Editor: Walker, Ruby

Yeong-ha was a young 29-year old wife now.

She grew up receiving lots of love from her brothers by being the fourth of the five siblings.

However, when the Korean War broke out, all the families living in Hwanghae-do* had to evacuate to the South and the family dispersed. Although the rest of her family reunited in Busan, she never saw her father again. It was not easy to live in Busan without the head of the family.

Eventually, Yeong-ha’s mother decided to remarry in hope of making their situation better and gave birth to Yeong-geol, Yeong-ha’s youngest brother, fifteen years younger than her. Yeong-deun, Yeong-ha’s eldest brother by twenty years, had treated her like a daughter. He never went to an elementary school, so he had to earn money for the family by learning the trade from a group of peddlers.

After many years of raising his siblings and traveling around the country selling goods, Yeong-deun finally met a beautiful and kind woman and started a family at a late age, having five children. Because of the huge age difference between Yeong-ha and Yeong-deun, his first daughter was only six years younger than her.

Although Yeong-ha was born and raised in Busan, she never spoke in the Busan dialect. Torn between the North Korean dialect of her family and the Southern dialect of her hometown, she decided to speak in a standardized accent. Perhaps she found it attractive because it temporarily made her forget her poor circumstances and made her feel like a rich lady instead. She wasn’t jealous of the delicious food they ate or the clothes they wore but she envied the rich cultural life they had. Perhaps that’s why she always listened to foreign singers like Elvis Presley and the Beatles to show off her good taste in music. Her favorite time of the day was when she could listen to music while vacuuming.

Yeong-ha couldn’t afford to buy LPs, but Tae-woo had recently won a raffle at a baseball game and got a high-quality record player, so they could listen to music with the record player.

Love me tender ~ love me sweet

Never let me go

You have made my life complete

And I love you so

Muffled by the sound of the vacuum, Elvis Presley’s mellow voice echoed softly in Yeong-ha’s ear. Geon knew that his mother shouldn’t be interrupted while listening to music, so he sat in the living room and tapped his feet on the floor to the beat.

This little routine had been a daily occurrence for his mother ever since Geon could remember, so he was very used to it.

“This man’s voice is always nice to hear. Yesterday it was Jim Morrison, his voice is a little depressing but still it was cool. These people would have a pleasant speaking voice too, right? I want to sing well too…”, he muttered. Looking at the picture of Elvis on the LP, he told himself that they would have to meet one day. Although he didn’t understand the English lyrics, he was sure that if he met Elvis or Jim Morrison one day, he could sing just like them.

Geon laid down on the couch and picked up a calendar. He liked to draw, but since the family couldn’t afford sketchbooks, he always drew on the backs of the calendar.  Thanks to some pencils his mother and ten-year-old cousin, Yoon-jeong, bought him, he could draw much more often. He put an Elvis album and Jim Morrison’s ‘The Doors’ down on the table and sat down to draw both of their faces.

Although the portraits looked more like crooked monsters than people, he fell asleep on the couch with a satisfied smile on his face.

Yeong-ha stopped. She didn’t stop cleaning – it felt like time had stopped around her as the music froze in the air. The house, always full of bright colours, became a world of grey and black when time stopped. A pair of greasy black feet descended onto the sleeping Geon’s back.

“Well, I see a child full of life and devotion. I’ll let you meet them if that’s what you want.”

*Hwanghae-do is currently in the southwest of North Korea.