From the KMA to Sungkyunkwan

4. 화랑대에서 성균관으로

From the KMA to Sungkyunkwan

I began my third year of high school. My father did not take kindly to his son writing “philosophy” in the “anticipated major” section of the nationwide practice examination for the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT).

Every time my report card arrived, the same questions would come in a sarcastic bellow: “Are you going to basically become a fortune-teller and open your own divination business?” “Are you just going to starve to death?”

It was always going to have been difficult to expect understanding from people who had lived through different times, and I tried my best to take it as them expressing wishes for my success, but the lack of understanding from my family always saddened me.

The following January, I took the actual entrance examination. Sensing that I hadn’t passed, I began studying in the Noryangjin area to take it again, waving off my mother’s urgings to just accept whatever college I could get into. Eventually, to assuage my parents’ fears, I set my sights on the Korea Military Academy (KMA), which seemed like something they might accept.

My father had been an officer, and I had grown up in the barracks. I was a regular visitor at the PX (the army convenience store); the training field had been my playground. I had gone to the military kindergarten (a renovated semicircular steel barrack structure). In the evening, I would take my pail and head to the BOQ (Bachelor Officer Quarters) restaurant to collect scraps to feed to my puppy.

All the images of my early childhood were military scenes: the grinning guard handing me snacks hidden in the barricade, the morale-boosting performers traveling in deuce-and-a-half cargo trucks, and the shouts of the soldiers on their early march, ringing in from the other side of the soldiers’ quarters as the sun rose in the morning.

That fall, I went to Kyobo Book Centre and purchased a KMA application in a yellow envelope. My father got a recommendation for me from a friend of his who was a general. The morning the results from the first round of the KMA entrance exam came out, I asked my younger brother to turn the light on in my room if I had passed. As I made my way home nervously from my after-school academy classes, I saw the light in the distance, and my heart rose in my chest.

The second test took place over the last two days of October and involved an essay, a physical examination, and an interview and fitness test. Disembarking at Seokgye Station on Line 1 of the subway, I boarded a crowded bus and made my way to the KMA. After a cursory ID check, I headed to my four-person dormitory room, with its bunk beds, and began unpacking my things.

The essay test began shortly afterwards. I placed a clear blue stone I had found on the beach as a talisman on my desk; my pen left deep marks on the page, ink rippling over it like a wave.

I headed to a building with a long tunnel for my physical. I became disoriented during the color-blindness test; perhaps because I was so nervous.

I was at a loss about what to do, but the supervising soldier mouthed the answers. One hurdle behind me, I was then called over by a military doctor who was waiting to measure my waist. He told me lean forward and felt along my spine with his fingers before writing something down on a chart. I felt uneasy.

Once the physical exam was finished, I waited in the corridor for the next item on my schedule. Someone called my name, guiding me to the office of the medical corps head. He sat behind a large desk, backlit so that I could not see his face. He asked me to bend over. Then he told me that I had been disqualified due to scoliosis.

He held out a piece of paper and asked me to sign it as an acknowledgement. I had known about my scoliosis since I was in middle school, but I never imagined that all my preparations would end up undone by it. They may have had spotted the curve in my spine as soon as I had undressed, revealing my scrawny, 57-kg (about 126-lb) frame.

I returned to the dormitory and packed my things back up. Leaving behind the notes that I had prepared for my interview, I walked barefoot out of the KMA. My parents found it strange that I had come home that day when I was not supposed to arrive until the next. I simply told them that it wasn’t going to work out and buried myself under my blankets.

Early the next morning, I headed to my after-school academy, gathered my test forms, and headed to the reading room at Boramae Park. There were less than two weeks to go until the CSAT.

On November 13, I took the CSAT, armed with some calming medicine for my nerves that my mother had carefully prepared. This was the 1997 test—the so-called “hellfire CSAT”—and my results failed to meet expectations. My parents were disappointed to see that my brains weren’t translating into success.

After quarrelling with my parents, I entered the College of Confucian Studies and Eastern Philosophy at Sungkyunkwan University. Finally, I began to forge a connection with the words of such sages at Confucius, Yi Hwang, and Wonhyo.