Interview With My Grandfather

As Suh Ki Suk sits on his chair for most of the day watching golf and other various sports, he chews on the cashew nuts on the table.  He is 72 and a lot has changed throughout his lifetime.  He does not remember much because he has moved from Korea to Brazil to America; but he sits down drinking bo ri cha (Korean tea) and tries to remember the greatest change in his life, the television.       

The electronic device that impacted me the most was the television.  When I first heard about the television it was 1960 and I was in South Korea.  I was around late twenties and it was when the television was first introduced in our country from United States and we got that television around mid 1960s when I was early 30s.

My first television was first black and white and it only had a one channel.  It was a channel called KBS and it was national channel and it didn’t have an all night program.  We only saw tv from morning to evening only and mainly it was news program and some drama, but once in a while on weekends they showed a movie, but it was mainly the news.  They had more channels, it was late 1960s, they had a two more stations became available to my country so four or three channels were available so they were competing each other.  So they developed better shows and better drama so it was they put a more programs into the channel and longer hours.  They had a uh… nighttime show they always had some kind of a show where all the singers would come out and sing.  So we would see a variety show they played everyday for an hour that we watched everyday right after news.

When the tv was introduced it was very expensive and not many people was able to buy it because of its high price so only few people was able to buy it.  And so if someone had a tv all the neighbors got together on weekend someone else’s house to watch tv.  I wasn’t one of the first families to get a tv.  I wasn’t making enough money at the time.  Uh… we were the last, one of the last families to get the tv when I wanted to watch tv I had to go to neighbor’s home to watch it.

Oh… everything that we only before we only heard (radio) they had to describe everything through the word, but from then on we actually could see what was happening outside through the news (television).  Through the show we could see the picture of a singer which before we could only hear the song, but we could actually see the person who was singing and when about the news when they filmed the actual scene we could actually see what was going on outside the world so everything was more visualized and more clear.

When the television was first introduced it was black and white.  But later on in 1970 early 1970s they introduced the first color tv, but the very first color tv was very uh… how could I say… didn’t have much colors.  It was not natural colors they only used main colors like red, yellow, blue, and brown so certain so actually it was not natural colors that they filmed.  Anyhow the pictures more clear and more colorful later on in the years, and they developed more special effects for tv, and they developed more drama more shows so it had a more channels.  They developed more channels that we could pick shows and drama or news from different channels we could choose to watch.

When I came to the United States, United States already had more multiple channels and United States was showing shows for 24 hours.  Anytime you turn on tv they would show something on tv not like our country (South Korea) where at 11 or 12 o’clock in the evening they would shut down the tv stations.  So the United States was showing movies almost every night, more drama, more news and so they had better shows.

I think the tv was first introduced and developed at the United States then Japanese made a tv as well later on.  But the United States had better tv: RCA and Phillips those kind of brands were pretty popular and they had a better sound system and bigger screens and the color I think was better quality.

The tv impacted my life uh… before the television was introduced we were all depending on the radio.  All the news, drama, everything we had to listen to the radio.  We never had a television in our life before.  I would say the tv… from tv many other devices were developed like video, movies and so even movies you didn’t have to go to a theater to watch it and the news we could actually see the scene so before, the radio was available and was the only media source we had.  From the tv we could see other stuff in the outside of the world to see what was going on and we didn’t have to travel to see other different places and it was a tremendous change in our life. 

Interviewed by Andrew Suh