Drift Reality

My childhood wasn’t any happier than anyone else’s, as far as I can tell. Nor was it any more special or unique than anyone else’s. Mostly, we just did whatever we could to pass the time.

Nearly sixty years after the fact all I have is thin fragments of memories: Running around outside with my friends, during a torrential downpour, wearing only a pair of shorts; building a go-cart so I could race against other kids in my neighborhood; visiting relatives in the countryside and stealing potatoes from a nearby farm and almost getting caught.

When I have these memories, it is difficult to remember whom I was with at the time or how I got there.

These thoughts feel like memories of someone else’s dreams, relayed to me in quiet whispers.

I was only about eleven-years-old during the early stages of the Korean War.

I have a dim memory of walking by an abandoned school that must have been converted into an internment camp because I recall catching a glimpse of a dozen or so American soldiers through the school’s iron gate.

They were leaning against one of the school buildings, and all of them looked frail and exhausted. Their uniforms, tattered remnants of what they once were.

One of the soldiers, a young black man, called out to me as I peered through the gate from a distance. Glancing around to make sure there were no guards nearby, I gingerly approached the gate.

The black man remained seated by the school building, but one of the other young men slowly rose to his feet and approached the gate by him. As he drew near, I realized that he looked much younger than the others - he couldn’t have been much older than eighteen.

His sallow eyes and forlorn facial expression conveyed a deep sense of misery that I had not witnessed in my short life and for some strange reason, I found myself wondering if he had any better notion than I, of why he was here: being held prisoner in a school yard in Pyongyang.

As I watched, practically hypnotized by the strange figure before me, the he reached his hand through the gate and muttered something. Although the words were unintelligible, the tone was unmistakable. Without so much as another thought, I turned and sprinted back to my house, which must have been at least 3 miles away.

I ran into the kitchen, grabbed something out of the cupboard, and ran back to the school as the sun began to set.

When I returned to the school, I saw that it was deserted. I stood near the gate for several moments as the sun made its final descent.

When I walked into the house, my mother looked at my quizzically and asked why I was holding a bit of cooked rice wrapped in paper. I shrugged noncommittally before setting the food on the table and walking into my room.

My Father doesn’t have many memories of my grandfather. He spent most of his waking moments at work, until he began a shoe business. His primary (and quite possibly his only) responsibility in the family was to earn money. According to my Father, he was successful at providing his family with a comfortable life although it is possible that they received supplementary support from my Father’s wealthy grandparents, who were living in Hawaii at the time.

My Grandfather was looked upon as the unequivocal head of the family. Often times, my Grandmother would serve him before the rest of the family, in a room set apart where he would eat by himself. Other times, he would go to a nearby bar after he was done working for the day, and drink with his friends until late at night. When he was fairly drunk, he would trudge back home, where his wife would be waiting to warm up his dinner and keep him company while he ate, if he felt so inclined.

According to my Father, “Dinner conversations did not include much inquiry into the well being of my siblings and I. Happiness and fulfillment in life were not an important function in our family; paying proper attention to the roles we were expected to play was of the utmost importance.”

My Father does not recall every seeing my Grandfather display any sign of outward affection towards his wife or children. It did not mean that he did not care or that he resented them, it just was not expected of him. On the other hand, my Grandfather was a strict disciplinarian when it came to asserting what was acceptable and unacceptable from his children.

My Father doesn’t have many memories of my grandfather. He spent most of his waking moments at work, until he began a shoe business. His primary (and quite possibly his only) responsibility in the family was to earn money. According to my Father, he was successful at providing his family with a comfortable life although it is possible that they received supplementary support from my Father’s wealthy grandparents, who were living in Hawaii at the time.

My Grandfather was looked upon as the unequivocal head of the family. Often times, my Grandmother would serve him before the rest of the family, in a room set apart where he would eat by himself. Other times, he would go to a nearby bar after he was done working for the day, and drink with his friends until late at night. When he was fairly drunk, he would trudge back home, where his wife would be waiting to warm up his dinner and keep him company while he ate, if he felt so inclined.

According to my Father, “Dinner conversations did not include much inquiry into the well being of my siblings and I. Happiness and fulfillment in life were not an important function in our family; paying proper attention to the roles we were expected to play was of the utmost importance.”

My Father does not recall every seeing my Grandfather display any sign of outward affection towards his wife or children. It did not mean that he did not care or that he resented them, it just was not expected of him. On the other hand, my Grandfather was a strict disciplinarian when it came to asserting what was acceptable and unacceptable from his children.

As my siblings and I grew older, my parents decided that our condominium simply did not have enough space, and so we moved into a single unit home, complete with its very own outhouse.

The home had enough room to sleep ten people - by Korean standards - which basically meant that there were three rooms in the house.

Moving from the condominium into our own house resulted in a certain degree of isolation. Now, I was mostly surrounded by my two brothers, my sister, and my Mother. The only other people I encountered during the day were relatives, who would come from the village in order to help my mother with her household chores.

Our new home was separated from neighboring houses by eight-foot walls, which served to create an illusion of isolation in an otherwise claustrophobic neighborhood. The walls meant that I no longer saw other children in the neighborhood when I stepped onto the narrow front porch, before I would begin the walk to school.

Every morning, I would leave my house very early garbed in my school uniform, which consisted of blue shorts, a white shirt, and a red necktie. I would walk down a steep, narrow dirt road that lead to the school.

Once all of the students had arrived and been accounted for, we would go through the same daily process, which would begin with our teachers leading us through a set of callisthenic exercises. Once these had been completed, we would sing songs extolling the virtues of our glorious leader.

After the morning rituals, we would begin our daily lessons.

Initially, our lives did not change much even though our political system had become communist. Later, as the societal changes began to have a more palpable effect on our daily lives, a sense of fear began to grow.

While it was still fresh though, I continued to do the same things I had always done: play soccer, tinker with my go-cart, and waste time with other neighborhood children.

There were a number of beaches along the Taedong River, which runs through Pyongyang. It was popular for families to visit the river during holidays. Back then, the beaches were still relatively unspoiled and I would often lose myself in a blur of fishing, swimming, and playing in the sand.

In this country, when people think about eating fish, they tend to think about larger fish. Back then, people would catch hundreds of tiny fish and then fry them in a cooking pan. They do that in Sri Lanka as well, and I feel a dim sense of nostalgia when I see them eating these fish.

I’m sure if I ever got a chance to go back, I would not recognize the beaches or the river that graced this beautiful city.

My Father was born in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. He was the youngest of four children: two brothers and one sister. As the fourth and youngest child in the family, he was considered something of an afterthought, particularly because his two older brothers, who were close in age, jointly held the family mantle and responsibility for carrying on the family name.

His family was heavily influenced by the Confucian philosophy that permeated Korean culture. Part of this philosophy involved a belief that a smoothly running society depended on the functioning of five key relationships: husband and wife; parent and child; ruler and subject; friend-to-friend; and elder brother and younger brother.

It is the last of these relationships that may have held particular significance for my Father. There is a Confucian exchange in which a disciple asks his master, “Should one immediately put into practice what one has heard?” The disciple’s master responds, “As your father and elder brothers are still alive, you are hardly in a position immediately to put into practice what you have heard.”

Being that my Father had two older brothers, he was particularly shit out of luck.

My Father once referred to his Father as a “remote authority,” since he “didn’t do a heck of a lot in terms of providing emotional support.” Providing emotional support was his Mother’s role.

My Father grew up in a typical middle-class household, in a five-room apartment in a building that also contained four other units. Of the five rooms, one was a kitchen; two were solely bedrooms; one served as a bedroom/dining room; and the last served as a living room/bedroom. The units were built in a circular fashion around a central courtyard that was shared by all the families in the structure. A heavy wooden gate served as a common entrance for all the families to enter the building.

My Father does not remember exactly what his Father did for a living, but vaguely recalls that it has something to do with a shoe factory he purchased with money he inherited from his parents who lived in Hawaii, before the Korean War began.

My Grandmother was a warm and caring woman, who devoted her entire life to her children. Allegedly, my Grandfather was quite the opposite. According to my Father, my Grandfather never really cared to have much to do with his family, apart from financially supporting it. While this was not uncommon behavior for Korean fathers, my Grandfather had been born and raised in Hawaii, and my Father could not quite understand why he had failed to inherit any Western ideals of parenthood.