Ponderings & Contemplations: Thinking of My Hometown

By Park Nahm-Sheik ||

Let me start by saying that I happen to hail from Gwangju-Jeonnam. I am but an old geezer in love with my hometown.

Homesickness may be to blame for this incurable craze of mine. Though it may not be altogether rational, this nostalgia does strike a chord in the deepest crooks of my heart.

I often find myself on a trip down memory lane as it relates to my teens. For the first year of middle school, I was renting a coffin cubicle in a rundown shanty in the middle of an infamous red-light district located atop a hill in Seo-dong of Gwangju’s Nam-gu. The place was just outside a park, sandwiched between Wolsan-dong, Sa-dong, and Bullo-dong. The housing available there was on the affordable side, suited to people of limited means like me.

The room I was renting was inside a pocket of poverty. Women there, young and not so young, were engaged in a do-or-die struggle for existence, offering themselves for sale 24/7. They were out there earning a living for a fair-sized household, each of them with six to seven family members on their hands.

One vantage point of my life amid this pit of poverty was that the place was in the vicinity of an urban park. I could slip into the wooded park just like that at any time of my choice. It was my privilege to wander here and there beneath the canopy of the wooded area whenever the urge struck. I appreciated the peace, quiet, and solitude of this park.

A traditional Korean archery range was right next to my humble abode there. Well-to-do archery aficionados flocked to the range to hone their skills. Those waiting on them were normally everyday people from the bottommost rungs of the income ladder in the community. I thus had a window unto a gaping gulf between the haves and have-nots of the era in Korean society at large.

Overshadowing this side of my life was an exasperating struggle with hunger in a pitch-black tunnel of poverty with no end in sight. My first meal of the day was always just a thin gruel of bran. And I did not usually get to savor anything like a solid meal for lunch, either. Even the evening meal was anything but square.

My surroundings back then were as miserable as could be. They were close to hell on earth. No stretch of the imagination is intended here. The red-light-district chapter of my life came to an end when I relocated to Hwasun.

This Hwasun chapter of my life got underway in earnest toward the end of my first year of middle school and lasted well into the midsummer of the following year. Every day now started in the wee hours, around four in the morning. I had a quick bite to eat for breakfast at about five a.m. Then I hurriedly left home for the railway station some two kilometers away to catch the Gwangju-bound train departing at about six in the morning. Trudging the bumpy road in the darkness of early dawn did not come easy.

The train ride to Gwangju took an hour or so. I got back home by train too, so the round-trip commute took the better part of two hours daily. Interestingly, most male students boarded the car that was last but one in the train. Officially set aside for girl students only, this car was supposedly off limits to their male counterparts.

Be that as it may, most boys gave a wide berth to the car designated specifically for themselves, which was at the tail end of the train. They did everything in their power to keep their distance from that car bringing up the train’s rear. Under these circumstances, the last car of the train ended up being unoccupied most of the time. As a result, I was free to exploit it any way I chose to. I was eventually able to co-opt it as my private study space.

As a side note, trains back then were often out of service overnight due to circumstances beyond the railroad’s control. Leftist guerillas (aka “night visitors”) were on the loose, lurking on pitch-black wooded trails. Until well into the second half of the last century, much of our local countryside was the abode of those night guests. They were the law everywhere, especially with the cover of darkness to support them.

Real-life dangers like this notwithstanding, we often had miles to negotiate while still on the far side of the Neorit-jae pass. We had to navigate the bulk of this steep trail, already buried in layer upon layer of utter blackness.

I had no alternative but to brave this path at grave risk. Most of all, I had to watch out for a guerrilla encounter that I could have the misfortune of running into on the trail. No wonder, we often thought twice about venturing through this risk-riddled blackness. Sometimes we resorted to asking around if some roadside household would kindly shelter us overnight.

After I finished high school in 1958, I could not afford to go on to college. The three years of 1959, 1960, and 1961 thus comprised a kind of gap between high school and college for me. I turned this period into an opportunity to make plans for what to do with myself in college and thereafter. I made up my mind to polish up on my English. This was in keeping with my intention to make English the ultimate lifeline for myself and my family. I decided to make use of this stretch of time to set aside enough wherewithal for a BA degree in English literature.

In college, I had several English language experts to shepherd me along. They included Professors Shin Sang-soon, Kim Seung-gyu, Kim Jeong-su, and Myeong Noh-geun. Sarah Barry, John Lynton, and a few other Protestant missionaries operating in and around Gwangju and Suncheon also lent a helping hand. Speakers of English from elsewhere came to visit from time to time.

I also came in touch with native speakers of a few other languages at informal get-togethers sponsored by the Gwangju Bahai Center in Dongmyeong-dong. The venue was the residence of John McHenry, who was then a visiting professor of English at Chosun University. A native of Chicago, he was Midwestern nice. Among the invited speakers at the Center were Professor Dale Enger of Donga University in Busan and a few Bahais from Iran. I can still hear their distinctive Iranian accent ringing in my ear. Their English accent was tinted with clear traces of their mother tongue Farsi.

At the Bahai Center, I volunteered as a live-in guide cum interpreter/translator. I offered this service free of charge. I didn’t dare ask for any material compensation – opportunity to practice my English was compensation enough.

Before closing this essay, I should like to thank my hometown for the love and warmth with which it has harbored and nurtured me ever since my birth there on January 16, 1940. I love my hometown as it is. As they say, “Home is where the heart is,” and “East, west, home’s best.” Had it not been for you, my dear hometown, I wouldn’t have been able to grow into who and what I am today.

I am grateful to my alma mater, Chonnam National University, for being just around the corner, not too far from my home on the outskirts of Gwangju. In fact, it was within easy walking distance of home (about three quarters of an hour). It was not that much of a distance to cover to school and back in that era.

If not for you, my beloved alma mater, even a BA degree might have been out of my reach. I wouldn’t have been able to afford to go to any place far away for the degree. I simply didn’t have the means to leave home and stay away for an extended period. I suspect that there is no separating a person from their place of birth. As they say, geography may indeed be destiny for everyone, me included.

Incidentally, what served to render my hometown of Hwasun still dearer to me was that, by and by, I grew fond of the daily chores there – especially of gathering firewood for the household. What was particularly alluring about this chore may have been the fresh smell of pine trees in the forest that kept (re)activating my sensitive nostrils. I was also proud of the role I was playing in keeping my family afloat, persevering through the severest weather of old man winter.

Ah, thinking of my hometown, and the scent of pine.

Cover Photo courtesy of the National Folk Museum.