes
you think you know that, Brother?” Then she would run up behind me
and tap me on the back with her tiny fists.
In the year she turned eighteen, Hyo Seon met a man with whom
one of our aunts was trying to arrange her marriage. That morning
she got up early, carefully combed her hair, and powdered her face.
She thoroughly cleaned our home inside and out and waited for her
prospective groom to arrive. “Hyo Seon,” I teased her, “you must really
want to get married.” This made her blush, and I still remember how
beautiful she looked with the redness in her face showing through the
white powder.
It has been well over ten years since my visit to North Korea. My
older sister, who wept so sorrowfully to see me, has since passed away,
leaving just my younger sister. It fills me with such anguish. I feel as
though my heart may melt away.
I was good with my hands, and I used to make clothes for myself.
When it got cold, I would quickly knit myself a cap to wear. I was better
at it than the women were, and I would give knitting tips to my older
sisters. I once knitted a muffler for Hyo Seon. My hands were as big and
thick as a bear’s paw, but I enjoyed needlework, and I would even make
my own underwear. I would take some cloth off a roll, fold it in half, cut
it to the right design, hem it, sew it up, and put it on. When I made a
pair of traditional Korean socks for my mother this way, she expressed
how much she liked them by saying, “Well, well, I thought Second Son
was just fooling around, but these fit me perfectly.”
In those days it was necessary to weave cotton cloth as a part of
preparations for the marriage of a son or daughter. Mother would take
cotton wool and place it on a spinning wheel to make the thread. This
was called to-ggaeng-i in the dialect of Pyong-an Province. She would
set the width at twenty threads and make twelve pieces of cotton cloth,
thirteen pieces of cotton cloth, and so on. Each time a child would
marry, cotton cloth as soft and beautiful as processed satin would be created
through Mother’s coarse hands. Her hands were incredibly quick.
Others might weave three or four pieces of to-ggaeng-i fabric in a day,
but Mother could weave as many as twenty. When she was in a hurry
to complete the marriage preparations for one of my older sisters, she
could weave an entire roll of fabric in a day. Mother had an impatient
personality. Whenever she would set her mind to doing something, she
would work quickly to get it done. I take after her in that way.
Since childhood, I have always enjoyed eating a wide variety of foods.
As a child, I enjoyed eating corn, raw cucumber, raw potato, and raw
beans. On a visit to my maternal relatives who lived about five miles
away from our home, I noticed something round growing in the field.
I asked what it was and was told it was ji-gwa, or “earth fruit.” In that
neighborhood, people referred to sweet potatoes as earth fruit. Someone
dug one up and cooked it for me in steam, so I ate it. It had such a
delectable taste that I took a whole basketful of them and ate them all
myself. From the following year, I couldn’t keep myself away from my
maternal relatives’ home for more than three days. I would shout out,
“Mother, I’m going out for a while,” run the whole distance to where
they lived, and eat sweet potatoes.
Where we lived, we had what we called “potato pass” in May. We
would survive the winter on potatoes, until spring came and we could
start harvesting barley. May was a critical period, because if our store
of potatoes was depleted before the barley could be harvested, people
began to starve. Surviving the time when potato stores were running
low and the barley had not yet been harvested was similar to climbing
to a steep mountain pass, so we called it potato pass.
The barley we ate then was not the tasty, flat-grained barley that we
see today. The grains were more cylindrical in shape, but that was all
right with us. We would soak the barley in water for about two days
before cooking it. When we sat down to eat, I would press down on the
barley with my spoon, trying to make it stick together. It was no use,
though, because when I scooped it up in my spoon, it would just scatter
like so much sand. I would mix it with gochujang (red pepper paste)
and take a mouthful. As I chewed, the grains of barley would keep coming
out between my teeth, so I had to keep my mouth tightly closed.
We also used to catch and eat tree frogs. In those days in rural areas,
children would be fed tree frogs when they caught the measles and their
faces became thin from the weight loss. We would catch three or four
of these frogs that were big and had plenty of flesh on their fat legs. We
would roast them wrapped in squash leaves, and they would be very
tender and tasty, just as though they had been steamed in a rice cooker.
Speaking of tasty, I can’t leave out sparrow and pheasant meat, either.
We would cook the lovely colored eggs of mountain birds and the
waterfowl that would fly over the fields making a loud, gulping call.
As I roamed the hills and fields, this is how I came to understand
that there was an abundance of food in the natural environment
given to us by God.
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