My brave sister-in-law

By Chang Soon-hee

Several North Korean soldiers pounced on our farm house in the remote Uljin countryside on the east coast two days after the Korean War broke out on June 25, 1950.

Some were carrying long-barreled rifles with long bayonets attached and others shouldered short machines guns with round magazines attached under them. They were awfully young to be combat soldiers.

The light brown baggy fatigues and cloth shoes were faded and they looked tired. The leader of the group asked in clear Korean to my mother, ``Where is your policeman son?” ``There is no policeman in our home, we are all farmers,” mother stammered, shivering.

``Search the house,” he ordered. Without removing their shoes, they kicked open all the doors and dashed in and searched every room as well as under the floor and in the attic with their long bayonets extended. Failing to catch the enemy policeman of the South, the soldiers gathered in the yard deciding whether to torture my mother or me. I was ten years old.

The youngest soldier holding his bayoneted rifle walked over to two chickens peacefully pecking the ground, ready to plunge his bayonet into one of the birds. Instead the young boy wearing a sad smile silently stood, gazing down at the hens as if he was remembering his own farm left behind in the North.

Then my sister-in-law, the policeman’s wife, with a visibly inflated abdomen, stepped out of the kitchen with a handful of wheat. She walked over to the chickens and spread the grain and while the chickens were busy pecking away, she quickly snatched one of them and went to a nearby tree stump, grabbed a hatchet and chopped its head off.

The soldiers’ eyes widened and everyone gazed over her unhesitating butchering. Abandoning the head and holding the still fluttering and bleeding headless bird in one hand, she approached the leader and mumbled, ``I’ll serve you lunch,” and went back into the kitchen.

The hungry soldiers had a feast with hot chicken soup mixed with rice. They thanked us, and marched out of our yard, heading south and leaving the hacked off chicken head behind.

My elder brother was a South Korean police officer who just happened to be on a home visit when the war broke out. Some five years before this incident while Japanese police were patrolling the villages in uniforms with a shining sabers suspended from their waists, three girls in their early 20s from nearby villages had taken refuge at my house.

They were hiding from Japanese predators whose job was searching for young unmarried Korean girls to forcibly recruit them for the ``Women’s Service Corps.” The only way escape for these single girls was to get married and one of the girls hastily wed my elder brother. A poorly prepared wedding ceremony was held on a straw mat in the yard for her and her two friends who were exempted from the conscription because the villagers had quickly arranged two more marriages.

I visited my widowed sister-in-law, the brave wife of the late police officer now in her late 80s last week in the same farming village, who is now showing signs of dementia. A weak grin appeared around her mouth when I spoke of my visit to the bronze statue of a “comfort woman” sat in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul.

The writer is a grandmother who once lived in Closter, New Jersey, but finds Seoul more comfortable. Her email address is ham1940@gmail.com.