After I began to get close to Choi Dong Woo, I ended my stay in the country and moved to Kwangju. Once there, Nam Soo urged me to join the organization. In order to do so, I first needed to form my own group and prove myself by writing and distributing leaflets and training others. Dong Woo did not like the idea. We had already begun our own study group with almost twenty people. We were not an official group recognized by a bigger organization, but our work progressed with seriousness and depth. By the end of the seventies, our membership had grown to over thirty. Of course, other than the first five founding members, each was contacted and managed separately.
Nam Soo’s group ended up being arrested first. When I thought about it later it was a great pity. If they had been active during May of 1980, the resistance in Kwangju might have evolved exponentially.
I escaped Kwangju on the twentieth of May 1980. Two days before, soldiers stormed into my friends’ houses and dragged them away with guns pointed at their heads. Many in Seoul were also arrested early in the morning. Choi Dong Woo and Park Suk Joon both begged me to return to the capital.
I was not able to take the direct train; instead I took a bus all the way to Masan, then took a night train. As promised, I got out at Youngdeungpo Station. First we went to Dong Woo’s house. He was staying in an empty sweatshop factory that his brother used to run. There was a spacious factory building, a storage house, and even a bedroom for people doing night shifts, a perfect hiding place. We didn’t need to debate, we immediately began the work of publicizing what had happened in Kwangju. We obtained a professional printer with hand levers. I wrote the leaflet, Dong Woo printed it, and Suk Joon filled two duffle bags with leaflets and distributed them among our members.
In the late seventies, at the end of President Park’s regime, the police were on high alert, so we had to be even more precise and cautious. We carved incendiary slogans on a rubber pad and inked and stamped them on the thin paper used in typewriters. Most of the slogans were short and intense, mottos of less than ten words. All work was done with our fingers covered by rubber thimbles from the pharmacy, and the printed paper was cut into thin strips with scissors. We put them in the inner pockets of our jackets or coats like money and went to busy markets and streets full of people on weekends. The inner pocket would be torn, and we walked around leaving trails of paper strips. Sometimes we hastily wrote slogans with felt-tip pens on stickers and put them on the backs of bus seats or inside telephone booths. One member actually put a sticker on someone’s back in a packed bus.
But by the time of the Kwangju Uprising it was different. We knew very well we would fail, but we believed that the truth would be revealed, even if it took a long time, and we believed in a future where the world would be transformed into a righteous place. A tiny stream of water can make a crack in a formidable stone, which becomes a hole, which becomes bigger and eventually causes it to collapse. We formed teams, two in each, and divided Seoul into four zones. The A Zone was where many government and business offices were, a southwest corner of the downtown area within the four gates of Old Seoul. The B Zone was the university area, the C Zone was the industrial area on the outskirts of the city and around the slums, and the D Zone was the corner stores in various neighborhoods. Each zone was divided into four quadrants, and each team was responsible for each zone. Among them, the A Zone was considered the most critical and perhaps the most dangerous, but we considered the area—with many high rises and big companies full of the more educated office workers—as an important strategic target. We thought the leaflets would have the most impact in the B and C Zones, and that these would be much safer than the A Zone. The D Zone would act as a buffer between the other zones, a safe station where we could gather before and after each operation. There were some grander operations in which all of us spread leaflets at the same time all over the city, but most of the time each team took a day and distributed leaflets irregularly, at several times. Dong Woo and I were a team, Suk Joon and Kun another, and we took turns studying the area or checking other teams when they were in action.
Dong Woo was used to doing these sorts of things. When President Carter visited Korea in June 1979, Dong Woo teamed up with a religion student to burn the welcome arches erected for the occasion, as a protest against the United States’ acceptance of the military dictatorship. There were two teams of three, one taking an arch on the second bridge of Han River. Dong Woo’s team took an arch in Kwanghwamoon. The operation was to begin at 7:00 p.m. the night before Carter’s arrival, but unfortunately it rained that night. Although it was just a soft drizzle, it was enough to soak the sheets of plywood that made up the arch. The team responsible for the bridge prepared gasoline, but no matter how much they poured on, the fire would not light and they failed to accomplish the mission. Dong Woo’s team at Kwanghwamoon waited until the operating hour at a bakery next to the old Kookje Cinema. Inside his parka, Dong Woo was carrying two cans of lighter fluid. His team members were the seminary student and an unemployed man who had just finished his military service. First, Dong Woo climbed the steel structure that formed the spine of the plywood arch. When he reached a certain height, he poured both cans of lighter fluid onto the plywood. After Dong Woo sneaked down, the other two climbed up while he kept watch. They hadn’t rehearsed, so no one knew how explosive the lighter fluid was. The moment they lit the fluid, it blew up. Caught off-guard, the seminary student fell down to the ground, followed by the unemployed man whose hands were both red. People on the street stopped and gathered around. Dong Woo rescued the seminary student from those trying to capture him by hitting them with his umbrella, and the two of them ran to the alleyway behind the Kookje Cinema. The unemployed man was in such a hurry he ran across the road full of speeding cars and toward Mookyo-dong. He became even more disoriented with cars screeching to a halt and honking. That night, about half of the arch was burnt and scorched. But the restoration began early the next morning, and by the time people were going to work there stood a welcoming arch, its color even more vivid and fresh. Our work was as useless as throwing an egg against a rock.
During the precarious weeks following the Kwangju Uprising in May 1980, our usual gathering points were bakeries or, quite common at the time, casual restaurants with lots of booths serving Western food on the outskirts of Seoul. The chosen bakeries were frequented by housewives, not businessmen or people in law enforcement. Furthermore, most bakeries were empty around dinnertime. And the Western-style restaurants were usually dark, playing loud music, and full of young people out on dates. In the back corner booth of one of these places, we could talk safely. Dong Woo was usually my companion, and we were sometimes joined by Park Suk Joon. We would order a pitcher of beer and wait for hours for Kun, who manned the phones in another location, to contact us. The password for the all-clear was simple: “going home.” If a team needed to be summoned, Kun met the captain elsewhere and brought him to us. The operation was usually carried out during the evening rush hour, and once everything was done and our members had moved to a safe zone, it would usually be around 8:00 p.m. Kun was usually in charge of safety check, but sometimes Suk Joon did it. Each of us wore the only suit we owned, always clean and nicely pressed, and a white dress shirt and a tie. To anyone watching, we looked like a group of fine young salaried men who had just left work for the day. I remember the waiter would call out a name when someone in the restaurant had a phone call.
“There’s a phone call for Mr. Kim!”
I leave the booth to talk on the phone.
“This is Kim.”
“Hey guys. Hae Soon wants to go out with you.”
“Bring her over, then.”
Dong Woo and Kun get up and disappear, and I wait for them by myself. Around 9:00 p.m., two people finally make an appearance by the door and search around. I remain in my seat patiently until they circle the restaurant to find me. Hae Soon finds me first and she collapses into the other side of the booth. Suk Joon finds another table by the entrance and sits there
facing the door. Hae Soon’s short hair is wet and plastered to her forehead.
“Is it raining outside?”
When I ask her, she brushes her bangs back.
“This is sweat. Ugh, it was really bad.”
“Something happened?”
“I want a new partner.”
“Where’s Duk Hwa?”
“Don’t mention his name. Do you know how much money I spent on taxis today?”
“You were in Myung-dong today, right?”
There had been two teams operating that day. We had already heard from the other team that they had finished work in Shinchon and gone to a safe zone.
“We were almost caught. I told you I didn’t want some nerd who went to college!”
Hae Soon was a factory worker who was fired from her job. She was working with Dong Woo, and it was impossible for her to find another job because she was on a blacklist. Some members collected money to buy a few knitting machines for them, but among the five who were fired from the same factory, Hae Soon and Jung Ja joined our organization. We put the two in separate teams and made sure they didn’t run into each other too often. Hae Soon was not happy with this arrangement in which she had to work with college students.
Hae Soon was teamed up with Duk Hwa. During the Kwangju Uprising period there were too many checkpoints and inspections downtown, and it became too conspicuous to carry a big backpack or a duffle bag. Hae Soon made a sack out of cloth that she could put around her waist under her skirt. She could stuff about a hundred leaflets in there. Duk Hwa opened his shirt and put leaflets inside and put a barn coat on top. Their assigned spot was an underground passageway at the entrance of Myung-dong. Following our rules, they surveyed the area first and decided to carry out the operation during rush hour, after sunset. At first, each of them would go down the underground pathway from different entrances, then spread the leaflets as they passed each other and run away. But, as she told us, “Duk Hwa insisted that this was too risky. He told me to get a cab and wait for him while he distributed them at the entrance of Myung-dong by himself, and then we could get away in the cab. I guessed he wasn’t confident because I was a woman. And of course, I was right. He was scared.” Hae Soon said she squatted, took out the leaflets she was carrying, and handed them over. Duk Hwa took the ones from his shirt and clutched them in each hand. But Hae Soon did not go to get a cab. Instead, unable to trust him, she watched from behind, anxious. Duk Hwa appeared to take a peek under the passageway stairs, then suddenly threw down the leaflets and ran away without turning back. Hae Soon saw the leaflets, still in a batch, lying there in the middle of the stairway, perfectly positioned for someone to pick them up and report to the police. Without thinking, Hae Soon ran down the stairs and picked up the batch, spread it out like a fan, and threw the leaflets into the air in two handfuls. Fortunately, there were only a couple of people walking up and down the steps at that moment. Hae Soon went up and searched for Duk Hwa in the direction he ran, but there were too many people. She grabbed a taxicab that was approaching slowly and went toward Uljiro. “While in the car I saw him running toward the end of Uljiro with his hair flying. I lowered the window and called him as I passed, but he didn’t hear me. I couldn’t stop the taxi, there were all these cars behind. I looked back and saw his face, it was so red. He should have been walking, that would have made him less conspicuous.”
“So where did he go?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t show up at the first meeting point. I waited for half an hour, just as the rules dictate, then I called Suk Joon and came to the second convening point.”
I considered this for a moment. It was clear that Duk Hwa was under too much pressure, and the work we were doing was too much for him to handle. I decided to exclude him. I left Kun, who found him, to take care of the rest.
In Seoul that May, different teams were active. Without talking to each other, we were all aware of each other’s operations and activities. There were a couple of incidents where the word spread underground, when a demonstration was planned in front of the Youngdeungpo market or in Chongro. Different groups waited at both sidewalks and alleys. When the time came, a small group in Youngdeungpo ran into the wide traffic lane shouting slogans, and was captured almost immediately. In Chongro, the activist leader climbed to the top of the Christian Association building, from which he shouted slogans and distributed leaflets and threw himself down, but those waiting on the street didn’t know what was going on and were unable to turn it into a bigger protest.
Early one morning we received word that the last battle and the crackdown in the state capital in Kwangju were over. Dong Woo and I had left his brother’s factory building and rented a two-room house in a slum. Only Kun and Suk Joon knew about it. We stayed up all night. Around seven in the evening, those who escaped from Kwangju had contacted their bases in Seoul. We clung to each other and cried. The uprising was over but the operation continued for about a month. In the summer of 1980, we decided on a period of dormancy, and the number of members dwindled notably. They went back to work or switched to running night schools. Only about fifteen responded to our regular roll calls. Nam Soo received a fifteen-year sentence. He had already been arrested once before and survived horrific torture, having his fingernails pulled off. Some got life sentences, some death.
We collected all records of the Kwangju insurrection, various leaflets, and reports on our organization’s efforts and results. We got together to organize everything and held a reading. It was held for three days at a private prayer house near the highway connecting Seoul and Choonchun. The government had published the outcome of its investigation on the Kwangju Incident, and a wanted list of three hundred people suspected of inciting social instability. Of course, Kun was on the list, and Dong Woo and I were included as well. Fortunately, Suk Joon was still unknown to the authorities. On the last day, we named the organization and chose a platform for a preparatory committee. We lit candles as we criticized ourselves and cried, feeling guilty for escaping and regretting our survival. We ended the gathering by pledging to be fully operational by fall. As soon as summer was over, Suk Joon left for Tokyo to join his uncle and study there. At first, we were sad and didn’t want him to go, but Dong Woo encouraged him. We needed to make connections overseas, he said, and ask for assistance. This would become the legal case against us.
There were numerous other organizations and groups like ours. First, those from the farming movement, who went up to the rooftop of the American Cultural Center in Kwangju in the middle of the night, destroyed the roof, and started a fire by throwing lit bottles. Hyun Sang, who later set fire to the ACC in Busan, was persistently laying the groundwork in Seoul and the Youngnam region. Everyone had seen or heard of the cruel massacre of innocent civilians in Kwangju. It was the beginning of the eighties, the age of fire. There was no way to beat this brute force with the lukewarm thoughts and actions of the past; it seemed impossible that the people could take power in our generation. Everyone talked about a revolution. And we thought a lot about the power of the working class. Naturally, the leaders of the movement rushed into ideological studies in order to train the leaders of revolution. Becoming a radical was the only way to overcome despair and shame.
7
I heard the long crow of a rooster, soon followed by all the other roosters in the neighborhood, as if they were in competition. I stayed lying in the darkened room and watched the back window become lighter. By my head was a small, low table with her notebooks stacked on top. Inside them, Yoon Hee’s monologue, written in tiny script, was waiting for me.
As it was written in her notebook, Yoon Hee packed her things and moved in from the neighboring village the day I finished renovating the house. Together the two of us unpacked various household things and her art supplies. We put a cabinet on top of the kitchen fireplace in her studio. We didn’t dare cook in the huge cast iron pot secured to the fireplace, so we decided to only heat water in there. We cooked rice on a portable gas bur
ner she brought with her and lit two candles, since we had no electricity. In the candlelight we really felt like we were in the most remote corner of the world. We sat facing each other and ate dinner. All we had was rice, a tofu stew, and sour kimchi, but after more than a year of wandering around, I felt like I had come home. Yoon Hee sat in front of the kitchen fire and washed her hair. She combed it dry and hummed.
“So what do you want to do in the future?”
“I should go back.”
“No, not that. Don’t you have something you want to do?”
“A long, long time ago, I thought about writing poetry.”
“But now?”
“I’m a runaway.”
Yoon Hee stood up then sat on the tiny porch that connected the two rooms.
“I think you should become a poet. Otherwise, when the struggle loses its direction, you’ll have my father’s life.”
“For humans or, you know . . . even for wild flowers, there’s a best time for everything, isn’t there? For your father, his twenties was the shining moment of his life, and if you survive you just go on living.”
“I don’t understand people like you. You’re all the same. You’re like horses with blinders on, only looking ahead.”
“Because we need to go a long way.”
Yoon Hee did not say anything any more. Her hair was combed back, and she raised her head, her profile so sharp, to stare calmly at my face. She walked into the bedroom and closed the door. She took out a futon and comforter and spread them out.
“I only have one set. The blanket was so dirty, I had to wash it. We’ll have to sleep together,” Yoon Hee declared and climbed into bed first. A bit flustered, I remained seated on the other side of the room.
The Old Garden Page 9
