Songs Know No National Boundaries

By Yi Woo-won

I sometimes travel to Daegu to go to the Central City Library in its downtown area, which is fairly large and in close proximity to the subway. While browsing, I often enjoy reading ``Bungeishunju," a monthly Japanese literary magazine that has lots of interesting and enlightening articles. If I find some exciting subjects and realize I don't have much time to read them, I copy the pages to bring home. Not long ago, I came across a really engrossing story in one of the back issues of the magazine.

It was a dialogue between two distinguished Japanese intellects ― one a writer, the other a mathematician and professor. The story was about their bitter experiences of deportation after Japan's defeat in the Pacific theater in 1945 and about the Japanese ballads that were popular in those days.

The writer, Itsuki Hiroyuki, was not a stranger to me as I had read his book before. It was a great book and I was impressed by the immensity of his erudition. Further, after learning from the book that he had grown up in Pyongyang, I had a friendly feeling toward him as if he came from my own hometown.

Incidentally, we were both 13 years old and in the first year of middle school when the war ended, the only difference being he was in North Korea and I was in the South. He recounted in the dialogue how desperate he was to get his family out of the city, which was overwhelmed and terrified due to the Russian soldiers who then took full control of the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Carrying his little sister on his back and holding the hand of his younger brother, he fought with countless adversities to cross the 38th parallel and return to his homeland by way of Busan.

What attracted me most in their conversation was the romantic old songs that I still remember ― the melodies had terrific soothing power for war-stressed people in those days. Of the dozens of songs they mentioned, I recognized instantly many of them, although I had forgotten some lyrics over the years.

I couldn't believe I still remembered those ancient songs. As I hummed the tunes silently to myself, suddenly I missed the bygone era. There were songs that were particularly familiar to me and whose words I could recite fully as I followed the tunes.

We used to have some albums with those songs at home. We played the albums on the phonograph ― our family treasure ― and some of them sounded a bit scratchy and noisy after having played them over and over. I always loved to listen to them, sometimes singing along with my older sisters.

I guess those emotional songs affected me profoundly in the formative years of my boyhood. They bring back many wistful memories of my lost youth. I was in elementary school during the height of the war and in the first year of middle school when the war finally came to an end.

We were so poor then. The Japanese government, whose rule we were under, was too preoccupied with the unwarranted and unpopular war programs to mind our needs and livelihoods. Our basic necessities such as food and clothing were severely in short supply. At school, my pencils were stubs, which were often too short to hold, and my textbooks were dog-eared old copies handed down from my seniors. My one and only school uniform was laundry-worn with patches at the knees and elbows. But, fortunately, there was my sweet little home where I was happy with my loving family, my parents and our five siblings who all pulled together to get over the hard times.

I cannot forget my Japanese teacher, Mr. Tachiki, who taught me English for the first time in my life, the language I had so dreamed about. This was my first year in middle school. I remember the sentence he taught us on the first day of the semester: ``It is a map of Japan." It was the first English sentence I ever learned. He read the sentence first and asked the class to repeat it after him, imitating his pronunciation. We did this again and again so many times.

The class was so exciting. I thought English was a fascinating language and my teacher's pronunciation was just fabulous. I really admired him ever since. I tried hard to copy his pronunciation and practiced it ceaselessly. But a great disappointment befell me a year later. This was after my Japanese teacher had left the country for his homeland. One day, I ran into an American soldier in the street and I talked to him to try out my English. Quite discouragingly, however, I couldn't understand a word he said and he didn't understand what I said, either. I came to realize later that my English was still poor and my pronunciation had a strong Japanese accent.

But I didn't blame my teacher. I thought, like many non-native English teachers in those years, he probably never had opportunities to communicate with native English speakers. I still admire and respect my former English teacher nevertheless. He was indeed my mentor and an inspiration for me in learning my dream language thereafter. I miss him just as I miss the old songs.

After all, memories of fond people and songs should have no national boundaries, especially for old people like me.

The writer teaches English at Gyeongju University in North Gyeongsang Province. He can be reached at yiwoowon@yahoo.co.kr.