Reliving the Past
This young woman (name to be determined) experienced a difficult childhood. Born in 1930 during the Japanese occupation in the Chung , her parents were both forcibly taken from her. Her father was vocal about his opposition to the Japanese – even making a comment at the local market about the wrongness of Japanese occupation – and was later forcibly taken and enlisted in the Japanese army in 1937. He is presumed dead. Her mother was taken away to be a comfort woman, leaving this character with no family since she was an only child of relatively young and recently married parents. Her aunt on her mother’s side took her in because she lived nearby, but she already had two sons and highly favored her boys. My character came to believe that not only was she less favored because she was a girl, but the aunt blamed her father for why the character’s mother had been taken away. The family attempted to learn whether either of the two parents were still alive through several shaman ceremonies, which were both dangerous and expensive, but all declared that they were both dead. After ten years, the family decided to give up hope. During the Korean War, since the family lived in Cheongyang, the armies continuously came through the region as the battlefront wavered between North and South, burning and killing as they went. In June, 1951, this character was out in the family’s small agricultural field when a white American soldier attacked her and raped her. She was fortunate to live through the trauma and that her aunt allowed her to stay in the family. They appealed to a local MASH unit hoping for aid, justice, or compensation, but the unit refused to help or acknowledge the problem. She became pregnant as a result of the rape, and when the child was born, instead of sending him to the orphanages or committing infanticide, the family kept him. He was fortunate that his features were not too Caucasian, but he was still markedly a half-Asian, half-white child. The character had become an ardent Korean nationalist, seeing all that was wrong in her life and the nation as the result of foreign occupiers. She became a primary teacher in the new schools set up under Syngman Rhee. While she kept quiet about her views – wanting reunification, her disappointment in Rhee’s lack of understanding of the nation and authentic ‘Koreanness’ – she felt that the best option towards upholding her nation was to ensure that the next generation knew to be proud of their heritage. Her teaching focus was on literacy. When she had the opportunity, she would sneak some materials home for her own son. Unsure of his status in society as a half-American, the family had decided to keep him relatively hidden until he was old enough to attend primary school.