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Narrow escape from death experience
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Chapter 3 - Narrow escape from death experience
There are three memories I am very fond of during elementary school days. Two of them were narrow escape from death experience, and the other almost made me disabled.
The first incident was this. One summer day I went to play in the water with my friends in the river that connected directly into Han River, while crossing over one area without suspecting it would have a deep area. But I did step into a deep pool and ate a lot of water and nearly drowned, but a friend had pulled me out and saved my life. In the present, in the past, my body was always weak and never healthy enough. Winters were very hard. Especially during physical education time when there were no adequate jungle gyms or swings, most of the times we ran, snow fight, or did rope pulling but those were always too much for me so I had usually sat out.
The second incident was during winter time while I was standing next to a well. Since it was winter the ice had formed in the wells and the bottom was rising up fast. Some of the older students (at that time some of them had past age of learning – because of the Korean War) were using the bucket to pull out some water and I was standing nearby to watch in an interest, but when I did the line that had the bucket I was holding caught on my pants and pulled me down into the deep well (it was made during the Japanese occupation of Korea), but I was still on the bucket and some of the older students pulled the bucket up in all their might. On the next day during morning class meeting, the principal ordered all the students in front of me and said “yesterday we had a near accident. A student nearly fell into the well, but survived. This is the student.”He told us to be careful when we are near the well.
When we came back to restored Seoul there was nothing to eat. No house to be sheltered in. It was all burned down. With nothing to eat I got malnutrition and gotten weak. During winter time I had frostbites on my hand and foot. It got swollen and turned blue at times. One time I got up morning and scratched a part of my nose that was very itchy and scratched it so hard that a part of my skin came off with the nail. The scar still remains to this day. On a very cold winter day in 4th grade while I was attending the Ansan Elementary School next to MuAkJae Pass, during that time the floors were colored with citron and had waxed to make it shiny and slick. I was coming into class and was walking fast between the classes when someone tripped me and I flew a bit and landed hard a few paces away. Even though it had hurt a lot, I still went to class, because my mother told me even if I don’t do well with grades she wanted me to have a perfect attendance reward from school. I don’t even know how I got home that after that painful trip.
Since my mother was working out in labor she came home late and only was able to see her in the morning. When she woke me up the next day to go to school, I couldn’t move. But my mother carried me on her back and took me to the principal. The kind principal’s name was YongTae Moon. He had the same family name as my mother, NamPyung Moon, and had a great care for poor students – after hearing out about the incident about my legs wrote a letter. He suspected something was wrong with both my leg bones, and told me to go to a bonesetter’s in SuhDaeMoon. My mother carried me to the bonesetters in Gwanghwamoon. The doctor who had prescribed me told me that as suspected, the two leg bones in the pelvis had been wrenched and had I came in later I would’ve been permanently on a wheelchair. A dozen years later I had met the principal in San Jose and was able to serve him a dinner thanking him for his hospitality during my youth. How great was it for me to meet him again in San Jose despite the world being so large!
The Teacher who brought dinner during Sunset
During the restoration period in Seoul there are were several houses that still stood and lived in there for a while. We had gathered some of the wood in the burned out town and made a fire to stay warm during winter nights.
We never knew when our mother would return so we were forced to go to sleep despite all the hunger and having nothing to play with.
But I do remember many times when my older brother’s homeroom teacher whose name is MyungBum Kim came to us while we were all huddled in cold. I think he came from GongJu College of Education. He was very kind to us though he didn’t say much words, he brought us his food for us to eat! We were crying as we ate the anchovies and rice and I still remember that clearly. As I write this, the teacher that brought us dinner during sunset during the hungry times brings me tears.
During the kimchi preparation during winter time, in YoungChon Market place we gathered some of the decent vegetable leftovers and went to the fields and grabbed some of the frozen napa and radish and took some of the leftover peppers (in current town of EungAmDong) and grinded them to make kimchi and ate them. After the Korean War, gathering food to eat was very difficult. Our family sometimes gathered rice and barley chaffs and grinded, added saccharine (a type of artificial chemical sweetener) and made a barley chaff cake to eat. To be honest, life is long and tenacious even without proper nutrition to eat.
The hardest time was during the annual Athletics Gathering.
Since I was weak running I never got the 1st place, and only my brothers and sisters were there to see me. My mother as always made the barley chaff cake since there was nothing else to make for lunch. Because of this how many times was my mother in pain?
The biggest problem was during lunch time when I had to eat with my fellow students. I was in shame to eat the barley chaff cake with them, so I went to a hiding spot where I had agreed to meet with my brothers to eat there. Somehow my homeroom teacher found out where I hid (since there were a lot of rivers and trees near our school I used to sneak out) and came, and when that happened I usually ran away gathering the food I was eating.
But the teacher caught me and I used to cry. So did the teacher.
And even if the teacher wanted me to come back down with the rest of the students I refused. When that happened the teacher would bring something to eat. It was the love of the teachers that made me into this day.
Most of them have passed away now, and when it’s my time to go those people are the ones I will never forget, even if I am to be buried.
(January 2011)
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Rise HeungGu! 
Narrow escape from death experience