Sad Peninsula

by Mark Sampson

  The girls were too frightened and excited to raise a single question. Meiko thought: Why us? Why not just send our fathers? But kept her “why” questions to herself.

  “Go home tonight and discuss it with your parents,” the man said. “It’s a big decision. You’ll be away from your families for a year. But the journey will not be too arduous: Just a train ride south to Pusan and then a ferry across the Sea of Japan to Shimonoseki. If this sounds like something you’re interested in, come to the Tanghu train station two Sundays from now, in the morning, and we’ll provide you with more information. You won’t have to make any decisions then. But we can at least tell you more about this and begin filling out the necessary paperwork should you decide to say yes.”

  For the next few days, Meiko could not keep Shimonoseki out of her thoughts. Walking the streets of her neighbourhood with the early January snow falling, she kept pondering what it would be like to live and work there and become the main provider for her family. Was this not what she had been training herself for all these years? It was a Korean girl’s duty to be silent, respectful, and hardworking. She knew she had probably failed at the first two, but at least she was capable of hard work. Her studies had proven that. She could go away and make enough money to put an end to her parents’ bickering.

  She came home one afternoon about a week later to find her father home alone, sitting in his wicker chair by the door. His presence in the house startled her; he should have been at work. “Father, are you okay?” she asked, hanging her wool shawl on its hook. He raised his left hand to show her what had happened: streaking across his blackened knuckles was a dark paste of half-clotted blood. “I got careless with one of the machines,” he told her. “They sent me home to let this heal.” Meiko hurried to her mother’s washtub to fetch a clean rag. She brought the soaked cloth over, knelt in front of him and began washing away the oil and grit seeping into the wound. “There there,” she said with the gentleness of a nurse, “let me look after that for you. Here, turn your hand this way. There. Let me wash that …” She sensed him staring down at the top of her head as she worked on him, and that was when she caught the odour of soju on his breath. It filled her nostrils each time he exhaled. Ah, so you didn’t come straight home after your accident, she thought. Meiko would not look up at him as she washed his hand; she would not look up at him even when he cupped his other hand, also filthy but unmarred, to the side of her head and allowed his fingers to crawl up into her virginal braids. She froze. “My daughter,” he said. “I feel like I fail you every day. Do you know that?”

  “Father, don’t say such things,” she swallowed.

  He leaned back against the wall, the wicker chair creaking beneath his weight. “Did you find a job today?” he slurred. She resumed cleaning without looking up. He let out a laugh that was tinged with frustration. “Of course you didn’t. Because you’re just a girl. Your mother’s right. You need to be in school for a couple more years and we’ll arrange a chungmae. Then you’ll become some other man’s problem.” When he laughed, his grip on her skull grew tighter, as if he wanted to grind her head into the floor, or somewhere else.

  “Father,” she said, “if I am ever offered a job, do you think I should take it?”

  He looked down at her with his dark eyes and drew her closer to his lap. He leaned over her until his face was nearly crushed into hers. “I no longer care,” he whispered, his words as poisonous as his breath. “Whatever happens to you, I don’t care. As long as you become another man’s problem before these devils kill me.”

  Outside, they could hear Meiko’s sister hurrying up the stone walkway to their house, her mother’s voice hollering behind her. Meiko and her father quickly released their grip on one another. She was just standing up and straightening her dress as her sister burst through the door, her mother appearing a moment later. She looked at the two of them over her canvas sack of vegetables. “What are you doing here?” she asked, and for an instant Meiko thought she had been speaking to her.

  Y ou don’t have to make any decisions today. That’s what the man said. You can just come and get more information about the job in Shimonoseki. That’s all.

  When Meiko arrived at the Tanghu train station, she found about forty girls standing in a line that snaked up to a long table manned by what were clearly Japanese soldiers. She recognized only a few girls from her class, standing up further in the line. They were dressed as she was — in full hanbok and braids, looking to make a strong impression on these potential employers. But the other girls here were clearly not from their academy or any other. They looked as if they had been shipped in from villages outside of the city. They wore ragged, rural-looking dresses, and their hair was matted against their heads as if they spent the previous night sleeping awkwardly on a train. She also noticed that they did not seem to speak Japanese very well. A soldier was moving up and down the line asking random questions, and when one of the rural girls attempted to reply in Korean he screamed in her face and then struck her. Meiko swallowed and looked around, trying to figure out a way to slip from the line she had entered without getting noticed. But it was impossible: the soldiers were watching to make sure each girl made her way to the table, answered their questions, and then moved off to the side.

  When Meiko arrived at the table, the Japanese man sitting there made only brief eye contact before hovering his pen over the large ledger in front of him.

  “Name,” he ordered.

  “Meiko Teshiako,” she answered.

  “Year of birth?”

  “1928.”

  He then asked for her parents’ names, their address, the name of her academy, and how she had come to learn about the day’s recruitment.

  “Recruitment, sorry?” she asked. “No, I’m here only to get more information.”

  “Any sexually transmitted diseases?” the man asked.

  Meiko flinched, stared at him while he waited for her answer. “I … I don’t even know what those words mean,” she replied.

  He gave the smallest smile, then motioned to the side. “Okay, go stand over there with the others. We’re done.”

  “But I don’t —”

  He looked past her and screamed at the next girl in line. “Please move forward! You’re next. Keep the line moving please.”

  Meiko floated over in a daze to join the group of girls who had cleared the table and were now huddled under a metal awning by the railway tracks. She spotted one of her classmates, Huriko, standing with her chin buried in her chest, tears pouring over her face. “Huriko, what’s going on?” she tried to whisper to her. As soon as she did, a Japanese soldier stomped over and yelled in Meiko’s face. “No talking! Stand still and don’t talk, Chosunjin!” The word he spat at her, Chosunjin, was a racial epithet for Koreans, bastardizing the true name of their nation, Chosun. His use of it froze Meiko where she stood.

  Once all the girls had taken their place under the awning, they had to wait several minutes in silence while the soldiers processed the names in the ledger and typed up small passports for each girl. When one passport was completed, a soldier would call out the girl’s name and then hand her the slip of folded paper. When Meiko stepped forward to receive hers, the young Japanese soldier handing them out leered at her. There was no kindness in his grin. “You’re very beautiful, Chosunjin. Look at you — like a little porcelain doll. You will do very well where you are going.” And Meiko thought, stupidly, What does beauty have to do with working in a factory?

  When all the girls had received their passports, the soldiers herded them across the station platform and told them to board the waiting train. The girls were no longer making attempts at silence: they were crying, calling out for their mothers, pleading with the Japanese to let them go. Some tried to run, but soldiers chased them down and threw them gruffly back into the line that flowed into the open train carts. Meiko was squeezed through the door and pushed deep inside, nearly tripping on her hanbok in the swell of bodies. Soon she was pre
ssed up against the far window. All the windows were covered by a canvas blanket tied loosely down with twine to hide the view outside. Once all the girls had squeezed in, the soldiers pulled the rattling metal door shut and locked it with an iron clunk. For a few seconds, there was an absurd silence as the girls stood stunned in the darkness. Along the cart’s walls, squares of sunlight peeped around the blankets covering the windows. Soon the girls broke out with more weeping, with more calls to their mothers. “I don’t want to go to Shimonoseki,” someone yelled in panic. “I’m not ready … I just wanted information …”

  There was an abrupt jolt beneath their feet as the train began to move. The girls closest to the door began pulling at it uselessly, whimpering “No! No!” as they realized there was no way to get it open. The shift and steer of the moving train squeezed them all to the right, crushing Meiko where stood against the blanketed window. The crying grew louder, but Meiko found she could not summon the breath to join in. She moved her fingers to the edge of the blanket at her shoulder and pulled it back to reveal the moving landscape outside the window. She watched as the structures of the train station and then the city itself thinned out and faded away, replaced by a spare and rural landscape. She looked up to see the sun hover in the cold January sky. Its position above them filled Meiko with a sudden, frightening wisdom. As the train picked up speed, Meiko beseeched the sun to shift its place in the sky. When it didn’t, her realization rose up like vomit and suddenly she could find the breath to speak, the breath to scream.

  “We’re moving north!” she yelled out. “Do you hear me? We’re moving north! They’re not taking us to Pusan. They’re not taking us to Shimonoseki. Do you hear me? They’re taking us north!”

  But her knowledge seemed lost in the cacophony of weeping. And Meiko realized too late that this had been her mother’s worst fear all along — this, a train packed with ignorant, terrified girls, and heading in the wrong direction.

  Chapter 4

  I stand at my whiteboard, glossy Basic 5 storybook in one hand, green marker in the other, uncapped and ready for business. This is me, pretending to know what I’m doing. My tiny classroom is packed — fifteen Korean students aged eight to eleven. Fourteen of them sit at their miniature desks, each one littered with storybook, homework book, grammar book, and pencil case. The fifteenth student, a troublemaker named “David,” stands facing the corner of the room, his back to the class, head arched downward in shame. This is his punishment from ten minutes ago when I caught him speaking, for the third time tonight, a quick burst of Korean to one of his buddies. The Canadian flag I’ve taped to my wall hangs just above his head.

  “Get the ball,” I read to the class.

  “Get the ball,” the class echoes.

  “Now Billy has the ball,” I chant.

  “Now Billy has the ball.”

  “MichaelTeeee-chore!” David weeps from the corner, as if I’ve forgotten he’s there. I look over at his slouched frame and hesitate before speaking, allowing him to stew a moment longer in my feigned authority. “Okay, David, you can sit down.” He skulks shamefaced back to his desk.

  We begin working through the storybook as if it’s Henry James. I get the kids to read lines aloud, correcting their pronunciation as they go, then begin to ask leading questions about what is happening in this soccer game, and they recite back exactly what I want to hear, exactly what the storybook says. I’m obligated to stay standing and write these insights on my whiteboard, lest the school’s director (Ms. Kim — confirmed Asian spinster, a hostile little touch-me-not) looks through my classroom-door window, fixes me in her angry little crosshairs, and confronts me at the end of the night for Not Following the Curriculum. Time is winding down, so I get the kids to close their books so I can hand out their nightly quiz. For the next five minutes, they will hunch over the test with great purpose, filling in blanks with nouns and verbs left out of the exact sentences we’ve just read. I take a slow walk up the aisle to inspect the kids’ progress, hoping my presence will hurry them along. Soon I have all the tests in my hand and with a few seconds to spare — which doesn’t feel right. I’m forgetting something.

  “MichaelTeacher, homework?” asks “Jenny,” one of the older girls. They always seem to be named Jenny.

  “Oh shit,” I mutter aloud, and the kids all gasp in horror. I hustle to my whiteboard and begin frantically jotting down workbook page numbers and grammar exercises, reciting them aloud for the kids as I do. Meanwhile, the class bombards Jenny with a Korean phrase, which I’m sure if I could translate would say, You stupid bitch, he nearly forgot!

  “No Korean, please!” I shout with my back to them, still scribbling furiously. Then the bell does chime, an annoying rendition of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and the kids burst from their chairs and pile toward the door. Some go gliding out on their Heelys— rollerskate wheels built right into the heels of their sneakers. I finish getting all the homework down and turn around. “Did you get that?” I yell. But I’m nearly alone, except for the last couple of kids squeezing into the noisy hallway, looking back over their book bags at me with a sense of vague pity.

  I am not a teacher by trade. You don’t have to be to work here. Anybody with a university degree, in anything, can come to Korea and teach English in this hagwon system. Korean parents believe in education, as best as they understand it, and this involves sending their children to as many of these after-school academies as they can afford. Kids go to public school from 8:30 until 3:00, but after that they move through a long parade of extracurricular learning — math academy, science academy, English academy, taekwondo academy — that stretches well into the evening. ABC English Planet is one of the more reputable hagwons in this neighbourhood of Daechi: we boast a regimented curriculum, reading-writing-grammar-conversation, and a staff of native-speaking teachers from around the West. And I am now one of them.

  How things got this far — with me falling into the chair at my desk to watch the next class of exhausted students pour in to my room — is a tale of minor tragedy, of personal failures and squandered opportunities. Many of my coworkers here are like the guy in the baseball cap from the club — in their early twenties, recent graduates with relatively useless university degrees, spilling out of planes at the mudflats of Incheon with unfathomable student debt and a misguided sense of adventure. By contrast: I am nearly thirty years old and with a fairly practical degree under my belt: journalism. Up until the spring of 2002 I had a career as a reporter for the Lifestyles section of The Halifax Daily News. For a long time, I treated that background like a godsend, the one clear way out of my chaotic family situation and into a life that would prove stable, reliable. And, for a while, it was.

  Of course, my ex-fiancée Cora would tell you that I was never a good journalist, and I would have to agree with her. I was probably two years in to the job at the Daily News before I realized that I lacked the one quality essential to being a good reporter: extroversion. I could research the hell out of any topic, learn all there was to know about occupational health and safety, Black History Month, municipal budgeting, Goth fashion — but to actually pick up the phone and call a stranger or go knock on someone’s door filled me with a gumbo of paralysis. It was only through Cora’s positive influence that I forced myself to do the sort of harassing essential to my career. She and I met at J-school and she was, even from the first semester, already a journalist’s journalist. She got on with CBC Radio at the same time that I started at the paper, and she was always pressing me to get out there, get out on the streets of Halifax and “Talk to People.” It was probably her nagging that kept me from getting fired in those tough early years. So when she eventually left me for one of her radio colleagues, some French fucker named Denis (pronounced Din-ee, never Dennis) and transferred with him to CBC in Montreal, I had a sense that I was doomed in more ways than one.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. The story of how I ended up slinging English like hamburgers in South Korea does not begin wit
h Cora leaving me for another man, nor with the crippling introversion that eventually got me fired from the Daily News. No, the story starts much farther back than that.

  I never knew my father. He died of a rare blood cancer when I was two and my sister Heidi was eight. What I know of him is based on the pedigree he left for me and on the photographs of him that my mother kept framed around the house, like totems to his memory. He was involved in Nova Scotia politics and worked as a speechwriter in the later years of the Robert Stanfield government. There was a photo of Dad that stood out in my childhood above all others, a picture that Mom kept on one of the crowded bookshelves in the living room. It had Stanfield in the foreground, mid-speech at a bouquet of microphones, fist raised and finger extended, and my dad in the background, arms folded loose across his chest and face full of a mirth that said I got him to say that. There were many who believed that, given time and proper mentoring, Dad would become Stanfield’s heir apparent and lead the Nova Scotia Conservatives throughout the eighties and nineties.

  It was not meant to be. The cancer that arrived in the fall of 1975 took less than six weeks to kill him, or so I was told. There were generous obituaries in the papers and letters written to our family from MLAs on both sides of the aisle. My mother stored these in a shoebox she kept under her bed, and would take them out and reread them whenever she felt her grief was fading to unacceptable levels.

  My mother, as winsome and as wise as she could often be, had a weakness for the drink even as a young woman, and, faced with the unfair, inexcusable death of the man she’d been infatuated with since high school, descended into an alcoholism that Heidi and I could only watch with a kind of perplexed horror. The rattle of empty beer bottles stacked in sagging cases in the kitchen, the chime of hidden gin and rum bottles that sounded each time we opened a linen closet, became the white noise of my childhood. Mom insisted that my father was worthy of such mourning. (I even got a sense of his reputation when, sixteen years after his death, I arrived at journalism school to discover that some of the older profs had known him, and thus anticipated great things from me.) And to imply that Mom needed to let go of her sense of injustice was the highest sin you could commit against her. I cannot tell you how many friendships she ruined in a drunken rage because someone had dared to suggest that she Move on with Her Life.