Making Our History
Photos and text by Anna Yamamuro, a first-year ETA in Cheonan The Monument to the Nation My host mom has wondered before why I was interested in visiting the 독립기념관 (Dongnip Ginyeomgwan), or the Independence Hall of Korea, a museum located in my placement city of Cheonan. She asked me if it would be uncomfortable to visit a museum dedicated to Korea’s independence movement against Japanese colonization, considering I am half Japanese and half white-American. I said yes, but that’s the very reason I wanted to go. The legacy of that time still affects many people even today, and if we don’t face that history, uncomfortable as it may be, then nothing will change. I have learned about this historical period over the years in various forms—through minimal coverage in history class at Japanese Saturday school, then again through Korean literature and history classes in college. I have learned the big ideas, but there is still much for me to learn about the hardships both of my countries have inflicted on the one I live in today. I could have been placed to teach anywhere in Korea, yet somehow I was sent here to Cheonan—the birthplace of Korea’s independence movement against Japanese colonial rule—and it felt like a sign. My first impression of the museum was that it’s not a museum, really. It’s a park that stretches across a sprawling 23,424 square meters (almost 6 acres), complete with a lotus pond and fountain and a giant “Monument to the Nation” measuring 52 meters tall. Scattered among these are seven exhibition buildings describing Korea’s struggle for independence against Japanese colonization. Its immense size may be an indication of how important it was to the Korean people to tell their own story about what happened during a time when Korean voices were silenced. The White Lotus Pond While looking around the museum I was able to learn more about how the Japanese colonial regime took control over Korea. For example, Korean farmers were forced to send rice to Japan to supplement its own low rice production at the time, wrecking livelihoods and causing widespread hunger across Korea. As I walked through each museum building, I learned more about these kinds of details I had missed in the past, and reflected on how it’s possible that such horrible deeds were done by real, living people like us. I realized that these details of the colonial era speak volumes about how repressive institutions get established—slowly, subtly, insidiously. As I approached the end of the final museum building, I saw a wall dotted with bright yellow post-it notes, covered in messages from museum visitors. Buried within the sea of yellow is a title: “우리가 우리를 잊지 말아요.” (“May we not forget ourselves.”) Post-It Wall One post-it in particular caught my eye. It had the words “FUCK JAPANESE PEOPLE” sprawled across it in English, and was decorated with drawings of several middle fingers. My first reaction was an automatic, intense defensiveness. A series of thoughts ran through my head: It’s not all Japanese people, why are they spreading negativity on a wall constructed to respect the victims, I didn’t do anything wrong… but after a few minutes, I put all those thoughts in order and put them away. When your family and country have been through deep trauma, if you need to let out that rage through an angry, tiny, yellow post-it, that is completely justified. I can endure a pinprick of sadness and discomfort for your history. I began to think about my own history and especially my grandfather, my じじ (Jiji). I interviewed him once about World War II for a Japanese school project, I think in the 5th grade—and that is almost all I know about his life before he became じじ. じじ told me about how he was just a teenager during the war, who went to the countryside with his younger sister to escape the American bombings. He experienced hunger and saw people stiff and dead on the side of the road from starvation. But he survived, became a loving father and grandfather, and was a caring teacher to hundreds of students. When he was still with us in this world, I got the sense that じじ didn’t like that I enjoyed K-pop. Once, with the best intentions, he warned me that Korean people were “dangerous.” What I would give to have him meet my loving, endlessly kind, Korean husband now. The museum also made me think of my husband’s grandfather, his 할아버지 (Harabeoji), who is Korean but also tells us his story in Japanese, because that’s the language he went to school through. Every time we see him, 할아버지 describes how his father convinced him to flee his homeland on horseback, before North Korea was closed off to the rest of the world. He explains how he survived the war by escaping to Southeast Asia, where he met some American army men who he was able to communicate with through miming and received food rations from in exchange for helping with translating. Like じじ, he was also once a teacher. I think じじ and 할아버지 could have been friends. The Statue of Indomitable Koreans As all these thoughts swirled around in my head, I was struck by the absolute miracle that is my family, and everyone’s families; the whole generation that lived through the World Wars. Both our grandfathers narrowly survived hardships that I selfishly don’t even want to imagine. They, and those around them, made a series of choices that led them to their futures – to their careers, to their homes, and to their loved ones. They had children, who also had children. And two of those children are my husband, Sean, and me. The two of us have three cultural backgrounds, each intensely interconnected yet often blind to each other’s perspectives and histories. We could have easily ended up being born and raised in any of the three countries, but after a series of coincidences and
Sonnets
Sonnets (7/9/17 – 7/17/18) By Zach Winters, ETA ’17-’18/ Photograph by Madeline Kasik 1. Arrival & Departure (7/9/17 – 8/18/17) In ringlets Summer set to bloom, She fathered and dismayed A generation of Herself, Herself from states displayed By tresses, corded Gnomic rock Split snakely from the grass, By Dandelion buds themselves Far inland waked from rest— But then light bent, and then begun that tyrant afternoon, Supplanting, from a sudden move, A miracle of June— And then the spiders and the birds were bathed in tawny sea, And then that August ocean dropped— And drowned stability— 2. Placement & Displacement (8/19/17 – 12/29/17) Will comets fly with light retracing gait? Will comets paint with light the sky above? Will you appear, and leave, and so restate That stronger sadness comes from stronger love? Which love is just, if love reject the pain That deepens when some speechless distance starts, Mere chorus love that joins in bright refrains, But quiets in the time that’s spent apart— Yet love like ours does not simply repeat, And so, to me, this distance is a chance To rediscover you each time we meet, With love not just recurring, but enhanced, And through horrendous space I realize this: I love you more, the more I learn to miss. 3. Pause & Expectation (12/30/17 – 3/4/18) The sweep of time is gentle in its bend Above the sprawling ocean of the years, And as it moves the water turns to tears In blinking eyes which sink and then ascend; And every hand that holds fast to a friend Will tremble as the current lifts and steers A wave that to the shoreline’s borders nears To evidence a time that’s at an end; But as these days speed on with steady haste, Like tides that hurry to the golden strand, This time we have is ours to use and waste While waves erase the traces of our plans— So if time does naught but push us to the sand, Then let us live forever on dry land— 4. (3/5/18 – 7/17/18) Goodbyes are little deaths That hit you on the plane, And only leave you when you cease To need those friends again. Goodbyes are little deaths That wake you from a dream, When all you wanted was to lie In waking ecstasy— Somewhere I heard goodbye Means learning how to miss, But everything I ever learned Could not prepare for this For everything I ever learned Was rearranged by this Zach Winters is a 2017-2018 ETA at Jeju Jungang Girls’ High School in Jeju city, Jeju-do.
Something You Said
By Grace S. Ahn, Junior Researcher ’17-’18 Something You Said In memory of Mijung Moon 문미정 “Remind me again, Sora. What do I call these?” she asked in her perfect Korean. Her gentle, fragile hands suddenly tickled the bottoms of my bare feet, giggling as I roared in defiance begging her to stop. “I don’t remember!” These were the days you sat with me on our patio under the white blossoms, bribing me with hoddeok to speak with you in our native tongue. I remember collapsing in frustration, letting my arms fall into your lap, my face nuzzled into your neck. “Umma, we are in America and I am American… Korean is hard and I don’t need it at school.” “Sora, listen carefully.” Her voice grew grave. “This is who I am, and this is who you are. Hard things will come but when you remember this, you will remember me and know that we are with you.” Uri-ga neo-wa hamgge-raneun geos-eul algeoya. My attention evaded the tense air, fading in the direction of where Belle scampered beneath the trampoline with pieces of my sweet rice cake. Uri, she said, “we.” Who was we? Words that fluttered through my nine-year old ears, words of a mother who worried too much, words that meant nothing to me at the time—barely hinting the gravity they would soon carry for me. Now I am here, standing where you once stood. So many years ago, where your own mother bathed and fed and tickled you. Before you met appa at the barbershop in Brooklyn, before oppa and I came into your life, before the tumor nestled into its hiding place. Now I am tripping and stumbling through a country you once called your home. A place you left to escape the burden of a broken family and broken times, but a place you longed for everyday since. I’m barely aware of what strangers in the streets murmur around me, how the ajumma working the counter of the local pyeonuijeom instructs me to use the sejeongje, where the men are heading with soju bottles in hand, why the children laugh so heartily in this eunhaeng-filled playground. I’m here barely standing yet held in place by something you once said to me. Now I am just beginning to understand the place you came from. I feel the weight of its tumultuous upbringing as I pass the reconstructed palaces and towering monuments of legendary men and renegade leaders you told me stories of. I breathe in the familiar scents of fermented spicy cabbage, red bean dumplings, garlic marinated beef you toiled into our small kitchen walls back in the Pennsylvanian woods. I observe the fragility of appearance and reputation, why it was so imperative to look and do our best in a nation crawling then sprinting its way to the top. I marvel from my train window at the chain of fog-covered mountains you once sketched for me. I recognize the jeong you disciplined into my mannerisms, my respect and consideration for others. I glimpse the silent ache you must have chuckled through when I slowly forgot how to pronounce the name halmeoni gave me. I frame the uri that binds the people here together into the community that both hurt and cared for you. Now I am struggling to speak with the families I came here to help and guide. I want so badly for you to be here beside me, repeating back the words I grasp for as I try to communicate with the grandparents who’ve just learned the chemotherapy is no longer working. My lips search for the right words that I can only think of in English—useless to these families who have never stepped foot in America, in Pennsylvania where I once thought my whole world was. I tell myself in secret this is what I deserve, suffering from the ignorance I refused to correct in childhood embarrassment and laziness. Now I am using the time I have, walking with these shadowfeet through a land I’d never seen or known. I’m shifting, less and less asleep from the dream of passivity I’d fallen into. I’m changing, more and more into the woman you might smile down. I’m ashamed and proud (of how I lived / who I come from). I’m grieving and grateful (how I treated your wish to pass on this part of yourself to me / for the opportunity to finally start). I accept the negligence of my past with which I brushed away your words as if they were nothing when they contested my own comfort and convenience. I’m now made of different things than when I began, barefoot in the forests shrouding our home away from home, and I’ve sensed it all along. I did all of this for you, but I know now it was also for me. It is the land here that made me and is continuing to make me. We is the people who wept and cooked and struggled and laughed and fought for the land that raised my mother. Uri is the country that shows me every morning here who she was, why she was, where she was while becoming the woman my life continually strives after. Although wehgook is what they call me, uri nara is the country that made her and, in part, made me. These feet you gave me, the prayers you whispered over me, this heart you molded so carefully after your own—they all brought me here. You are with me, reminding me this is where you come from. Where I come from. Grace Sora Ahn is a 2017-18 Junior Researcher in Seoul. Grace is researching end-of-life care at Seoul National University Hospital.