Recovering My Grandfather’s Voice

It’s now been 15 years since my grandfather passed away. He had been unwell for a long time. I later found out it was leukemia that landed the final blow. But he had been in chronic pain for even longer, ever since the war, in which he had been shot in his calf and his hip. My dad said he never fully recovered from those injuries.

It’s been half my life now that he’s been gone from this world, and that proportion will only grow every second that passes by.

I never really got to talk to him face-to-face. I left for America when I was four (too young to have any memories of, well, almost anything, let alone my grandpa), and I was only able to go back to Korea twice before he passed. In those times I met him again, I remember him being cheerful but tired, perhaps weary of the world. My grandma even now tells me how she’s tired of life at times, of the world that made her and grandpa undergo so much suffering, and I begin to panic and tell her not to say such things. Even though deep in my heart I know saying goodbye is inevitable. Just not right now.

Losing my grandpa was especially painful to me because I was supposed to arrive in Korea one month after he passed away. If only he could have held on longer, or if I had somehow gotten their sooner. I desperately wanted to see him one more time.

The only visual memories I have of him are thus preserved in those two trips to Korea, the photographs scattered about the various albums in our family’s possession. But I have one more source of memories, that of our phone conversations. We had more phone calls than face-to-face meetings. So it was his voice that I remember most about him, that I most treasured.

But the problem is, with the passage of time, I’ve begun to forget his voice, that is, I’ve begun to forget how his voice sounded like. And because his voice was the most tangible connection I had with my grandfather, it has triggered a fear in me that I might be forgetting him as well.

It’s too late to record his voice, of course, or to record videos and preserve his memory in that way. But the silver lining of this realization of forgetting has been my desire and effort to begin to remember him in other ways. And in the process, I found and read my grandfather’s private memoirs, which he had written for his children before he passed away.

Especially, as a current history student, I find his life story, as well as that of my grandmother’s, of interest because of what it shows about the times back then. In a way, my grandparents’ generation ranks among the most tragic in modern Korean history, having to undergo Japanese colonialism in their childhood, war and devastation in their teenage years, and immense poverty and oppression in their young adult years — only able to enjoy the fruits of South Korea’s rapid industrialization and democratization in old age.

I decided to write an account of my grandfather’s life based on the memoirs he wrote, supplemented by the stories my dad and relatives have told me. By recounting his story below, I hope I can give shape to a different type of voice for him. I hope I will be able to continue to remember him, and commemorate him, in this way.

My grandpa was born and grew up in a village called Ŏŭm-ni (Eoeum-ri or 어음리) in the interior of Jejudo (Jeju Island), near the extinct volcano of Mt. Halla (Hallasan), in the last decades of the Japanese colonization of Korea. He was the youngest of his siblings, many of whom died at a young age due to illness. Back in those days, my grandfather comments, even a minor illness was a cause for serious concern due to the lack of true medical service and infrastructure, particularly in the countryside of the remote island of Jeju.

My great-grandfather was the headmaster of a private village school. He was one of the few educated men in the area and often assisted in reading and writing letters for the villagers. My grandfather studied at that school for a few years, and inherited his interest in letters and academics from his father. But soon my grandfather had to attend the local public school.

His elementary school was located near the sea, in Aewŏl-li (Aeweol-li or 애월리) which meant he had to make a four-mile trek by foot every morning and then another one every afternoon to go to school and back. In the 1930s and 1940s, there were no developed roads or walkways, so my grandfather had to trudge through the mountain trails. His shoes were made from straw, but because they wore out easily, he often held the shoes in his hand and walked barefoot to and from school, and only wore them in school.

In the 1930s, Japan’s wartime mobilization was in full swing, and especially by the 1940s, when my grandfather had begun attending the local school, Japan’s chances at victory and resources were both declining. Not only were students, including in the Korean colony, spending more time on mandated war-related work than studies, they were being strongly encouraged to bring to school whatever materials they could, which would then be sent away to contribute to the war effort. The more one brought, the more praise the teacher would heap on the student.

My grandfather, being a typical bright and eager young student, sought his teacher’s praise and wanted to bring to school as much as he could carry and fill his schoolbag to the brim. But of course, he had to walk quite a long ways to and from school everyday, and he was only a child. My great-grandparents, who treasured their young son, who was one of their few surviving children, worried about the strain on his body and so sewed up his schoolbag such that the bottom was raised up higher than usual, and so the bag ended up being much shallower and filled up more quickly. My grandfather didn’t discover this until a while later.

He won a place in the only secondary school in Jejudo at the time, Jeju Agricultural Middle School, which was a remarkable achievement at the time; only those who ranked in the top two of a rural elementary school could take the entrance exam. But as soon as he was accepted, his mother — my great-grandmother — fell ill, and my grandfather, as the only person able to take care of her, periodically left school early or missed it altogether some days. He struggled paying the school fee and was threatened with suspension multiple times as a result. Moreover, the school was located in Jeju City, which was too far from his village to even walk to every day, so he had to find a place to live by himself in a village near the city. He often skipped meals as well; he would have to dash back to his room to eat a lunch of boiled barley and dash back to school within an hour, and soon found it not worth the time or effort, as he was often more tired and hungry afterward.

Although his mother recovered from her illness, his father was suddenly struck by dysentery and passed away. When my grandfather heard the news, he walked all the way back to his village, his future clouded. My great-grandfather’s last words to him as they clutched hands were, “You probably won’t be able to study anymore [because of me]. How will you all live now?” He is said to have passed away in great distress.

My great-grandfather’s passing was a huge blow to my grandfather. There was a great emptiness, as if a pillar had disappeared, he wrote. The road ahead for him was dark as night.

And then even greater disaster struck Jeju in 1948.

In 1945, Japan was defeated in the Second World War and Korea was liberated by the Allies as a result. But there was only a short time for celebration, for almost immediately, the Korean peninsula was divided by the U.S. and USSR into a communist-dominated north and an anti-communist south. Correspondingly, political tensions flared in both Koreas as each political faction sought to unite Korea through their own leadership, while having to contend with — and court — the American and Soviet superpowers who occupied the south and north, respectively.

In Jejudo, these political tensions exploded in 1948 in what has come to be known as the 4.3 (April 3rd) Incident or Jeju Massacre (among various other names given for the event). Although initially cordial, the working relationship deteriorated between the Jeju local people’s committee and the US occupation authorities, who controlled southern Korea from 1945 to 1948. On March 1, 1947, the government’s suppression of a demonstration caused several deaths and many more injured and arrested. As the elections to determine the new South Korean government approached in early 1948, local leftists launched a rebellion on April 3, 1948 and were able to quickly take control of large parts of the island. Many Jeju residents were sympathetic to them and initially supported the partisans. But the government response, first from the US military occupation but especially from the South Korean government that was established in August, was exceptionally brutal. Over the course of the next half-decade, thousands of people died — some due to the leftist partisans, but mostly due to indiscriminate state violence during the suppression campaign. Some estimates state that up to 30,000 people died. And the trauma of the event lingered, but had to be suffered in silence; it was taboo to discuss it for much of South Korea’s history, and so survivors have had to stay silent for most of their lives. Often they lived in the same villages and neighborhoods as the perpetrators of violence.

There’s so much left out in my hopelessly inadequate description of the event. Thankfully, the topic is finally getting the attention it deserves, and there’s a rapidly growing literature on the Jeju Massacre and its impact. One of my long-term goals is to eventually write, or help write, on its history.

My grandfather and his family were caught up in those tensions. My grandfather, who was still living away from his village because of his attending school in Jeju City, became anxious to hear news about his family, especially because the village was in the mountains, where the worst of the violence and suppression was happening. He constantly saw police and soldiers on his way home.

One morning, armed government-affiliated soldiers swooped onto village and gathered all the villagers in one spot. A soldier then called the names of 16 people to come forward. My grandpa’s older brother — my great uncle — was one of those people called. The 16 people were dragged away by the soldiers.

Rumors flew that everyone being taken away by the soldiers were being killed. My great-grandmother couldn’t bear it anymore and went to Hallim (한림) to at least retrieve his body. They searched for a long time, but they couldn’t find his corpse; suddenly they gained hope that he might still be alive.

The next day, the government issued an eviction order for the entire village, forcing the relocation of the villagers from the mountains to the beaches. My grandfather heard weeping and defeated sighs as the villagers packed and moved to the designated zone on the outskirts of the island. He wrote how in that time of confusion and fear, villagers could spare no emotion or sympathy to anyone outside their families, not even to relatives; they focused solely on getting their families out safely. No one asked my grandpa about his brother’s fate.

The villagers later discovered, upon attempting to return to their homes once the situation had calmed down, that the soldiers had burned down the village, leaving it a blackened ruin.

My grandfather eventually enrolled in a school designated for the Jeju refugees. Life there was akin to a military camp, with even harsher discipline. Juniors always had to obey their seniors no matter what, while teachers, some of whom appeared to originally be from northern Korea (and thus I imagine were associated with the right-wing Northwest Youth Corps (Sŏbuk Ch’ŏngnyŏnhoe)), frequently harassed and bullied the students. Students were divided amongst themselves as well, one side consisting of those whose relatives were killed by the rebels in the mountains and one side whose relatives were massacred by the government forces (my grandfather noted that he was in a unique position, having been from a remote village that was among the first to be burned down by the state and had lost everything there). Despite these hardships, however, my grandfather credited his time there for developing his strong will and fortitude that would help him endure the adversities he would later face.

Ultimately, my great uncle did come back to his family, alive but shaken — but not for several years. I don’t know why he was arrested, and he passed away over ten years ago as well, before I could ask him, well before I even had any inkling of this history. But the potential consequences to the family were dire. Jeju residents for many decades afterward were already automatically under a cloud of suspicion just by being from the island where the major rebellion had taken place. But the fact that my great uncle was arrested meant he and his family would have been presumed to have leftist leanings, and in all likelihood would have put the entire family on an unofficial blacklist that would have hindered one’s progress in education or jobs. (A recent book by Heonik Kwon, called After the Korean War, provides an excellent analysis of the intersection of kinship, politics, violence, and trauma in Korea.)

Indeed, one of the reasons my grandfather enlisted in the military, only a couple years after the Jeju Massacre began, was to help his family avoid any stigma of association with the leftists. By fighting in the war, he could prove to the government that there was no reason to suspect his family.

My grandpa was a veteran of the Korean War, which began in June 1950 and ended — although not completely — by ceasefire in July 1953. He was only around 18 — not yet finished high school — when he enlisted in the Marine Corps as one of the first Korean marines. In fact, many of those first Korean marines were also Jeju natives. Each generation in our family has since produced a marine, including my dad and my older cousin, partly due to my grandpa’s example.

It’s surreal to think that in that war, Grandpa experienced all of the major developments that I’ve only read about. Grandpa enlisted on August 30, 1950. His mother said goodbye to him in tears, believing it might be the last time they would see each other. Moreover, my great uncle’s fate was still unknown at the time, so my great-grandmother must have thought she was losing her only two sons in quick succession.

Only two weeks later, on September 15, my grandfather would land at the city of Incheon as part of Douglas MacArthur’s famous counteroffensive, in which the UN forces launched an improbably amphibious landing amidst the rapidly changing tides of Incheon harbor. He only had a couple weeks’ worth of training before being thrust into one of the most celebrated battles of the war. He and the other Korean marines on the ship had no idea where their destination lay until the day of the operation.

But he not only fought at Incheon, he continued on as part of the force that recaptured Seoul. He was part of the advance north to the Yalu River, before falling back in the face of the counterattack of the newly-entered Chinese “volunteers.” He continued fighting, and fighting, and fighting for two more hellish years.

My grandfather was shot in the calf and waist during the war. His wounds continued to hurt him throughout his life. In our rare trips to Korea as kids, my sister and I often massaged his legs, which were constantly in pain.

He received a medal for his service and courage. But can a medal make up for everything else, I wonder. Not just the physical scars, but the mental and emotional ones would be too much to bear, at least if it were me. I can’t imagine what he felt during that time. He left a vivid account of battles, the scenes of comrades dying in front of his eyes, the terrors of war, the fear during combat, the courage to continue fighting, the despair as the war dragged on. There was a scene of him watching live hand grenade rolling in front of him as if in slow motion and then making the instant decision to kick it as far away as he could, hearing it explode only a few seconds after he encountered it. Would I have had the same presence of mind, or would I have frozen in shock?

One anecdote is particularly striking to me. At one of the battles he fought in, which took place on a mountain, he was shot in the leg and lost consciousness. When he awoke, he was surrounded by the corpses of his comrades. He was behind enemy lines. At night he slowly made his way down the mountain, all the while in tears. He couldn’t stop crying because his comrades, with whom he had shared so much, both pain and joy, together with whom he had fought up to that very morning, no longer were of this earth.

Somehow he made his way back to the front and rejoined the South Korean army. In the meantime, he had been presumed dead. My great-grandmother had even had last rites conducted for him in absentia, until he miraculously turned up very much alive. I can’t imagine the rollercoaster of her emotions in that situation.

He never forgot those comrades he had lost. After the war was over, my grandfather made sure his comrades who had passed away during the war were adequately recognized by the government and their families adequately compensated. After going to veteran events, Grandpa learned that his comrades were often not recognized by the state because of lack of evidence of their participation or deaths, and that their families were not being given compensation as a result. Thus, in response, what he did was to contribute his account of his combat experiences for the Marine Corps’ official history of the war. In his descriptions of the battles, Grandpa wrote as many names as he could of the (deceased) participants he knew, their birthplaces, and where and when they died or were injured. Once the bereaved family members saw the names in the official history, they could cite it as evidence and were able to apply for official recognition and compensation.

Whenever we think of veterans and heroes of war, as my grandfather was, what is omitted from these remembrances is the fact that they are probably considered heroes because they took the lives of other human beings. It’s the unspoken, horrible truth: they have blood on their hands. I doubt my grandfather was any exception. He participated in so many of the (in)famous battles of the Korean War; he must have shot and killed enemy soldiers in at least one of those battles, if not more. But this life-taking is celebrated because it was the lives of the enemy, so it’s okay. Not only is it okay, but it is celebrated.

My grandfather was a patriot and was proud of his participation in the defense of the country. But he didn’t dream of being a soldier as a child. As I read his memoirs, all I could see was a boy who aspired to emulate his father and be a scholar. The life of the soldier was forced on him, a role he carried out in exemplary fashion. But my heart sinks every time I think of what it took to be an exemplary soldier, and how different that side of him would have been from the grandfather I knew, the kindly, soft-spoken man who encouraged me to try the path of the scholar that he never had a chance to take.

When I think of his life in this way, I can’t help but think of it as tragic. Maybe the more hawkish, patriotic folks will admonish me for being so negative about my grandfather’s experiences. But war is always a tragedy. There’s no glory in it. I’m proud of my grandfather not for his war heroism, but for his humanity in all other aspects of his life.

But maybe it’s a fool’s errand; is it really possible to separate his military service from the rest of his life? Aren’t they too integrated given its transformative experience?

My grandfather was a man of contradictions. In other words, he was human.

He was deeply conservative in all senses of the term. He was, predictably, strongly anticommunist, given his experiences as a teenager and as a soldier. He inculcated his family in Korean traditional values, and my extended family still continues to practice traditional rites as regularly as we can. There were clearly defined gender roles that my grandparents upheld as well. My grandmother recalled that he never stepped foot in the kitchen if he could help it; there was a saying back then that a man lost his manhood if he entered that space. This sort of environment was clearly too stifling for my mother, who all but ran away to the U.S. to start her life anew.

Yet my grandfather is the one who advised my sister when she was just a little girl dreaming of being a nurse, why not be a doctor instead? Which was one contributing factor in her pursuit of her current medical career.

In his phone calls, I couldn’t understand much of what my grandfather said because of my lack of Korean language ability. But I do remember him telling me to drink milk everyday to grow taller. I also remember him encouraging me to be a “paksa” (박사). I asked my dad later what that meant, and he said it meant “doctor.” Oh, like a medical doctor, like what my sister wants to be? No, my dad said, like a scholar. Oh, that’s great, I’d think, because I do want to be a scholar, too — a historian if all goes well.

It was only later once I started to learn about my grandfather’s life that this encouragement of his must have stemmed from his own regret at not being able to pursue his own dream of becoming a scholar. He left before graduating high school, and never went back to school. He took a job at the local post office after getting discharged and worked there the rest of his life.

The war and his long military service, and then the need to support his young family, all that prevented him from returning to school, much less pursue any academic career. He still wrote essays occasionally for the local newspaper, but that was the extent of his literary activities.

I wonder how he would react upon finding out I’m a graduate student now.

My grandmother told me that my grandfather, in his last few days, would wake up whenever someone opened a door. “Is it Sunmi and Sungik?” he would ask, before sinking back into his bed in sadness.

I wish, more than anything, that I could have been there, to hold his hand one more time, to tell him that I was, and still am, so sorry for not spending as much time as I could with him. If I had known back then . . . but I didn’t, and it’s something I’ll have to carry with me the rest of my life.

The only comfort I had after his passing was the memory of his phone calls, the memory of his voice, telling me to keep drinking milk, encouraging me to pursue my dreams. And now I’m forgetting that very sound which had kept me tethered to him and his memory.

And now that I’m in graduate school, I wish I could hear his voice even more. I want so much to hear him tell me about his life. He left behind his memoirs, but I wish I could see his face light up at recounting and reliving his past, hear his voice fluctuate while describing the hardships and tragedies in his life. I just want to be with him — I guess that’s really the simple truth. I miss him so much.