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During the Korean War, I was just entering 1st grade in school. I still get teary whenever I think about the incident that had happened to our house in Seoul’s in Hyunjuh-dong in Seodaemun-gu. In September of that time, my father had passed away from the bomb fragments when the American planes were bombing the North Korean soldiers around that area.
After sending us to the mountain, our town was engulfed in flames from all the bombing and seeing the house vanish, he was sighing from that view when he was hit by a fragment and passed away. Few days later, two of my older brothers joined the army to fight for our nation.
My mother had sent me away to one of my uncles who were in Yeoju in KyungKi-Do, while she and two older sisters escaped somewhere. Of course, my brother and I had also escaped the war with my uncles and had returned. For many days I had wondered if my mother and sisters had survived the war –but one day, she suddenly came to my uncle’s home after leaving my older sister as a maid for an acquaintance.
Since this was during post-war time, eating was very difficult, so we had lived in a small room that our uncle got for us. Despite my mother having the strong will, she had chosen a drastic measure – “let’s all die together!”
One warm spring day, our mother had put on a white dress and leaving our older sister (who was capable of doing some maids work) and said my brother and I are going to the Han River. We were all naive thinking we were going to have a picnic in Han River and followed. But when we arrived at the river my mother’s expression had suddenly changed. Mother had suddenly took her dress robe and tried to tie our hands together. Then she tried to jump into the river with us – as we were located near a very steep cliff with very deep water that was rushing very fast. She said “Instead of all this hardship let’s all just die!” we said “No!!” but our mother tried to drown with us in the river, and after we held our mother’s hand and cried for while, then my brother and I ran away. My mother followed us weakly while weeping as well.
After the restoration of Seoul, mother had returned to the house that once stood and worked day and night on anything and everything. She had taken a basket and sold things in the market, selling to feed us. Despite being young, we helped our mother selling vegetables, steamed sweet potato, rice cake, mung-bean pancake and so on.
Despite all the efforts during the time it was to make kimchi (in Korea, there is a tradition where certain time during winter we would make kimchi and bury them in ground to ferment). So we went to the market during late night to pick up whatever trashed napa leafs was there to make kimchi with only salt.
Since the neighbor we were living in had many scrap shop, my mother made a food stop – since if that was the job we wouldn’t starve at least… But she had spent so much effort but earned almost nothing and had to fold that business to close. One of the main reasons was because she knew how hungry all the people coming were and without thinking of profit she had served plentiful. But like she said, we didn’t starve at least…
We had returned to Restored Seoul but had nowhere to go. So we had lived across the street in the next neighbor’s house which was empty and lived there but one day, the owner had returned so we had to leave. So during that time as family together, we had dug a small area what was once our home for our family to live. After gathering several ration boxes the American soldiers had left, made a temporary shelter roof and lived for about 2 years.
After that, we had rented out the large portion of the field that was our house to a Korean taffy (yeot) factory - the factory’s renting money and lump sum rent money (they would live with us when the house was completed) was used to build a new small house to live.
When I was about 11, we rented out the other rooms and we lived in a single room. I used to wake up in the middle of the night sleeping from a very strange smell; I would see my mother sitting by a small lamp in corner with her back facing the wall and doing something. Turns out part of her breast had become hardened and calloused. Mother would burn that hardened spot with a mugwort, and at some point the burned area was large enough to fit a thumb but she would burn that spot saying the root of the hardened spot should be burned out so it won’t spread.
She continued to burn away despite the raw flesh being visible from the burn damage but she was persistent with her determination to burn away at her own flesh to rid of this callous spot was great, and eventually she had completely burned away the cancer growth.
I suspected this was a breast cancer in today’s medical term. But she finally got rid of the cancer with fire on her body without any medical help… After that she took some cactus puree and continued to ointment her burned spot. After about 3 years it was finally healed. She went from “let’s all die together!” to “Let’s live together!” and had changed her perspective of life to overcome this hardship.
After few years while I was in middle school, my mother had become a Christian. After her life changing experience meeting with Jesus during a Revival Crusade, she took her most fresh money as a tithe for the first time. After that she took the rest of the money to buy us something to eat. She had witnessed to us at firsthand what devoted life is like.
How difficult it was for my mother to raise us all alone!
She never had thought of sending us to foster care. We never in our lives have felt that either. But how many times had she had to face her limits for living? She was never learned, had no fortune but had to raise us and spent many days and nights in despair?
I wrote a praise song many years ago thinking about my mother who had raised us despite such bad circumstances. Composer Dr. Gilsang Kwon wrote the music to the praise song.
Nowadays in Mother’s Day Sunday the hymn is sung popularly in churches all around Korean churches.
In part of the 2nd verse there is a lyric that mentions about mother’s “burned chest in pain” - which was homage of my mother burning her breast to rid of the breast cancer. She had lived to be 96 in healthy life and was taken to the Lord peacefully.
(January 2011) |
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Rise HeungGu! 
“Die Together!” (Mother)