Tales of a Korean Grandmother Read online

  The children laughed merrily at this absurd story. They laughed, too, when their grandmother told them what people thought of the new solid coins that replaced the old copper cash. "We called them 'blind money,'" Ok Cha explained. "Without holes in their centers, we did not think they could be good coins. Without an eye, how can they see, we asked each other.

  "When those first houses on wheels, called streetcars, appeared, people here were afraid that the spirits would be angry," the old woman remembered. "They threw stones at the car windows, and they tore up the rails. I know of one man who was killed because he jumped across the track in front of an oncoming car. He did that foolish thing hoping to escape himself, but hoping also that the car would run over any bad spirit that might be at his heels.

  "It was the streetcar," Ok Cha continued, "that made our Emperor give orders that the city gates should no longer be closed with the ringing of the Great Bell. Indeed, very soon the Great Bell itself no longer rang to warn people in off the streets. With the city gates thrown wide open, men could travel whenever they liked, by night as well as by day.

  "Hé, people went crazy about these strange new things from the West." Ok Cha shook her head as if she, too, had always known no good would come of giving up the ways of the Honorable Ancestors. "Men began to buy clothes like those of the foreigners. Some who had traveled in Western lands wore their hair as short as that of a priest. The Emperor even gave orders that all topknots should be cut off.

  "But that was too much. Most of our men were proud of the neat knots under their fine hats of black gauze. How else could it be known when a boy became a man if he had not a topknot? The men refused to obey this order, and the Emperor did not insist. Of course, now that Western ideas, like the spirits, are everywhere in our land, all the boys and the young men cut their hair short. Your great uncle, Yong Tu, is the only man I know today who wears a topknot as a yangban should."

  "But short hair is easier, and new ways are better, Halmoni," one of her granddaughters said. "I shouldn't like to stay all my life shut up in this Inner Court. I like to go to school. I like to play with my friends. I like picnics on the hills in the springtime. When I am older, I want to go to the Girls' University, Ewha, in Seoul."

  "Yé, blessed girl, the new ways are better. Our people all say so. Those fire imps you call matches are safer than carrying a burning stick from a neighbor's fire to light the wood under our rice pots. The telegraph, the telephone, and the radio can give longer messages than the ancient signal fires on the mountains. On the smooth streets of our city we no longer need to walk upon high wooden shoes to keep our feet out of the mud. It's true that electric street lamps are far brighter than the paper lanterns our servants used to carry before us to light our steps.

  "But there were many things about the days of my childhood that were good, too. Best of all, we were free. Our land belonged to us alone. Most of these new ways you like so well came during the dark years when Japan ruled our land.

  "If you try to make friends with a tiger, you will soon find yourself in his stomach, my grandmother used to say." Ok Cha shook her head solemnly. "So it was with the Japanese. We let them come to us as friends. They remained as our enemies. They fought wars about us with China and Russia. And each time they won. At last, when they could, they took over our land and made it their own.

  "Ai-go! Ai-go!" this old Korean grandmother moaned whenever she thought of those years under the cruel Japanese. The proud white Korean flag, with its round symbol of red and blue, was pulled down; the red and white flag of Japan flew over all buildings, both new and old. Even the name of the land was changed from Korea back to its ancient title, now spelled Chosen. Cities and towns were given Japanese names instead of their former Korean ones. The proud Koreans themselves were made into slaves. Even a paksa or a poet was punished if he did not work like a peasant for the dwarf men from Japan.

  "Inside our gate the family had to crowd themselves into the servants' houses in the Outer Court. Japanese generals took over our home, and we had to serve them. The Japanese ate our food, and the 'Spring Hunger' lasted throughout the year. They would have stolen all our treasures if we had not buried them secretly out in the garden and under the kimcbee jars." Ok Cha did not like to remember this part of her story.

  "Terrible things happened then, my children. No man was safe—nor woman either. Never will I forget the sound of the Great Bell ringing again to warn the men off the streets at the time of the Korean revolution of 1919. Schoolgirls took part in this peaceful plea for independence. They loved their land quite as much as the singing girl, Nonga, in the old story. Along with the men they raised their voices out in the streets. They, too, shouted, 'Mansei! Man-sei!'—our old Korean battle cry which the Japanese had forbidden. Then it was that my husband, your grandfather, was beaten so badly that he went to the Distant Shore. He lost his life working for freedom for his country.

  "Ai-go!" The old woman wiped a tear from her eye. "That revolution against the rule of Japan was foolish, I know. It was like trying to split a rock by throwing a hen's egg against it. The Japanese were too strong. They were too cruel. It was indeed a bad day when we let them into our land."

  "But the Japanese are gone now, Halmoni. The American soldiers drove them out of Seoul as soon as the World War II was won." Thus one of the boys tried to comfort his sad old grandmother.

  The older children of this household knew a great deal about the Japanese who had ruled over their country. They had learned early never to speak Korean words in their hearing. Those who went to the city schools had been forced to study their lessons in Japanese. They had to bow before the likeness of the Japanese Emperor, whom they must call the "Son of Heaven."

  And they had to learn by heart the benefits which had come to their land under the Japanese: factories, with humming machines; fine stores and handsome government buildings of stone; modern hotels and department stores; thousands of trees planted upon the bare Korean hillsides; steel bridges over the rivers; automobiles rolling over smooth roads; and airplanes rising from airfields into the blue sky! All these, the Japanese boasted, were the gifts they had brought to their Korean colony.

  "But they brought us also hunger and fear, sadness and suffering," Ok Cha always added when these benefits were mentioned. "They took our rice fields from us. They burned our precious books. They tried to make us forget our own language. And they killed our brave men."

  The old grandmother's face always brightened when her grandsons spoke of the American soldiers. "Hué, it is good to think of those tall men in their brown suits," she said. "They gave us new hope, like spring blossoms sprouting from a dead branch at the winter's end. Their coming was as welcome as water flowing once more, after a rain, in the dry bed of a stream.

  "Yé, my young dragons, the Americans gave us back our country. And we are grateful. Mansei! Mansei! May Korea live free for ten thousand years!"