At first the Communists were a silent presence, a mood, with their uniforms and steely faces, but then they became louder, more demanding, barging into houses to pillage whatever food and supplies they wanted. They said it was for the common good. People complained quietly, bitterly, that the Communists were more insidious than a swarm of grasshoppers when it came to wiping everything out—they took all therice, beans, and barley stored for winter, blankets, paper, ink, and small pieces of furniture; they knocked over the huge earthenware jars full of daenjang paste looking for gold and other valuables. Farther afield, they took farm animals, fruit from the orchards, vegetables still growing in the fields, as well as stealing ox carts, A-frames, bicycles, and dogs. When they came through Sung’s small village, they took the small, crackling radio treasured by his father and the Korean books Min had given Sung to prepare for secondary school.
At first Sung was glad war had come. It would mean he wouldn’t have to go to school anymore. He didn’t want to study all day like Min did, keeping his uniform clean so he could save money by only having it washed every other week. He wanted to stay in the village, where he played games in the field with his friends, went hunting for tiny shrimp in the little watering holes that developed during the monsoon season, plucked apricots and apples and chestnuts as he wandered through the village after his chores were done. Townspeople thought village life was dull, but Sung was never bored. There were always insects to trap, girls to annoy, women who would smack him on the head and then feed him. Only the thought of Seoul beckoned him. More than anything, he wanted to ride a streetcar.
Min was called home soon after the war started because Kumchon was overrun with soldiers and his parents were afraid he would be conscripted. Min and Sung spent the summer like the other boys in the village, digging spaces underneath their houses where the men and older boys could hide at a moment’s notice.
In late September, just when they were getting used to this new reality, life changed very quickly. The ROK Army from South Korea, with significant American help, came roaring north, pushing the KPA at a dizzying pace. Relatives told Sung’s family that the Communists in Kumchon seemed to disappearall at once, all in a day, leaving behind burning stacks of paper, equipment, and buildings. Then the Americans arrived.
Sung’s father took Sung and Min to witness the historic spectacle. People lined both sides of the main street while trucks of men rode through waving, throwing chocolate and tins of food at them. Someone had given Sung a sign to hold, and he raised it high as the first tank came through town. The sign said in English: WELCOME AMERICANS! WE ARE NOT COMMUNISTS! The Americans didn’t stop in Kumchon but continued on, heading toward the real battle in Pyongyang. They hoped to push the Communists all the way to China and they hoped to do it quickly before a harsh winter began.
Buoyed by the mistaken idea that the war—if it could even be called a war—was now over, Sung’s father remained in Kumchon for an evening of celebration while the two boys were sent home. When he didn’t return in three days, Min was sent to find him. He returned with news that changed their lives: their father had been taken away. The story as Min understood it was that late at night when his father and his friends were drinking at an inn, men appeared with guns. They forced Min’s father and his friends into the yard of the primary school already filled with other men who were picked out of fields and paddies, plucked off roads, and pulled from houses. Then they were put on open-backed trucks and driven away while families waited anxiously outside. Nobody knew where they went or if they would come back. In the chaos, people didn’t even know who had taken them, whether it was the work of the KPA, desperate for men, or the ROK Army, looking for reinforcements as they chased the Communists north.
The family was in a panic. What did this mean? How would they find Sung’s father? Would he be able to escape on his own? What if he was killed while trying to escape? How would they ever find him?
After two weeks of waiting and hearing only that more and more men and even boys were being stolen, Sung’s grandmother took a good, long look at Min, taller now than his father, and, pulling Sung’s mother aside, said, “Daughter-in-law, if you don’t leave with the children today, I’m going to kill myself.” Her wrinkled face, her tired eyes were firm.
She told them to go south, to Seoul, where at least they wouldn’t freeze in winter. “What’s left but the will to survive then?” the grandmother asked no one in particular. “Eat and live, eat and live.”
The two women wailed together and beat their chests. They moaned and knocked their heads on the ground. They very nearly tore out their hair. Then they gathered themselves and together prepared the children for the journey. The mother dressed each child in three pairs of cotton pants and so many shirts their arms stuck out from their bodies, while the grandmother boiled a dozen eggs, set a handful of potatoes steaming, and sewed a cleverly hidden pocket into her daughter-in-law’s thickly padded winter coat. Into it went several gold
