Min came and left, came and left, collecting news he kept mostly to himself. He had not wanted to abandon their home in case his father came back, even though the fear that he would be conscripted was the reason the family was leaving. He grew up right before their mother’s eyes. “We’ll be all right, Mother,” he told her. “Don’t worry. We’re doing the right thing.”
He even made money along the way, picking up heavy loads for richer families. Sometimes they thought he was an orphan and offered to buy him. “A family these days could use a strong, smart boy like you. We have connections in Seoul. Why not continue with us all the way?”
A heavy, sweating man with four daughters was especially persistent. “Look at my fate,” he said, turning around wearily to gesture toward his four trailing daughters. Three looked down at their feet; the fourth glared at Min. “Stay with us and I’ll give you whichever one you want,” the father said.
With other boys, Sung scavenged through the discarded, scattered household items that grew along the road like a new kind of foliage. Wooden chests, bright bits of clothing, old shoes. He even found treasures: a knife, ebony chopsticks, a pair of red silk slippers just right for Jisu. For Min, he found a history book; for his mother, a Chinese pin.
He also saw things that numbed him; they all did. They saw swarms of flies out in the fields where some poor rotting body lay, a hive of activity. Lame animals by the side of the road, a woman naked from the waist up, clearly crazed, running from person to person, with a child still suckling on her limp breast. “Where is my husband?” she wanted to know. “Where did you take him?”
Everyone turned away from her, some clucking, some muttering about her bringing bad luck, as if things weren’t bad enough.
Finally, someone, a woman, stopped and said, “Your husband’s fine. He’s waiting for you in Seoul. Now settle down and put this on.” The woman took a hemp shirt out of her bundle; she held the baby while the now quiet mother put on the shirt.
“What a world,” Sung’s mother said. “One doesn’t know how to feel.”
It took them almost two weeks to walk to Seoul, such was their pace. Often, they were pushed off the road by the Americans in favor of their long caravans of men, supplies, and food. Sung always knew when the food trucks went by; they were the most heavily guarded. He tried not to look desperate and beggarly as they went by, but sometimes he could not help it and crept out onto the edge of the road, where soldiers threw candy and gum at them, but never the tins of beef that they really wanted.
Their first sighting of Seoul was not auspicious. Outside the Great North Gate was a makeshift camp of the poor, the lame,and the young. They put out their filthy hands as Sung and his family passed by. Sung’s mother told them not to stare and to keep on. Then she thought, Well, there is still farther to fall.
Sung ran through the city gates expecting to see it lit up with golden lights while streetcars trundled by, casting their own cheerful music. Min cuffed him on the head. “Slow down, stupid,” he said. “The lights and cars are only in the better parts of the city. If they still work.” Min was right. Seoul was nothing like what Sung expected. Everywhere there was dust and animals underfoot, close smells and dirt. The streets were chaotic and confused, filled with debris, blackened ruins next to a normal-looking house, the tiles on the roof still red and whole. Soldiers and people lived crammed together like rabbits in a warren. There was scarcely any room for the newcomers. Sung’s hope of finding his father fled in light of the new grim reality.
Still, it was a relief to have reached their destination, not to be stuck in that mindless walking. Sung’s clothes were stiff with dirt and sweat, brown stains growing in ever-widening, darkening circles. So matted was his hair, it had to be shorn.
They knew only one person in Seoul, Sung’s aunt, his mother’s older sister. During the days, they searched the confused streets of the confused city looking for her. The address they had for her was crude, with only the name of the neighborhood and a description of the corner store. The neighborhood itself was much like the rest of Seoul—crumbling rubble where houses had once stood, gardens picked clean and turned useless and muddy, trash strewn everywhere, children running about half clothed, itchy with lice.
“I’m looking for my sister,” Sung’s mother would begin. But people were turned off, their faces closed. They didn’t want to hear about anyone else’s sorrow, didn’t believe they could help anyone but themselves. “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” they would say. Or: “I’ve only been here a short time myself. How can I know who was here before me?” Or even:“I’m looking for someone myself. Have you heard of a man named Kim Min-su?”
At night, they stayed in a corner of a room that had once been a dry goods store. It was crowded with other families and loud with complaints and rumors. Some said the Chinese were close to the city’s gates and that everyone should flee farther south. “Why don’t you go ahead, then?” someone else would shout out. “There’d be more room for us all if
