To my children
Since their first son became crippled, my parents wanted another son. So, they had another baby. It was a daughter. She was such a good baby and never cried much. Her name was ‘Eun Hee,’ but no one called her by that name. Everyone called her ‘a good child.’ She thought it was her real name until she entered the elementary school. My parents tried one more time, and it was a daughter again. That’s how they got five kids, two sons and three daughters.
My father was a colonel and he expected to be a general. He was doing well until then. But the turmoil started. There were April 19 Revolution and May 16 Military Coup.
We could look down the city of Seoul from our house. On April 19, 1960, we could see black smokes rising here and there in the city. There was a corrupt council man living in our neighborhood and we could hear a group of students banging on his house. We feared they might come to our house.
Army led May 16 Military Coup and they succeeded. There was some talk of a coup among Marine Corp, but since they were small, they let Amy lead it.
If Marine Corp started the Military Coup, my father’s fate would have changed, too. My father completed his assignment as a commanding officer for his battalion and he was removed from the field assignment. He completed his assignment as an instructor for the military academy. He expected to return to a field assignment. But they sent him to the headquarter for a lame position. He realized the chief commander did not keep his promise. He felt that his days with the Marine Corp was ending. One day, he armed himself with a hand gun and visited the chief commander.
He made an offer to him. He asked him to provide a vehicle, a driver, and pay checks for a year. After a year, he would retire. The chief commander gladly accepted the term. He had been agonizing over my father. He did not know what to do with him and my father gave him the solution.
My father thought there was some money saved. He was going to do his own business. There wasn’t any saving. The house was all he had. For the rest of his life, my father thought my grandfather took his savings. I think there is some truth to it. My grandfather never had a real job. Nevertheless, he bought and collected antiques and old coins.
He sold the two-story house in Ga Hei Dong and bought a smaller house in Ik Sun Dong. My grandparents bought a small house in Kwan Hoon Dong and moved out. I went with them. It was a very small house, but still had three small rooms. There was half basement storage shack in the front yard and laundry drying lines were on top of this structure. My grandmother climbed the stairs to hang the laundry. I could see her cooking in the kitchen thru the a small window on the wall of the room.
Running water and the sewer were in the front yard. Most homes had one facet and one sewer line in the front yard. There was no running water in the kitchen or the outhouse. People had to carry the water to the kitchen. We washed and cleaned at the faucet.
Outhouse had an underground tank with an opening on the floor. Once it if filled, we called a vendor who would empty it. Later, they used a vacuum hose to empty it. But initially, they used a large can attached to a long wooden pole to scoop the feces. They filled the large metal bins and carried them. When the vendor came, several homes in the neighborhood emptied their outhouses. Men hurried around the alleys with bins filled with feces.