13/7/26 A memoir about Korea
Warmly recalling a childhood visit from a Korean uncle, exploring the Korean side of her heritage, to try deal with her estrangement of her Korean mother. The book title symbolizing ancestral legacy, resilience, and a protective shield over Korean heritage amidst tumultuous historical invasions.
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. Her uncle Hong do had come from Korea to stay with them and studied at Boston University. He had a thriving business but he partner disappeared with the money, so he returned to Korea. She did not have an easy relationship to her mother and decided to take a trip to Korea. Her mother was a great violinist and left Korea to become a music student in NY. Mira got on better with her father an American. Korean's don't show physical affection in families, certainly not in public.
1443 Korean writing script is called Hangul invented by King Sejong to democratize the common people so that all could read. Confucian is family and social relationships, self reliance , self sacrifice, pacifism , harmony with nature, Korea was the last oriental country to open its gates to the west.
1895 Japan ordered the assassinations of Korean Queen Min.
1904 Feb till Sept 1905 Russia Japanese war.
1910 Japan annexed Korea..
1919 King Kojong had refused to sign a document to be circulated at the Paris Peace Conference, and shortly after that the king was dead of apoplexy but it was believed that he was poisoned. A pacifist march for independence. Korean massacres were a series of brutal suppressions carried out by the Imperial Japanese Army and police and Jeamni church burnings. 7,5000 died. Japanese was the only language allowed in schools.
1936 Kangwon Province was in her family possession they were the Min clan the chief land owners in a province that straddled north and south. Living under the Japanese dictatorship many fled to Manchuria and Siberia to avoid impoverishment only the bankrupt commoners and serfs remained. The grandfather imperial scholar title bestowed on him by King Kojong rules 1864 to 1907was now worthless. Grandfather had watched the Japanese police burning books and a group of Government ministers committed suicide to protest annexation. Farmers and civilians had been slaughtered and artisans, doctors and printers were kidnapped and taken to works in Japan. Some villages the men were forced into churches and they were set alight while women died trying to save their men.
Parents who could not afford education, their children were deliberately being left illiterates. They could not understand how Japan so immoral yet it flourished. On Grandfather Min estate they had cultivated mulberry grove and the peasants set up a silkworm industry. There were orchards of many fruits and bamboo.
Sygman Rhee was living in exile in Shanghai leading the Korean government in exile.
1937 The Sino- Japanese war broke out with Japan sacking Nanking and massacring's
When WW2 broke out, Korea was in chains. Korean men of all backgrounds were drafted. The volunteer Labour Corps was set up with a promise of study in Japan but this was later revealed to be forced sex slavery for the Japanese troops, recruitment came more from rural areas where poorer people were more gullible. These women ended up every where that Japanese troops had been sent. All Korean natural and manufactured resources were taken into Japans war effort making Korea poorer.
WW2 200,000 Korean women taken into sex slavery wherever Japanese troops went. Then Korea was divided between the Russians and Americans
1945 August after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bomb they heard the Emperor Hirohito on the radio capitulating .Now Korea was free but Russia declared war on Japan and took north Korea. For the first time people could see the Korean flat up. There were no longer Japanese on the streets and the houses of high up Japanese officials were vacant. The Soviet army was already crossing the Yula river and 38th parallel was chosen as the dividing line so that Seoul would fall under the south.
3 weeks after Japan capitulated US troops landed at Inchon. As the Americans disembarked the Korean delegation. Japanese police were keeping order and shot some Koreans. The Korean Democratic Party had to move fast to gain recognition and the US held a ceremony to welcome Dr. Syngman Rhee back from Exile. Kim Il Sung was a revolutionary colonel in the Soviet army and they had a ceremony to welcome him to rules the north.
They were now able to speak Korean at school where English French and German was also now taught. Her father was now able to get a home in KDP headquarters next to Nanking Park as he was appointed press secretary to the Home Minister.
1948 till 1994 Kim Ill Sung the last Stalinist leader took over North Korea.
With returning exiles and refugees fleeing the north there was a shortage of housing, and a lot of illegal housing went up. A man her father met and gave a lecture at the English society and they could hardly understand his Oxford accent. George Blake the British chief in Seoul later was imprisoned in North Korea was finally unmasked as a Soviet Spy.
1948 August 15th the Republic of Korea was officially founded with Syngman Rhee as the first President.
1948 December the Russians had officially left with the DPP Democratic Peoples Party with Kim Il Sung as Soviet trained Stalinist puppet.
1949 spring the US troops officially left even though they asked they to remain until the Korean army was properly established.
1950 May, election only gave Syngman Rhee a quarter of the National Assembly while Northern troop were massing on the border.
1950 June ,Some though that China was more likely to attempted a communist uprising in Taiwan than Korea. People ran on the bank so its doors were closed, at the university they were told classes were cancelled. At the US embassy they were burning documents. The public were asked to stay in their homes. The north had launched a surprise attack on Onjin and 90,000 had crossed the 38th parallel. Kim Souyin a spy had been living with her boyfriend Colonel John Baird and sending precise information to her Communist boyfriend Lee in the north. 3 days after the attack Seoul had fallen. The South army was retreating to south of the Han river. They left their house in the administrative neighborhood and moved into a modest house to hide their identity. As they closed the door they heard the bridge exploding on the Han river. When she visited friend she did not want them to know how to how to find her. North Koreans massacred South Koreans in Taejon and Chonju. For the next 3 month the family stayed in hiding and grew thinner. She studied hard at English as she knew she wanted to leave Korea.
1950 Sept. Mc. Arthur and the UN forces landed in Inchon on their way to Seoul. 81 days later the UN forces took Seoul back and her brother arrived in a US uniform and well fed. He managed to get his sister Chung a job as a clerk at the airstrip in Kimpo, there was a squadron of Australian Meteor planes a weather station as well as US cartographers. The wireless broadcast music of tghe time including the popular Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Good Night Irene. In October there was another attack against the South and Mc Arthur ordered napalm bombing on all North Korean Industry. Another Chinese surprise attack that Mc Arthur put down to poor intelligence. However most Chinese casualties were from frost bite and not combat.
The US General Walker died in an accident and General Ridgeway took over and brought a new fighting spirit. Chung and her army unit had fled south a while and returned to Seoul which was now in flames. She also describes the thousands of hungry people escaping again along the roads. Refugees centres were set up by the UN and people were sprayed like cattle against lice. At Teagu the UN arranged rice rations. Seoul changed hands 4 times in 9 months. 1950 July till 1953 June Korean War, 74,000 UN fatalities of them 35,000 were US soldiers.
Chung as a skilled violin player managed to get to the US and studied art and music at the Julliard Arts School and married an Irish American.
During the Korean war 10 million families were separated by the division along the 38 parallel. They go to the bridge of no return to burn incense to pray. Her mothers maternal grandparents were left in the north. Her mother had not been able to see her grandmother before she left for America. Along the DMZ were many lines of defense. Seoul is close to the DMZ She was not able to meet many relative as a result who had been trapped in the north.. There are blocked railway tracks that once could take you to Pong young and onto Manchuria, Mongolia and then Peking to Harbin. She went to see her grandparents tomb and there is a book of the family genealogy in it. This was written in Chinese characters as that was the language of Korean royalty.
She had come to know her mother better from the tour, and felt a certain belonging in Korea. Neither Japan or the US want Korea reunited but there are 37000 troops left to guard, against China and the Soviets. America fought against communism not for Korea. She never managed to see the farm where her mother grew up. In the 20 C Korea had undergone annexation , class reform 2 wars , mass migrations, partitioning and building drives.
Her ancestors in defiance of centuries of barbarous invasions - by the Japanese, Manchus, and finally the Communists - he built a temple high in the mountains, and planted one thousand chestnut trees to shield it from view. They wanted to get there but it was the closed season and would have needed mountain climbing equipment. They would not have been able to recognize leafless Chestnut tree in winter.
