Once I set my mind to do something, I have to put it intoaction immediately. Otherwise, I cannot sleep. As a child, I
would sometimes get an idea during the night but be forced
to wait until morning before acting on it. I would stay awake and make
scratches on the wall to pass the time. This happened so often that I
would almost dig a hole in the wall and chunks of dirt would pile up on
the floor. I also couldn’t sleep if I had been treated unfairly during the
day. In such a case, I would get out of bed during the night, go to the
culprit’s home, and challenge him to come out and fight me. I am sure it
must have been very difficult for my parents to raise me.
I could not stand to see someone treated unjustly. Whenever there
was a fight among the children in the village, I would involve myself as
though I were responsible to see that justice was served in every situation.
I would decide which child in the fight was in the wrong and I
would scold that child in a loud voice. Once I went to see the grandfather
of a boy who was a bully in the neighborhood. I said to him, “Your
grandson has done this and that wrong. Please take care of it.”
I could be wild in my actions, but nevertheless I was a child with a
big heart. I would sometimes visit my married older sister in the home
of her husband’s family and demand that they serve me rice cakes and
chicken. The adults never disliked me for this because they could see
that my heart was filled with a warm love.
I was particularly good at taking care of animals. When birds made a
nest in a tree in front of our house, I dug a small waterhole for them to
drink water. I also scattered some hulled millet from the storeroom on
the ground for the birds to eat. At first, the birds would fly away whenever
someone came close. They soon realized, however, that the person
giving them food was someone who loved them, and they stopped flying
away when I approached.
Once I thought I would try raising fish. So I caught some fish and put
them in the water hole. I also took a fistful of fish food and sprinkled it
over the water. When I got up the next morning, though, I found that all
the fish had died during the night. I was so looking forward to raising
those fish. I stood there in astonishment, looking at them floating on
top of the water. I remember that I cried all day that day.
My father kept many bee colonies. He would take a large hive box
and fasten a basic foundation to the bottom of the hive. Then the bees
would deposit their beeswax there to create a nest and store their honey.
I was a curious child, and I wanted to see just how the bees built the
hive. So I stuck my face into the middle of the hive and got myself stung
severely by the bees, causing my entire face to swell tremendously.
I once took the foundations from the hive boxes and received a
severe scolding from my father. Once the bees had finished building
their hives, my father would take the foundations and stack them to one
side. These foundations were covered with beeswax that could be used
as fuel for lamps in place of oil. I took those expensive foundations,
broke them up, and took them to homes that couldn’t afford to buy oil
for their lamps. It was an act of kindness, but I had done it without my
father’s permission, and so I was harshly reprimanded.
When I was twelve, we had very little in the way of games. The
choices were a Parcheesi-like game called yute, a chesslike game called
jang-gi, and card games. I always enjoyed it when many people would
play together. During the day, I would like to play yute or fly my kite,
and in the evenings I would make the rounds of the card games going
on around the village. They were games where the winner picked up 120
won (Korean monetary unit) after each hand, and I could usually win at
least once every three hands. New Year’s Eve and the first full moon of
the new year were the days when the most gambling went on. On those
days, the police would look the other way and never arrest anyone for
gambling. I went to where grown-ups were gambling, took a nap during
the night, and got them to deal me in for just three hands in the early
morning, just as they were about to call it quits for the night. I took
the money I had won, bought some starch syrup, and took it around
to all my friends to give them each a taste. I didn’t use the money for
myself or to do anything bad. When my older sisters’ husbands visited
our home, I would ask permission and take money from their wallets.
I would then use this money to buy sweets for children in need. I also
bought them starch syrup.
In any village it is natural that there are people who live well and
those who don’t. When I would see a child who had brought boiled
millet to school for lunch, I couldn’t eat my own better lunch of rice. So
I would exchange my rice for his millet. I felt closer to the children from
poor families than to those from rich families, and I wanted somehow
to see to it that they didn’t go hungry. This was a kind of game that I enjoyed
most of all. I was still a child, but I felt that I wanted to be a friend
to everyone. In fact, I wanted to be more than just friends; I wanted to
have relationships where we could share our deepest hearts.
One of my uncles was a greedy man. His family owned a melon patch near
the middle of the village, and every summer, when the melons were ripe and
giving off a sweet fragrance, the village children would beg him to let them eat
some. My uncle, though, set up a tent on the road next to the melon patch and
sat there keeping guard, refusing to share even a single melon.
One day I went to him and asked, “Uncle, would it be all right if some time
I were to go to your patch and eat all the melon I want?” Uncle willingly answered,
“Sure, that would be fine.”
So I sent word to all the children that anyone wanting to eat melon
should bring a burlap bag and gather in front of my house at midnight. At
midnight I led them to my uncle’s melon patch and told them, “I want all of
you to pick a row of melons, and don’t worry about anything.” The children
shouted with joy and ran into the melon patch. It took only a few minutes
for several rows of melons to be picked clean. That night the hungry children
of the village sat in a clover field and ate melons until their stomachs
almost burst.
The next day there was big trouble. I went to my uncle’s home, and it
was in pandemonium, like a beehive that had been poked. “You rascal,” my
uncle shouted at me. “Was this your doing? Are you the one who ruined my
entire year’s work of raising melons?”
No matter what he said, I was not going to back down. “Uncle,” I said,
“don’t you remember? You told me I could eat all the melons I wanted.
The village children wanted to eat melons, and their desire was my desire.
Was it right for me to give them a melon each, or should I absolutely not
have given them any?” When he heard this, my uncle said, “All right. You’re
right.” That was the end of his anger.
