Oil Paper Family

By Melanie Kim

On a cold morning in 1950, Young Bok stood on a deserted road with a pouch of paper money warm against his chest, watching his entire family make their way north...back towards their hometown. Would he ever see them again? Was he making the right choice in leaving his family to flee south? 

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Jan 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781637309841

Book preview

Note from the Author

I have always been curious about my grandfather’s story. I could see it in the scribbled questions I asked him in fourth grade, the way my notes went off into the margins and the words blended together because I was writing too fast. I was excited to hear these stories, little tidbits of a past that was mine but was also not.

I can’t remember exactly what sparked the journey toward this book, but I do remember the picture of my grandfather’s mother in his office. Among pictures of award ceremonies, his children, and his grandchildren, she was always smiling.

She looked so much like my grandfather. The same wide jaw, the same ears, the same lined forehead. There were so many stories in her face and so many unspoken words. I wanted to know more.

I spent a year and a half interviewing my grandfather. Spring and summer of my junior year of high school slipped into fall and winter and spring of my senior year. My grandfather and I spent countless hours together in his office, a room with a little alcove window and boxes upon boxes of dusty papers. It was almost always afternoon, and the dust motes floated down around his head as we sipped water and ate sliced watermelon and talked. Over the course of the three or so years after, I began to piece together the stories my grandfather told me, weaving them into a cohesive narrative and into this book you are holding now.

To me, my grandfather had always been just my grandfather—kind-hearted, deeply intelligent, quick to smile, and always ready with his shirt pocket full of his favorite blue pens. But in that cluttered office, I began to see the story of his life unfold. The more we talked, the more I was struck by the fact that he could smile and laugh; the fact that he even sat in front of me was a miracle.

That’s something I hope you, the reader, will not miss either. I hope you ask questions and take the time to listen to the stories of a loved one. I hope you get to hold their hand when they’re crying, when they laugh, when they tell you something they’ve never told anyone else. I hope you get to see that beautifully intimate moment when they are talking about the person whom they love best in the entire world.

My grandfather’s story is a part of mine. Though I never lived through what he did, his past is not removed from mine. His blood courses through my veins, and his past is just a thread in the richer tapestry of the history of my heritage. It’s a history that is not just Korean but also is a story of humanity and resilience and strength.

As a third-generation Korean American who has set foot in Korea only once in my life, I truly knew nothing about my heritage. I didn’t speak the language beyond the New Year’s blessing or a few choice food dishes. I knew very little about Korean culture or history beyond the brief mentions of the Korean War in class or the guilty pleasure of late-night K-dramas. It certainly made the entire book writing process more difficult, and I worried often about its effect on this entire project. However, at the same time, because I knew so little about this topic, I approached it at first as many readers might, with wide-eyed curiosity and a thirst for knowledge and truth. I had the opportunity to center around the particular experience of my grandfather with the background of such key historical moments as the Japanese occupation of Korea, the March First Movement, the Korean War, and Communist rule. In this journey of combing through books and primary sources and old footage, I’ve developed a deeper connection to my heritage and to my grandfather.

Maybe I started writing this book for myself. I always wanted to be an author. But to say that was all would reduce the vast canvas of this story. To say that would rob my grandfather of the vulnerability and the realism and the emotion of his story.

I wrote this book because of how my grandfather looked while he was telling me the stories of his life. Immense pain and sorrow, guilt and joy were etched into the lines of his face. Much of his story was told as he tumbled over words, repeating stories and misremembering and re-remembering. Telling circuitously, not telling, and telling too much. A human voice illustrating the blank landscape of history in my head, populating it with faces of family members and friends, with dramatic events and color and life. When he held my hand and told me about his siblings and his mother, when I saw so much passion and life and resilience…how could I not write this book?

So, I hope my grandfather’s story will be more than just a brief read. I hope for other Korean Americans like me and for anyone interested in underrepresented history, this guides you to ask your loved ones about their stories, too. I hope it explores the broader themes of humanity and war and family love. I hope you can see my grandfather as he is: a man who lived through decades of conflict and war and emerged flawed, but resilient and strong.

A man who I am so proud to call my grandfather.

***

All the events I have written about are true; only the names have been changed to protect people’s identities.

Chapter One

It was 1921, and Sang Chul’s newly wed bride, Yang Sil, was fourteen.

They were a quiet procession slipping into the fog of an early morning, avoiding the stares of neighbors and officials. Yang Sil sat in the swaying wedding litter, an enclosed wooden box raised by poles on the shoulders of her husband and one of his brothers. Her heart thumped rapidly. If they were caught, would they be shot on the spot? It was all too clear they were fleeing into the mountains. Would they be arrested?

She could hear her father-in-law walking ahead, occasionally turning to breathe a word of warning about a loose rock, a low-hanging branch. They stopped at the sound of footsteps crunching over leaves. Yang Sil could see nothing from inside the litter, and she froze, hardly daring to breathe, lest the crinkling fabric of her dress give them away.

She had heard horrible stories about those who disappeared into the prisons. Brutal beatings that made faces unrecognizable beneath blood and bruises. Whippings that left the buttocks flayed almost like the thin strips of raw beef her mother bought at the market. What more would they do to her, a young woman? And what about these men who carried her into the mountains? Would they leave her and run if they heard the shouts of Japanese soldiers? Would they be willing to sacrifice their lives just to save hers?

It was just a pair of deer.

As they climbed deeper into the forest, the singing rumble of cicadas overwhelmed them.

Yang Sil could not keep back the flood of her thoughts. There had been no time for a full wedding ceremony, no time to decorate the litter with colored tassels and paintings of pairs of birds and fish to express wishes for the couple’s harmony. Barely any time to say goodbye to her family and hurriedly fold away a few clothing items into a little sack.

A little wet puddle of tears grew on her skirt, and Yang Sil’s palms were full of crescent moon indentations from clenching her fists.

Just a few months ago, she had promised her parents she would be brave. She had promised herself she would never cry. Just a few months ago, she had peered around the corner of a doorframe and listened to her father-in-law-to-be, Kim Chul Soo, talk about how he feared reprisal from the Japanese government. Though the Japanese government officials had shed their military uniforms and violence, threats by the Japanese officials had lessened, and vernacular newspapers had reopened, he still feared. It was 1920, and there had been ten years of Japanese occupation in Korea. If Chul Soo had learned anything, it was that the Japanese would not see him as an equal. It was that behind the written edicts and spoken words of a cultural rule and relaxation, he saw the hardness in the eyes of the Japanese colonizers. It was that these heavy feet did not belong on the soil of his ancestors, that these mouths that had spit insults and these hands that had wrung blood and tears from his nation could never be trusted. He planned to slip away into a mountain village in Koksan, in the Northern HwangHaeDo province. Tucked away among the jagged ridges and thick forests of oak, Kim Chul Soo hoped to continue his practice of the Chondogyo religion without any interference from the Japanese.

Practically everyone knew the history of Chondogyo, which had been created by Suun Choe Je-U in 1860 under the name of Donghak, Eastern Learning. People recalled differently whether there were a hundred thousand members or over three million by the early 1900s. Regardless, Donghak (termed Chondogyo only in 1905) was characterized by its involvement in social movements. Followers of the religion fought for freedom of worship, the end of governmental corruption, and the elimination of foreign influences. They led popular uprisings in 1871, again in 1892, and 1894. With this came persecution: first by the Korean government and later by the Japanese government. Suun Choe Je-U was beheaded in 1864. Pain and persecution extended to the other leaders of Chondogyo and thousands of protestors. In 1919, thirty-three individuals signed a Korean Declaration of Independence from Japan, fifteen of whom were members of Chondogyo. It was from the violence that followed in the wake of this movement that Chul Soo fled.

Chul Soo’s four sons had demanded to follow him, feverish in their anti-Japanese sentiment. It was impossible for them to continue to live as they were: second-class citizens in their own nation. They agreed they would spread out in all four directions in the mountains, each with their families and a few sacks of seeds. This way, even if one of them were caught, the others would be free to continue living safely. They would never know where the others lived. Maybe in a year, ten years, fifty years, they could finally emerge into a new and safer world. That was their hope, and Yang Sil was swept up into it.

Yang Sil allowed herself a few more tears of self-pity as she sat in the gently rocking litter. The unfamiliar voices of her husband and his brother were rough to her ears. She clutched her skirt. To marry a man she had never met, this she accepted. Her parents and her husband’s parents had planned this union nearly from her birth. But to leave her entire family behind, to go into the wilderness with this strange wide-jawed man, to live as his wife in a home not yet built…how could she bear such a burden?

Sang Chul’s brother began teasing the groom with the sillangdarugi that was usually a whole family affair, though primarily of the male relatives, to embarrass the newlywed couple. Yang Sil cringed away from the crass remarks, surely spoken more loudly for her benefit. The bridal clothing was scratchy. The men stopped for a drink of water and the jolting of the litter dropped tears into her lap. Umma, she wanted to call. Mom. Is this what it means to love someone? That when you leave, your heart aches like this. This dull and terrible ache deep in my chest. She shook her head and clenched her fists. Yang Sil, you promised you wouldn’t cry.

When they resumed their journey, Yang Sil could feel the climb becoming steeper. Holding her knees tight against her chest, she held back her instinct to squeak when she felt the litter tip. The hum of cicadas was suffocatingly loud as the sun rose.

They had been traveling for a few hours when Yang Sil heard her father-in-law gently calling, "Aga, child, come on out for shi."

She had felt the press of her bladder for at least an hour, but she had been embarrassed to ask to urinate in the presence of three men. She was thankful for her father-in-law. Her mother had warned Yang Sil that her father-in-law would be remote and distant, but Chul Soo treated her kindly, and his stern eyes were not nearly so hard and angry as she would have expected for a man so fiercely against the Japanese. The word shi, too, was familiar and comfortable. She remembered cold nights with her younger siblings, holding their hands to walk to the toilet outside. Crouching beside them and murmuring, shi.

Yang Sil was grateful, too, that her father-in-law, and not her husband, had come with her to hold up her skirts as she relieved herself. She did not have to fear the tigers either, not next to this man with his fierce eyes and quiet strength.

Yang Sil clambered back into the litter, rubbing the cramped muscles in her legs. They traveled for several more hours in this way, after which Sang Chul’s brother bid his farewells.

***

Over the course of the year, Sang Chul and Yang Sil worked hard to open up a clearing and build a small hut. Sang Chul wrestled with the remaining stumps for hours, while Yang Sil steadily cut away at the grass and weeds. They had brought a few sacks of seeds with them, and they planted these and watered them with buckets of water from a nearby stream. They had only each other to talk to, but Sang Chul had very little to say and spent most of his time sitting in the doorway of the house staring out in stony silence. In the humid summer downpours of rain, the receding heat of fall, and then the blisteringly cold winter, a backbreaking year passed.

A month after Yang Sil turned fifteen, Sang Chul disappeared from the home without warning or explanation.

Yang Sil waited a week, then two. The wailing sound of animals calling out in the night became the anthem of her heart. Alone.

Surely, he would have left some word if he had intended to make a long journey. Maybe he was visiting one of his brothers? Maybe his father?

After a month, Yang Sil no longer waited at night for the sound of returning footsteps nor did she look up when the trees rustled as she worked in the field. Rather than curse Sang Chul’s name, she worked steadily onward, tending the crops, preparing food, mending her worn clothing, patching leaks in the thatched roof, and fighting back the ever-encroaching shrubs and weeds. The long and difficult hours in the field left little time for thought.

Nighttime, however, was a different matter. At nighttime, the forest breathed, and she felt its resistance to her presence, her footsteps, her destruction of its trees, her fight to keep open the small clearing, to resist the swallow of nature. Rubbing her blistered fingers and sore arms, she thought about her father and mother and siblings, picturing their faces in front of her. Other times, she thought about Sang Chul, the man she hardly knew.

The man who had abandoned her.

She thought about the betrothal process that had started even before she was born. She imagined her parents and Sang Chul’s parents sitting together on some warm summer evening, drinking rice wine together in the courtyard of one of their houses, saying, If we ever have a daughter, and you a son, they shall be married.

When she was ten, the long process of the customary uihon began: discussing her and Sang Chul’s age, their surnames, ancestral origins, family status, and traditions. Sang Chul’s family’s proposal, and her own family’s acceptance, of it. The fortune teller who had predicted the future of their life as a couple and read Sang Chul’s horoscopic data. Later, the decision of Yang Sil’s family on the date of the wedding.

She remembered the little thrill of excitement when Sang Chul’s friend had delivered the traditional wooden chest of silks and a yejangji, letter of appreciation. How beautiful the red and blue silks had seemed against the white and gray clothing with which she was accustomed! She had looked forward to the ceremony, the gifts, the clothing, the food, the smiling faces of all her family members and friends watching her approach true adulthood.

But the rest of the traditional marriage practices had been cut out in a frenzied rush to flee into the mountains. It was a marriage with just the prayer of her father-in-law over the two newlyweds. She had never even met Sang Chul until the day of the ceremony. There was nothing familiar about his rough manner, well-built body, or crooked smile.

Sang Chul. Why did you abandon me?

Now at nights, the mat next to her was empty. Sang Chul’s farming tools stood still in a corner of the room. Yang Sil cooked too much food in the beginning, expecting him to come through the door when the sun set or when it rose again. The rice stuck in the pot, and she had to scrape it out and eat it herself rather than let it go to waste. Had he always eaten this much food? There was only one bowl to wash now. One pair of chopsticks. One set of socks to darn. One. One. One. Pounded into her head again and again. You are alone.

Yang Sil visited her father-in-law’s home with some frequency, which was only a little distance from Sang Chul’s plot of land. Sometimes she wondered if it had been intentional so he could help care for her, a young wife new to bearing all the burdens of a home on her shoulders. Other times she wondered if he perhaps knew Sang Chul’s character and had predicted his disappearance.

The few others who had hidden away in the mountainside nearby were followers of Chondogyo, scattered within a few miles of their leader, Chul Soo. He was well-respected for his purity and godliness.

Sometimes when Yang Sil visited him, Chul Soo sat in the doorway of his home, and they looked out together across the small, cultivated field and the thick border of trees. Chul Soo’s voice rose gently over the sound of rustling leaves as he explained Chondogyo and his belief in the oneness of man with God.

Occasionally, Yang Sil’s visits to her father-in-law coincided with the daily Chondogyo ceremonies. She heard the jumun, incantations seeking oneness with God. A bowl of clear water on a table represented spiritual purity, and worshippers sat nearby to meditate on its significance. The prayer, kido, occurred during all ceremonies. The people sat in silent meditative prayer known as the simgo, or heart’s address.

On one occasion, Chul Soo entered a forty-day fast. Every day, he knelt by the mountain spring, his long beard drooping to his knees, and filled a brass bowl with clear water. After praying and silently meditating over the water, he lifted it to his lips and drained it. When the forty days had passed, he emerged from his solitude, and the people around him bowed deeply: How holy is he! He is like God!

Laughingly, as Yang Sil would often tell her family later, If God saved your grandfather, then I am God, because every day I added honey to his water!

***

Shortly after Yang Sil turned sixteen, it came time to sell the year’s harvest at the market. It was her father’s birthday as well, and Yang Sil asked for her father-in-law’s permission to visit her parents. Chul Soo agreed. He did not make eye contact with her, and she sensed pity in his stern and quiet goodbye.

Yang Sil had already made up her mind that she would not return to that lonely hut in the mountains. As she clambered down the mountain with the large bundle of her harvest strapped to her back in a rough straw sack, she was already convinced she would live with her parents, even if it was for the rest of her life. She would never go back to that terrible mountain. Sang Chul was not her husband anymore. She would just live at home. Home…home was where she belonged.

With a pocketful of crumpled money from the market, Yang Sil ran toward her home, desperate to run into her parents’ arms and tell them of her struggles in the past year, her tears, her victories. She ran through the gate to the courtyard. Her father would be sitting on the warm floor, eyes closed in a blissful moment of quiet rest. Her mother would be in the kitchen, stoking the fire to heat the floor and begin cooking the evening meal. It would be so good just to see their faces again, to hear their voices. She threw open the front door. They would say, Daughter, you came? We—

Yang Sil froze.

Sang Chul was staring at her, a cup of warm tea in his hand.

Chapter Two

The empty water bucket clattered on the kitchen floor as Yang Sil scrambled for its handle. Her hands trembled and she balled them into fists around the handle. Breathe, Yang Sil. She lifted the bucket on top of her head with both hands, and without a word, she shoved past Sang Chul and ran from the house in the direction of the neighborhood well.

Sang Chul was on his feet immediately, and Yang Sil could hear his heavy footsteps quickening as he caught up to her. He breathed heavily as he pulled her arm and forced her to face him. The bucket fell to the ground. Why did you run away? You didn’t even say hello.

She ignored him, bending to pick up the fallen bucket.

Yang Sil! He jerked her arm. The bucket tumbled in the dirt again. Why did you run away?

She yanked her arm out of his grasp and glared up at him. Why are you in my parents’ home? And who do you think you are to talk to me like that? You are nobody to me. You left me in the mountains. Did you forget that? You ran away…you left me without telling me anything. Not even a single word! Her voice rose a pitch and angry tears glistened in her eyes. Do you know how hard I had to work? Do you know how lonely I was on that farm for a whole year by myself? She turned away from him. I’m not going to talk to you anymore. I won’t see you. You ran away, you coward. She snatched up the bucket.

Heads were turning to watch them, village busybodies and young girls whispering on their way to the well.

What did you say? Coward? Sang Chul’s voice was incredulous. Coward? He stood huffing angrily with his hands behind his head, shifting from foot to foot. "How could you say…I… Aish… He drew close and spoke in a hushed tone, though there was a sharp bite behind his words. So? Would you like to go back and live there? You fool, you don’t want to live there; you don’t want to go back. I can’t live there; I can’t go back there either."

Yang Sil started walking away. Fool? How dare he call her a fool!

Sang Chul followed her. I’ve rented out a room, a single room. I knew that someday you would come back to your parents. You ask them! I’ve been at their home faithfully working, waiting for you to return. Finally, you came. He sped up his pace to match hers, straining to meet her eyes. You should not go back.

Yang Sil didn’t say anything but continued to the well, where she filled the bucket. Sang Chul watched her, noting the wiry muscle of her arms, her tanned complexion, her glaring eyes.

They walked back together in silence on opposite sides of the road. Yang Sil leaned away from him, balancing the bucket on her head.

After Yang Sil greeted her parents, they were enthusiastic in telling her about her husband’s efforts to rent a home for her in Pyongyang.

Your husband, he carried this much dirt on his back. Like this, like this. Her father hunched down and mimed carrying a heavy load on his back with a strained face. So much dirt from the countryside, and he carried it to Pyongyang to sell for the floors of homes.

Her husband? He was away for an entire year, and suddenly he was her husband again? Yang Sil struggled to keep a blank expression on her face.

Sang Chul leaped in, too. When I earned some money, I bought a handcart, and then later an ox to pull the cart. I saved it all to buy a home for us. He spoke more gently now. Would you like to go with me there?

Yang Sil stared at the smiling and nodding faces of her mother and father. What would she do if she didn’t go with this man? Would she stay forever in her parents’ home? She could only bring shame on them, a disobedient daughter who had broken off her marriage, a burden on the household. And this man…his husband of hers. He had done the unforgivable and yet…he hadn’t truly abandoned her. He promised her a home. It was true he had never apologized, but she already expected very little from him. What choice did she really have?

Yang Sil nodded. I’ll go with you.

Within a year, Yang Sil’s first child was born. Yang Sil was overjoyed with the birth of a son with a little pouting mouth and wildly flailing limbs. Strong like his father, she joked, when a little fist met her face while he was feeding.

Cheotjjae was to be only the first of seven children born over a twenty-one-year period. For twenty-one years, Yang Sil would breastfeed her little suckling children. For twenty-one years, she would sleep on a thin cotton mat on the floor, waking to the sound of their mewling cries. For twenty-one years she would wake in a damp bed, sighing as her children wet the bed through the pieces of cotton she used as diapers.

When Cheotjjae had turned three and Yang Sil’s milk had finally run dry, Yang Sil became pregnant with her second son. Soon after Duljjae was born, Yang Sil’s elder brother traveled the twenty miles to Pyongyang from his town. He appeared at her home smiling, holding a basket of apples from his farm.

Congratulations, Dongsaeng!