Remembering the war generation

A woman carrying a baby stands in front of a tank at Goyang in Gyeonggi Province on June 9 1951 during the Korean War. / Korea Times file

By Peter Paik

A famous philosopher once remarked that our consciousness of history usually goes only as far back as the lives of our grandparents. What our grandparents lived through is something we cannot help but take seriously, no matter how strange, alien, or alarming their experiences might appear to us. Their experiences, because they lived through them, are conceivable and accessible to us in ways that the experiences of earlier generations are not.

This thought came while I was watching a morning TV program where a group of elderly Koreans were being interviewed about their childhoods. One woman, who had a kindly and open demeanor, recounted how she had dealt with starvation as a young girl during the Korean War. Ravenous with hunger, she said the only nourishment to be found was in the rations carried by soldiers lying dead on a hillside.

She and others who were also famished climbed the hill at night. They were terrified by the presence of so many corpses, but they were so hungry that they made themselves search through the uniforms to find things to eat. She said that although she was frightened and alarmed at her actions, the food tasted unimaginably sweet.

Almost all Koreans above a certain age have stories of hardship and suffering because of the Korean War and the harsh poverty that followed. But they have now grown old, and in a decade, few of those with memories of the war will still be living. What will Korean society be like, once the generation that suffered through the terrible ordeals of the 1950s passes away?

I grew up in conditions of comfort and never had to worry about going hungry, but the stories my mother told about fleeing from North Korea made a deep impression on my view of the world.

I often wondered how I would deal with such harsh and arduous circumstances. Her stories made me conscious of realities that were difficult to imagine living in the U.S., a wealthy and stable country that has never suffered invasion and conquest by a foreign power.

My parents' experiences during the war gave me an alternative perspective from which to view my own experiences growing up in the U.S. As a teenager, I sought to rebel against them, and as much as I felt that they were often wrong in their views of American society, nevertheless I had to concede that they had a profound knowledge of human nature that I could never acquire, never having to worry about the basic necessities.

Indeed, the middle-class virtues they sought to instill in me ― modesty, fortitude, self-discipline and frugality ― provided much more than the means to succeed in American society. Such virtues, I realized, could help one endure and adapt to great hardships, such as those brought on by war or economic collapse.

Reflecting on the suffering of one's elders, we are often told, should make us grateful for all the privileges and comforts we enjoy. While there is certainly truth in such a lesson, I do not think it goes far enough.

We should reflect on their suffering as a way of looking more skeptically at our comforts and privileges, because they can also weaken our will and drain our spirit in pursuits that are often petty and narrow.

History always contains surprises and it is possible that younger generations will face ordeals that might be just as crushing and as terrible as those that Koreans of my parents' generation had to endure.

As this generation passes into history, it will become more vital than ever to keep in one's mind the kinds of virtues and dispositions that enabled South Korea to rise out of dire poverty into the ranks of the world's most advanced economies.

Such virtues and dispositions may not lend themselves as easily to success in the global capitalist system, but they will help a people come together and withstand inevitable periods of stress and breakdown.

Moreover, what is most difficult for people in a wealthy society to do is to figure out which battles are worth fighting and which changes are necessary and adaptive. Remembering the suffering and poverty caused by war helps us to assess what actions are important and advantageous against those that are frivolous and destructive.

Peter Yoonsuk Paik (pypaik@gmail.com) is a researcher in literature and philosophy at Yonsei University.

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