अ Novel

Episode 11: The Editor Roars



It's time I thought of humanity and personality. It's time I thought of benefaction, celebration and honor which had once been allowed for me. It's time I thought of the lost opportunity which had been screwed up and humiliated by none other than myself.

I now realize at this age that I had been so forgetful of people and things who had helped me out, from the depth of despair. When I had been desperate they held out helping hands, which I soon forgot. Or, I am afraid I tended to forget, which has been a major character flaw.

I now discover to my horror that there are a huge number of persons I should have called on and said thank you. They would never forget and would never forgive me for that. I now recollect an anecdote in which an enlightened Buddhist monk appears an indebted yet defaulted person.

The monk could view a strange man negotiating the uphill toward the Buddhist temple in his meditation. Taking a closer look at him, the monk knew to his astonishment that the man would turn to mugging the temple, braving any chance to kill. After a brief rumination, the monk, realized to his aghast that the would-be mugger had been his creditor in his previous life, who was on his way to take the money back which had been lent to the monk himself.

The debtor might be inclined to forget his or her debt, but the creditor would never forget the credit he or she would take it back. When I had paid a condolence visit to my elementary school teacher at my sixth-grader class, I knew to my shame that his widow and close relatives were mad at me because I had been indebted to them and ungrateful nonetheless.

In the summer months of 1954 or around that year, Mr. Kwon and his wife used to put me up at his home whenever I got myself trapped caused by the swollen stream river because of the downpour during day class. He was more than a teacher. He used to arouse in me curiosities and exhilarations at every class work.

The KT had been another boon in my life. I can't dare say every minute of my stay in the media had been a bliss and celebration for my life but I can say with no reservations that I had gotten a great origin of knowledge and happiness from it. Each and every member of the newspaper company had been like a mentor to me.

That's why I had inquired after any newsroom patient at every category of hospitals in the capital whenever the notices of the newsroom, folks who had called in sick, had been posted on the newsroom bulletin board. That's why I had made every condolence visit to any newsroom person whose parents or close relatives had died.

In retrospect, desperation had been a sort of motivation that got rocks rolling. Looking back, I find that I myself had lost the motivation so soon. Forgetting the determination that I had assured myself, I began to loosen up.

Mounting the stairs to the newsroom of The Korea Times to have a job interview with the managing editor, I had eagerly prayed I would get the job. While having the rarely earned conversation with the respectful interviewer, I thought he was a very handsome gentleman.

However, as soon as I had been accepted and embraced as a cog wheel of the machine, I didn't look up to him as my mentor any longer. I answered him back from time to time. That had been a challenge to his authority.

I regret and remorse that I had been considered by the folks, who had done me or thought they had done me every gamut of favors, to be a very paragon of ungratefulness. I can't forgive myself for that. I also deplore the fact that I have more often than not been mistaken to be unthankful, for which I haven't done my utmost to convince the others to think otherwise.

Regardless of the controversy over the credit and discredit of the newspaper or other broadcasting media, Shimmanni the country boy had spent every day of the full seven years at the newspaper company wondering with awe the shift of the media into a gigantic power machine. That might have been a sea change, that is, the metamorphosis of the news media from a modest town crier to a huge organization with political, social, cultural, and economic significance. Or, the organization of power itself.

That's been a way of a town crier. I as a country boy had very often seen the town crier himself. The crier of the town of course had been an adult male person with a good voice. The crier, climbing a small peak of the town hill, had made a fullest cry to make some urgent news heard, of which the major notice had been that of the labor contribution to improve boe, that is, the water channel.

The means of transmitting the news developed and improved from naturally manual to arbitrarily physical, mechanical, electrical and electronic. The tools for the transmission of the news evolved from mimeographs, copiers, linotypes, teletypes, facsimiles, newspapers, televisions, and the Internets.

The interests in getting some things known, and in the same context, unknown, to specific or unspecific persons or to the public, have become a power. The printing news media and their news persons in the downtown of the capital or the broadcasting stations and their folks in the Yoido periphery, influence the national community by their clout comparable to that of the governmental agencies.

I had observed the power seekers, its brokers, and its wielders, at the entrance of the newsroom, to enter and exit the room. The ladders of the social status they had climbed ranged from the ministers of the governmental agencies, congressmen of the National Assembly, diplomats, businessmen, movie stars, and the KCIA guys regularly commuting between the media organs. They all had been interested in some specific news articles posted in or not posted in the newspaper.

One of those, who had been the most interested in lobbying and manipulating the news media circles, was Gen. Chun Doo Hwan and his martial law government. Gen. Chun, stepping up censorships to the contents of the news articles and literally evicting the press people who had been inclined to dissent to the military dictatorship on the one hand, started wooing and "bribing" the leftovers.

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Out of some early morning stimulation, (It is 05:30 hour of October 28, 2010) I rose from my bed seat and, tiptoeing through the living room, push opened the room in which my wife had been sleeping. I said sheepishly, "I'm here to say good morning to you!"

"Get out!" she blurted out with some irritation. "Need some more sleep." Rejected and humiliated, I stepped away from my wife's, with my just erected stuff drooping with shame.

That had been so easy 40-some years ago. I miss the years the well had always been wet and not parched. I also miss the good old days when I had been urged to do something for her. "Do that to me one more time before you go sleeping!" I also miss the unforgetful hour, in which, Cha Hee, under the guise of the pitch dark, had literally waylaid me.

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Gen. Chun Doo Hwan and his dictatorial government had courted the press in a very extreme and weird way. In short, he had handed out the material means of every conceivable convenience and comfort for the press, that is, the leftovers of the press, who had been considered by the Chun clique not to be so hostile, rather obsequious.

The dictator had bought his way into the heart of the media: He had built the convenience building for the press populace and named it Korea Press Center. He had provided low-interest loans payable for a long-term period for the press people and their dependents. He also had sent the cadre members of the press overseas for their further study, which had been financed by the revenues streaming from the real estates, that is, the management of the Press Center itself. The dictator and his government also had comforted the press people at large by giving each and every member of the press a gala opportunity of a foreign travel for one or two weeks.

In brief, Gen. Chun. the chief architect of the December 12 coup, 1979, bribed the whole press of South Korea in such a radical fashion he had usurped the power seat of the nation. I still wonder with a subdued and timid heart that there could be any parallel on earth that the highest power of a nation has ever been successful in achieving the weird objective of bribing the news media as a whole

The fraternal organizations, such as a chamber of commerce, should have to be a voluntary and autonomous entity. However, The Press Center of South Korea was not created by the financial contributions of the member media corporations or by the people who work for them. That had been a facility gift by the Chun government to the press media of the nation. It had been a sheer bribery.

The common sense in me dictates that the press community of South Korea should have to start chipping in to make a sum of money to buy back the convenience facility designated as The Press center. Or, if they were not determined and prepared to have their own fraternal organization by their own financial donation, the name plate should have to be shut down and the fund should have to be restored to the national coffer.

My dismissal from The Korea Times had much to do with that common sense. That idiosyncrasy of dismissal called "the recommended resignation" had of course been forced by the company but the procedure for my whacking had proceeded in a very calm and peaceful way.

I had of course raised some voices in the newsroom against some protocol suggestion from then managing editor Mr. Yun somebody but it had been Yun himself that had blurted out curse words and sworn at me and picked up some wooden tools to strike at me. But it had been me that had been denounced as the anathema to the corporate harmony.

What was the protocol suggestion from the managing editor then? He rose from his seat high up there and deigned to come near us proof readers and said nonchalantly, "How about meeting Ying at the airport?"

It had been too unexpected a suggestion made out of the blue at best. A dim-witted expression of good intentions at worst. So coarse and unbecoming of a supervisor in charge of a corporate workforce. Ying was a colleague all right but he was on his way back only from his pleasure trip and we were sweating out in the office and we were lacking in work force because Kim somebody had called in sick and Lim somebody was not showing up yet.

"What are you talking about?" I demanded to know. "We're lacking in hands now, and Ying is a pleasure traveler, isn't he? What on earth do we have to meet him for?"

"This goddamned son of a bitch!" the editor roared. "What a perfidious lot!" he picked up the proofs shelves. I rose from the seat and swore at him, too and, angered at me, some guys at the room dashed toward me, causing a scene.

अ Novel

Episode 10: Too Nomadic



It's been a great mystery what had driven Cha Hee to such desperation that night. Why I am saying it is a great mystery is that it hadn't happened in later years again and that it's been considered that a normal person couldn't have done such kind of weidry in such condition: Parents had been lying in a nick of a meter. Of course, the room was pitch dark because it had no glass windows and electric light was off.

Why had she been so horny? A feasible theory is that she had been overwhelmed at that time with an uncontrollable sexual urge, say, with the use of an aphrodisiac or something. She had never touched and heard about that: She was a simple country girl like me.

Why had she been so horny that night? The other feasible theory is that she had been a nymphomaniac or something. Far from that. She had been such a paragon of virtuous girls that she was a favorite daughter of her father: Her father liked to take Cha Hee of the rest of the five daughters.

She had never gone out with a boyfriend or something before me, I assure you. She sang a song after she had known me.
I've never known about love/
Till I've met you/
I've never known tears/
Till I've met you/

Another final theory for her weirdry is a victim theory that states to the effect that a particular female animal is attracted to a loser male, that is, a male animal that has been beaten down by a fierce struggle for mating. Cha Hee of course could not define her motive for her odd sexual urge nor could understand a particular social action theory. But a theory is feasible that she felt an extreme sympathy about the dreary situation in which my parents had been put and the sympathy subsequently turned into an impulsive stimulation on the verge of a sexual urge.

With the winner theory or the predator theory alone (Power is an aphrodisiac: Henry Kissinger), Cha Hee must have left my young man. But she has not left him. Rather, she has stayed, born him three sons, and financed their education. I am afraid a victim theory fits his case.

I had actually been a nomad myself. I hadn't shown a willingness to settle for my parents and for my wife. Too nomadic a life of me might have left my young wife so lonesome at times and tired. My oft-repeated reclaims of and withdrawals from jobs would have gotten her ready for rainy days by herself.

Starting from the winter of 1969, I kept making transfers from Kilan to Sangju to Onyang, where I quit the teaching job, of course forever. It was 1971. While I was making transfers, my parents, who had had a real hard time making ends meet, returned to their original rustic place where there were gravel, dirt, and soil to be ploughed.

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Cha Hee, who sat behind a small sewing machine as a seamstress when she had met my young man at Kilan, used to befriend it even after she had married him and born three sons, during which time she had moved from Kilan to Sangju to Onyang to Oksan and finally to Seoul. My young man, as a mirage seeker, while his wife had been leading a toilsome life as a supporter of herself, her family and her husband, was hitting the tortuous road as a failed higher government job seeker, an insurance salesman, and a day laborer. He had wound up taking a proof reader's job of a local English daily, the Korea Times. The separated family was reunited in 1974 in Seoul.

Grandma's condition got worse. She got confused with dates and names of things at first. As days went by, she had her belongings stolen too often by the daughter-in-law of all the family members. She kept asking for meals as if there had been a famished spirit inside her.

Everything about her began to lose points, angles, edges, orders, disparities, and degrees. In their place took the all the fuzziness, vagueness, and emptiness. She progressively showed blank expressions, asking bizarre questions making her sons and grand children perplexed and the visitors from the family clan flabbergasted.

The worst thing had happened. As grandma had been making rounds of the neighborhood, backbiting her first-son couple for their ill-treatments of her, which had of course been groundless. At this, what had been imploding in the great uncle and aunt couple exploded at last. They got their mother kept in a small back room of the house.

The great uncle and aunt couple is gone and their sons, that is, my cousins, are in their middle seventies and early sixties, and they are not aware that I'm writing about our grandma getting roughed up by her first-son couple for the record. The gist of the regrets is that we the grand children had been mere bystanders and that we had never made any efforts to improve the condition.

I won't particularly forgive myself. I had been such a coward that I had not been able to face up to grandma, when she had been domineering over my mom, for my mom's poor plight, and in later years, I had not been able to challenge my great uncle and aunt couple, when they had been mistreating their mother, for my grandma's pathetic condition.

There had been a very eerie aspect of human consciousness which could be researched in connection with grandma's Alzheimer's disease The crux of my contention is that the brain of a sufferer's would like to be awakened at some moment toward a specific person.

As she told me the story she was surprised by herself. She wondered aloud how such thing was possible. When she had once dropped by, when she had stayed far apart from me at Oksan running a dressmaker's shop, the then ailing grandma and given a courtesy greeting to her, her blank face brightened at once and recognized her.

Though grandma had never had an occasion to familiarize with Cha Hee, or her grand daughter-in-law before, she had recognized her at a first glance, saying "You're Shimmanni's wife, aren't you?" What had at that time been more surprising was that grandma had been pinpointing Cha Hee's destination and the object of her purchase, saying "You've been to Jeomgok Bazaar to buy salt, haven't you?" After that, in a minute, grandma's face had darkened: The gate to her consciousness had seemed to get slammed shut.

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Since I had quit the school teacher's job forever in 1971, after some more trial interviews and promises of calls from certain corporate entities, I got a job at an English daily as a proof reader and started settling, that is, a settlement-looking life in Seoul. That was in the summer of 1974, and the name of a news media was The Korea Times and still is.

I brought my family back home in Seoul. My first son Tai was in Seoul with us, and when I took my second son Hua, who had been in his grand parents' care, to a bus to Euiseong from Oksan, he burst out crying, clinging onto his grandma.

It was in the 1960s when I had first stepped in the capital of South Korea. I had escorted then as an enlisted army medic the sick soldiers of a certain armory company to Soodo Army Hospital stationed at the downtown of Seoul. After the army discharge, I had attended a college class of Seoul for one year. Seoul, in brief, had been just like a stopover city till 1974.

Now I had stepped into a bowel of an office building at the downtown of the capital. The Korea Times building had not been surrounded with the towering office buildings but it had rubbed shoulders with the buildings of power-- The Embassy of the U.S. and the Embassy of Japan buildings and several national agency buildings.

I liked the back alleys leading to The Korea Times building and the aroma of coffees which had been being brewed at several coffee shops. I liked the delicious smells of cooking, which had been getting over the fences of dining houses at the back alleys. I liked the music heard from somewhere around the alleys, prepared or played by someone.

To almost the same degree as, or more strongly poignant than the memory of the niceties, was the memory of famine, anxiety, and fear. My family and, me too, had been famished all the time through the 1970s and early 1980s. The paycheck envelope of a fledgling proof reader of a newspaper had been so lean.

If you walked the corridors or back alleys of power, you might look to the others to be one of the power community members. But you actually cannot and will not. You could be hungrier yourself. In my case, my wife Cha Hee had to run her age-old seamstress' shop at a corner market.

All the folks walking the back alleys of power couldn't be called the people of power. In the same context, all the folks working at a newsroom of a newspaper company couldn't be called the newspaper reporters. Any person who said that today would be remembered tomorrow for telling you that.

But people might be confused, and some people might still try to confuse the others by telling them that the proof readers are also newspaper reporters and that they are the folks that are entitled to prove to the readers that a specific newspaper company belongs to the readers but not to the people of power.

To be brief, the proof readers were not the reporters at all. They still are. They at that time were the ones who were supposed to compare notes with the proofs the linotype operators had typed with the original article scripts the reporters had typed on their typewriter.

I had my office desk placed a few steps further inside of the entrance door. Which means that the proof reading desk, at which I had worked as one of six or seven members, was the tail end of the pecking order of all the seven desks according to its priority of the assignments: The politics desk, the first in assignment rank, was placed contiguous to the chief editor's, and the proof reading desk was placed at the farthest end.

Dirt was near at hand, and filth was my companion. That is, then the rental one-room house was short of all the necessities of life: a toilet, a bath, and a shower. Omission was all the face- and body-cleaning procedure: All that was done as a summary feline fashion. Office colleague Ying somebody was heard at a certain distance that far to talk to my another colleague Tom Banes, "That guy stinks!", throwing a sidelong glance at me.

We were scared and terrified all the time, Cha Hee and me. Of all the fears, the fear of being warned from the landlady of the house to move out. We had more often than not been simultaneously startled to sit up from the bed, screaming, We must have had a nightmare of the same character.

Fears and spine-chilling terrors were clinging to my wife and me. The first two sons, Tai and Hua, didn't get us couple worried more than Kyo. The third son, Kyo, didn't get us reassured because he was exposed to the danger of plunging into the pit of an institutional Korean toilet.

Kyo had hardly done away with toilet training when the kid had to keep house which had been deserted by his mom gone to the seamstress's shop at the corner market of Black Stone Town, by his two brothers gone to their play fields of their own, and by me, his dad, gone for the day shift as one of the Korea Times' proof readers.

Imagine a tantalizing suspense that the Cha Hee couple had been praying their way through their work hours that their son Kyo might not fall into the horrible pit latrine several human heights deeper. The kid had been warned not to squat on the big hole, but to spread a waste paper on a concrete floor distanced from it and to defecate on it.

The thought sends me a shudder of fright that that could have been worse. I now thank to God with an epiphany, thinking that we had been bestowed with luck at that time, my family and me. I want to remind you of the reality that any gamut of communication was not available for the house keeping child: by radio, by dial phone, much less by cell phone.

The other two sons of mine, Tai and Hua, were playing the field with the other children of the town whose poor parents hadn't sent them to children's house or to kindergarten. The kids, who'd left behind in the street at the moment, deprived of a priceless chance to share with their peers, were just like stray dogs.

Things could have been worse. It was very fortunate of us that we all survived. Even while I had been reading proofs at the Times and while my wife had been pedaling the sewing machine at a corner market, Tai and Hua hadn't had a brush with the police, and Kyo had survived the pit latrine, keeping the house, such as it had been.

I am not trying to be difficult about the night-shift work. I am not saying I had been discriminated against the folks of the other desks. I am only saying that they had been more considerate toward the busier and more important pack.

While they hastened the exit from the office, after having done the night shift assignments, toward the company limousine for their return back home, they wanted me to extend the stay till the next morning by spending the warm night at the company bedroom.

Which was, in a certain sense. a real kindness, that is, a practical consideration to keep me from the night chill. When the night shift was done, it was almost always three or four o'clock. The day break was far away.

But I also wanted to keep me warm at my home with my wife. The fellows at the company bunk beds might have been a nuisance: The alcoholic or foot or shoe odors were intolerable at times, and the snores were at a high pitch.

Above all, the early morning chill was what I really disliked. The city bus ride on Bus No. 84 headed for Heukseok-dong, or Black Stone Town, was an unwholesome experience. The cold seat sent me a shudder.

In fact, all those people and things had been a novelty and wonder to a country boy like me. Such wondrous communication gadgets as cell phones and smart phones had not been heard about. Personal computers had just been marketed in South Korea and the major industrial businesses had just launched education programs of email composition and the use of it.

The linotype operating room of The Korea Times was situated at the 2nd floor. The page boys and girls had had a hard and busy time plying between the newsroom and the linotype room. They had usually been racing between the two floors.

The inconveniences of plying the proofs had been so noticeably palpable and the necessity of shortening the time by which we could make it to the deadline was so high that the concerned folks had agreed to bore a hole through the ceiling between the two rooms. As the linotype room folks hollered, ringing the bell, "They are coming up!" the upstairs people ran to the "well" to draw the proofs basket.

One of the virtues of the night shift was that I was able to hear some intriguing stories through the grapevines, or through the old timers. In 40 years' time, the stories, which had sounded so exciting, go the route of becoming the legends. The sagas of the Vietnam War had always been interesting, and the flashback stories of the Vietnam War correspondents had been no less interesting, too.

One night, the chief of the then night-shift workers, Economic Affairs Section Chief Gong somebody, under some influence, revealed his feat as a war reporter. He had once been to Saigon to cover the frontline or something. The then corrupt South Vietnam government or something had put the correspondents from Seoul in plush hotel rooms in Saigon and provided them with all assortments of luxurious room services imaginably conceivable.

What did actually excite or electrify me was not just the palpable experiences of a visible reporter but the impalpable stories by an invisible reporter or something. When I had first witnessed teletypes at a wire room of The Korea Times, it was rather shocking. I for a while guessed that a ghost had been at work. The key boards of the typewriting machines were stroking the letters by themselves.

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On the planet earth of differences, disparities and dissimilarities, don't you also wonder that what happened yesterday also happens today? Don't you wonder that what had occurred to your parents also occurred to you? Why do things reiterate themselves? Do you wish to call them crazy happenstances?

Since I had been discovered of the hidden disease I was taken by my wife to a university-level hospital yesterday morning. I had to go through an ultrasound scanning of a particular intestinal gland of mine. The young resident in charge explained to me on how and with what gadget to use to examine the stuff. After my initial refusal and some arguments, I was taken into the room again. Then the doctor asked me to take a weird posture. Really weird. I realized to my horror that I had my comeuppance.

When my wife had been running an accessory shop of her own after I had been booted out of The Korea Times in the winter of 1981, I had one morning gone to a downtown roadside shop to make a refund of what I had purchased the previous day. That night my wife, who had come home from her shop, talked about a "really" unpleasant experience of that day.

"What a disgusting customer or something!" she exploded, "that came to me and asked for a refund as soon as I opened the shop."
"What time was it?" I asked.
"It was around ten. Why?" she asked.
"Nothing," I said, but I knew to my horror that the time was exactly the hour when I had been asking for a refund of my own.

When I was drawing the well of proofs at the Times I didn't realize that I was reactivating the plights of my father who had been digging the coals as a coal miner of the wartime Mitsubishi Corporation at a small beach town coal mine of Nagasaki, Japan, during the period of 1940~1945.

Figuratively speaking, I had been digging the coals in my own way. That signifies that God's, or Nature's, or Providence's will is that the harsh toils, which had been infringed upon my father, were once again borne on me. I had to live them out, but I hadn't been aware, till then, of my father's harsh toils in Japan. That's been a shameful thing.

The invisible hands had been hitting the keyboards of the wire room of The Korea Times, warning of some imminent danger. The continuous warning issued from the invisible folks across the Pacific was that Gen. Chun Doo Hwan, who had masterminded the Dec. 12 coup of 1979, would take charge.

Tension had gripped the nation, which had been full of the imaginary sounds of gunshots and shrieks. The assassination of President Park by his confident KCIA chief of all the people and the overturn of his government overnight and the issuance of the martial law had put the nation on a raw nerve.

While the alerts out of the national border were brisk at work, the people within the national border were put under a gag. The news scripts of foreign sources referring to the shady movements of the coup authorities were deleted. The social gatherings of political character were not permitted, and if held, they were imprisoned with impunity.

Cha Hee had been very resourceful. Her feet had been brisk at pedaling the sewing machine at a corner market of Black Stone Town and her hands very dextrous in handling the domestic chores. She had gotten family "wealth", such as it had been, by "not spending", that is, by saving "hard-earned money" before spending it, and mainly through an institutional method of kye, which means institutional "mutual funds", which, organized by a small close-knit group, is designed to apportion and collect a specific sum of money from each member in order to give the predetermined specific sum of money to the duly selected member at each chance.

I hope my readers will not get dizzy at a sort of juggling done by this writer himself. You will know the art of tossing things, that is, bats or balls or something, and catching them in rapid succession. The narration of my novel is done juggling fashion by this writer in the juggling way of time sequence, so the date and time of each function could be confusing.

The past occurrences are of course are described mostly in the past tense or past perfect tense, which are sooner or later given a perspective view in the present tense, which is done mostly in retrospective or reflective point of view. in brief, the overall context is that I've sinned and I regret, and I've made mistakes and I feel sorry for that, and I've been indebted and I am grateful for all that.

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My wife did all the troubles of registration and payment of the fees for the diagnosis and treatment of my disease. That has been a dizzying experience done in the throngs of the patients and their families, mounting the escalator and dismounting it, waiting in the multitude looking at the red-letter number plates and names, tension-mounted moments with the consulting doctor, exiting and mounting the escalator and dismounting it again, paying the fees and receiving the specific numbers and going to the automatic machine to push the buttons to get the prescription paper.

She has done all that holding my hand in hers, showing smiles on her face. Just like yesterday and the day before yesterday, she had done all the juggling of house chores, bringing up our sons and funding their education, paying each installment of the kye and at last gaining a big sum of money, and presto! she had finessed the purchase of our own house, and that of an accessory store of her own, in the years i979 and in 1981.

अ Novel

Episode 9:In the Pitch Dark Room



It's been ashamed of me as I made a guilty mention of the retrieval of a previous job. A teaching profession couldn't be had like we used to recapture a lost territory. It shouldn't be. It's been so brazen of me to leave and recapture the earlier job of elementary school teaching in such short span of time.

Of course I had not been restored to the same job of the same school. I had presented myself to the local education board and submitted a suggested document in order to be reappointed to a teaching job at an elementary school. As a result, I got my job back at the fall semester of 1968 at Kilan Elementary School about 16 kilometers far from the Jeomgok Elementary School for which Willows had been serving.

This is a very awkward moment. Really. I have to give my readers an apt explanation for my retreat, that is, why I had plunged down to a rustic town again. The one reason: I was not able to register at the administration office of Chungang University for the first semester of the sophomore year, and I was not resourceful enough to withstand an urban life in the national capital.

The gang, really Samaritan, who had been armed with worried considerations, mobbed me, giving out ideas for my salvation. To which I thought it's time I blew a whistle for myself and for them also. I also had to fight an iota of an urge to take advantage of the others' good intentions. (We're willing to finance your whole academic courses!) I said good bye to my love on a winter night and cried all the way home trudging along the long river bank.

I also take this moment to give you readers an insight to the way in which I was and I would be unraveling my story. I am actually writing my story for the third time. And that in a book form. The previous one is on sale in www.textore.com about how many copies have been sold I have no knowledge.

Although I have rewritten the whole story of mine for the third time, what I seek your understanding, about which I am very proud, is that I have never compared notes with the earlier ones. There will naturally be omissions and new additions. I have from time to time been tempted to look into the previous descriptions, but I have fought the urge. So I can assuredly say that no line, sentence or paragraph is identical with each other.

It's been a really torturous process to have taken a fresh route of writing, but I think there's been a reward in its own way: I have experienced and experimented with a wide expanse of an expository prose. And I casually confess that Google has been truly instrumental, that is, I have consulted Google, particularly through its image searches, about the most recommendable lexicographical option out of a lot of conceivable expressions. If this were to see the global light as a successful writing piece, the half of the credit is Google's.

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My class, which I now vaguely guess comprised 60-some students, of which the boy students were dominant, came from valley and riverside villages. They were a very jovial and active group, who were getting along with one another. I saw to it that there would not be a bully or bullies who would keep harassing their classmates.

The parents of my students were mostly farmers, among the rest of whom were merchants, a postman and the holders of other mercenary jobs. The local people were a quite hilarious lot, of whom the Three Cannons of Kilan were famous, three humorous exaggerators, that is.

Kilan, to which my young man had taken a visit as an elementary school teacher, was eight kilometers far from Sun Valley to the south, in which he had spent eight childhood years, and 12 kilometers far from Jeomgok Elementary School, over a hilly pass. Kilan is an intermediary town linked to Cheongsong to the east, Euiseong to the west, and to Andong City to the north west.

Kilan was a sane rustic town. At the time of my residence, the town folks enjoyed exchanging gags. They also enjoyed throwing fishnets over the river but they were optimistic over the catches as they threw and pulled them up.

Kilan, a small cozy town, which is built along a tributary of a great river, the Nakdong River, collects tributaries of its own and is merged into the Nakdong River proper. Kilan could be named as a sort of souvenir town because my young man collected souvenirs of his own.

The thought that my young man had collected a souvenir or two of some sort might be a mistaken notion. Why? In a certain sense, the young man had been collected by a young lady as a souvenir for her, who had premeditatedly ambushed him, snaring him.

The siren, who had long made a transmorphosis of a fatigued young sea man into an obedient pig, assuring herself of the state of the pig's powerlessness and loyal bondage to her, confided to the charmed animal that she had followed a fortuneteller's recommendation: "Go east, and you'll run into your mate."

Taking the fortune teller at her word, she had come to Kilan from Pungsan, opening a seamstress' shop by a roadside on the way to Kilan Elementary School. In the summer of 1969 Cha Hee was 21 years old, and the young man that had been me was 27. In linguistic terms, she had been attracted to me, but in physiological and Freudian terms, she had been in heat, that is, at the peak of her libido, and I might have been at my peak age, too.

She was just like Wanda in the movie Wanda Nevada. She was as young and brilliant as Wanda, as street smart as Wanda had been in the movie, and more beautiful than Wanda herself. I liked the siren in purple dress. I wanted to be the air going inside her dress.

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In the leftist-dominant society, the wording is rampant that everybody is equal, people are the same, things of this kind or that are similar. No way. In the strict sense of word, no people are equal, nothing is the same with each other. All is different, people and things

People are different, in color, gender, age, length and weight, their tastes and job capabilities. People could be ranked in millions of tiers of monthly income and social status, and could be listed in files of intelligence, even in amorous abilities.

In brief, people are different, and things are different, too. Like the sky and earth are different. From the olden times, it's been a commonsensical idea that this is the world of "thousands of differences, and tens of thousands of categories..."

In the leftist-dominant society, the members of the communities have been trained so long by the ideology of identicality and equality and so much influenced by the ill-conceived routines that they have been hampered to think rightly. So it's time we the people are supposed to enhance the awareness of the differences of people and things.

Willows and Cha Hee were different. Whereas Willows reminded to me the contagiousness of my depression to her, Cha Hee was out to stoke its surface. She had a lot of funny stories to tell, of which the story entitled "May I come in naked or fully clothed?" made me laugh.

How she came to hold a fat sack of funny stories was really interesting. Her father, a farmer by profession and a chief of a district political party chapter by pastime, liked to take her second daughter Cha Hee with him to the adult gatherings. She naturally acquired a large repertoire of funny stories.

Her father was different as to how he bestowed an audience with a would-be son-in-law. Unlike a large number of the worldly parents, he was not trying to be difficult to the young visitor. Cha Hee's father, who had been in his late fifties at that time, after greeted by me on an early morning of an early winter day, smiled at me and said, "I am rich in daughters. She is up for grabs. for any young man."

My wedding, which was celebrated by the whole teaching staff of Kilan Elementary School and several fifth-graders of my class, and some friends including Brother Paragon at Euiseong, took place at Andong Wedding Hall, four months after I had met Cha Hee. The wedding car stopped rattling the empty cans at its tail at the borderline hill between Andong and Euiseong.

I am greatly indebted to my parents-in-law, whose benevolence, generosity, and tolerance had embraced my faults and follies of youth endlessly. Both of them have passed away, with their six daughters and one son doing well with their spouses and offspring.

I am also greatly indebted to my great uncle and aunt for my wedding reception which they had held for their nephew and his wife because my parents had gone back home in Taejon after having attended their son's wedding.

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To make a long story short, my parent's move to Taejon had everything to do with my insecure plan and Chungang's subsequent repudiation. I had negotiated my way, through correspondence, with Chungang University's academic administration office, into the full scholarship benefits for me. But they had repudiated their assured pledge at the final phase. They had mailed me suddenly one day the next spring a sorry note to the effect that they had failed to register me for the sophomore class.

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I heard and watched a tragic news yesterday on television (October 8, 2010) that "Lecturer of Happiness" Mrs. Choi Yoon Hee had died at a suburban motel room in a suicide pact with her husband. She had left a note to the effect that she had succumbed to the extreme pain from heart and lung diseases.

I shudder at an anxious anticipation at what corner the brutal army of cancer is turning. My doctor told me weeks ago that the numerical index indicating to the incidence of my intestinal glands cancer, specifically lymphatic, is so high that I have to go through the sophisticate examination at a university- level hospital.

I have no time for that. Above all things, I refuse to wear the patient's uniform and lie on the couch. I have to go ahead with this story and finish it in time. My wish is that my loving wife will be able to put my book, if it were to be published until that time, in my casket.

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Winding up the overnight honeymoon at Daegu City, making a customary three-day stay at Cha Hee's home at Pungsan, we hit the road for Taejon to pay our parents, who had been roughing up at a new place, a courtesy visit. The cab driver gave us an unashamed show of irritation at which we were equally irritated and embarrassed.

The cabbie in his early forties, who, starting igniting the engine of his ugly car grumbling, when, in 20 or so minutes, passing a river bridge, he swerved to a unpaved shallow road, having some back-breaking jolts on some pocked earth, was belching out curse words.

Cha Hee and me, who were forced to get off the cab at the entrance of a particular urban village, had to make knocks on some dwellings and ask questions, was able to enter the residence of parents. It was a ugly-looking shack. They were perplexed at the unnoticed visit. "Why not send us a telegram?" mother said.

I was annoyed at the terrible condition in which my parents had been put. I was to blame for all the troubles they had been going through. Father was really roughing up himself, getting rid of the modest peach farm and well-built wooden house of his own design. I chastised Chungang between my teeth for its distrust.

Mother got herself busy, getting in and out of the room, to feed the uninvited guests, making everything out of nothing. Steamy modest meals were set on a small dining table. Mother was saying sorry for the rough meals.

The winter night was long going. Having done with early supper, and listening to all the soap operas on radio, night was long left. Father said like an army commander's order it's time to sleep. Blankets and bed sheets were supplied for their daughter-in-law and their son, such as they had been.

Whenever I mention the "incident" my wife of 41 years blushes herself. She even negates the occurrence that night. I hold it as a fond memory of youth, and what has been missing is that she has never done me the same hospitality she had done that night again.

Because the room had no windows but the only room door, which was no glass, as mother switched off the only electric bulb, the room was wrapped in a pitch dark and death-like quiet. We were slumber mates to each other, father to mother and me to Cha Hee.

Hardly had some minutes had passed when I was about to slip into sleep. I felt a groping touch: Her left hand was gliding down my belly. My right hand caught hers in between but could not restrain hers, which thrust down to my crotch.

Her willingness to get away with some urgent needs of hers transmitted through the grip of her hand was so strong that I could not breathe much less give a decent cough. Ascertaining the hardness of erection of my staff, she got on top with agility, with her one hand pulling my stuff into her opening, thrusting her body forward deep into mine.

Locked to each other water tight, I was imagining her giving me agile pushes and sterile pulls on top of me, with her two hands around my neck and with her eyes closed, only relishing the intensity of the locking through her spine. In some minutes, the grip of her hands on me was more tightened, with liquids streaming down her loose legs and with her upper body collapsing, then me exploding inside her, with her coming again with some silent shakes, all of which was done with such agility in the wraps of bed sheets.