It is a bustling place, a meeting ground of whooshing colors and mingling voices and frenzied motion. It is the type of place that a local enters without a second thought, a fabric tote swinging from the crook of her arm as she visits, one by one, the produce man, then the fishmonger, then the halmoni who sells a spread of homemade soups and banchan, before stopping by the snack stand on her way out to eat a quick plate of tteokbokki in the winter. It is the type of place that foreign tourists enter wide-eyed and beaming, eager to soak in the culture and use the phrases they have memorized for this very occasion. Annyoung haseyo, they will enunciate, nodding jovially to the hunchbacked ladies peeling garlic next to the till. If there is a seasoned expat in their midst, he will proudly point out which stall has the best kimchi and which store has apples the size of an infant’s head.
This traditional market in a small, somewhat neglected neighborhood in the northernmost part of Seoul looks no different from any other of its kind. It is an open-air market, except for the domed ceiling that keeps rain and snow but little else out, and you can smell the dumplings and noodles a full minute before you arrive at the entrance. Once you enter, you would see the women with their coiled perms and the butchers with their red light and hanging meat. If you venture in a little deeper, you would see little stores with signs that read, “Rice Cakes with a 50 Year Tradition” or “Fried Chicken as Seen on TV”. What you wouldn’t see is a man, very old, small in stature, sitting in a room 6 feet by 8 feet transcribing Korean poetry by hand.
His daughter first discovered him hard at work four months ago, when the early March thaw signaled the end of a long and brutal winter. She had felt unusually chipper that day; perhaps it was the spring air, perhaps it was the fact that they had already made a tidy profit and it was barely lunchtime. She took care of the morning customers, asked her husband to man the store alone for a while, and opened the thin sliding door to rest for a bit in the attached back room. She was startled when she saw her father there, sitting at the ancient lacquered floor table. He was dressed in his Sunday best: a grey wool suit with vest, a thick houndstooth flat cap, and argyle socks. His forehead was creased in concentration, his thin lips parted just enough for the ends of his teeth to be visible.
“Dad, what are you doing?”
He ignored her and continued writing. His right hand moved in a flurry, a stubby yellow pencil gripped tightly in his fingers. He mumbled something to himself, paused for a moment, then scribbled again. He appeared to be transcribing the contents of one notebook into another. Both notebooks were filled with his own handwriting.
“Dad, what are you doing?” she tried again. This time, he looked up, but his face didn’t soften.
“I am busy, Mihee.”
She crept closer. His handwriting was messy and rushed, but she could make out a few words.
Until I breathe my last breath… I shall love all that must die…[1]
Her face brightened. “Oh! I know this poem. I read it in school.”
Her father continued to write.
“But Dad, why are you writing these down all of a sudden? And isn’t this notebook already full of the same poems?”
Mihee peered over her father’s frail shoulder and extended her arm toward the notebook. He slapped her hand away.
“Mihee, you must let me do my work! I told you I am busy.”
Mihee stared. Until yesterday, her father had visited the market once a week to pick up groceries and say hello to the neighboring shopkeepers. He had complained of the heat in the summer and the cold in the winter, brought Mihee and her husband sweet rice punch from Mrs. Park’s stall, and on occasion helped bag fruit during peak hours when customers grew tired of waiting. He had never set foot in the tiny back room, not once in a full year, not since Mihee had discovered her mother lying dead in that very room.
“Dad, I…”
Her father raised his head and met her gaze. His eyes were blazing, but to her they seemed more frightened. Like the eyes of a cornered antelope determined to go out fighting.
“Mihee, listen to me. They are coming. We don’t have much time.”
Mihee did what most daughters would do in that situation. Her browser filled with search terms like “Alzheimer’s disease symptoms”, “dementia treatment”, “how to prevent dementia from worsening”, and “elderly father acting strange”. A few hours later, her father walked out of the room, waved goodbye, and went on his way. That night, back at the apartment they all shared, Mihee and her husband found him sitting on the living room floor, his back resting against the couch. He was watching his favorite television show and peeling an orange. Get some rest, he said to them, you must be so tired. The same words he had spoken to them when they returned from work, night after night after night. Dad? she had asked. Her voice shook slightly. Are you feeling okay? Of course Mihee, why wouldn’t I be feeling okay? He looked at her curiously. She stared at her husband, who shrugged. We brought home some chicken, he said to his father-in-law. Let’s eat at the kitchen table.
By the time Mihee and her husband opened their shop the next morning, she was convinced she had made the entire thing up. The morning passed uneventfully; for lunch, she and her husband went next door for a bowl of seafood noodles. When they returned, Mihee went into the back room to change into a fresh pair of socks. There he was, in the same suit and hat, posture straight but eyes wild. Writing. Scribbling. Transcribing.
The season of ripening green grapes… Whisperings of an approaching village epoch…[2]
“Dad!” she squawked. She marched over and snatched up one of his notebooks. “What in the world are you doing?”
Her father stood up so quickly his knees wobbled.
“You are preventing important work!” he bellowed.
Mihee dropped the notebook. He picked it up, placed it back on the table, and returned to work.
Mihee spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on a stool behind the cash register as her husband took care of the customers.
“You look pale,” he said.
Mihee just shook her head. Her husband knew this was her way of telling him not to press further.
Four hours later, Mihee’s father exited the room with his suit jacket draped over his forearm.
“Such nice weather,” he quipped.
Mihee took her father to a doctor the following morning. They went to a neighborhood internal medicine clinic, where a young doctor ran simple tests and asked simple questions. He doesn’t display any signs of being confused or disoriented, he said, but you’ll want to get him a full checkup if you’re worried. So Mihee took her father to a fancy medical institute situated on the 19th floor of a glass building in the middle of the financial district. She waited in the lobby as he shuffled around in a blue robe, going from station to station to get his blood drawn, his hearing checked, his chest x-rayed. When she got the results back the following week, all the boxes were ticked “normal”. A bit hard of hearing, sure, but the bloodwork was clean and his reflexes were good. All around spectacular results for an 84-year-old man. Meanwhile, her father had visited the back room every single day that week.
Mihee made an appointment with a neurologist specializing in dementia. The doctor asked dozens of questions, poked and prodded him, scanned his brain. The news was good: he was as healthy as a horse. He was alert, aware, and his scans showed no abnormalities. Mihee wanted to scream.
This is great news, the doctor said. You should be very relieved. Yes, doctor, I am. I am so relieved, Mihee said. Is there… any other test you can run? Anything at all? Maybe he has something very rare and not easily detected. The doctor chuckled as if to say, ah, yes. I know your type. You’re one of those. She smiled benevolently. Anything is possible, she said. But as of the present your father shows no indications of dementia in any form. But Doctor. I mean, yes, that’s great. So great. Of course I’m glad to hear that. But he’s been acting very strange. The writing I told you about. When I try to talk to him in those moments, it’s like he doesn’t even know where he is. His eyes are different. They are not my father’s eyes. Yes, yes, he recognizes me. But I don’t think he knows what is going on. What is actually going on. The doctor nodded, her face dripping with clinical compassion. Yes, of course. This must be very frustrating for you. Unfortunately, strange symptoms do appear as people age, even if they are not diagnosed with anything officially. Your father may be thinking of the past more, as he grows older and reflects on his life. We all get sentimental from time to time. Perhaps he is getting lost in his memories, perhaps he finds comfort in transcribing these poems from his youth. I don’t think it is anything too serious.
As they left the doctor’s office, Mihee’s father placed a wrinkled hand on her arm.
“Mihee. My daughter. Do you see? I am fine. You worry too much.”
Mihee didn’t ask him about his hours in the back room. In fact, they had never talked about it with each other. She didn’t know if she was scared he wouldn’t remember, or if she was scared that he would.
So it continued, as the tentative warmth of March gave way to the lukewarm showers of April, Mihee’s father transcribed poetry five days a week. He carried his work with him at all times, tucked away in a tattered leather satchel he wore cross-bodied over his suit jacket. When the air grew thick with humidity, he switched to his blue cotton twill set and a solid brown newsboy cap. When the end of June brought record-breaking heat, he donned linen trousers and a white short-sleeved dress shirt with suspenders. Mihee learned not to bother her father when he worked. He seemed healthy enough, and aside from this one thing he was largely the same man he had always been. She scrolled through online message boards, reading stories of children caring for their elderly parents with dementia and told herself that her father was different. He did not stare at the wall for hours or throw his soup bowl across the room for no reason. He remembered everyone’s name and face at the market and did not repeat himself ten times or mix up his words. With time, Mihee grew accustomed to her father’s routine and accepted it as a hobby of sorts. By summertime, she even joked about it with her husband. Maybe he’s writing the Great Korean Novel in there, she would say. Lots of writers have quirks.
Then, one day, he showed up at the fruit stall in his old school uniform. Shinichi Iwamoto, the nameplate read.
“Dad, what are you wearing?”
Her father walked past her and into the back room.
“Isn’t your father’s name Kim Youngsu? What was that Japanese name on his uniform?”
Mihee answered after a long pause. “The Japanese name-changing program. My dad was in high school when everyone in his family had to change their names. He used to talk about it a lot, remember?”
Youngsu had spoken of that time often, mostly with his wife Eunju who had lived through it too. When they met he had been 25 and she 23. One war had ended just to give way to another, and while they were not afforded the idealism demanded by youth, they were hopeful. They spoke of the past, of dead siblings and violence and the nightmares that never went away. They spoke of freedom and resistance, of Yoon Dong-ju and Yi Yuksa and Kim Sowol. They both, deep down, felt happiness was not something that could realistically be attained in a country so ripped apart, but they were desperate to try anyway. For what defines a small nation, stepped on by colonizers and stripped of everything that makes it whole, but an unrelenting army of patriots who bleed the colors of their country’s flag and will die on the streets in a blaze of fire shouting “Long live the Republic of Korea”?
Youngsu proposed with a bouquet of handpicked azaleas. Eunju said yes. The war raged on, the bodies piled up, and their country remained split in two. They moved in with Youngsu’s parents and slowly, painstakingly, built a life. They had three children and moved to Seoul, where Mihee, Jihee, and Heechul navigated the rapidly changing Korea of the 70s and 80s. They wore blue jeans and watched television. Youngsu sat them down often; just from the tone of his voice, his children knew a lecture was coming. I want you to remember what I tell you. Inscribe these words in your heart. We are a country of survivors, and soon we will be leaders. But you must never forget the struggle that birthed us. It was in my lifetime that Korea was ruled by another country, our language and names taken, our sisters and daughters taken. Men gathered in basements to draw the Korean flag and plot assassinations. Freedom was fought for, not given. You must always remember this. Mihee and Jihee and Heechul would nod respectfully, their eyes downcast. Yes, Dad, they would say. Let me read you this poem, Youngsu would say, retrieving his tattered copy of Sky, Wind, and Stars. So many resistance poets died in prison. They died too young, fighting for the country they would never see free. Do not think we will never be colonized again, do not assume that oppression is a thing of the past. It can happen again. It can happen anytime. At that point, who will fight for us? Who will write beautiful poetry from prison that will move an entire nation to act? Yes, Dad, Mihee and Jihee and Heechul would nod, thinking about Coca-Cola and Raquel Welch and the new movie theater in town.
Yes. He used to talk about it a lot. About history, names, poets. But his children had grown up in a different world. They were being raised not just by him, who knew how to hold and cherish history, but also by a society that was eager to expand and innovate. They wanted the future, not the past. They wanted blue jeans with zippers, not dirt-caked hanbok and gomusin and sad stories of displacement and death. Only later would they realize that, simply by being born into this country, they were required to carry the flame of rage and resistance. It was a birthright, wanted or not. It burned red and blue, flames of Joseon peace and wrath, turning people bitter or strong or hopeful, but never apathetic.
When her father exited the room that day, Mihee stopped him.
“What year is it?” she demanded.
“What?”
“What year is it, Dad? Tell me what year it is!”
Her father looked surprised. “It’s 2011, Mihee.”
Mihee was filled with despair. She wished he had been wrong, so she could shout Aha! I finally got you! and hold his hand all the way to the condescending brain doctor so she could declare in her smug face, I told you! I told you he wasn’t right in the head. She wished he had hallucinations, or spewed garbled nonsense, or asked, Who are you? once in a while. She wished all this, and she hated herself for it.
Of course Youngsu knew none of this.
Certainly, he knew his daughter was worried. He felt bad, but what could he do? He knew there was no way to make her understand. She had never understood, not like he had. He did not want to be viewed as one of the “end-of-days crazies”, as the less sensitive kids called them, the people who marched through crowded streets holding a bleeding cardboard cross in one hand and a corded microphone in the other. Some pulled wagons with large square speakers. Nearly all had some sort of signage declaring “REPENT OR PERISH” or “No Jesus, Fire Hell”. Youngsu had seen enough of these people to know that no matter how earnest their efforts, they were never taken seriously. How could he explain his work without being relegated to a senile lunatic? No words would succeed. Only time could prove what he knew.
When Eunju died, over half of Youngsu died right with her. Who said the old generation wasn’t romantic? Youngsu didn’t go around declaring his love for all the world to hear, but he allowed his heart to dictate his actions in the safety of her private company. He brushed her hair each night, noting with a solitary sadness how it thinned as she aged. As they lay in the darkness awaiting sleep, she would rest her head on his outstretched arm as he recited love poems to her in his low, melodic voice. He serenaded her with her favorite song on her birthday each year, his voice trembling with the vulnerability of a man who sings despite being unable to hit the right notes. They say a healthy marriage comprises two whole people, but without Eunju Youngsu felt less than half of himself and he was just fine with that. With everything they had seen and heard and experienced, it was a relief to give up some of that weight for someone else to carry.
It was a couple months after her death that he began hearing the voices. He wasn’t going crazy, that he knew for sure. He maintained complete control over his faculties. But he did hear them. The voices. Men, women, young, old. Ethereal, wispy, gravelly, booming, menacing voices that delivered his mission. Genocide was coming. History was gearing up to repeat itself. Names would be reassigned, an entire language obliterated—for good, this time. Youngsu was Korea’s last hope. He was to transcribe as much resistance poetry as he could and bury the notebooks all over the country, so that in a faraway future, when his scrappy little nation somehow prevails once again, posterity will have records of the words that have and will always signify liberation. So he worked, day after day, keeping a rigid schedule but taking care not to burn out, for he had important work to do, very, very important work, transcribing poetry written by soldiers who fought for their country in a cramped prison cell with a pen mightier than the shin guntō.
He was nearing the end of his mission. He had transcribed 50 of the most important poems into 75 leatherbound notebooks, and now all he had to do was wrap each one in plastic, place it in a chemically inert, airtight container, and begin his final trip around his beloved homeland before it became a colony again.
He wrote the final stanzas of Yoon Dong-ju’s “Counting the Stars at Night”[3] slowly before shutting the notebook.
Because I have a secret yearning,
Seated on this star-showered bank,
I have writ my name thereon,
And covered it with earth.
In truth, it is because the insects chirp
All night, and grieve over my bashful name.
But spring shall come to my stars after winter’s delay,
Greening the turf over the graves;
So, this bank that buries my name
Shall proudly wear the grass again.
Youngsu stood up. His shoulders felt broader, his back straighter. When he stepped out of the back room and into the busy marketplace, he saw white men in military uniforms and Japanese men wielding swords. He saw youths with Farrah Fawcett hair and old ladies in hanbok. He saw a stateless people whose souls reverberated with the han of the peninsula. He saw a World War II tank rolling by. He saw ruddy-cheeked children buying hard candy bigger than their noses as the town gossips laughed and slapped one another’s arms. And all the way down the entire span of the market, in front of the entrance where a brilliant summer sun illuminated his entire world, he saw Eunju. She was 23, her long black hair in a single braid down her back. She smiled at him, and he smiled back.
[1] Excerpted from Yoon Dong-ju’s poem “Prologue”, from his collection Counting the Stars at Night. Translated by Sung-il Lee.
[2] Excerpted from Yi Yuksa’s poem “Green Grapes”. Translated by David E. Shaffer.
[3] Translated by Insoo Lee.
*****
Sarah K. H. Yoo is a writer and emerging literary translator based in Korea. She is a Literary Translation Institute of Korea and British Centre for Literary Translation Summer School alum and this year’s National Centre for Writing’s Emerging Translator Mentorships mentee in Korean (mentored by Clare Richards).
