by Ellen Oh
“Eomma! I’m hungry! Give me food,” Doha shouted as he burst into the outer courtyard of his family home.
His mother and older sister, Yuni, immediately hushed him. They were sitting with his grandmother on the elevated wooden porch that framed the outside of their house. Bean sprouts were spread on newspapers in front of them, but they were largely ignored. Doha was shocked to see so many people standing inside his courtyard. Most of them he recognized from town. Local government workers, farmers, and merchants. There must have been fifty people packed into their outer courtyard. But what were they all doing here at dinnertime?
Mr. Choi, the village leader, and a few of the elders sat with Doha’s father on the elevated porch at the other end of the L-shaped house. People were listening to them talking about the loss of the old ways in the changing world. Doha wasn’t that interested and was about to go back out when Police Chief Song entered the courtyard and headed straight for Doha’s father. A long, whispered conversation ensued before the police chief addressed the crowd.
“The Commies have invaded. They took over Seoul. President Rhee has left Seoul and is now in Daejeon,” Police Chief Song announced. “I heard word that there are thousands of refugees from the North who are heading south. The trains are packed full and the roads are clogged with refugees.”
The response was immediate distress as people shouted in alarm. Daejeon was a city almost 150 kilometers south of Seoul and 100 kilometers southeast of Seosan. Doha remembered going there by train once when he was very young.
“Rhee abandoned Seoul!”
“What will happen to us?”
“They will kill us all!”
Chief Song waved his arm for quiet. “One at a time, please!”
“Are the refugees coming here?” a merchant lady asked.
Doha thought that was an odd question to ask first. Shouldn’t they be more concerned about the approaching war?
“We barely have enough food to feed our residents. What are we going to do if a lot of outsiders come here?”
“Well, they are heading south. Some might come here, but most are heading as far south as they can, probably all the way to Busan, since it’s the biggest city and has an American military base nearby,” Chief Song replied.
Doha’s eyes widened. Busan was on the southeastern coast, a diagonal line across Korea from Seosan.
“Do we need to go to Busan?” Farmer Jung asked. He was a red-faced, blustery man who intimidated Doha. He had the biggest farm because he’d rushed to take over Japanese properties as soon as they were forced to leave Korea after World War II. “I can’t leave the farm, but maybe I should send my family to safety.”
“We should be fine here, but we have to stop the refugees from coming.”
Everyone started talking all at once, people worrying about whether they had to leave town. Whether it was safe for them to stay. How close the fighting was. How they could stop refugees from coming.
Doha was troubled by all that he heard. If people were fleeing war, shouldn’t his village help them?
“If a lot of refugees come, we won’t be able to feed everyone this winter,” another farmer was saying. “We hardly had enough last year.”
That bothered Doha. In all his life, he had never worried about running out of food. But as he saw the sober faces of the adults, he was reminded of how his mother would always send baskets of food to Sunjin’s family and others. It was a moment that made him deeply aware of how lucky he was that his father was a doctor. How privileged he was. He suddenly wanted to be with his family. Looking around, he caught his grandmother’s eye. She waved him over.
“Halmoni,” he said as he hugged her.
“Aigo, my little puppy,” Halmoni cooed. She pushed aside the cloth sitting on top of a basket of roasted ears of corn and passed him some.
But he’d lost his appetite. Talk of war and the Commies scared him. Realizing that others had suffered from hunger when he had so much pricked at his conscience.
“What about the Commies? When will they come here?” one of the shop owners asked.
“They’re already here!” someone else shouted. “They’re in the mountains during the day and come down to steal from us during the night.”
Chief Song cleared his throat. “Listen, those are mostly local Reds. The North Korean Army isn’t here yet.”
“Maybe we need to leave also! Head south for now.” Doha recognized his teacher, Mrs. Lee, speaking.
“We should be safe here,” her husband responded.
“I don’t know about that,” Chief Song interrupted. “They’ve been evacuating villages in the line of fire.”
“But we’re not in the path. We’ll be safe,” someone was saying. “We’re far enough west.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“The Commies will head south. They’ll bypass us.”
“How do you know?”
“That’s why the Communists have been getting bolder. They tried to break into the prison house and release the Communist leaders.”
“Communist leaders? Nonsense. They’re not leaders of anything! They’re just poor farmers listening to that Communist garbage. Especially old Moon. He’s just a drunkard. He’s no more a Communist leader than your ancient granny. Chief Song, you should release those poor wretches and let them go home.” Doha recognized the speaker as one of the shop owners from the marketplace.
Police Chief Song ran a hand through his thick, graying hair. “It’s not like I want to arrest them,” he said. “I know they’re harmless, but I have no choice! We have orders to round up all local Communists and Communist sympathizers. But it won’t be our problem much longer.”
“Why’s that?”
“The army’s sending soldiers to gather all the prisoners together,” he said. “It’s better that way. I’ve not felt good about this whole situation.”
“Is the army going to protect us?” someone shouted out, but Doha couldn’t see who it was.
Chief Song shook his head. “They want all our young policemen to join the war effort and leave town.”
There was a loud commotion in response. “What about us?”
“Who’s going to save us from the Commies?”
“Our army will protect us,” a villager said.
Someone laughed derisively. Doha thought he was someone who worked in the local government office.
“That’s a joke! Our army is too inexperienced and seriously underpowered! The Soviets gave the KPA two hundred tanks while ROKA has none! They’re a joke! No wonder they took Seoul so quickly!”
Before the man could continue, the village leader, Mr. Choi, stood up to speak. “That’s enough! No need to scare anyone unnecessarily. I have heard the Americans are sending troops.”
Another wave of loud relief as everyone processed this new information.
“The Americans will fight; that’s what’s going to happen. You saw what they did to Japan in the big war. Got them out of our country for good! They’ll flatten those Commies in no time.” Doha wasn’t surprised to see that it was Gunwoo’s father who spoke so passionately. Doha knew him to be a huge fan of Americans, although his admiration was solely based on the fact that they resoundingly beat the Imperial Japanese Army. Like most Koreans, Gunwoo’s father despised the Japanese.
At his words, there was an immediate clamor of loud voices arguing for and against the likelihood of a swift and easy Communist defeat in the hands of American military might. As voices were raised and emotions became heated, the argument began to spiral out of control.
“Seonsaengnim, please speak up!” someone called out to Doha’s father. When Doha was small, he always thought seonsaengnim only meant schoolteacher, but it actually meant someone with a higher educational degree. So doctors were also called Seonsaengnim, as a form of respect. Doha once asked his father why that was and his father had said, “Because doctors are also teachers. We teach people to take better care of themselves.” That made a
lot of sense to Doha.
The room abruptly went quiet in deference as Dr. Han slowly rose to his feet.
“I will not lie; I am deeply concerned,” he said. “We are once again relying on a foreign country to help save us. But this time, against our own fellow Koreans. This doesn’t feel right. Our leader is a corrupt dictator in the pocket of the Americans, and the North follows a Soviet puppet who calls himself ‘the Great Leader.’ Who is protecting us? Who really cares about our people?”
There were murmurs of agreement among the crowd.
Doha’s father shook his head grimly. “First we were oppressed by the Japanese; now we are caught between Russia and China on one side, and the Americans on the other. When will free Koreans control our own destiny?”
A wave of voices erupted from the crowd; it was hard to make out who was yelling what.
“We’ll never be free if the Communists take over!”
“China wants to control Korea again! The only way to save our country is to fight!”
“But the army is conscripting all our young men.”
“And if they don’t enlist, they’ll be taken by the Communists anyway,” Mr. Choi said grimly. “Look what happened to Widow Song’s oldest son. They didn’t even care that he is the only source of income for his disabled mother and little brother; they wanted his youth and his strength. They are bad men who only care about their ideology!”
They were talking about Sunjin’s hyung. Doha turned to his grandmother and asked quietly, “Halmoni, will they take me and Sunjin, too?”
Halmoni wrapped her arms tight around Doha’s shoulders. “No,” she whispered only for him to hear. “Thank the heavens my precious boy is too young.”
But then her sorrowful gaze turned to Doha’s maternal aunt and uncle. Doha could see they were standing next to each other, his aunt’s hands wrapped tight around her husband’s arm. Recently married, his new uncle was a schoolteacher.
“They have no choice. It’s the Communists or the ROKA. And no self-respecting Korean should ever willingly join the Communists,” Mr. Choi said sternly. His eyes also turned to Doha’s uncle.
Dr. Han sighed and walked over to Doha’s uncle and gently patted him on his shoulders.
Doha’s uncle bowed. “I’ll do my duty, of course. There’s no way I’ll join the Commies.”
There were murmurs of concern and sympathy among the crowd, all of whom had attended their spring wedding. Doha could see how pale his aunt was as she clung tightly to her husband. He wondered how soon his uncle would have to leave to join the ROKA.
With a sad nod, Dr. Han faced the crowd again. “We Koreans have a long history of surviving against many invasions. We are survivors. We survived forty-five years of oppressive Japanese rule as they tried to systematically destroy our culture, our language, and break our spirit. But they couldn’t, because we are resilient. And we are also fighters. We kept our language and our heritage even under pain of death. That is who we are. We are stubborn and proud. Whatever happens next, we will fight, and we will survive. But remember, to do so, we must look out for one another, take care of our neighbors. We survive not individually, but as a community. That is our strength.”
He gave the crowd a slight bow and walked over to escort the elders out. This was the signal for everyone to head home. As they filed through the outer doorway, they thanked Doha’s parents for their hospitality.
When everyone had left, his mother and sister went back to picking off the tails of all the bean sprouts. They sat on the outer wooden floors, each with one leg hanging over in identical fashion as they laughed together. Since Yuni had turned fifteen this year, they looked more like sisters than mother and daughter. Doha’s father said they were the most beautiful women in all of Korea, which made Doha roll his eyes. But he had to admit his mom and sister were both very pretty.
“Doha,” Yuni called to him, “come help us.”
Shaking his head, Doha shimmied over to where his father was getting ready to return to his medical clinic to check on his patients. Quietly, he grabbed hold of his father’s hand and looked admiringly at his serious face.
His father smiled down at him and gripped his hand tight.
“Doha, are you coming to help me at the clinic tonight for a little while?”
He nodded. He’d rather go to the clinic than snap bean sprouts at home. Also, he had a lot to think about from his father’s speech.
Junie
“Grandpa, your dad was really cool, huh?” I ask in admiration.
Grandpa smiles. “He was my hero.”
AT THE CLINIC, DR. HAN WAS greeted immediately by Nurse Pak, a recent graduate of a nursing high school, who was training with Head Nurse Cha.
“Seonsaengnim, I was ready to go to your house,” she said with a bow. “An emergency just came in.”
As she spoke, she urged Dr. Han toward the back of the clinic. Several people were in the waiting room. They all bowed and greeted him as he walked through. Doha saw his friend Minki sitting in the waiting room with his older brother. They both looked tired and worried.
“Minki!” Doha called out as he approached his friends. “What are you doing here? I thought your parents didn’t trust doctors. Are you sick?”
His friend shook his head. “It’s my little sister Mija. She was not feeling well for several days. Nothing the shaman did was working; she was just getting sicker. So I begged my mom to come here.”
“That’s terrible!” Doha looked to see where his father was talking with the head nurse, Nurse Cha. “Let me find out what they think is wrong.”
He went over to his father’s side as Nurse Cha was explaining what she’d diagnosed. Nurse Cha had been educated by American missionary nurses in Seoul. Dr. Han always said Nurse Cha should have been a doctor, she was so good at medicine.
“Seonsaengnim, Mrs. Jeong is in the exam room with her youngest. She’s slipping in and out of consciousness and burning with fever. She’s favoring her lower right side. I think it’s appendicitis, but she’s in a very bad way.”
“If that’s true, we’ll need to put her on antibiotics right away,” Dr. Han replied. “How is our current supply?”
Nurse Cha made an unhappy noise. “Very low. I’m not sure I even have enough for Mija.”
His father headed into the main medical room where several small beds were set up. On one of the beds lay a very still figure of a small child. Doha peered into the room and saw that it was little Mija. She was terribly pale except for two bright spots of color high on her cheeks. She was unnaturally still for a kid who was constantly on the move.
“Please, Seonsaengnim, save my baby!” Mrs. Jeong sat, holding tightly to her daughter’s hand.
For a moment, Doha could see an angry, almost anguished expression on his father’s face as he turned away from Mrs. Jeong and rubbed his eyes.
“Mrs. Jeong, I’m going to do my best, but we don’t have much time now. If only you had brought her to me earlier, before her appendix ruptured. But now the infection has spread, and she’s gone septic. We must operate right away.”
“Seonsaengnim, what does that mean?”
Dr. Han didn’t answer her, concentrating on getting Mija into the small operating room in the back of the clinic.
“Seonsaengnim!”
Nurse Cha intercepted her, not letting her enter the room.
“Mija is fighting a very dangerous infection and she has to have surgery if there is any chance of saving her. Please, wait outside with your children,” Nurse Cha said. Spotting Doha, she waved him over. “Doha, take Mija’s mother out to the waiting room.”
With a bow, Doha led the anxious woman to where his friend Minki and his brother were sitting.
“What’s wrong with her, Doha? Did your father say?”
“It’s a really dangerous infection. She is in surgery now.”
“Will it save her?”
Doha wanted to say of course his father could save her. But he’d seen the anguish on his f
ather’s face; he knew that Mrs. Jeong had waited too long before bringing Mija to the clinic. There was no way to know what would happen.
“I don’t know, Minki,” Doha answered quietly. “She’s very sick.”
An hour passed in agonizing slowness as Doha sat with Minki’s family. They were too worried to talk, so all Doha could do was keep them company. Suddenly, he felt his stomach give a painful rumble and remembered he hadn’t eaten any dinner. He thought of the corn his grandmother had been going to give him. Hopping to his feet, he told Minki he would be right back. Running home, he asked his grandmother for some corn, and she gave him four ears wrapped in a white cloth. He carried it to the clinic only to see Nurse Cha take Mija’s mother to the operating room. The next moment, he heard a heartbreaking scream and then the loud wailing of Mrs. Jeong. Minki and his brother rushed out to her.
Doha’s heart sank. He followed behind, dragging his feet, afraid to see what his heart already knew. Inside, Minki and his brother were crying and hugging their mother, who was pressing her face against Mija’s. He watched as Mrs. Jeong flung her body over her daughter’s, pushing Mija’s pale hand over the side of the table, where it hung limply. Doha dropped his bundle of corn in shock. As a doctor’s son, he should’ve been used to death. But this was the first time he’d seen the death of a child. A child who was a friend.
“Doha, let’s give them some privacy,” Nurse Cha said. She picked up the now-dirty corn, wrapped it up, and gently led Doha away.
She took him to his father’s office and left to return to the front desk. Doha watched as his father sat slumped low in his chair, his eyes closed.
“Abeoji, are you all right?” Doha asked.
Dr. Han opened his eyes and pulled Doha into a tight embrace. Doha could feel wetness through his shirt and realized his father was crying. Once again Doha found himself frozen in shock. He’d never seen his father cry before. It was in that moment that the weight of what he’d seen hit him like a kick in the stomach. Mija was dead. He would never see her chasing after Minki or hear her infectious laughter as she shouted, “Oppa! Catch me!”