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"One morning, father told me to go and pay attention to the situation at the American army office and see if there is a job opening," says Prof. Yoo Chong-ho in his three-volume memoir.
He was just 16 and temporarily staying in the city of Cheongju with his family, having fled some 66 kilometers from his less-safe hometown of Chungju, both in the central part of the Korean Peninsula. The American soldiers were stationed at Cheongju, which was the northernmost supply center with a railway connection for the American military.
The first day he roamed around the middle-school building, at the time used by the American army, and saw many idle children and students. If any of them moved closer to peep inside, a soldier would shout "Get away!"
After a few weeks, it was rumored that the American army was recruiting laborers. He went to the office again. He was the only boy among the aged adults. He collected all his courage and approached a middle-aged man, who yielded some sort of charisma.
"Hello. I want to work," he said in English. The American soldier examined him with interest. "I want to work," Yoo repeated. But after that, the boy could not understand what this gentleman was saying to him. Later, a Korean explained to Yoo that the soldier had said "Nine o'clock, tomorrow morning" many times.
Thus began the new life of Yoo as a janitor for the American soldiers stationed in Cheongju in 1951. War made everybody jobless ― no class for his father to teach, no school for Yoo to attend.
But his memoir surprises me with his steel-trap memory, such as the name plaques of his first workplace ― Noncommissioned Warrant Officer J.M. Parson, Technical Sergeant D. Hale, etc.
He remembers that his first task on the first day of work was nailing to the wall a poster with a photo of Gen. Douglas MacArthur with "Invincible United Nations Soldiers" in the print below the picture. He says this is how he learned the difficult word, "invincible," in this unlikely chaotic environment.
He was not an ordinary young boy. He was known as a genius in town. Before the war, as an elementary student, he saved pocket money to buy a literary magazine. He knew who was who in Korea in the intellectual and artistic world.
At one point, his supervising American officer said, "Education is marvelous," and, "He is different from other boys," regarding Yoo's attitude and competence.
His school was closed for 15 months ― in June 1950, after the outbreak of the Korean War ― until September 1951. In this chaotic period, the classes at the school were arranged by rough standards and he found himself in the second grade of high school.
His narratives are straightforward in real names and positions then and later. In the changing hands of military rulers, his relatives, including his father, had to cooperate with the Communists during their occupation. He maintains a calm and objective observation throughout the book.
Without criticism, he remembers many teachers, including a novice teacher, Mr. Chung, who began teaching English to the second-graders. He called students "Mr. Somebody," not out of courtesy, but from total ignorance about the job of a teacher.
While reading "What I Saw in America" by Andre Maurois, from the "Living English Reader" in the class, there is a scene in which a New York taxi driver could recognize that the music from the radio was Brahms' Symphony No. 3. The author said: "American civilization is no longer a dollar civilization." The teacher thought it was about denying the worth of one dollar.
If anyone wonders why English has become a powerful tool in Korea, Prof. Yoo's memoir is the best way to get a very realistic understanding of the historical circumstances. The first memoir, "My Times Around Liberation," covers 1940-1949, including 1945, when the American Military Government began administration after Korea's liberation.
Then two books, "Memoir: My 1950" and "That Winter and Fall" 1951, carry detailed narration of his experiences of family survival through the harsh period of starvation, dying and killing during wartime.
Not quoted much here, but the memoir elaborates about the complicated positions between the ideologically confronted camps in that tragic period.
What was his life like after the war? Yoo studied in the English Literature Department, Seoul National University, and New York State University. He also was a professor at Chungju National University of Education and Yonsei University. Yoo has been a leading literary critic since the late 1950s, with many literary awards, and the chairmanship of the Academy of Art of Korea, 2013-2015.
So why did he bother to explain his hard times in such great detail?
"The past is a foreign country," wrote Yoo in his preface. "It is difficult for people to imagine those periods during which they had not lived. Our imagination is fundamentally limited as it is grounded on our experiences and present situation."
Not many societies have undergone such radical and compressed changes as Korea has. I agree with Prof. Yoo in that human beings are bound by their instilled preconceptions, subjective judgment, education, information and rumors. Imagination is often slanted, at best.
Yoo says he wrote for the younger generations who must have difficulty in imagining those never-seen times.
The writer is the chairwoman of the Korea Heritage Education Institute (K*Heritage). Her email address is Heritagekorea21@gmail.com.
