Interview with my Grandmother – Chang Tae-Geun

As I get the recorder ready Chang, Tae-Geun laughs to herself thinking back to her memories of her child hood. Now at the age of sixty-three she resides in Los Angeles, California having come from Korea in the early 1980s with her husband and four children. The memories of South Korea in the late fifties and early sixties get her to laugh as she nears the couch for the interview.

  I was born in Dae ku, South Korea in January 19, 1943. My parents were farmers. I had an older sister and a younger brother. In Dae ku we lived with our parents and grandparents on our farm till we had to go into refuge cause of the war.

  When I was young I didn’t go to school because the war broke out. During the years I should have been in school our family like many others were going into refuge. So I didn’t really get an education starting from a young age. My family and I have been through so many hard times during this time in our lives.

The war broke out in… I think somewhere around the mid 1950s. During school these buses carrying the American soldiers came onto the school field and from there everyone just ran away. Through the war everyone in refuge had a very hard time. I remember this young lady giving birth and everyone had to get out of the shack we were crammed in because of her. Everyone went out and we found these large sacks carrying canon balls and we made tents with those in the first night. During the night it rained a lot because it was summer time and it kept on pouring and wouldn’t stop so we all just sat up not sleeping for many nights. Because it was cold my sister couldn’t move her legs because of sitting all the time in a cold place so our grandpa carried her on his back while I carried my brother on my back ~sighs~ I remember being very hungry and people started to cook food and when our water was at boiling point the Japanese or North Korean soldiers were shooting at us and we ended up not eating at all. So everyday we just walked escaping the danger, and when we got hungry we stopped to cook and started walking again towards the south. Many times through this war I saw dead bodies lying in the streets and bombs dropping on towns it was horrible.

  After the war was over we moved to a new town because of the damage done to our old house from the war. There I started school with my sister and brother. This school was right near our house and so we didn’t have to walk a lot everyday back and forth. And because I didn’t go to college after high school I got a job at this factory putting buttons on the clothes for a little while just to support my family. At age twenty-two I married your grandpa and later your mom, uncles and aunt were born.

  In Korea both men and women were allowed to vote at the age of twenty I think. The first president was Mr. Lee Sang Min and after him Park Jong Il became president. At that time I was to young to vote and because he was in office for a very long time I didn’t have a chance to vote until over twenty. Was it for president Chung Du Han, I m not sure but it was somewhere around that time that I had first voted and I remember going with my friends. It didn’t seem like a big deal to me being able to vote because no one made a really big deal about not being able to do it in our country.

  One year I remember we didn’t get rain and people were starving and there was nothing the government did or could have done to help the people in my opinion because there was not a lot of things the country were able to do then. People who were business owners probably had hard time because there was no food to buy at the market place and only the farmers kept all the food. ~Sigh~ in that same year there was a flu going around that had killed many young children and old people, luckily I didn’t die from it but I did catch it.

  Koreas law wasn’t that hard to follow it was kind of similar to todays except we have maybe a little more freedoms than it used to. If someone was caught doing something wrong the cops just take them to the station depending on their crime and the police didn’t take random people to jail from what I knew. The government people weren’t always fair though, they made innocent people look like liar sand sent them to jail, but I didn’t really understand why it happened because I didn’t really know what was going on at that age.

  After moving to America I see how lucky I am to have survive the war and the many accidents that could have occurred in my life. I am real glad to have survive through that war with my family together although it was really hard on everyone getting sick and starving ~sigh~ my experiences in life I think has taught many things about life and my country all together.

                                                                                                       Interviewed by Jun Ahn