Narrative on Korean War

By William Jones

If today you are 75 years or older you would have memories of experiences from the time of the Korean War. Others must rely upon parents, grandparents, history books, documentary films or museums for the account and descriptions of day-to-day conditions during those desperate and trying times.

Another way to delve into that past is to enjoy the novel, “The Voices of Heaven” by Maija Rhee Devine. Maija's remarkable long-term memory beginning from that of a kindergartener enlightens and illuminates much for us. She recollects and shares remembrances of pleasant and unpleasant incidents, experiences, and feelings from the distant past.

The detailed narration begins June 1949. Fifteen years prior, Eum-chun and Gui-yong who were head over heels in love married. Having one miscarriage and now in her 30s, Eum-chun was unable to bear her husband a child. However, the doorstep discovery of baby Mi-na five years later would become her precious “Jade Leaf” of comfort.

Their family, friends, and neighbors were steeped in a combination of Buddhist, Confucian, and Shaman traditions. The culture of the time called for and even demanded that a spouse bear a son to carry on the name of the father. This was to be done even if by means of surrogacy. It was one rule of many that did not collapse along with the Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910).

The story reeled and whirled further once previously jilted 25 year-old Soo-yang was presented as a second wife. Her arrival was unsettling to the reigning mother-in-law in the household that believed in karma. The narrative culminates in 2005, but not before “30,000 female fetuses” were purposely terminated “in 1994 alone” because there had not yet been emancipation from the patriarchy. Because of the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line, sons were valued over daughters.

Culture prescribes or directs boundaries of a shared lifestyle. It is as German philosopher/writer Johann Gottfried Herder wrote, "Everyone loves his own country, customs, language, wife, children, not because they are the best in the world, but because they are his established property, and he loves in them himself, and the labor he has bestowed upon them." Thus, we are born into the activities of a culture.

Mi-na was keen to note how much culture and beliefs could hinder one's dreams. She wanted to be nobody but herself. There were no unworthy children ― only unworthy parents. Her dilemma was how to escape her mother's vicarious dream and how to "escape her native culture" that taunted her merely because she was a girl. She might have well agreed with James Lowell, saying "New times demand new measures and new men; the world advances, and in time outgrows the laws which in our fathers' day were best.”

The book's paged characters and old sayings come alive and touch you. The writer provokes and unsettles you with the grit of historical reality. She is a skillful wordsmith who uses at times shocking expressions with piercing directness. Wherever language permitted, she was not too proud or prudish to put pen to paper. She demonstrates that all words have purpose or they wouldn't exist.

The author (wrjones@vsu.edu) published the novella Beyond Harvard and presently teaches English as a second language.