Chapter 14: The Summary Execution

14
Summary Execution, 1950


A misfortune after another occurred. Hardly had Dad, Mom, grandma, great grandma, me and two younger brothers returned from the refugee evacuation when great grandma was taken ill, very ill in bed until she died one month later. my second brother below me, who had been very active and playful, went away after his great grandma one month or so later. The poor brother disappeared suddenly overnight. That was so dreadful. I vaguely surmised my parents' sad conspiracies, in which they had, in the small hours of the night, moved and buried the sudden dead body of their son somewhere in the nearby hill hurriedly.

Astonishing thing was that his death was not pronounced before the family, that nobody including parents questioned his sudden disappearance, and that the rest of the family did not and could not ask about his whereabouts. The unfortunate parents, Don and Boolim, did not mention their dear son's sudden death even once thereafter and did not cry even once, either. Which was really dreadful.

A third misfortune, that is, a severe infraction, was inflicted on the cow which had accompanied the evacuation route and which had taken all the trouble of carrying the heavy load. By none other than me myself.

Boy Dano was feeding the cow, which had not been on a leash. The cow was let go of his rein, keeping herself free so that she could be feeding by herself because fresh grass was afield. The sky was clear without clouds and a warm sun ray was showering on Dano's back who was sitting on the nondurong, a shallow farm road bank attached to a rice field.

The prankster in the cow might have moved. The cow, spotting me Dano dozing off sitting on the road, dashed to him and headed him, letting him fall on the grassy clearing below the elevated road. Dano was astonished and angry and he was not so mature enough as to take the cow's sudden attack as a demonstration of a friendly joke. I snitched to my father on the cow's infliction. My dad Don's temper blew over, whipped the cow with curses and sold her at a local cattle market.

On the surface, the kids of Oksan Elementary School were joyous again, cheerfully running and merrily talking. But the atmosphere of the school was subdued. The classroom windows on the main part of the school building were smashed. The classroom desks and chairs were vandalized; The floors were brutally violated. And, most of classmates were, like Dano, victimized or traumatized.

They did neither know, however, the extent of their wounds, nor have the capability to get them known and treated. The teaching staff, originally consisting of 12 male and four female teachers, were in short supply. So the students of the class, who had been incapacitated, were merged into another class with a teacher.

Many mockup classrooms were prepared on the playground with straw mats on which to sit, with no roofs, of course. Teachers of each classroom said that South Korea was repelling the Reds of North Korea that were retreating. The nation would be reunified sooner or later by the strategic wisdom of the Great General Douglas MacArthur and by the global military troops of the United Nations. The people had to help the Syngman Rhee government with vigilant alerts. They were supposed to inform the police of the "suspicious strangers."

Bad whispers circulated in town. The rumors had hopped from village to village that the summary execution of partisans was imminent. The gist of the rumors was that "the mountain people" had been nabbed and taken to the local police section and they would be killed that day. The weather was clear and warm that day but the air was heavy with somber murmurs. Kids sneezed like dogs. The time bell indicated that the three classes were just finished and another morning class was soon to be done. But boy after boy tiptoed to the school fence around which Thuja orientalis trees had grown tall and tight. Boys, who I was one of, and some daring girls were peeping through the trees.

It was being done on the dry stream bed in front of the school. You walked out of the school gate and stepped onto the road which had been used both by pedestrians and vehicles. And there was a stream, not so wide nor shallow, down below the road. Now, six or seven or some more men were lined up in a column. All of them were handcuffed and tied to the waist in a row but were not shackled.

It seemed they were blindfolded. The partisans who had been alleged to do sedition activities were made to face the firing squad who were lined in the clearing below the stream bank. It was a rapid snap procedure. There was no reading of guilty verdict; There was no protest, nor chanting of slogans, nor spitting of curses. There were gunshots which tore the air and there were falls. Some had one shot fired to the fall; The others two or more to it.

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The truncated life of my youngest (at the time) brother of four gives me a heartache. So cute and so charming. My immediate younger brother and I hadn't seen her body. I don't know where he is buried. Ignorance and silence might have been my parents' only and last resort for their son's sudden death.

Terror gradually melted down; Questions caved in to reluctant acceptance; And the eventual sympathy took place with the extreme measure for their irredeemable sorrow. My parents had had to do the discipline of suppressing their instinctive emotion toward their youngest son. They must have thought that they had had to contain sorrow for all of us.

Prejudice might have played a role in the merciless recklessness. Any protocol for the early demise for their offspring might have been considered to be improper because a child is not entitled to cherish manhood or womanhood before the child has become an adult by reaching specific age and being married.